‘No, do not go!’ cried Angelo as Lucrezia turned to leave him, and reaching with his left arm, took her by the shoulder. She uttered a gasp of pain and he, with a responsive cry, enfolded her in his arms – but now with extreme care – and babbled a little stream of endearments mixed with apology for his clumsiness. ‘I am not,’ he said, ‘quite used to my new finger. I forget that it is harder than my old ones.’
‘Give me your handkerchief.’
First with his right hand, then with his hook, Angelo felt in pockets and sleeves, clumsily but without appearing to care that he was clumsy, and then admitted, ‘It does not seem that I have one today.’
Lucrezia watched him, his patience and his fumbling, then covered her eyes and turned away.
‘Is it so painful?’ asked Angelo. ‘I am very sorry.’
‘No, it is not that.’
‘Then I think, perhaps, we should be going home. We have talked enough for tonight, and it is nearly dark.’
She turned again and flung her arms round his neck. ‘Oh, your poor hand!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Angelo! I have not been kind to you. I meant to be kind, I was going to ask you to forgive me, I was determined not to say a word that would anger you. But when you said the baby was black, and when I looked at that woman –’
‘She is only a girl,’ said Angelo.
‘That makes it no better! But do not let us talk about her. – Angelo, do you swear to me that you love me still?’
‘There is no doubt about it.’
She hung more heavily about his neck, and cried a little, and kissed him with a sort of desperation. ‘His skin is going to be rather brown,’ she said, ‘but you cannot call him black.’
When at last they went home, walking slowly in the darkness, Angelo wondered if he had behaved as firmly as he intended. It cannot be denied, he thought, that to some extent it was Lucrezia who took the initiative, and whereas I was going to make it quite plain that I, on certain conditions, was ready to forgive her, she now believes that she has forgiven me. I have, I think, achieved what I set out to achieve, and that clearly proves that Lucrezia has a certain respect for me. But if we do succeed in living together on friendly terms, she will undoubtedly take the credit for it, and I really think the credit should be mine. – But what does it matter? Let her have the credit; it is a small price to pay for peace.
He was tempted to speak once more about Annunziata and make sure that her position had been properly recognized; but discretion intervened, and it occurred to him that Lucrezia might tolerate Annunziata’s presence the more easily if she were not required to make a formal acceptance of it. I shall say no more, he decided, but await developments.
Despite his wisdom he was surprised, within the next week or two, by the quick growth of friendship between Lucrezia and her guest. They had discovered, it appeared, some common cause with which Lucrezia’s sisters were associated in a less degree, but to which Angelo was certainly not a party. If, for example, Lucrezia made some small reference to his behaviour, his appearance, or an opinion recently uttered, Annunziata and Lucia and Simonetta would all laugh together, and it was evident that to them her words had a peculiar illumination and a special significance, though to Angelo they often sounded quite irrelevant.
All four women paid much attention to the infant members of the household, and not only were such practical matters as feeding and cleaning them taken seriously, but what, to any man, would have seemed the imperceptible vagaries of their inexistent characters were very gravely discussed. Into these activities Angelo had no wish to intrude, but he observed with interest that the four young women appeared to regard the three small children as their common responsibility – if not their common property – and that Tommaso, the young Stanislas, and the little blackamoor could equally depend on the service and interest of Lucrezia, Simonetta, Annunziata, and Lucia; whoever happened to be nearest responded to the cry.
When he proposed that the little blackamoor should be called Otello, they combined against him in open resistance and for several days the division in the house was manifest, and courtesy was strained. But Angelo saw clearly that if his wishes were flouted now, his authority would be denied before long, and with a firmness that gravely offended the others and deeply astonished himself he insisted on having his own way. Lucrezia’s second child was called Otello.
