Mariuccia regarded it as too drastic an answer to her prayers when the
erring padrone returned from Ostia shivering and sneezing, his clothes
covered with green mud from the excavations where he had been joyously
burrowing over some valuable discoveries just made in Tiber's forgotten
port. His boots were soaked--his lunch uneaten.
"Figlio mio," cried Mariuccia, all her animosity quenched in anxious
pity as she opened the door and beheld him in this heartbreaking
condition. "What have you been doing? But this is fatal. Domine Dio,
you shake, you have fever. Animal that I was to let you go in those old
boots. Come in and let me put you to bed at once."
Bianchi resigned himself to her ministrations only too gladly, and
while she rolled him up in hot blankets and surrounded him with
fortifications of scalding bricks, Giannella, all undeterred by the
late hour, rushed off to the apothecary for quinine and other potent
drugs. She had never found herself in the street after dark before, but
charity gave her wings and she was whipped along by remorse. Suppose
the poor padrone were to die? And she had been feeling so cross with
him lately, had been so ungrateful for the little attentions which he
had been trying to show her and which probably only her own stupid
conceit had distorted into anything more alarming than kindness and
condescension. Did man but know it, he has only to catch a cold in the
head to make the women of his establishment forget all the grumpinesses
and tyrannies of years. Poor darling, he wasn't well all the time! What
a shame to have resented shortcomings which one ought to have known
were but symptoms of approaching indisposition. Quick, cosset him,
doctor him, and in a few days perhaps the gentle invalid will feel well
enough to put his pretty foot on our necks again.
The Professor basked contentedly enough in the excitement he had
caused, and by the end of the second day was feeling much better.
Mariuccia having reduced him to a state of apparent subjugation and
tucked him up in his blankets with fearful threats of what would
overtake him if he put so much as a hand out of bed, hoisted a basket
of wet linen on her head and climbed up to the roof where each tenant
was allowed a small space for drying clothes.
Giannella had been feeling unusually light-hearted all day. The padrone
was better--what a comfort. And the house was peaceful; there had been
no more "little arguments" between him and Mariuccia. Then the morning
had been so lovely when she slipped out to the five o'clock Mass, a
summer morning with fragrance everywhere, as if ghostly violets and
roses had been dancing about the streets all night and had left their
sweetness behind them when they fled at the coming of the sun. This
was not her own idea; Giannella could not be called imaginative; she
had found it in a book of very sentimental poems which somebody had
most inappropriately presented to the Professor. But it struck her
as pretty, and she had remembered it as she crossed the cool, empty
piazza in the summer dawn. Then it had been most consoling to see a
young man devoutly following the Mass. Young men were not in the habit
of coming to church on weekdays; Mariuccia said they were too lazy
or too frivolous. Mariuccia had a bad opinion of men in general, and
Giannella accepted it, as she accepted most axioms enounced by her
elders, in unruffled good faith. But here was living contradiction to
such pessimism, a sprightly-looking young gentleman, as well dressed
as Don Onorato himself, kneeling piously on a pretty silk handkerchief
from the "Deus in adjutorium" to the "Ite Missa Est." Giannella was
sure that she had never turned her head to look at him, and was a
little puzzled to know how she had ascertained all these attractive
details. True, she had dropped her rosary--very stupidly--and he had
picked it up and returned it to her with grave politeness but without
attempting to meet her glance of thanks. Ah, how comforting it was to a
Christian heart to witness such faith and piety. The world was perhaps
not so evil after all. Mariuccia, and the dear nuns who used to rail
at it, and Padre Anselmo, who told her to give special thanks for her
separation from it, had never seen a good, handsome young man saying
his prayers!
So Giannella, singing softly to herself, was moving about, tidying up
the kitchen (still redolent with damp soap from Mariuccia's washtubs)
when she heard the Professor calling for her. She ran to his door and
looked in. There was very little of the Professor to be seen except
a pair of mournful eyes and a long nose; all the rest was blanket.
"Please give me my spectacles," he whispered hoarsely, "she took them
away, and I am like one blind. They are over there on the bureau. Santa
Pazienza! May I die of an apoplexy if I am ever so stupid as to catch
cold again. She makes me do my purgatory, that woman."
