Regina had once dreamed of an eclipse of the sun. Reading Gabrie's
page, she remembered that dream, because there was reproduced in
her the same feeling of fearful darkness, of portentous silence and
terrible expectation.
For a moment. When the moment had passed she again saw the light of
the sun, felt again the vibration of life, perceived that everything
in the outer world had retained its proper aspect and position, and
that nothing was changed. But _she_ was no longer the same. Around
her, far and near, the light had returned; within her darkness
remained.
She laid the note-book on the table, took up the violets, the
biscuits, the book, and she went. Later she saw she had fled from the
vulgar temptation to question Gabrie, to force her, even by violence,
to tell how she had guessed, whom she had heard speak of the hideous
secret. As always, she was sustained by pride, stiff and cold as the
iron which sustains the clay of the statue.
The dumb woman ran after the visitor as she departed, and made signs
which Regina did not understand. That little figure, like a disguised
child, woke in her a kind of ferocious repulsion. Why did such
beings exist? Why did not nature or society suppress all maimed,
useless, weak persons?
For the rest of her life Regina remembered that quiet little
Apartment of the strolling musician, the uneven stair, the equivocal
landings, the dusty hall of the big house in Via San Lorenzo; but it
was with profound disgust, as if she had there come in contact with
all the most foul and miserable things of life. She never returned to
it.
Again she traversed the sunny street, the Piazza, the avenues,
without noticing any one or anything, though she forced herself to
remain calm and _not to believe_ that nonsense which she had read.
She would speak of it to Antonio. They would laugh at it together!
However, she was aware that agitation was gaining upon her, and,
instead of going back to the garden where nurse and baby were
waiting, she sat down on the first bench of the avenue on the right,
opposite the Terme.
Why did she not go back to the garden? Why not call the nurse, that
they might return home together? _She could not._
Suddenly she seemed to hear a distant rumble like that of the immense
palpitation of a train passing on some remote and invisible path.
"My God, what is it?"
A lady, with a great roll of red hair twisted at the nape of her
neck, passed, looking at her curiously and turning her head as she
went by. Regina drew a hand over her face, and understood that she
was pale and visibly upset. The distant rumble, the breathless
palpitation, came from her interior world, from her own agitated
heart.
Then she shook herself all over like a bird just awakened, and tried
to return to reality. The violets, the packet and the book were
still on her lap. Why had she brought these away? Well, yes; by an
instinctive vendetta against Gabrie, who had thrust this thorn into
her heart.
"How small I am!" she thought. "What fault is it of hers if _that_ is
true? But _can_ it be true? And why? And why did I not ask that at
once, that _Why_?"
Ah! because it was useless to ask!
She knew the answer to this terrible _Why_. Even before the useless
question had shaped itself on her lips the reason _Why_ had sounded
in her blood from vein to vein, out of the echoing abysses of her
heart.
_He_ had sold himself. Regina did not doubt it for a single instant,
nor did the absurd thought pass for a single instant through her
mind, that before his marriage he could have been the disinterested
lover of that rich old woman.
He had sold himself. He had sold himself for her, for Regina,
precisely as women sell themselves, to get money, to get a
fine house, light and air, bits of silk, gewgaws, gloves, silk
petticoats--all the things she had asked, all the things for lack of
which she had reproached him.
"Oh, wretched, stupid boy! to be so weak, so vile. I will come home,
I will take you and punish you as one punishes a wicked child! You
ought to have understood me--you ought to have understood me!"
But while in her heart she sobbed out these and other recriminations,
she felt them vain. Words of a very different truth were resounding
in her soul, turning it into a threatening whirlwind.
It was she who had been weak and vile; she who had not understood the
seriousness and fatality of life; and now life was punishing her like
the wicked child which she had been.
Her head burned and throbbed as if she had literally been beaten. How
long had she been sitting on this bench? People passed and stared at
her. Young men turned their heads. One of them smiled after a glance
of admiration at her green shoes and the edge of her green silk
petticoat showing under the flounces of her dress.
She remembered that nurse was waiting in the gardens, but she could
not move. Through the veil of her anguish she saw the people passing,
the trees, the ruins in their spring clothing of weeds. There was a
yellow awning among the ruins, and two doves with grey plumage were
kissing in the ivy. The telegraph wires engraved the vivid azure of
the heavens. She saw the advertisements on a corner of the Terme, a
hunting scene, notice of a sale. She read senseless words, "Odol!
Odol! Odol!" which afterwards remained strangely impressed on her
memory. Builders were at work in the Piazza, and never afterwards
could she forget the earthy red colour of their shirts. She followed
with her gaze the scintillations of the wheels of the vehicles.
The simple scene, familiar after having been seen a hundred times,
woke in her a profound disquiet, attracted, absorbed her. Then she
suddenly realised that she herself was creating this curious interest
in it, as an excuse for not moving from the bench, not going back to
the gardens, delaying the hour for returning home.
She feared the return home to the house, the thought of which roused
in her a sense of horror. All in it was lurid! All! all! all!
She would have liked to strip herself, to strip her baby--to tear
from the little soft body, pure as a rosebud, the robes of shame, of
prostitution, and take her thus naked on her naked breast, and fly
with her, fly, fly----!
Fly! The old idea came back; but this time Regina would have wished
to fly to some spot far distant from her native province, away beyond
the river which never, never, would she cross again!