The major factor, however, in maintaining peace in the family, or in restoring it after this and some other disputes, was not so much Angelo’s authority as the abundance of work that had to be done. Though the farm had been neglected, the grapes and the olives had ripened, the fields had to be tilled with what primitive tools they could find, and the greatest need of all was to patch and fortify their ruined house against the winter rains and Christmas cold. Because the Germans had driven off so many draught oxen, the whole village had suffered during the past year from a grievous lack of beasts for the plough, and had it not been for the pictures that Angelo had once brought from Rome in a cargo of flour its plight would have been far worse.
When the Count – more than a year ago now – had returned in time for Angelo’s wedding feast, he had found all but two of his pictures safe and in good condition. The Adoration of the Shepherds had been destroyed, and one of the small Bronzinos had been discovered by the Germans and removed, by a major who appreciated art, as a souvenir of the war; but the others remained, whole and intact, and on his return to Rome the Count took them with him in the six-wheeled lorry that Sergeant Vespucci had so opportunely stolen. Little had been heard of him since, but it was understood that he was very busily engaged in several schemes for the welfare of his tenants and the promotion of good relations between Italy and the United States of America. That he had sold one, two, or three of his pictures was easily inferred when two pairs of matched plough-oxen arrived in Pontefiore; for the Countess let it be known that Don Agesilas had had to pay the monstrous price of 900,000 lire for each pair.
The oxen worked hard but the villagers worked harder, and day after day laboured with their mattocks to open the fields for seed. Two of them were killed when their mattocks struck mines that the Germans had left in exchange for the beasts they stole.
Now winter came again, and everyone was cold, and often wet, and not seldom hungry. But all except some of the youngest and a few of the oldest survived, and went on toiling, and Angelo was widely envied because he had four women to work for him. He himself, however, sometimes thought with regret of the easy times he had had when the world was still at war, and he had nothing to worry about except his recurrent fear of being killed, or wounded, or taken prisoner, or punished for some breach of discipline. – The rain came through the roof, the fire smoked, the children cried in concert, and life was hard indeed. But there was consolation, he admitted, in the warmth of Lucrezia’s love, though there was warmth in her anger too; but Annunziata had the sweetest of tempers. And hanging on the kitchen wall, mounted on a square of pale wood, was the head of Piero’s Madonna that he had salvaged from the wrath of the German officer.
Angelo was by now quite sure that this was the perfect expression of all beauty, and to possess it, and be able to look at it every day, often seemed to him the very height and culmination of good fortune. For nothing in life either was or could be more agreeable to the senses than beauty to the eye, and to the understanding – or so he thought – there was no such justification of life, or much need of any other. ‘What a blessing have I won from the wreckage!’ he would say, and looking from Piero’s Madonna to Lucrezia or Annunziata he would perceive in their comeliness the living tutor of Piero’s art, and very often, in his delight at this relationship, embrace them one after the other in the heartiest manner. Sometimes, if he had been staring too long at the Madonna, so that his eyes were a little dazzled by her, he would turn and see her reflection against Lucia’s wistful face or Simonetta’s hoydenish red cheeks; and embrace them also. On such an occasion Lucrezia would be sure to utter one of her veiled remarks, that he could not
see through, but which always made the others laugh.
Spring at last returned, and then the fact that they lived in a ruin became of no importance, for they hardly used it except as a place of darkness in which to sleep. All day they worked in a golden light or a green shade, and their thoughts, like the thoughts of everyone in Pontefiore, were flushed with an approaching triumph. Their famous bridge had been built again, and in a little while, when the road had been levelled across it, it would be opened to traffic.
All the young people thought the new bridge a vast improvement on the old, and their parents and their grandparents were hard pressed to find a single fault in it. The masons had worked with the cunning and craft of their forefathers. The stone had been nobly hewn and trimly dressed, the abutments ran sweetly into either bank, over the ravine the arch soared serene as a rainbow.
