STEPHANONE was often seen in the Via della Frezza, for the host of the
little wine shop was one of his good customers. The neighbourhood was
very quiet and respectable, and the existence of the wine shop was a
matter of convenience and almost of necessity to the respectable
citizens who dwelt there. They sent their women servants or came
themselves at regular hours, bringing their own bottles and vessels of
all shapes and of many materials for the daily allowance of wine; they
invariably paid in cash, and they never went away in the summer. The
business was a very good one; for the Romans, though they rarely drink
too much and are on the whole a sober people, consume an amount of
strong wine which would produce a curious effect upon any other race, in
any other climate. Stefanone, though his wife had formerly thought him
extravagant, had ultimately turned out to be a very prudent person, and
in the course of a thirty years' acquaintance with Rome had selected his
customers with care, judgment, and foresight. Whenever he was in Rome
and had time to spare he came to the little shop in the Via della
Frezza. He had stood godfather for one of the host's children, which in
those days constituted a real tie between parents and god-parents.
But he had another reason for his frequent visits since that night on
which he had accompanied Gloria and had shielded her from the rain with
his gigantic brass-tipped umbrella. He took an interest in her, and
would wait a long time in the hope of seeing her, sitting on a
rush-bottomed stool outside the wine shop, and generally chewing the end
of a wisp of broom. He had the faculty of sitting motionless for an hour
at a time, his sturdy white-stockinged legs crossed one over the other,
his square peasant's hands crossed upon his knee,--the sharp angles of
the thumb-bones marked the labouring race,--his soft black hat tilted a
little forward over his eyes, his jacket buttoned up when the weather
was cool, thrown back and showing the loosened shirt open far below the
throat when the day was warm.
Gloria reminded him of Dalrymple. The process of mind was a very simple
one and needs no analysis. He had sought Dalrymple for years, but in
vain, and Gloria had something in her face which recalled her father,
though the latter's features were rough and harshly accentuated.
Stefanone had made the acquaintance of the one-eyed cobbler without
difficulty and had ascertained that there was a mystery about Gloria,
whom the cobbler had first seen on the morning after Stefanone had met
her in the storm. It was of course very improbable that she should be
the daughter of Dalrymple and Annetta, but even the faint possibility of
being on the track of his enemy had a strong effect upon the unforgiving
peasant. If he ever found Dalrymple, he intended to kill him. In the
meanwhile he had found a simple plan for finding out whether Gloria was
the Scotchman's daughter or not. He waited patiently for the spring, and
he came to Rome now every month for a week at a time.
More than once during the past year he had brought small presents of
fruit and wine and country cakes for Gloria, and both she and Griggs
knew all about him, and got their wine from the little shop which he
supplied. Gloria was pleased by the decent, elderly peasant's admiration
of her beauty, which he never failed to express when he got a chance of
speaking to her. When little Walter Crowdie was first carried out into
the sun, Stefanone was in the street, and he looked long and earnestly
into the baby's face.
"There is the same thing in the eyes," he muttered, as he turned away,
after presenting the nurse with a beautiful jumble, which looked as
though it had been varnished, and was adorned with small drops of hard
pink sugar. "If it is he--an evil death on him and all his house."
And he strolled slowly back to the wine shop, his hand fumbling with the
big, curved, brass-handled knife which he carried in the pocket of his
blue cloth breeches.
He was certainly mistaken about the baby's eyes, which were remarkably
beautiful and of a very soft brown; whereas Dalrymple's were hard, blue,
and steely, and it was not possible that anything like an hereditary
expression should be recognizable in the face of a child three weeks
old. But his growing conviction made his imagination complete every link
which chanced to be missing in the chain.
One day, in the spring, he met Griggs when the latter was going out
alone.
"A word, Signore, if you permit," he said politely.
"Twenty," replied Griggs, giving the common Roman answer.
"Signore, Subiaco is a beautiful place," said the peasant. "In spring it
is an enchantment. In summer, I tell you nothing. It is as fresh as
Paradise. There is water, water, as much as you please. Wine is not
wanting, and it seems that you know that. The butcher kills calves twice
a week, and sometimes an ox when there is an old one, or one lame. Eh,
in Subiaco, one is well."
"I do not doubt it when I look at you," answered Griggs, without a
smile.
"Thanks be to Heaven, my health still assists me. But I am thinking of
you and of your beautiful lady and of that little angel, whom God
preserve. In truth, you appear to me as the Holy Family. I should not
say it to every one, but the air of Subiaco is thin, the water is light,
and, for a house, mine is of the better ones. One knows that we are
country people, but we are clean people; there are neither chickens nor
children. If you find a flea, I will have him set in gold. You shall
say, 'This is the flea that was found in Stefanone's house.' In that way
every one will know. I do not speak of the beds. The pope could sleep in
the one in the large room at the head of the staircase, the pope with
all his cardinals. They would say, 'Now we know that this is indeed a
bed.' Do you wish better than this? I do not know. But if you will bring
your lady and the baby, you will see. Eyes tell no lies."
"And the price?" inquired Griggs, struck by the good sense of the
suggestion.
"Whatever you choose to give. If you give nothing, we shall have had
your company. In general, we take three pauls a day, and we give the
wine. You shall make the price as you like it. Who thinks of these
things? We are Christians."
When Griggs spoke of the project to Gloria, she embraced it eagerly. He
said that he should be obliged to come to Rome every week on account of
his correspondence. But Subiaco was no longer as inaccessible as
formerly, and there was now a good carriage road all the way and a daily
public conveyance. He should be absent three days, and would spend the
other four with her.
