LITMIR.BIZ

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      "What, is it a pastrycook this time?" joked Antonio.

      "Yes; his name's Stanislao."

      "But when I went away it was a penny-a-liner!"

      "I got rid of him. For more than three months I had no one," declared Marina, all smiles again.

      "Brava!" said Claretta, "that's the best plan. Have you had a great many?"

      "Four. No—five, counting the first. He was Peppino. He was an official."

      "Good gracious! Where?"

      "At Campo Verano."

      "Oh! Did he perhaps dig there?"

      "Yes," said the girl, simply.

      They all burst out laughing, and again Regina felt choked.

      Were they always like this in this house? Even Antonio, her Antonio, who was always gay, but with her never had shown himself vulgar—even he appeared in a new light.

      Suddenly, however, while Signora Clara was repeating her description of the countess's dress, Regina saw her husband looking at her with distressed eyes, and she knew that her brows must have been contracted in a frown. He got up, came over, and stroked her hair.

      "It's time for bed now. You're tired, aren't you?" he whispered, his voice almost supplicating.

      Regina rose. Arduina and Claretta thought it necessary to run after her, embracing and kissing her. When they had conducted her to the bedroom, they kissed her again.

      Now she was alone with Antonio, and great was her relief. But alas! the door opened immediately, and in came the mother-in-law.

      "What is it?" asked Regina, dismayed; and she threw herself on one of the immense, encumbering arm-chairs, and closed her eyes.

      Signora Anna, sighing as usual, advanced to the bed.

      "Oh!" she exclaimed, in accents of tragedy, "these maids, now-a-days, know nothing of their business! They have no heads. Forgive me, my dearest child——"

      "What on earth has happened?" asked Antonio, half undressed.

      "She hasn't turned down the bed!" cried the poor lady, attacking the pillows with her fat and trembling arms.

      She fussed about, altered all the blankets, tidied the dressing-table, examined the jugs. Regina was waiting to undress; but as the old lady would not go away, she leaned back in the arm-chair, her eyes still closed, her hands folded in her lap. She listened to her mother-in-law's uncertain step and panting breath; and she thought with anguish of to-morrow.

      "And the morrow of that, and the next day, and for ever and ever, I shall have to put up with these people! It's awful!"

      "Where are your things?" asked Antonio, in his pyjamas.

      Regina opened her eyes, got up hastily, and searched her portmanteau. Lo! behind her the heavy panting of the old lady!

      "Let me, dear child! You go and undress. I'll find everything for you."

      "No, no!" said Regina, vexed, "I'll do it myself."

      "Leave it all to me. Go and undress."

      "No!"

      "There's nothing for me but to dance!" said Antonio, cutting capers; he was well made, and agile as a clown.

      "My dear daughter! what are you thinking of? That's a petticoat, not a night-dress! This? Surely that's one of Antonio's flannel shirts? Ah! a flannel night-dress! Dear me! doesn't it tickle you? But I believe it's very cold in your part of the country. It's cold here, too, when the tramontana blows. The tramontana blows for three days at a time. Dear! what lovely embroidery! Did you do it yourself? Listen——"

      But Regina could listen no longer. Rage possessed her, while the old lady rummaged in the portmanteau, examining everything with the greatest curiosity. Antonio was waltzing round the arm-chair; he suddenly seized Regina, and whirled her away with him.

      "Oh!" she exclaimed, with a cry of suffering protest, "it's time now to leave me in peace!"

      The hint was lost upon the old lady. She put everything straight in the portmanteau, then came to Regina and embraced her lengthily.

      At last she did take herself off, and at last Regina was really alone with her husband, but it was too late for her to feel great comfort in the fact. She undressed and got into bed; into the huge, solid bed, hard, and wide and cold as the bed of a river! She felt shipwrecked; around her floated gaping trunks, boxes, curtains, unpleasing furniture; above beetled the grey ceiling, overwhelming as a rainy sky. Confused noises, vibrations in the silence of night, penetrated from the distance, from some unknown and mysterious place. Arduina's foolish laughter, Claretta's hysterical shrieks, echoed on in the next room. And above these, above all voices far and near, sounded a melancholy whistle, the sibilant lament of some nocturnal train, which seemed to Regina a voice out of other times from a distant place, a cry which called, invited, implored her to—what? She did not know, did not remember; but she was sure she knew that cry, that it had once told her something wonderful, that it was sounding now only for her, having sought her out in the night of the vast, unknown city;—that it was repeating to her things wild, sweet, lacerating——

      "At last!" said Antonio, embracing her. "This bed is a limitless desert! Where are you? Oh, what little cold hands! You're trembling! Are you cold?"

      "No."

      "Then why do you tremble?" he asked, in another tone; "are you not happy, Regina?"

      She made no answer.

      "Are you not happy?"

      "I'm tired," she said, her eyes shut; "I still feel the shake of the train. Do you hear that whistle?"

      "Ah!" she went on, as if speaking in a dream, "I know it now! It's the whistle of the little steamer on the Po! Ah! let us start!"

      "We have hardly arrived, and already you want to go?" he said, his voice half jesting, half bitter.

      She made no response. He thought she slept, and kept motionless for fear of waking her. But presently he heard her laugh and felt quite cheered.

      "What's the matter?" he asked, fondling her hand, which was beginning to grow warm.

      "That official—was a gravedigger!" she murmured, still dreaming; "if my sister Toscana had been here how she would have laughed!"

      "She's still in that old home of hers!" thought Antonio jealously.

      Long afterwards he confided to Regina that that night he had been unable to sleep. He wanted to ask how she liked his mother and the rest, but dared not put the question, guessing intuitively that she would not answer him sincerely.

      He, too, heard the whistle which had reached the half-slumbering Regina, and had lulled her in memories and hope.

      "Go? Is she already dreaming of going?" he thought, bitterly; and remembered, not without resentment, her cold, sad, now and then contemptuous manner during those first hours of communion with her new relatives. Yet he could not but feel the measureless distance which divided those relatives from the thoughtful, delicate creature of a superior race whom he had dared to marry.

      "But she knew all about it!" he reflected; "I had told her everything. I said to her: We're a family of working people, descended from working people. My mother is just the housewife, my sister-in-law is a harmless lunatic. She said she did not care—she loved me, and that was enough. Then what more does she want?"

      He had a foolish desire to push her away, to distance her from himself in that great, limitless bed; but she was so fragile, so slight, so cold, lying like a dead thing on his warm, pulsing breast!

      "I've been wrong in bringing her here! I ought to have prepared our own nest, and taken her there at once. She's like an uprooted flower which must be planted

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