The day came when the road was finished, and while a few workmen sprinkled gravel on it – as though powdering its face for a party – the villagers stood at the near end and debated with loud good humour as to who should have the honour of being the first to cross. They were still arguing, and pushing and resisting, when some of them caught sight of an approaching motor-car. It was a very small car, black as a beetle and remarkably like a beetle in shape; and quickly recognizing the driver, they greeted him vociferously.
‘My dear friends!’ exclaimed the Count, emerging with difficulty from the tiny vehicle. ‘What a beautiful bridge! What a magnificent achievement! Our national and domestic difficulties are still enormous, but now I am convinced that we shall overcome them. Indeed, I never doubted it. I have lost my fortune, but not my faith. Nations totter, empires crumble, crowns go tumbling down the abyss of time, tyrant states are blown out like candles, but man is invincible, man is the true phoenix, and our dear Italy is the native home of the risorgimento, the renaissance, the indefeasible and recurrent spring of beauty. Primavera shall walk across this noble bridge with a pledge of richer years, and I myself, preceding her like a herald, have brought you something that will give you pleasure, profitable employment, and the promise of security in your old age. Will someone fetch me, as speedily as possible, a table and a chair?’
While the furniture was being sought, the Count gossiped with his acquaintances – shook hands, clapped shoulders, patted cheeks, inquired for brothers, sisters, fathers, cousins – all in the liveliest manner; and when a chair and a table had been fetched, and set conveniently in the middle of the road, he raised his arms in the sort of gesture that the conductor of an orchestra makes to gather attention for the opening chords of a Beethoven symphony, and returning to his diminutive motor-car, dived into it like a rabbit entering a rudimentary burrow. For a moment or two his hinder parts were curiously agitated, and then he reappeared with a burden in his arms that was shrouded with a coverlet of green baize. He carried it to the table, set it down, and removing the cloth displayed the bright enamel and shining steel of a sewing-machine.
‘My dear friends!’ repeated the Count. ‘After Noah had been afloat for forty-seven days – in great discomfort, one may assume – he sent out a dove from the Ark, and in the evening the dove returned with an olive-leaf in its beak. Now what was the significance of that? – It meant that normal conditions were returning, and the time was ripe for reconstruction!
‘My friends, history repeats itself, and I am Noah’s dove! We, like that sturdy patriarch, have seen the devastation of our world, and now I, like the dove, come to you with a promise of better times. Not an olive leaf – of which you have plenty – but a brand new model of America’s finest sewing-machine, for the sale and distribution of which I have lately been appointed Principal Supervising Agent in Umbria, Tuscany, the Abruzzi, and the Marches. This sewing-machine is the favourite instrument of many of the most intelligent, cultured, and virtuous women in the Western Hemisphere. It is at once the ornament and the assurance of well-being in a million high-class, happy, and essentially modern homes in Canada and the United States. When it has been introduced into Italy in large numbers – as I hope and intend to introduce it – it will be a potent factor in the reconstruction of our country, which, no matter what political system we may enjoy or endure, must begin in the home and cannot be well founded unless it is founded on the prosperity and happiness of the home. With a sewing-machine in the house you can never be bored, you can never be listless; and with a sewing-machine like this in your house, your house will quickly become the envy and example of all your neighbours!’
Sitting down, the Count put a square of white linen in position and speedily stitched a broad hem in it with scarlet thread. This he handed to the nearest villagers for their admiration, and to others distributed leaflets that explained how a sewing-machine could be bought outright for so much, or by a series of fractional payments for a somewhat larger sum.
‘I want you to realize,’ he said very seriously, ‘your good fortune in being offered this machine, on such reasonable terms, in times that are still gravely perplexed by the evil legacies of war. Had it not been for my close friendship with an American officer, and our realization in the midst of war that we must prepare for the sterner tasks of peace, you could not possibly have been given such a marvellous opportunity. With all the force of which I am capable, I advise you not to neglect it.’
Having instructed an elderly man named Dino to look after the machine, and told him to let customers make a fair trial of it, the Count re-entered his motor-car and was about to drive to the castle when he caught sight of Angelo, who, somewhat embarrassed by his patron’s latest activity, had till now remained on the outskirts of the crowd. The Count greeted him in the most amiable fashion and proposed that he should ride a little way with him.
