SIX months had hardly gone by when new troubles came for Don Gesualdo. Isabella threatened to commit suicide; the son-in-law had taken her travelling outside the Kingdom of Naples, and talked of appealing for a legal separation, on grounds of incompatibility of temper. Other gossip reached the poor father, in secret, and he set off hot-foot to the Villa di Carina, where the duchess was kept for reasons of health. He came back looking ten years older, and quarrelled with his wife, who never understood a thing, and cursed Aunt Cirmena and all the relations with all his heart, because they had brought him nothing but bitter vexations, and was forced to rush to the lawyer to settle the business with his genteel son-in-law by dint of money and more money. It was a great blow for the poor fellow. He hid the real trouble from his wife, so as not to distress her uselessly; – he kept everything to himself; but he had no peace; it seemed to him that people were pointing the finger at him; he felt the blood come to his face as he went alone, thinking, or if he met that infamous creature Cirmena. He was a peasant; he wasn’t used to such shame! And his daughter the duchess cost him the eyes out of his head, moreover. The Canziria estate to start with, and Alia and Donninga which he had assigned to her as her dowry, and which made his heart bleed every time he saw them now, let out to anybody, and everybody, divided again into bits and scraps after he had struggled so hard to put them together, badly kept, badly worked, far from the master’s eye, as if they belonged to nobody. From time to time also other bad news reached his ear, giving him no peace, tormenting him like horse-flies or like stinging wasps; they said in the village that my lord duke was sowing debts with both hands, thick as hail, the same wild oats that devoured his own property and spread over his wife’s possessions worse than locusts. That poor Canziria which had cost Don Gesualdo so many labours, so many privations, and where he had felt his blood stir as he set his foot for the first time upon his own soil! Donninga for the sake of which he had brought down on himself the hatred of all the village! the good lands of Alia, which he had brooded over, coveting them with his eye for ten years, morning and evening, good sunny land without a stone, loose and soft so that you could push your hands in and it felt warm and fat like living flesh – all, all was going in this gangrene! How could Isabella have held the pen in her hand and put her signature to so many debts? Cursed the day in which he had let her be taught to write! He seemed to see the shadow of mortgages stretching over the lands which had cost him so much sweat and blood, like a hoar-frost in March, worse than a heavy spring mist that blackens the young corn like fire. Once or twice, in serious circumstances, he was forced to let himself be bled in other ways. All his savings bled away from this open vein, all his toil, his sleep at nights, everything. And yet Isabella was not happy. What a state he had found her in, in the sumptuous Villa di Carina! He guessed what there must be underneath it all, when she wrote letters to him which set him in a fever, and which poisoned him with the delicate scent of those crested sheets, him who had thickened his own skin labouring even under malaria. The lord duke, however, conducted all this sort of business through the lawyer Neri – because they weren’t his forte. And when at last Mastro-don Gesualdo really turned, refusing to go any further, rearing and shying, he was told that his son-in-law said:
‘It is obvious my father-in-law, poor man, doesn’t understand what is needed for my wife to keep up the name she bears in decency.’
‘Decency? – I black my boots with decency! I eat bread and onions to keep the duchy going. Tell my noble son-in-law that! In a few years he has wasted a whole patrimony.’
There was the devil of a row. Donna Bianca, who was already ill enough, spitting blood morning and evening, had a relapse which brought her to the grave’s brink in a fortnight. In the village they all knew she had consumption: like all the Traos! a family which was dying out of exhaustion, said the doctor. Only her husband who was always out, busy with his own business, so many thoughts and troubles in his head, deluded himself thinking she’d be better as soon as he could take her out to Mangalavita, into that balsamic air, that would really bring the dead back to life. She smiled sadly and said nothing.
She was reduced to a skeleton, gentle and resigned to her fate, expecting nothing and desiring nothing. Only she would have liked to see her daughter again. Her husband had promised it her. But since they were at outs with their son-in-law he had said no more about it. Isabella was always promising to come, from one autumn to another, but she could never finally make up her mind to it, as if she had sworn to herself never to set foot in that accursed village again, as if she had plucked it from her heart entirely. And Bianca, as her strength ebbed, felt this hope also fade, as her life was fading from her, and wasted herself in ruminating on future projects, day-dreaming, her face flushing up with the last flames of her life, her eyes veiled with tears which might have been tears of tenderness and were really tears of discouragement.