Giannella brought the spectacles and respectfully placed them on the
sufferer's nose; he beamed at her through them gratefully. Then he
asked for something else, the Report of the Archæological Society,
there on the chair, under the coat. She handed it to him and was
about to move away when he slipped the pamphlet under his pillow and,
forgetting all his promises, put out a hand to detain the girl, saying,
"Wait a moment, Giannella. I have something to say to you--we may not
be alone again."
Giannella gazed at him in surprise, "Well, Signor Professore?" she
asked.
"It is this," he said; "but pray sit down. I fear you will be agitated.
Calm yourself, my child, and be prepared for a beautiful piece of news."
He had never spoken to her so kindly before. What was coming? Something
very pleasant, certainly. Giannella carefully removed the coat and sat
down on the only chair, directly facing him, an expectant smile on her
pretty face.
The Professor coughed and took a sip of barley water. "Giannella, you
are a good girl," he said solemnly, "and you are about to be rewarded.
Now--control your feelings--I intend to make you my wife."
Giannella sprang to her feet with a shriek. He smiled indulgently. "I
warned you not to give way to emotion," he continued; "of course you
could not figure to yourself that this good fortune awaited you. There,
there, Giannella--be calm, I entreat you."
The girl's face had turned crimson, she appeared about to choke. Then
she hid her face in her hands and turned away her head over the back of
the chair. Her shoulders were heaving convulsively.
The grating of a key in the lock of the front door brought the
interview to a sudden end. "Run," whispered Bianchi, ducking down under
his coverings with an expression of terror, "she is coming. Not a word
to her. Run, you can thank me another time."
Giannella was gone already, flying to the most distant corner in the
house, the corner behind her embroidery frame. There she stood, close
in the angle of the wall, her apron over her face, trying to suppress
all sound of the hysterical laughter which shook her from head to foot.
Mariuccia's war-horse tread resounded on the bricks of the kitchen. She
called out through the open door, "Are you there, Giannella? Eh, but
the roof is scorching to-day. I thought the soles of my shoes would
come off." Receiving no answer she came and peered into the work-room,
saw the bowed figure in the corner, rushed to the girl and tore the
apron away from her face. "Giannella, what is the matter?" she cried.
"For the love of Heaven tell me what has happened."
"Go to the padrone, quick," gasped Giannella, looking up at her with
scarlet cheeks and tear-drowned eyes. "Oh, mamma mia, I shall die of
laughing--it hurts--speak gently to him--he has gone mad."
Mariuccia turned pale and her jaw fell. "Madonna Santissima," she
whispered, "give me strength. Has he got a knife?" In imagination she
saw the Professor leaping wildly round his room seeking for someone to
kill.
"No, no, he is quiet--there is no danger, but he is quite mad, I fear.
It must be the fever, I suppose."
"Leave it to me," Mariuccia exclaimed. "I will give him a calmante.
Where is the camomile?"
A few minutes later she entered his room on tiptoe, inwardly cursing
the "scrocchio," the bit of hard-creaking leather which the shoemaker
always put into the soles of the boots (and charged extra for, the
brigand!) to make them sound new to their dying day. Bianchi was
pretending to be asleep. His nurse came and leaned over him anxiously.
He was breathing with suspicious regularity, and the confiscated
spectacles were still on his nose.
"He has been getting up," she whispered to herself, "and the poor
boy has caught a chill. It has sent the blood to his head. But he
shall perspire, I will put on leeches--it will pass. Padroncino," she
murmured coaxingly, "wake up for a moment. Drink this." And she held
the scalding cup to his lips.
The invalid was astute enough to see his advantage in her anxiety. He
opened his eyes wearily and gazed up at her. "I do feel very ill," he
said, "and it is less from the cold I caught than from the agitation
I suffered before going to Ostia. Oh, my nerves are in a terrible
state. I was not fit to go--after you had made me that scene. My poor
Mariuccia, you must never so upset me again. It is not safe. I do not
know now whether I shall ever recover from the shock."
"What do you feel?" she asked anxiously. "Is it the head? Oh, you break
my heart. Rash beast that I was to let my evil tongue so disturb you."
"And all for nothing," continued the patient reproachfully. "What had
I done? Merely proposed an act of benevolence--which I intended to
follow up with one of noble generosity. But your ignorant impetuosity
shall not turn me from my purpose. If I recover from this terrible
illness, this fire in my head, this numbness in my limbs, then, my
good Mariuccia, you shall carry the burden of maintaining Giannella no
longer. That pertains to me in future. Have you not realized that I am
going to marry her?"
