When Domenico inquired whether the Professor's servant might come in
to see her master, the physician shook his head. "Better not," he
said, "the patient is very weak and nervous still, and has fever. I
cannot say whether it will abate at once. It is possible he may need
great care for several days. And you know what these good females are,
Sor Domenico. They weep, they wring their hands, they suggest sending
for the priest, and frighten the poor creature into believing he is
about to expire. Also they have ancient and noxious remedies used by
their great-grandmothers for sore fingers, which they will administer
to typhoid cases on the sly--and throw the doctor's medicines out of
the window. I have known them give a fever patient a plate of beans
because he happened to fancy it! No, the Signor Professore is better
without any visitors at present. Tell these women that he is improving
rapidly, that he is asleep--say that I have ordered him to have two
pounds of beefsteak for his dinner. They will believe anything and that
will reassure them. But mind you give him nothing but the soup, and the
orzata if he is thirsty. I will return this evening."
Domenico nodded comprehendingly, showed the doctor out and, when
the door had closed on him, gave Mariuccia his report with a little
added color and embroidery to make it more convincing. The old woman
listened eagerly, and, on receiving a rather rash promise that she
should see her master the next day, declared herself satisfied, but
asked leave to wait until the Signorino Goffi should be dismissed
by his Eminence. She had the signorina with her--Domenico bowed
perplexedly to Giannella, whose status was by no means clear to
him--and the streets were in a dreadful condition still, Mariuccia
explained, not fit for two women alone to traverse. Domenico, all
politeness, begged them to be seated, and assured them that the
Signorino Goffi would rejoin them shortly; he was about to retire when
another visitor entered, the lawyer De Sanctis, looking troubled and
out of breath. The messenger had told him the story of the Professor's
adventure and had (after the manner of Italian servants, who consider
themselves and are considered a part of the family) given him a
friendly warning that the Eminenza was "proprio inchieto," very much
annoyed by what had happened, and would in all likelihood administer
some severe reproof to the Signor Avvocato. Sor Domenico had received
a terrific scolding, and it was understood in the house that but for
the intercession of Don Ignazio, the Eminenza's chaplain, he and the
porter and one or two others would have been dismissed on the spot.
The kind-hearted fellow suggested two or three good lies as possible
excuses, but De Sanctis knew that these would not pass with his
clear-sighted patron. He must take his scolding as best he might--and
revenge himself for it some day by discrediting Bianchi with the
Cardinal. That would be easy enough, as things stood.
He was being conducted through the sala to await his turn elsewhere,
when he caught sight of Giannella. He halted, looked again at her and
her companion, and whispered to Domenico that he had a word to say
to the young lady; there was no need to wait for him; he would be in
the room beyond when the Eminenza should condescend to send for him.
And Domenico, glad to be dismissed, hurried off to attend to his many
duties.
Then De Sanctis came towards Giannella with a pleasant smile of
recognition. "Signorina Brockmann," he said, "I fear you do not
remember me," for Giannella was meeting his glance with some surprise,
"yet it was I who had the pleasure of bringing you the news of your
accession to fortune some little time ago. How easily we become
accustomed to agreeable things! You have perhaps forgotten that you
were not always rich."
Giannella had risen from her seat when he began to speak, but her
face was grave and cold. There was a touch of familiarity in his tone
which offended her. As he continued, however, her expression changed
to one of blank incomprehension. It was patent to De Sanctis that
Bianchi had never told her about her inheritance. The shabby dress, the
running out on mean errands, the discrepancies which had puzzled him,
were explained now. He had not had long to wait for his pretty little
revenge. Here was a weapon with which to turn the Cardinal's just
wrath in quite a new direction. He smiled on the girl gratefully for
providing him with it.
"I remember you perfectly, sir," Giannella said at last, "but I do not
understand to what you allude. There is a mistake. You must be thinking
of some other person."
Neither of them had noticed Mariuccia, who, through the colloquy, had
been staring at the lawyer with an ominous frown. She remembered him,
she recognized him, the visitor to whom she had wished twenty thousand
apoplexies in the last three months.
Pushing Giannella aside she came before him, her eyes like fiery
gimlets boring for the truth--a rough-tongued, hard-handed Nemesis
prepared to chastise the disturber of household peace. "Ah, it is
you!" she began in a scornful growl, "Now perhaps you will tell me
what wickedness it was that you put into my poor padrone's head when
you came to see him? Till that day he was an angel, good, pacific,
regulated, thinking only of his studies, his blessed archæology and
his bits of stones, asking only that his house should be quiet and his
meals punctual and cheap. Never did he require more of us two poor
creatures than that--and as for matrimony--he would have run away
if anybody had had the temerity to speak to him of such folly. What
should he want with a wife at fifty-five, when he never wanted one at
the proper time? You come, Master Lawyer, and a thousand caprices come
with you and make an earthquake in his poor head! This child and I have
had no rest! He wants to marry the poor little thing, _marry_ her,
with the clothes she stands up in, a girl without a penny, who already
works for him without wages, as if she were my daughter and not a lady
born. Did you tell him, O assassin, that she is big enough and strong
enough to do the work of two? Does he want to send me away after twenty
years' service, to save my miserable wages--all that she and I have
in the world--and make her his wife so that she will have to work for
him, gratis, forever? Ah, that was it, was it? You said to him, 'Sor
Professore mio, why feed two females and pay one when you need only
feed one and pay her nothing? That old strega, Mariuccia, will soon be
aged and of little use. Giannella knows how to do everything now. Marry
her, so that she can live alone with you, and get rid of the other at
once.' Yes, that is what you advised, infidel, imprudent," thundered
the enraged seeress, "and you have committed a damnable sin, for which
the devil who taught it to you shall kick your soul and the souls of
all your ugly little dead about in hell for a thousand years! Madonna
mia, how could such wickedness enter a man's heart?"
