After the Divorce - Grazia Deledda

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do it. 'Don't be married now,' they said. 'If he's found guilty and sentenced, you can marry some one else!'"

      "How contemptible!" began the young woman, with flashing eyes, but the mother merely turned a cold, penetrating look upon her, and she broke off at once.

      "Did I say so?" demanded the other. "No, it was other people, and they said it for your own good."

      "For my good, for my good," moaned Giovanna, burying her face in her hands; "there is no more good for me, ever again, ever again!"

      "Have you children?" asked Paolo.

      "Yes, one, a boy. If it were not for him—alas, alas! if Costantino is sentenced, and there were no child—then, oh, misery, misery——!" And she seized her hair by the roots, and began to drag her head violently from side to side, like an insane person.

      "You mean that you would kill yourself, my beloved?" asked Aunt Bachissia ironically.

      To the student there was something artificial in the action; it reminded him of a famous actress whom he had once seen in a French comedy, and this open display of grief only aroused his cynicism.

      "After all," said he, "the new divorce law has been approved, and any woman whose husband is serving a sentence can regain her freedom."

      Giovanna did not appear so much as to take in what he said, and continued to rock her head from side to side. Aunt Porredda, however, spoke up in a decided tone: "What an idea! as though any one but God could undo a marriage!"

      "Yes, I read about that in the papers," said Uncle Efes Maria jocularly. "Those are the divorces they get on the Continent, where men and women marry over and over again without troubling themselves about priests, or magistrates either, for that matter, but here!—shame!"

      "No, Daddy Porru, that's not on the Continent, it's in Turkey," said Grazia.

      "Here too, here too," said Aunt Bachissia, who had eagerly followed every word.

      As soon as supper was over the two Eras went off to see their lawyer.

      "What room have you given them?" asked Paolo. "The 'strangers' room'?"

      "Why, of course; why?"

      "Because I really thought I should like to sleep there myself; it is suffocating down here. What better 'stranger' could there be than I?"

      "Be patient just till to-morrow, my boy. Remember these are poor guests."

      "O Lord! what barbarous customs! Will there ever be an end to them?" he exclaimed impatiently.

      "That's just what I should like to know," said Uncle Efes Maria. "These women are draining my pockets. Well, what do you think of the new Ministry?"

      "I don't think anything of it at all!" laughed the student, recalling a character in the Dame chez Maxim, a favourite play at the Manzoni Theatre, which he frequented. Then he sauntered off to look at some books he had left on a shelf at the other end of the room. Minnia and the boy had run out into the courtyard; Grazia, seated at the table, with both cheeks resting on her closed fists, was still gazing at her uncle. He turned towards her:

      "You read novels, don't you?"

      "I? No," she answered, turning red.

      "Well, I only wanted to say that if I ever catch you reading certain books—I'll rap you over the head with them."

      Her under-lip began to tremble, and, not to let him see her cry, she jumped up and ran out. In the courtyard she found the two children still quarrelling over the purse with the picture of the Pope. "As for stealing," the boy was saying, "you had better keep quiet about that; you, and she there—the bean-pole—you two sold some wine to-day, and kept the money!"

      "Oh, what a lie!" cried Grazia, falling upon him and dealing him a blow, but crying herself bitterly all the while.

      The courtyard was filled with the chirping of the crickets and the noise of the horses' hoofs; and the warm, starlit air was heavy with the scent of the hay.

      "You must not be hard on her, she is a poor orphan," said Aunt Porredda, speaking in Grazia's behalf (they were the three children of an older son of the Porrus', a well-to-do shepherd whose wife had died the year before). "And why not let her read if she wants to?"

      "Yes, yes, let her read by all means," said Uncle Efes Maria pompously. "Ah! if they had only allowed me to read when I was young—I would have been an astronomer, as learned as a priest!" To Uncle Efes Maria an astronomer represented the height of learning and cultivation—a philosopher, as it were.

      "Have you seen the Pope, my son?" asked Aunt Porredda, from an association of ideas.

      "No."

      "What! You have never seen the Pope?"

      "Oh! what do you expect? The Pope is kept shut up in a box; if you want to see him, you've got to pay well for it."

      "Oh, go along!" said she. "You are an infidel," and, going out to where the children were still fighting, she made a rapid descent upon them, separated the belligerents, and sent each flying in a different direction. "On my word!" she cried, "you are just like so many cocks. The Lord have mercy on me! Here they are, the chicken-cocks! Bad children, every one of you, bad, bad children!"

      And the lamentations of the youngsters arose and mingled with the noises of the summer evening.

       Table of Contents

      The next morning Giovanna was the first to awaken. Through a pane of glass set in the door came a faint, roseate, sunrise glow; and the early morning silence was broken only by the chattering of the swallows. Not yet fully aroused, her first sensations were agreeable; then, all at once it was as though a terrific clap of thunder had sounded in her ear. She remembered!

      This was the day that was to decide her husband's fate. She knew for a certainty that he would be condemned, and yet she persisted in hoping still. It mattered very little to her whether or no he were guilty; probably she had not at any time troubled herself much with that aspect of the case, and what wholly concerned her now were the consequences. The thought of being parted, perhaps forever, from this man, young, strong, and active as a greyhound, with his caressing hands and ardent lips, was agony; and as the full consciousness of her misery came over her, she jumped out of bed, and began drawing on her clothes, saying breathlessly: "It is late, late, late."

      Aunt Bachissia opened her little firefly eyes, and then she also got up; but she realised too clearly what that day, and the next, and the year following, and the next two, and five, and ten years would probably be like, to be in any haste to begin them. She dressed deliberately, plunged her hands into water, passed them across her face, and dried it, then carefully arranged the folds of her scarf about her head.

      "It is late," repeated Giovanna. "Dear Lord, how late it is!" But her mother's calm demeanour presently quieted her. Aunt Bachissia went down to the kitchen and Giovanna followed. Aunt Bachissia prepared the café-au-lait and bread for Costantino (the two women were allowed to take food to the prisoner), placed them in a basket, and started for the jail, Giovanna still following.

      The streets were deserted; the sun, just appearing above the granite peaks of Orthobene, filled the atmosphere with fine, rose-gold dust. The sky was so blue, the little birds so gay, and the air so still and fragrant, that it was like the early morning of some festal day, before the human bustle and the ringing of the church bells have disturbed the stillness and charm.

      Giovanna, crossing the street that leads from the station—near which the Porrus lived—to the prison, gazed upon her own violet-coloured mountains in the distance, hemming in the wild valleys below like a setting of amethysts; she inhaled the delicious air filled with the perfume of growing things; she thought of her little slate-rock house, of her child, of her lost happiness, and it

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