‘I’ll do this! I’ll do that!’
She was like those caged birds who try over their song for the spring they will never see. The bed in which she lay seemed to eat away her flesh; the fever consumed her with a slow fire. Now, when she was seized with a fit of coughing, she was left gasping, spent, with her mouth open, her eyes delirious in the depths of the sockets which seemed so deep, so deep, clutching with her poor wasted arms as if she wanted to hold on to life with all her might.
‘All right!’ sighed Don Gesualdo at last, seeing his wife in this state. ‘I’ll do this as well, then! – I’ll pay the noble duke to let you see your daughter again! – I’m made to carry the load, as I always was.’
The doctor came and went, and tried all the remedies and all the nonsense he read in his books; there was a frightful bill at the druggist’s.
‘Anyhow it’ll help some way or other,’ grumbled Don Gesualdo. ‘I don’t mind what is spent for my wife; but I want to spend my money so that she can get some good by it and I can see it in her face – not so that they can try all the new medicines on her like at the hospital! – Now they’ve got it into their heads that I’m rich, they all want to make what they can out of it! –’
But the first time he ventured to make a veiled complaint to the doctor himself, Saleni, another of these medical fellows, this one worse even than Tavuso, rest his soul, the man looked straight at him with his impudent eyes and said rudely:
‘Then why do you send for me?’
And he had to beg and pray him to continue to do as he liked, although it wasn’t the slightest good actually. On the eve of the Immaculate Virgin it looked as if poor Bianca was really going to yield up her soul to God. Her husband, who had gone to wait for the doctor on the stairs, said to him immediately:
‘I don’t like her, doctor! I don’t like the looks of my wife tonight.’
‘Eh! have you only just found it out? I haven’t liked the looks of her for some time. I thought you’d have realized it.’
‘But isn’t there anything we can do, your honour? Do all you can. Don’t mind the expense. – Money is meant to be spent for these things –’
‘Ah, you tell me so now? Now you realize? Well I’m glad to hear it, I must say!’
Saleni began the comedy all over again; the pulse, the tongue, a bit of a chat seated at the bed-foot, with his hat on his head and his stick between his legs. Then he wrote the usual prescription, the usual rubbish which was no good to anybody. and departed leaving husband and wife to their miseries. The house had become a forsaken cavern. Everybody gave it a wide berth. Even the servants were afraid of the infection. Zacco was the only relation who remembered them in their trouble, since he and Don Gesualdo had formed a company together for the contract for the high-road, and so were friends again. The baron came every day with all his family, the baroness lean and obedient, her daughters filling the room, so over-ripe, fat and bursting, that they made you expect a cannonade. –
He wasn’t afraid of infection! Lot of rubbish! – And then, when it’s one’s own relations – ! He’d heard that evening in the town that his cousin Bianca was worse, so he had come sooner than usual. To take Don Gesualdo’s mind off his troubles a bit, he drew him into the balcony opening and began to discuss their business with him.
‘What do you say to this? Cousin Rubiera is going to bid at the auction for the other two sections of road. – Yessir! that fool! – Eh? Eh? What do you think of it? – Him who’s not been able to pay you back that money for the leading lady yet! – There’s hell to pay with his wife, about you, because she won’t settle it with her money! – She brought him her children, for a dowry! – but she wants to keep her money for herself! He’s fated, is that poor Don Ninì! – And do you know who else is coming in at the auction? Do you want to know? – Canali, just think of it! – Canali playing at being a joint contractor along with Baron Rubiera! – They’ve all got hungry for making profit nowadays! – Eh? – Wasn’t I right to tell you? – Doesn’t it make you laugh?’
But his friend was not really heeding him; he was uneasy, keeping his ear listening in another direction. Then he got up and went to see if Bianca was wanting anything. She didn’t want anything, as she lay staring in front of her with those eyes of an innocent creature, putting her handkerchief to her mouth sometimes, and then hiding it again, along with her wasted hand, under the pillow. The Zacco girls were sitting round the bed, with their hands in their fat laps. Their mamma stammered timidly, in order to break the silence:
‘She seems a little calmer – since we came –’
At those words the daughters all looked at one another and nodded approval.
