A Spirit in Prison Part 120

"Salvatore and Maddalena."

And afterwards--Maurice had said something. Her mind went in search, seized its prey.

"They're quite friends of ours. We saw them at the fair only yesterday."

Maurice had said that. She could hear his voice saying it.

"I'm rested now."

She was speaking to Fabiano. They were walking on again among the chattering people. They had come to the wooden station where the tram-lines converge.

"Is it this way?"

"Si, Signora, quite near the Grotto. Take care, Signora."

"It's all right. Thank you."

They had crossed now and were walking up the street that leads directly to the tunnel, whose mouth confronted them in the distance. Hermione felt as if they were going to enter it, were going to walk down it to the great darkness which seemed to wait for her, to beckon her. But presently Fabiano turned to the right, and they came into a street leading up the hill, and stopped almost immediately before a tall house.

"Antonio and Maddalena live here, Signora."

"And Ruffo," she said, as if correcting him.

"Ruffo! Si, Signora, of course."

Hermione looked at the house. It was evidently let out in rooms to people who were comparatively poor; not very poor, not in any dest.i.tution, but who made a modest livelihood, and could pay their fourteen or fifteen lire a month for lodging. She divined by its aspect that every room was occupied. For the building teemed with life, and echoed with the sound of calling, or screaming, voices. The inhabitants were surely all of them in a flurry of furious activity. Children were playing before and upon the door-step, which was flanked by an open shop, whose interior revealed with a blatant sincerity a rummage of mysterious edibles--fruit, vegetables, strings of strange objects that looked poisonous, fungi, and other delights. Above, from several windows, women leaned out, talking violently to one another. Two were holding babies, who testified their new-born sense of life by screaming shrilly. Across other window-s.p.a.ces heads pa.s.sed to and fro, denoting the continuous movement of those within. People in the street called to people in the house, and the latter shouted in answer, with that absolute lack of self-consciousness and disregard of the opinions of others which is the hall-mark of the true Neapolitan. From the corner came the rumble and the bell notes of the trams going to and coming from the tunnel that leads to Fuorigrotta. And from every direction rose the vehement street calls of ambulant venders of the necessaries of Neapolitan life.

"Ruffo lives here!" said Hermione.

She could hardly believe it. So unsuitable seemed such a dwelling to that bright-eyed child of the sea, whom she had always seen surrounded by the wide airs and the waters.

"Si, Signora. They are on the third floor. Shall I take you up?"

Hermione hesitated. Should she go up alone?

"Please show me the way," she said, deciding.

Fabiano preceded her up a dirty stone staircase, dark and full of noises, till they came to the third floor.

"It is here, Signora!"

He knocked loudly on a door. It was opened very quickly, as if by some one who was on the watch, expectant of an arrival.

"Chi e?" cried a female voice.

And, almost simultaneously, a woman appeared with eyes that stared in inquiry.

By these eyes, their shape, and the long, level brows above them, Hermione knew that this woman must be Ruffo's mother.

"Good-morning, Donna Maddalena," said Fabiano, heartily.

"Good-morning," said the woman, directing her eyes with a strange and pertinacious scrutiny to Hermione, who stood behind him. "I thought perhaps it was--"

She stopped. Behind, in the doorway, appeared the head of a young woman, covered with blue-black hair, then the questioning face of an old woman with a skin like yellow parchment.

"Don Antonio?"

She nodded, keeping her long, Arab eyes on Hermione.

"No. Are you expecting him so early?"

"He may come at any time. Chi lo sa?"

She shrugged her broad, graceless shoulders.

"It isn't he! It isn't Antonio!" bleated a pale and disappointed voice, with a peculiarly irritating timbre.

It was the voice of the old woman, who now darted over Maddalena Bernari's shoulder a hostile glance at Hermione.

"Madonna Santissima!" baaed the woman with the blue-black hair. "Perhaps he will not be let out to-day!"

The old woman began to cry feebly, yet angrily.

"Courage, Madre Teresa!" said Fabiano. "Antonio will be here to-day for a certainty. Every one knows it. His friends"--he raised a big brown hand significantly--"his friends have managed well for him."

"Si! si! It is true!" said the black-haired woman, nodding her large head, and gesticulating towards Madre Teresa. "He will be here to-day.

Antonio will be here."

They all stared at Hermione, suddenly forgetting their personal and private affairs.

"Donna Maddalena," said Fabiano, "here is a signora who knows Ruffo. I met her at the Mergellina, and she asked me to show her the way here."

"Ruffo is out," said Maddalena, always keeping her eyes on Hermione.

"May I come in and speak to you?" asked Hermione.

Maddalena looked doubtful, yet curious.

"My son is in the sea, Signora. He is bathing at the Marina."

Hermione thought of the brown body she had seen falling through the s.h.i.+ning air, of the gay splash as it entered the water.

"I know your son so well that I should like to know his mother," she said.

Fabiano by this time had moved aside, and the two women were confronting each other in the doorway. Behind Maddalena the two other women stared and listened with all their might, giving their whole attention to this unexpected scene.

"Are you the Signora of the island?" asked Maddalena.

"Yes, I am."