Whosoever Shall Offend Part 32

Ercole only answered by raising his head and throwing out his chin, which means "no" in gesture language. He threw pieces of the bread and the rind of the cheese to his dog. Nino caught each fragment in the air with a snap that would have lamed a horse for a month. The woman glanced nervously at the animal, each time she heard his jagged teeth close.

Paoluccio appeared in due time, without coat or waistcoat, and with his sleeves rolled up above the elbows, as if he had been washing. If he had, the operation had succeeded very imperfectly. He glanced at Ercole as he pa.s.sed in.

"Good-morning," he said, for he made it a point to be polite to customers, even when they brought their own food.

"Good-morning," answered Ercole, looking at him curiously.

Possibly there was something unusual in the tone of Ercole's voice, for Nino suddenly sat up beside his master's knee, forgetting all about the bread, and watched Paoluccio too, as if he expected something. But nothing happened. Paoluccio opened a cupboard in the wall with a key he carried, took out a bottle of the coa.r.s.e aniseed spirits which the Roman peasants drink, and filled himself a small gla.s.s of the stuff, which he tossed off with evident pleasure. Then he filled his pipe, lit it carefully, and went to the door again. By this time, though he had apparently not bestowed the least attention on Ercole, he had made up his mind about him, and was not mistaken. Ercole belonged to the better cla.s.s of customers.

"You come from the Roman sh.o.r.e?" he said, with an interrogation.

"To serve you," Ercole a.s.sented, with evident willingness to enter into conversation. "I am a keeper and watchman on the lands of Signor Corbario."

Paoluccio took his pipe from his mouth and nodded twice.

"That is a very rich gentleman, I have heard," he observed. "He owns much land."

"It all belongs to his stepson, now that the young gentleman is of age,"

Ercole answered. "But as it was his mother's, and she married Signor Corbario, we have the habit of the name."

"What is the name of the stepson?" asked Paoluccio.

"Consalvi," Ercole replied.

Paoluccio said nothing to this, but lit his pipe again with a sulphur match.

"Evil befall the soul of our government!" he grumbled presently, with insufficient logic, but meaning that the government sold bad tobacco.

"You must have heard of the young gentleman," Ercole said. "His name is Marcello Consalvi. They say that he lay ill for a long time at an inn on this road--"

"For the love of heaven, don't talk to me about Marcello Consalvi!"

cried Paoluccio, suddenly in a fury. "Blood of a dog! If you had not the face of an honest man I should think you were another of those newspaper men in disguise, pigs and animals that they are and sons of evil mothers, and ill befall their wicked dead, and their little dead ones, and those that shall be born to them!"

Paoluccio's eyes were bloodshot and he spat furiously, half across the road. Nino watched him and hitched the side of his upper lip on one of his lower fangs, which produced the effect of a terrific smile. Ercole was unmoved.

"I suppose," he observed, "that they said it happened in your inn."

"And why should it happen in my inn, rather than in any other inn?"

inquired Paoluccio angrily.

"Indeed," said Ercole, "I cannot imagine why they should say that it did! Some one must have put the story about. A servant, perhaps, whom you sent away."

"We did not send Regina away," answered Paoluccio, still furious. "She ran away in the night, about that time. But, as you say, she may have invented the story and sent the newspaper men here to worry our lives with their questions, out of mere spite."

"Who was this Regina?" Ercole asked. "What has she to do with it?"

"Regina? She was the servant girl we had before this one. We took her out of charity."

"The daughter of some relation, no doubt," Ercole suggested.

"May that never be, if it please the Madonna!" cried Paoluccio. "A relation? Thank G.o.d we have always been honest people in my father's house! No, it was not a relation. She came of a crooked race. Her mother took a lover, and her father killed him, here on the Frascati road, and almost killed her too; but the law gave him the right and he went free."

"And then, what did he do?" asked Ercole, slowly putting the remains of his bread into his canvas bag.

"What did he do? He went away and never came back. What should he do?"

"Quite right. And the woman, what became of her?"

"She took other men, for she had no shame. And at last one of them was jealous, and struck her on the head with a paving stone, not meaning to kill her; but she died."

"Oh, she died, did she?"

"She died. For she was always spiteful. And so that poor man went to the galleys, merely for hitting her on the head, and not meaning to kill her."

"And you took the girl for your servant?"

"Yes. She was old enough to work, and very strong, so we took her for charity. But for my part, I was glad when she ran away, for she grew up handsome, and with that blood there surely would have been a scandal some day."

"One sees that you are a very charitable person," Ercole observed thoughtfully. "The girl must have been very ungrateful if she told untrue stories about your inn, after all you had done for her. You had nourished a viper in your house."

"That is what my wife says," Paoluccio answered, now quite calm. "Those are my wife's very words. As for believing that the young man was ever in this house, I tell you that the story is a wicked lie. Where should we have put him? In the cellar with the hogsheads, or in the attic with the maid? or in our own room? Tell me where we could have put him! Or perhaps they will say that he slept on the ceiling, like the flies? They will say anything, chattering, chattering, and coming here with their questions and their photographing machines, and their bicycles, and the souls of their dead! If you do not believe me, you can see the place where they say that he lay! I tell you there is not room for a cat in this house. Believe me if you like!"

"How can I not believe such a respectable person as you seem to be?"

inquired Ercole gravely.

"I thank you. And since it happens that you are in the service of the young gentleman himself, I hope you will tell him that if he fancies he was in my house, he is mistaken."

"Surely," said Ercole.

"Besides," exclaimed Paoluccio, "how could he know where he was? Are not all inns on these roads alike? He was in another, that is all. And what had I to do with that?"

"Nothing," a.s.sented Ercole. "I thank you for your conversation. I will take a gla.s.s of the aniseed before I go, if you please."

"Are you going already?" asked Paoluccio, as he went to fetch the bottle and the little cast gla.s.s from which he himself had drunk.

"Yes," Ercole answered. "I go to Rome. I stopped to refresh myself."

"It will be hot on the road," said Paoluccio, setting the full gla.s.s down on the table. "Two sous," he added, as Ercole produced his old sheepskin purse. "Thank you."

"Thank you," Ercole answered, and tipped the spirits down his throat.

"Yes, it will be hot, but what can one do? We are used to it, my dog and I. We are not of wax to melt in the sun."

"It is true that this dog does not look as if he were wax," Paoluccio remarked, for the qualities of Nino had not escaped him.

"No. He is not of wax. He is of sugar, all sugar! He has a very sweet nature."

"One would not say so," answered Paoluccio doubtfully. "If you go to the city you must muzzle him, or they will make you pay a fine. Otherwise they will kill him for you."