Then the baron went up to the bedside, showing a great deal of interest in the sick woman.
‘Yes, yes, there’s no comparison! – her eye is more alive, and her countenance is more animated. – Naturally! – hearing some talk going on round her. She needs to be livened up, to have a bit of conversation. For a blessing you’re in good hands. The doctor knows what he’s doing. And then when you’ve got the means! – when you lack for nothing! I know plenty of others where it’s different – well born too – of good family – and they want bread by day and covering by night! – old and ill, without doctor or druggist –’
He leaned to Don Gesualdo and twaddled out the rest in his ear. Bianca either heard or guessed, with her shining eyes which fixed people in the face, and she drew her white, wasted hand that was like a child’s from under the pillow to make a sign to her husband to come near. Don Gesualdo had bent over her and was nodding Yes. The baron, seeing there was no longer need for mystery, spoke up.
‘He won’t come! Don Ferdinando has become a regular child. He doesn’t understand a thing, poor fellow! – We must be sorry for him. We can say it here, among us relations. – He needn’t lack for anything. – A brother-in-law with such a good heart as this one here! –’
The sick woman waved once more that hand that spoke by itself.
‘Eh? What does she say? What does she want?’ asked the baron.
Donna Lavinia, the eldest of the daughters, had risen, anxious to do for her anything she might require. Donna Marietta, the other daughter, for her part pulled her father’s coat-tails. But Bianca had closed herself in a silence which sharpened her worn face like a knife, so that even the baron noticed it and changed the subject.
‘The Lord God sometimes lengthens our days to try us with fresh troubles – I speak of the Baroness Rubiera, poor thing! Eh? – To live to see the property she’d got together go to pieces under her own eyes! – and not to be able to say a word or to move a finger – eh? eh? Her son is a fool. Her daughter-in-law grudges her the mouthful of food she eats! – As true as God’s above! – She can’t wait to be rid of her! – But she doesn’t want to go! She wants to live just to see how her son will get out of that debt to Don Gesualdo. – Eh? – I’ve been telling your husband just now of the great schemes Don Ninì has got in his head –’
Don Gesualdo was silent, plunged in thought. Then, seeing that the baron was expecting his cousin Bianca to answer, waiting with that fixed little smile on his mouth, he growled:
‘No, there’s not so much to laugh at – I’ll wager the canon-priest Lupi is at the back of it.’
Zacco was staggered.
‘That rascal? that trickster? – How do you know? – Who told you?’
‘Nobody. It’s my idea. But he won’t take me in, you’ll see. – Besides, I don’t care. I’ve got something else to think about now!’
But the baron would give him no peace.
‘What? You don’t care! Thank you for that! You know what they’re saying, don’t you? That they want to take the communal lands away from us! – They say they’ve found the way and means this time – and that neither you nor me can help ourselves, do you know!’
Don Gesualdo shrugged his shoulders. It seemed as if really he didn’t care a single straw about it now. The baron gradually calmed himself down, in the midst of the chorus of his women who were murmuring abuse against the canon-priest.
‘A trickster! – a swindler! – You can’t stir in the village but what he has to poke his nose in –’
Donna Marietta, more prudent, pulled her father’s coat-tails once more.
‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ added he. ‘One chatters to say a bit of something – to liven up the sick woman. One doesn’t know what to talk about. – Do you know though what the malcontents like Ciolla are going round saying? – that they’ll be making the revolution in eight days’ time – to frighten the gentlefolks. – You remember, in twenty-one, eh, Don Gesualdo?’
‘Ah! – What’s the good of talking! – I’ve got a revolution in the house now!’
‘I know, I know. – But then, it doesn’t seem to me –’
The baroness, who could speak when necessary, turned to Don Gesualdo with that ill-omened face of hers to ask if they had written to the duchess to tell her what a state her mother was in. – Bianca had the sharp ear of the very ill.
‘No, no, there’s no danger!’ interrupted Zacco. Meanwhile Donna Lavinia had risen to fetch a glass of water. As the door-bell was heard to ring she wanted also to run and see who it was.
