Casa Braccio Part 53

In an agony of terror she heard the footsteps coming nearer and nearer, then retreating again, then turning back towards her. She prayed to G.o.d at that moment that Griggs might not open the door. To gain strength, she forced herself to rise to her feet and stand upright, but with the first step she took, she stumbled against the chest that contained Annetta's belongings. The physical pain roused her. She drew breath more freely, and listened. Griggs was moving about in the other room, probably putting together some few things which he meant to take to Rome with him that evening. It seemed an hour before she heard him go away, and the echo of his footsteps came more and more faintly as he went down the stairs. He evidently had not guessed that she was in the little room which served as a nursery--the room which had once been Dalrymple's laboratory.

She did not read the letter again, but she found a match and set fire to it, and watched it as it burned to black, gossamer-like ashes on the brick floor. It was long before she had the courage to go down and face Griggs and say that she was ready for the daily walk together before the midday meal. And all that day she went about dreamily, scarcely knowing what she did or said, though she was sure that she did not fail in acting her part, for the habit was so strong that the acting was natural to her, except when something waked her to herself too suddenly.

He went away at last in the evening, and she was free to do what she pleased with herself, to close the deadly wound she had received, if that were possible, to forget it even for an hour, if she could.

But she could not. She felt that it was her death-wound, for it had killed a hope which she had tended and fostered into an inner life for herself. She felt that her husband hated her, as she hated Paul Griggs.

She was impelled to fall upon her knees and pray to Something, somewhere, though she knew not what, but she was ashamed to do it when she thought of her life. That Something would turn upon her and curse her, as Reanda had cursed her in her dream--and in the cruel words he had written.

She hardly slept that night, and she rose in the morning heavy-eyed and weary. Going out into the old garden behind the house she met Sora Nanna with a basket of clothes on her head, just starting to go up to the convent, followed by two of her women.

"Signora," said the old woman, with her leathern smile, "you are consuming yourself because the husband is in Rome. You are doing wrong."

Gloria started, stared at her, and then understood, and nodded.

"Come up to the convent with us," said Nanna. "You will divert yourself, and while they take in the clothes, I will show you the church. It is beautiful. I think that even in Rome it would be a beautiful church. I will show you where the sisters are buried and I will tell you how Sister Maria Addolorata was burned in her cell. But she was not buried with the rest. When you come back, you will eat with a double appet.i.te, and I will make gnocchi of polenta for dinner. Do you like gnocchi, Signora? There is much resistance in them."

Gloria went with the washerwomen. She was strong and kept pace with them, burdened as they were with their baskets. It was good to be with them, common creatures with common, human hearts, knowing nothing of her strange trouble. Sora Nanna took her into the church and showed her the sights, explaining them in her strident, nasal voice without the slightest respect for the place so long as no religious service was going on. The woman showed her the little tablet erected in memory of Maria Addolorata, and she told the story as she had heard it, and dwelt upon the funeral services and the ma.s.ses which had been said.

"At least, she is in peace," said Gloria, in a low voice, staring at the tablet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Let us not speak of the dead."--Vol. II., p. 203.]

"Poor Annetta used to say that Sister Maria Addolorata sinned in her throat," said Nanna. "But you see. G.o.d can do everything. She went straight from her cell to heaven. Eh, she is in peace, Signora, as you say. Requiesca'. Come, Signora, it takes at least three-quarters of an hour to make gnocchi."

And they did not know. She was standing on her daughter's grave, and the tablet was a memorial of the mother of the woman beside her.

"You make me think of her, Signora," said the peasant. "You have her face. If you had her voice, to sing, I should think that you were she, returned from the dead."

"Could she sing?" asked Gloria, dreamily, as they left the church.

"Like the angels in Paradise," answered Nanna. "I think that now, when she sings, they are ashamed and stand silent to listen to her. If G.o.d wills that I make a good death, I shall hear her again."

She glanced at her companion's dreamy, fateful face.

"Let us not speak of the dead!" she concluded. "To-day we will make gnocchi of polenta."

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

IN the afternoon Gloria called Sora Nanna to move the chest against which she had stumbled in the morning. It would be more convenient, she said, to put it under the bed, if it could not be taken away altogether.

It was a big, old-fashioned chest of unpainted, unvarnished wood, brown with age, and fastened by a hasp, through which a splinter of white chestnut wood had been stuck instead of a padlock. Gloria saw that it was heavy, as Sora Nanna dragged it and pushed it across the room. She remarked that, if it held only clothes, it must be packed very full.

Sora Nanna, glad to rest from her efforts, stood upright with her hand on her hip and took breath.

"Signora," she said, "who knows what is in it? Things, certain things!

There are the clothes of that poor girl. This I know. And then, certain other things. Who knows what is in it? It may be a thousand years since I looked. Signora, shall we open it? But I think there are certain things that belonged to the Englishman."