During this long impassioned address De Sanctis had stood quite still,
never taking his eyes from his adversary's face till she stopped,
gasping for breath, with clenched hands that seemed twitching to get at
his throat. Giannella was clinging to her arm and had been keeping up a
stream of remonstrances and entreaties that she would cease to insult
the gentleman, would refrain from making such a scandalous uproar in
the Cardinal's house. But all to no purpose. Mariuccia shook her off as
a wolfhound would shake off a spaniel, and only paused, as it seemed,
to find breath and inspiration for another tirade.
De Sanctis had allowed her to say her say, for every word she uttered
only made the Professor's perfidy more plain; now his legal integrity
was sitting in judgment on the offender, while his personal grudge
against the man fed joyfully on the proofs of his double dealing.
Having learned all that he wished to know, he spoke to Mariuccia,
angrily enough. "You are a silly, ignorant woman, and you have been
saying things for which you will beg my pardon on your knees! You think
you know what I came to say to your master, do you? Well, listen, and
never again, so long as you live, dare to insult an honorable and
innocent person with vile suspicions. Yes, I thought the Professor
was like myself, an upright man, a man to be trusted. I thought he
had been the lifelong friend and helper of this young lady. And, as
she was still under age, I placed in his hands the wonderful fortune
which, largely through my disinterested efforts in discovering her,
had come to her from her father's brother in Denmark. Ah, you tremble,
you turn pale. Yes, that was what I came to tell Signor Bianchi--and
the brigand has never informed her of it--that Giannella Brockmann had
become a rich girl with an income of two thousand scudi, left her by
her uncle, two thousand big silver scudi every year, all for herself;
that she is no longer obliged to live on charity, but is now a young
lady with a dowry that will ensure her a good husband and a comfortable
establishment whenever she chooses. I came as the bearer of this
beautiful news--and you insult me as if I were an executioner!"
The last part of this speech was lost on his audience. Mariuccia had
sunk back on a chair, her face gray with emotion, and Giannella was
kneeling beside her, covering her gnarled hands with kisses and crying
through a rain of happy tears, "Mariuccia, do you understand? I am
rich, rich, and now I can repay you for all your goodness to me. You
shall have clothes, shoes, meat, old wine--a new bed for your poor
tired body, with soft blankets--two thousand scudi--every year, for
always? Oh, you shall have a gold chain as thick as my finger and
earrings with pearls as big as figs. Oh, what have I done that such
happiness should come to me, Madonna mia Santissima--I shall die of
joy."
Not a thought for herself, nor even for Rinaldo; not a glimmer of
resentment against Bianchi; only the passion of gratitude nearly
breaking her heart because it could be satisfied at last.
Mariuccia bent down and kissed the golden head. Then she took the
girl's face in her two hands and looked into it long and silently, a
light on her own that had never shone there before. She tried to speak,
but could not; only, two slow tears trickled down her cheeks. Giannella
put up her soft fingers and brushed them away.
"The very last you shall ever shed, Mariuccia mia," she murmured; "we
know, we two, what it has been. Domine Dio, it is all over!"
Then the old woman rose to her feet and flung up her arms with a
magnificent gesture of thanksgiving, like a prophetess beholding the
victories of justice, the justifications of her God. "After twenty
years you have heard me, Mother of Mercy!" she cried, "Protector of the
fatherless, Consoler of the afflicted, blessed be your most sweet Name
for ever and ever!"
De Sanctis turned away and walked to a farther window, where he stood
looking out and seeing nothing. His little fabric of false values had
tumbled to pieces. His shallow appreciations of human nature had scaled
off like a rotten shroud from a re-risen body. His own astuteness,
of which he had been so proud, Bianchi's dishonest avarice, the low
aims and rabid egoism with which he credited mankind at large--these
were not the spirit level by which to measure real men and women. That
was set by honest hearts incapable of selfish grief or sordid joy,
by Goffi, the obscure little artist, entreating his aid to obtain a
penniless bride, by the girl over there, pure of worldly taint, by
the ignorant old woman who had threatened him and his dead with hell.
He had looked deep into the hearts of all three, and had seen into
gold and crystal. Being only a prosaic Roman he did not put it so
poetically. "Good folk, good kind folk," he told himself. "Beati loro!
They are the happy ones. I wonder if there are many more of them in the
world?"
When he looked round again he found that he was alone. No flooded
streets, no hesitations of timidity, could weigh with those two
rejoicing women. They were hastening to San Severino to give thanks
where thanks were due.