‘A two-handed sword!’ exclaimed the baron sotto voce, as if he was saying something in confidence, smiling complacently. ‘A real treasure of a girl to have in the house. – So sensible! – And she’d throw herself in the fire for her cousin Bianca! –’
The mamma also smiled discreetly. At that moment appeared the servant girl announcing Baron Rubiera and his wife.
‘Him? Well, it takes a cheek like his!’ burst out the baron, jumping up and looking for his hat which he’d got on his head all the while. – ‘You’ll see he’s come to talk about what I was telling you! Isn’t there another way out? – not to meet him face to face, the fool! –’
His family was taking leave as fast as ever they could, rushing round like him, looking for shawls, upsetting chairs, bumping into one another, as if Don Ninì was going to burst into the room with a drawn dagger. The poor ill woman, overcome by all that turmoil, let herself sink into unconsciousness, saying with a thread of a voice:
‘For the love of God! – I can stand no more!’
‘No. – But there’s no help for it, cousin! – They’re relations, as well! – You’ll see they’ve come for their own purpose, to seize the opportunity. – Pretending to be coming to see you. – We’d better be going, we had. – That’s the way. – First come first served –’
But the Rubieras did not put in an appearance as yet. Don Gesualdo went into the anteroom, where he learnt that they were waiting in the parlour, as they had heard that the Zaccos were there –
‘All the better!’ observed the Baron. ‘That means he wants a private talk with you, does Don Ninì! – So we won’t stir. We’ll stop and keep our cousin company, while you talk business. – And then we shall hear what that ninny has come to ask you!’
The servant had taken a little light into the parlour, and in the semi-obscurity Don Ninì looked really enormous, muffled in his greatcoat, with a woollen scarf right up to his ears, in his neck a mane of hair that hadn’t been cut since May. Donna Giuseppina on the other hand, had gone round-shouldered, her face was flabby and wrinkled in her round hood, her hair, of a dirty grey, was ill-combed, rolled up in a hurry with one hand and then held in place by the silk handkerchief that she had tied under her chin. Her hands were cracked and black, the hands of a good housewife, as she now gesticulated to defend her husband’s interests; agitating herself inside her mud-splashed cape that covered her all over; showing in all her person the slovenliness and neglect of a rich lady who had no need to dress herself up, a wife who has left off bearing children and hasn’t to trouble any more about pleasing her husband. And on her toothless mouth she kept all the time the smile of a poor person, the humble smile of one who comes to beg a favour. While Don Ninì fumbled for his words, turning his old hat in his hands, with that scarf up to his nose giving him a threatening look. His wife encouraged him with a look and began herself:
‘We heard that cousin was worse. – We came at once with Ninì. – We’re relations when all’s said and done – the same blood. – There are differences – and different interests – there must be, in all families. – But everything goes under when certain things happen. – Ninì as well – poor fellow, he couldn’t rest – always saying – I’d really like to know why –’
Don Ninì agreed with gestures and with all his person, which he had let sink on to the sofa, making it creak loudly. And quickly he broached the matter he had come for – his wife insisting absolutely that their cousin should sit down between the two fires –
‘We’ve got that business of the new contract to consider, dear Don Gesualdo. Why should we fight amongst ourselves, say I? – for some outsider’s benefit? – since we really are relations! –’
‘Of course!’ interrupted the wife. ‘That’s what we came about – How is our poor cousin?’
‘As God wills she should be! – So that I’ve got the punishment of God on my shoulders! – I haven’t got the head for business now –’
‘No, no, I don’t want you to bother. – I was just saying – you ought to trust yourself to a reliable person. – Not that it’s anything to do with me, of course –’
All at once Don Ninì’s face went dark, as he seemed to withdraw, watching the other man with suspicious eyes.
‘Tell me though, do you trust Zacco, really? Eh? Do you trust him?’
Don Gesualdo, in spite of all he was feeling, twisted his mouth to a smile, as if to say he trusted nobody.
‘Good! If you knew the sort of fellow he really is! – All the things he used to say about you once! – before he was hand and glove with you! – The talk he used to let out! –’
Donna Giuseppina had her cheeks pursed out and her lips nipped together as if to keep in all she might say.