"The Englishman?" asked Gloria, with some curiosity.

She was glad of anything which could interest her a little. For the moment she had not yet the courage to begin to write again after Reanda's message. Anything which had power to turn the current of her thoughts was a relief. She was sitting in the same chair beside the cradle in which she had sat in the morning, for she had called Nanna to move the box at a time when the child had been taken out for its second airing. She leaned back, resting her auburn hair against the bare wall, the waxen whiteness of her face contrasting with the bluish whitewash.

"What Englishman?" she asked again, wearily, but with a show of interest in her half-closed eyes.

"Who knows? An Englishman. They called him Sor Angoscia." Nanna sat down on the heavy box, and dropped her skinny hands far apart upon her knees.

"We have cursed him much. He took our daughter. It was a night of evil.

In that night the abbess died, and Sister Maria Addolorata was burned in her cell, and the Englishman took our daughter. He took our one daughter, Signora. We have not seen her more, not even her little finger. It will be twenty-two years on the eve of the feast of St. Luke.

That is in October, Signora. He took our daughter. Poor little one! She was young, young--perhaps she did not know what she did."

Gloria leaned forward, resting her chin in her hand and her elbow on her knee, gazing at the old woman.

"She was a flower," said Nanna, simply. "He tore her from us with the roots. Who knows what he did with her? She will be dead by this time.

May the Madonna obtain grace for her! Signora, she seemed one of those flowers that grow on the hillside, just as G.o.d wills. Rain, sun, she was always fresh. Then came the storm. Who could find her any more? Poor little one!"

"Poor child!" exclaimed Gloria.

And she made Nanna tell all she knew, and how they had found the girl's peasant dress in a corner of that very room.

"Signora, if you wish to see, I will content you," said Nanna, rising at last.

She opened the box. It exhaled the peculiar odour of heavy cloth which has been worn and has then been kept closely shut up for years. On the top lay Annetta's carpet ap.r.o.n. Nanna held it up, and there were tears in her eyes, glistening on her dry skin like water in a crevice of brown rock.

"Signora, there are moths in it, see! Who cares for these things? They are a memory. And this is her skirt, and this is her bodice. Eh, it was beautiful once. The shoes, Signora, I wore them, for we had the same feet. What would you? It seemed a sin to let them mould, because they were hers. The ap.r.o.n, too, I might have worn it. Who knows why I did not wear it? It was the affection. We are all so, we women. And now there are moths in it. I might have worn it. At least it would not have been lost."

Gloria peered into the box, and saw under the clothes a number of books packed neatly with a box made of English oak. She stretched down her hand and took one of the volumes. It was an English medical treatise.

She looked at the fly-leaf.

A loud cry from Gloria startled the old woman.

"Angus Dalrymple--but--" Gloria read the name and stared at Nanna.

"Eh, eh!" a.s.sented Nanna, nodding violently and smiling a little as she at last recognized the Scotchman's name which she had never been able to p.r.o.nounce. "Yes--that is it. That was the name of the Englishman. An evil death on him and all his house! Stefanone says it always. I also may say it once. It was he. He took our daughter. Stefanone went after them, but they had the beast of the convent gardener. It was a good beast, and they made it run. Stefanone heard of them all the way to the sea, but the twenty-four hours had pa.s.sed, and the war-ship was far out.

He could see it. Could he go to the war-ship? It had cannons. They would have killed him. Then I should have had neither daughter nor husband. So he came back."

The long habit of acting had made Gloria strong, but her hands shook on the closed volume. She had known that her mother had been an Italian, that they had left Italy suddenly and had been married on board an English man-of-war by the captain, that same Walter Crowdie, a relative of Dalrymple's, after whom Gloria and Griggs had named the child. More than that Dalrymple had never been willing to tell her. She remembered, too, that though she had once or twice begged him to take her to Tivoli and Subiaco, he had refused rather abruptly. It was clear enough now.

Her mother had been this Annetta whom Dalrymple had stolen away in the night.

And the wrinkled, leathery old hag, with her damp, coa.r.s.e mouth, her skinny hands, and her cunning, ignorant eyes, was her grandmother--Stefanone was her grandfather--her mother had been a peasant, like them, beautified by one of nature's mad miracles.

There could be no doubt about it. That was the truth, and it fell upon her with its cruel, ma.s.sive weight, striking her where many other truths had struck her before this one, in her vanity.

She grasped the book tightly with both hands and set her teeth. After that, she did not know what Nanna said, and the old woman, thinking Gloria was not paying a proper attention to her remarks, pushed and heaved the box across the room rather discontentedly. It would not go under the bed, being too high, so she wedged it in between the foot of the bedstead and the wall. There was just room for it there.

"Signora, if ever your one child leaves you without a word, you will understand," said Nanna, a little offended at finding no sympathy.

"I understand too well," answered Gloria.