"Dio mio," wailed the old woman, "the girl is right, the fever has gone
to his head." Then, forcing herself to be calm for the sick man's sake,
she said in soothing tones, "Padroncino mio bello, you are agitating
yourself again. You must not talk any more. Go to sleep--and when
you are better you shall say all that is in your mind. There, are you
comfortable?" She smoothed the pillows, drew up the coverings, and left
him in the darkened room.
Outside in the passage she leaned back against the wall, faint with
fear and remorse. It was all her fault. Who could say how this dreadful
visitation would end? In a fatal illness, or in permanent derangement
of that illustrious understanding? She would fetch a doctor at
once--God send she should not have to go for the priest!
There was an anxious consultation between the two women over the
kitchen table that night. The doctor, put in possession of the facts,
had diagnosed the distemper as "rabbia rientrata" (unvented anger), one
of the most dangerous known to the faculty. How many regrettable losses
to society had it not caused! And how unfortunate that the aid of
science should not have been invoked at once. What could one do after
well-intentioned but ignorant persons had taken it upon themselves to
treat it for forty-eight hours?
Mariuccia and Giannella collapsed under this bitter reproach, and it
was only when the afflicted Professor had been finally lured to slumber
by innocent opiates of orange-flower water that Giannella recovered
sufficiently to remark to her companion, "I do not think we really made
so many mistakes, after all. What did the doctor order but just what
you had done? Leeches, quinine, a sedative--I wonder if he knows so
very much more than you do?"
"Tell me, Giannella?" Mariuccia asked, lifting her head and looking
at the girl curiously, "I had not time to ask you before--what did the
padrone say to you? What was it that first showed you he was delirious?"
Giannella thought for a moment, then she replied, while the lamplight
showed a gleam of rebellious amusement in her eyes, "He told me that
he had a piece of beautiful good news for me, and I sat down to hear
it--and then he said he--he intended to marry me. I could not help
laughing. He looked so funny, and the thought was such craziness. But I
am sorry--I should have had more heart."
Mariuccia reflected; then she shook her head sagely. "This craziness
has been coming on for a long time, I believe," she said, "it is not
all the result of our little argument the other day. I must tell you
now--though I did not mean to--that we were talking about you then,
Giannella. He said he wished to pay for your board--he, who counts
his coins as if they were beads of a rosary. 'Santo Baiocco, ora pro
nobis!' Proverino, it is his only fault. I ought not to speak of it
now that he is in such danger. And then I was angry--and he said to me
what he said to you this morning, that he intended to marry you. Now
let us reason a little, figlia mia. You have been at home for over four
years, and the padrone hardly seemed to see you till three months ago.
He changed then, suddenly. Now have you no suspicion of what was the
cause?"
"I cannot imagine," replied Giannella simply. "I thought at first that
perhaps he was sorry for me because I should soon be growing old and
ugly and my shoes were going to pieces--and since dear Signora Dati of
good memory died--and the Princess is too busy to remember, there is
no one to get me any work. But now he speaks of--marriage. What man in
his right senses could wish to marry me, nearly twenty-one and without
a penny?" She looked up in perplexed good faith as she asked the
question, and the lamplight fell on the calm, lovely face which had so
enchanted one man that he dreamed of it all night and crept down to the
church morning after morning to catch another glimpse of it.
"There might be plenty," growled Mariuccia, "if they could only see
you. You will be beautiful till you are a hundred, core of my heart.
Now don't smother me!" for Giannella suddenly ran round the table and
hugged her friend. "But the padrone is not like other men. The time has
come when I must tell you what I have discovered. You are young, you
saw nothing, but I saw, I understood. This bewitchment had a beginning.
It came with the first visit of that stout gentleman who asked you such
strange questions. Do you remember? Ah, they could not deceive me. I
wish I had thought of it when he was last here. If he comes again I
will ask him some questions, I can tell you. What did he want here,
putting folly into my poor boy's head and disturbing the tranquillity
of a Christian family? I have lived twenty-three years with that poor
afflicted angel in there, and never have we had a disagreement till
that fat demon, whoever he was, came to upset us all, and may his best
dead suffer for it. There, it is late, go to bed, Giannella, I am going
to sit up in here--the padrone may want something."