‘Anyhow, we won’t bother! Talk won’t grind us any corn. He’s a relation as well! So let’s come back to ourselves. – What have we to keep on falling out about? Why should we keep a lot of lawyers and judges at our expense? What is the trouble between us relations? Is it all for that trifle which I owe you? – For you it’s no more than a pinch of snuff.’
‘Oh well, excuse me, so it is for you –’
Then chimed in Donna Giuseppina, telling over her troubles, her large family, her mother-in-law the baroness, who while she lived –
‘Excuse me! – She doesn’t come in. – It’s the money that matters, you know. And I lent my money to your husband.’
Don Ninì began to excuse himself, there in front of his wife. – Yes, he had borrowed the money – at a moment when he had lost his head. – When you’re young – you’d better cut your head off, sometimes. – He would pay – in time – the last farthing – without law-suits or any more expense – as soon as his mother had closed her eyes. – But was it right to make him feel bitter against the baroness, good God? To make her do something foolish? –
‘Ah?’ said Don Gesualdo. ‘Ah?’ – And he looked at Donna Giuseppina as if to ask why she didn’t pay.
Don Ninì, embarrassed, looked from one to the other. She at last put in, cutting her husband short with a wave of the pocket-handkerchief she had taken from her satchel:
‘It’s not only that. – The affair of the lands. – You haven’t mentioned that yet to Cousin Don Gesualdo, have you?’
‘Yes – the affair of the communal lands –’
‘I know – ‘ replied Don Gesualdo – ‘The lease expires in August. Whoever wants to come in at the auction, can then –’
‘No! no! – Neither you nor I will get them this time.’
‘A new law,’ interrupted Donna Giuseppina with a sour smile. ‘The lands aren’t going to be leased out any more! The parish is going to rent them – to the poorest people – a little bit for everybody. – Everybody in the village will be a landowner in a little while! – Didn’t you know?’
Don Gesualdo pricked up his ears, putting aside his own troubles for a moment. Then he gave a weary smile.
‘It’s as true as God’s above!’ added Baron Rubiera. ‘I have seen the project at the Town Hall! They say the parish will be the gainer, and everybody will have his own piece of land.’
Then Don Gesualdo took out his snuff-box, smelling a trap.
‘That is to say? That is to say?’
‘Don Gesualdo!’ called the servant from the doorway. ‘Just a minute, your honour!’
‘Do go, never mind us,’ said Donna Giuseppina. ‘Don’t you bother. We’ll wait.’
‘It’s the mistress. She wants to speak to your honour!’
‘Eh? What do they want? What do they say?’ The Zaccos fell upon Don Gesualdo the moment he entered the sick room.
‘It was I who sent for you,’ said the Baron with a sly smile.
But the other didn’t answer, bending over his wife. Making her eyes and her poor, wasted white hand speak for her, she said:
‘No! – Don’t have anything to do with him – if you want just for once to listen to me. – Don’t join with my cousin Rubiera, don’t do it! – Mind, I speak to you on my deathbed –’
She had a toneless voice, and eyes which penetrated into him, so fixed and shining. Zacco, who had also bent over the bed to hear, exclaimed triumphantly:
‘Bless her! She speaks as if she could see beyond. You’ll never do any good with that man! A fool! A weathercock! What your wife says to you at this moment is gospel, Don Gesualdo! Don’t forget it. I’d be very careful before I disobeyed what she says, on my word I would – !’
‘And Donna Giuseppina! Deceitful, spiteful!’ put in Madame. ‘She has shortened her mother-in-law’s days! She can’t wait to be rid of her!’
‘Go then, go and face the music. We are here. Go along, else they’ll be there till tomorrow.’
Don Ninì was still seated on the sofa, puffing with the heat of his woollen scarf, his hat on his head; and Donna Giuseppina had got up to look in the obscurity at the ornaments and things arranged carefully on the tables and stands: the coffee-service, the paper flowers under the glass dome, the clock which always pointed to the same hour. Seeing Don Gesualdo return she said immediately:
‘Baron Zacco sent for you, didn’t he? There was no need – We don’t make any mystery –’
‘We don’t make any mystery – ‘ repeated her husband. ‘It’s only a question of coming to an agreement – all those that are well-disposed to one another. – If he’s well-disposed himself – that gentleman! –’
‘But,’ observed Don Gesualdo, ‘if the thing is as you say, I don’t know what’s to be done. – What do you want of me?’