It was a sacrifice on his part, as she guessed from the way in which he
spoke, but it was clearly necessary that Gloria and the child should
have country air during the coming summer. He had often reproached
himself with not having made some such arrangement for the preceding hot
season, but he had seen that she did not suffer from the heat, and his
presence in the capital had been very necessary for his work. Now,
however, it looked possible enough, and before Stefanone went back to
the country for his next trip a preliminary agreement had been made.
Gloria looked forward with impatience to the liberty she was to gain by
his regular absences, for her life was becoming unbearable. She felt
that she could not much longer sustain the perpetual comedy she was
acting, unless she could get an interval of rest from time to time. At
first, the hour he gave her daily when he went out alone had been a
relief and had sufficed. The tears she shed, the letters she wrote to
Reanda, rested her and refreshed her. For she had written others since
that first one, though he had never answered any of them. But the small
daily interruption of her acting was no longer enough. The taste of
liberty had bred an intense craving for more of it, and she dreamed of
being alone for days together.
She wrote to Reanda now without the slightest hope of receiving any
reply, as madmen sometimes write endless letters to women they love,
though they have never exchanged a word with them. It was a vent for her
pent-up suffering. It could make no difference, and Griggs could never
know. Her strange position put the point of faithfulness out of the
question. She was in love with her husband, and the man who loved her
held her to her play of love by the terror she felt of what lay behind
his gentleness. She dreamed once that he had found out the truth, and
was tearing her head from her body with those hands of his, slowly,
almost gently, with mysterious eyes and still face. She woke, and found
that the heavy tress of her hair was twisted round her throat and was
choking her; but the impression remained, and her dread of Griggs
increased, and it became harder and harder to act her part.
At the same time the attraction of secretly writing to her husband grew
stronger, day by day. She did not send him all she wrote, nor a tenth
part of all, and the greater portion of her outpourings went into the
fire, or they were torn to infinitesimal bits and thrown into the
waste-paper basket. She was critical, in a strangely morbid way, of what
she wrote. The fact that she was acting for Griggs, and knew it, made
her dread to write anything to Reanda which could possibly seem
insincere. No aspiring young author ever took greater pains over his
work than she sometimes bestowed upon the composition of these letters,
or judged his work more conscientiously and severely than she. And the
result was that she told of her life with wonderful sincerity and truth.
Truth was her only luxury in the midst of the great lie she had to
sustain. She revelled in it, and yet, fearing to lose it, she used it
with a conscientiousness which she had never exhibited in anything she
had done before. It was her single delight, and she treasured it with
scrupulous and miserly care. In her letters, at least, she could be
really herself.
But the strain was telling upon her visibly, and Griggs was very anxious
about her, and hastened their departure for Subiaco as soon as the
weather began to grow warm, hoping that the mountain air would bring the
colour back to her pale cheeks. For her beauty's sake, he could almost
have deprecated the prospect, strange to say, for she had never seemed
more perfectly beautiful than now. She was thinner than she had formerly
been, and her pallor had refined her by softening the look of hard and
brilliant vitality which had characterized her before she had left
Reanda. There is perhaps no beauty which is not beautified by a touch
of sadness. Griggs saw it, and while his eyes rejoiced, his heart sank.
He knew what an utterly lonely life she was leading, even as he judged
her existence, and the tender string was touched in his deep nature. She
had sacrificed everything for him, as he told himself many a time in his
solitary walks. All the love he had given and had to give could never
repay her for what she had given him. Marriage, he reflected, was often
a bargain, but such devotion as hers was a gift for which there could be
no return. She had ruined herself in the eyes of the world for him, but
the world would never accuse him, nor shut its doors upon him because he
had accepted what she had so freely given. He was not an emotional man,
but even he longed for some turn of life in which for her sake he might
do something above the dead level of that commonplace heroism which
begins in hard work and ends in the attainment of ordinary necessities.
He felt his strength in him and about him, and he wished that he could
let it loose upon some adversary in the physical satisfaction of
fighting for what he loved. It was not a high aspiration, but it was a
manly one.
He drew upon his resources to the utmost, in order to make her
comfortable in Subiaco when they should get there. He was not a dreamer,
though he dreamed when he had time. It was his nature to take all the
things which came to him to be done and to do them one after another
with untiring energy. He worked at his correspondence, and got
additional articles to write for periodicals, though it was no easy
matter in that day when the modern periodical was in its infancy.
Gloria, acting her part, complained sadly that he worked too hard. Work
as he might, he had no such stress to fear as was wearing out her life.
She hated him, she feared him, and she envied him. Sometimes she pitied
him, and then it was easier for her to act the play. As for Griggs, he
laughed and told her for the hundredth time that he was indestructible
and defied fate.
So far as he could see what he had to deal with, he could defy anything.
But there was that beyond of which he could not dream, and destiny, with
leaden hands, was already upon him, on the day when a great,
old-fashioned carriage, loaded with boxes and belongings, brought him
and his to the door of Stefanone's house in Subiaco.
Sora Nanna, grey-haired, and withered as a brown apple, but tough as
leather still, stood on the threshold to receive them. She no longer
wore the embroidered napkin on her hair, for civilization had advanced a
generation in Subiaco, and a coloured handkerchief flapped about her
head, and she had caught one corner of it in her teeth to keep it out of
her eyes, as the afternoon breeze blew it across her leathery face.
First at the door of the carriage she saw the baby, held up by its
nurse, and the old woman threw up her hands and clapped them, and crowed
to the child till it laughed. Then Griggs got out. And then, out of the
dark shadow of the coach, a face looked at Sora Nanna, and it was a face
she had known long ago, with dark eyes, beautiful and deadly pale, and
very fateful.
She turned white herself, and her teeth chattered.
"Madonna Santissima!" she cried, shrinking back.
She crossed herself, and did not dare to meet Gloria's eyes again for
some time.