‘What times we live in!’ he observed as they drove slowly through the ruined village. ‘With what triumphant invention has science filled our lives – those of them, that is, which it has not destroyed. Inventions of all kinds, racing to perfection. Sewing-machines, aeroplanes, radio, rockets and bombs, and drugs that cure unmentionable diseases almost before one has time to mention them. Progress has become a race – and only man has not entered for it. Our sewing-machines are better than they used to be, our aeroplanes fly faster and have a greater expectation of arriving, our medicines are more deadly year by year; but man, dear whimsical man, shows no improvement whatsoever. And on the whole,’ said the Count, ‘I dare say that is a good thing. Try to imagine a human being, emulous of the machines, who had become perfect in all his parts and scientifically efficient. How horrible he would be!’
‘Wait for me if you have nothing better to do,’ he said when they had reached the castle. ‘I must speak to my wife, but I shall not be long. I must let her know that I shall be dining with her.’
He returned in a few minutes wearing a look of worry and perplexity. ‘She is asleep,’ he said. ‘She never used to sleep at this time of day, but she is actually snoring.’
‘The Countess is no longer quite young,’ Angelo suggested.
‘Nonsense,’ said the Count. ‘She’s younger than I. – Well, it does not matter greatly. Let us walk in the garden, and you will tell me how marriage suits you, and how you are prospering as a farmer. Let me walk on your other side, dear boy. Your hook alarms me.’
He listened with the closest attention to Angelo’s description of his household, and often exclaiming in admiration, made him repeat it twice so that he could memorize it in detail.
‘It is magnificent, your menage!’ he declared. ‘I must come and visit you tomorrow.’
‘Lucrezia is not looking her best at the moment,’ said Angelo.
‘You mean –?’
‘Yes,’ said Angelo, ‘in about six weeks from now. We hope for a daughter this time.’
‘What excellent news! I congratulate you most warmly. – But you will permit me to meet the other lady: Annunziata, is it?’
‘It so happens that she is in a similar condition,’ said Angelo.
‘My dear fellow,’ exclaimed th
e Count, ‘let me embrace you! You are a credit to our old regiment. What a pity the war is over, for otherwise I should certainly have recommended you for a decoration. But have you any money?’
‘A little,’ said Angelo, who still had four or five thousand lire from the dead German’s pocket.
‘With a family so rapidly increasing as yours,’ said the Count, ‘you certainly need a sewing-machine. I had better put you down for one. I shall let you have it at a special price. – No!’ he exclaimed, ‘I shall do more than that. I shall make you a present of it. Though you did not win a medal, you have decidedly earned a sewing-machine!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ANOTHER YEAR went by, and it could no longer be denied that the Countess had taken to drink. Her appearance suggested it – little veins whose presence had never been suspected showed themselves in a rosy reticulation upon her nose and cheeks – and her manner completely betrayed it. She was happier than she had been since the first few years of her marriage, and the villagers who had often quailed under her reprobation now found that their silly ways and venial sins were condoned with a chuckle of sympathy; while the elder servants of the castle were often invited to share a flask or two and exchange their native legends and the local gossip for tales of her idyllic youth in Bradford. Such comfort and such kindliness, such moral goodness and worldly prosperity, such jollity, such benignity of climate and handsome scenery were now ascribed by the Countess to her Yorkshire home that presently there became popular in Pontefiore – almost proverbial indeed – a mode of approval which ran: ‘That’s good, that’s very good. That’s good enough for Bradford.’ No one thought worse of the Countess because occasionally she lost her way, and sometimes her balance, for everyone knew that she had had a great deal to put up with.
The Count came more frequently to Pontefiore, and though his affairs did not prosper as he had hoped, he kept his head above water. More and more he made Angelo his confidant.
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