Donna Giuseppina had also changed her face, darting her eyes like needles first to this one, then to that, chewing a smile with her black mouth. She put her husband altogether in the background, and took up the cudgels herself with her Cousin Motta.
‘Yes, there is help for it! – there is! – ‘ And she kept still for a moment, staring fixedly at him, to impress him more. Then, holding her purse tight between her hands, she came up to him with a peculiar motion of her hips, in confidence.
‘We’ve got to get our own people to take the lands – on the quiet – ‘ said the baron.
‘No! no! – let me explain. – The communal lands are to be rented out in lots, aren’t they? in bits and scraps so that every land-labourer can have his share. All right. Let them do it. And then, we’ll put forward other applicants, on the quiet – shopkeepers, people who don’t know what to do with land and haven’t even the money for the rent. Everybody has the same right to apply, haven’t they? Well then, with a bit of foresight, advancing a small sum to this one and the other. – They will be in debt to us at the New Year, and we’ll take the land in payment. Do you see what I mean? We’ve got to prevent as much as ever we can the real land-labourers from getting hold of it. Because once they do they’ll never let go of their bits again They’d die rather.’
Don Gesualdo got up suddenly, his nostrils dilated and his face all at once reanimated, and began to walk up and down the room. Then, turning round to face the other two, who had also risen startled:
‘You didn’t think of this!’ he exclaimed ‘This is a good one. I know where this comes from!’
‘Ah! Ah! You know? You see?’ replied the baron triumphantly. ‘First of all you’ve got to stop Nanni l’Orbo’s mouth. – With caution – and a little money – without doing anybody any hurt, of course! – The authorities –’
‘You who’ve got a hand in the affair. – The fellow is a ring-leader, an agitator – capable of rousing the whole place against you. You who’ve got a hand in the affair, you must stop his mouth.’
Don Gesualdo went to sit down again, repenting of having let himself be carried away by the first emotion, scratching his head.
But Baron Zacco, who was on the other side of the door listening with all his ears, could not contain himself any longer.
‘Excuse me. Excuse me, gentlemen,’ he said, entering. ‘If I disturb you – if you have something to talk about in secret – I’ll go – ‘ And he straightway took a seat, with his hat on his head.
They were all silent, each one glancing furtively at his neighbour, Don Ninì with his nose in his scarf, his wife with her lips compressed. At length she said she was so sorry about Bianca’s illness.
‘Really! mourning in the whole village. Ninì has been preaching at me for a while now – Giuseppina dear, we must go and see how my cousin is. – Money is one thing, and relationship another –’
‘Well now,’ resumed Don Gesualdo. ‘This fine idea of taking the communal lands on the quiet – who is responsible for it?’
It was no use pretending after that. Donna Giuseppina began to talk again about the ferment there was in the village, and of the revolution that was threatening. Baron Zacco fidgeted, making signs with his head to Don Gesualdo.
‘Eh? Eh? What was I telling you just now?’
‘When all’s said and done,’ concluded Donna Giuseppina – ‘it’s better to speak out plainly and shake hands with one another, all of us who have something to lose.’
And she returned to the subject of that scoundrelly chopping up of the communal lands for the benefit of the poorest people, into so many morsels, a crumb for everybody, so as not to wrong anybody. She laughed till her stomach shook, with venom.
‘Ah? ? ?’ exclaimed the Baron, purple in the face, his eyes starting out of his head. ‘Ah? ? ?’ And he said no more.
Don Gesualdo was also laughing.
‘Ah? It makes you laugh? ah?’
‘What do you want me to do? It matters nothing to me, I tell you.’
Donna Giuseppina was staggered.
‘How? – You! –’
Then she drew him aside, near to the corner where was the stopped clock, and was talking to him softly, with her hands over her eyes. Don Gesualdo said nothing, but stroked his chin, and with that calm little smile that made people wild. From the distance the two barons kept their eyes fixed on him like two mastiffs. At last he shook his head.
‘No! no! Tell the canon-priest Lupi that I’m going to find no money for these dodges. They can have the lands who like – I’ve got my own –’
The others turned on him one and all in one accord, shouting, exciting one another. Zacco, now that he understood what was going on, raved worse than any of them.
‘A genuine good idea! Coming from a man who knows what’s what! The best way of getting out of that rascalry of dividing the communal property among a lot of good-for-nothings – Don’t you understand? – What they mean is that what’s mine isn’t mine, and everybody wants his share of it! –’
Don Gesualdo, obdurate, only shook his head and kept repeating:
‘No! No! – They don’t catch me!’
All at once Baron Zacco seized Don Ninì by the scarf and pushed him towards the sofa as if he wanted to devour him, whispering in his ear:
‘Do you want to hear? Should I tell you? What it amounts to is that he’s got his own idea for making a fool of us all! – I know him! –’
At the commotion the Zacco cousins had appeared in the doorway of the anteroom. There was a moment of embarrassment among the relations. Zacco and Don Ninì calmed themselves suddenly, becoming ceremonious again:
‘Excuse me! Excuse me! I don’t know what cousin Bianca will think, hearing all this shouting – and all for nothing! –’
Zacco smiled good-naturedly, his face still kindled. Don Ninì wrapped his scarf up to his nose again. His wife, also with an amiable smile, took her leave.
‘My best wishes to Donna Bianca. – We won’t disturb her. – Let us hope the Madona will perform a miracle –’
Don Ninì also growled out some inaudible word from under his muffler.
‘Just a moment. I’ll come with you,’ exclaimed Zacco. And pretending to look for his hat and cane he came near to Don Gesualdo in the antechamber.
‘Listen – You’re wrong, upon my word you are! It’s a serious proposition! – You’re wrong not to join in with Baron Rubiera!’
‘No, I don’t want the bother! – I’ve got so many other things on my mind! – Then my wife said no. You heard her yourself.’
The baron was really getting into a rage at this.
‘Ah! – your wife? – You attend to her when it suits you!’ But he suddenly changed his tone:
‘Well then – do as you will! – Do as you will, my dear friend! – Wait a minute, Don Ninì. We’re coming now.’
His wife couldn’t get away. She seemed as if she couldn’t tear herself from the bedside of the sick woman, straightening the bedclothes, smoothing the pillow, putting the glass of water and the medicine within reach, making a long face, sighing, and mumbling Ave Marias. Then she wanted her daughter to stay and sit up for the night, at least. Donna Lavinia consented heartily, also busying herself doing things, anxious to help, already taking possession of the keys, watching over everything, like a mistress.
‘No!’ murmured Bianca with her hoarse voice. ‘No! – I don’t want anybody! – I don’t need anybody!’
She followed them round the room with an anxious eye, suspicious, diffident, with a peculiar note of rancour in her hollow voice. She forced herself to appear stronger than she was, struggling to rear herself up on her trembling elbows, with her shoulders so sharp that they seemed as if they would pierce through her nightdress. Then as soon as the Zaccos had gone she dropped exhausted, making a sign to her husband to come near.
‘Listen! – Listen to me! – I don’t want them any more! – Don’t let those women come here any more. – They want you to marry one of them – as if I was dead already.’
And she kept on nodding her head, saying yes, yes, that she was not mistaken. her sharp chin sinking in the shadow of her hollow neck, whilst he, bent over her, talked to her as if she was a child, smiling, but with his eyes swollen.
‘They want to set Lavinia in the house for you. – They can’t wait for me to close my eyes –’
He protested that it wasn’t so, that Lavinia wasn’t of the least concern to him, that he would not marry again, that he had seen trouble enough. And the poor thing listened to him quite pleased, with her shining eyes that penetrated right into him, to see if he was speaking the truth.
‘Listen – again – something else –’
She always motioned with her hand, because her voice failed her, her voice that seemed to come from afar off, her eyes that gradually were growing darker, becoming veiled. She had even made the effort to raise herself so as to clasp an arm round his neck, as if there was nothing left but him to cling to for life, to hold her to life, shaking her face, that had gone still sharper, as if she wanted to hide it in his breast, as if she wanted to confess herself to him. After a moment she relaxed her arms again, with her face rigid and closed, and her voice changed.
‘Later on – I will tell you – But I can’t now –’