After the Divorce Part 12

A little later the young master returned. Giacobbe, intent and smiling, watched him closely. "Ah!" said he, stepping forward solicitously, "you look like a man who has had a whipping; what has happened?"

"Nothing. Get away."

But nothing was further from the other's intention. He began to circle around his master, fawning upon him and making little bounds towards him like a dog, teasing persistently to be told what had occurred. At last Brontu, who really longed to unburden himself, yielded.

Well then, yes; Giovanna had, in fact, driven him away like an importunate beggar. She had asked him if he had forgotten that she had a son who would one day spit at her, and demand to know how it was that she had two husbands.

"My soul, I knew it!" cried Giacobbe, leaping in the air for joy.

"What did you know?"

"Why, that she had a son."

"Well, I knew that myself. She chased me out of the house; that's the whole of it. I could hear the two--the mother and daughter--from the road, quarrelling furiously together." And then Brontu went to look for his brandy-flask.

Giacobbe was so overjoyed that he could have laughed aloud for glee.

"Look here!" he called. "The spirits came last night and drank your brandy. Ha! ha! ha! but there must be some left; I am sure there is still some left."

Brontu drank eagerly without making any reply. Then he flung the flask angrily at the herdsman, who caught it in the air; and Brontu, having drunk for sorrow, Giacobbe proceeded to drink for joy.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] A summer goblin, invoked in Sardinia to frighten children out of the sun.

CHAPTER VIII

One morning, about three years after his conviction, Costantino awoke in a bad humour. The heat was oppressive, and the air of the cell was heavy and sickening. One of the prisoners was snoring and puffing like a kettle letting off steam.

Costantino had slept with Giovanna's last letter beneath his head, and a sad little letter it was; short, and depressing in the extreme. She told of her and her mother's dire poverty, and of the boy's serious illness. It never occurred to Costantino to reflect how cruel it was to write to him in this strain; he wanted to know the truth about them, however bad it might be, and he felt that to share all Giovanna's sorrows and to agonise over his inability to help her was a part of his duty. A barren duty,--alas!--merely an increase of his misery.

He had become quite deft at his trade of shoemaking, and worked rapidly, but he could make very little money; all that was left, however, after the _King of Spades_ had been paid for his supposed good offices he sent to Giovanna.

"Upon my word," said the ex-marshal, "you are a goose. Spend it on yourself. They ought to be sending you money."

"But they are so poor."

"Poor! Not they; haven't they got the sun? What more do they want?" said the other. "If you would only eat and drink more it would be a real charity. You are nothing but a stick, my dear fellow. Look at me! I'm getting fat. My bacon may be all rind, but, all the same, I'm getting fat."

He was, in fact, as round as a ball, but his flesh hung down in yellow, flabby rolls. Costantino, on the other hand, had fallen away, his eyes were big and cavernous, and his hands transparent.

The sun! he thought to himself bitterly. Yes, they have indeed got that; but what good is the sun even, when one has nothing to eat, and is suffering every kind of privation? He was, no doubt, a great simpleton, but as he thought of these things, he sometimes cried like a child. Yet all the time he never gave up hope. The years pa.s.sed by; day followed day slowly, regularly, uneventfully, like drops of water in a grotto, dripping from stone to stone. Almost every convict in the prison, especially those whose terms were not very long, hoped for a remission, and kept close count of the days already elapsed and of those yet to come. Their accuracy was amazing; they never made a mistake of so much as a single day. Some even carried their calculations so far as to count the hours. Costantino thought it all very foolish; one might die in the mean time, or regain his liberty! It was all in the hands of G.o.d. Yet, all the same, he too counted on being freed before the appointed hour; only in his case the appointed hour was so desperately, so hopelessly far away!

This realisation was heavy upon him on that morning when he awoke and fingered the warm paper of Giovanna's last letter.

Getting up, he sighed heavily, and began to dress himself. The man on his right stopped snoring, opened one sleepy eye, regarded Costantino dully, then closed it again. "Feeling badly?" he asked, as Costantino sighed again. "Oh, yes! Your child is ill. Why don't you tell the Director?"

"Why should I tell the Director? He would clap me into a cell for receiving the letter, and that would be the whole of it."

"Except _pane e pollastra_" (bread and water), said an ironical voice.

There was a general laugh, and Costantino, realising bitterly the utter indifference of all those men among whom he was destined to pa.s.s his days, felt as though he were wandering alone in a burning desert, gasping for air and water.

He went to his work longing impatiently for the exercise hour, when he would be able to talk over his troubles with the _King of Spades_. The great, fat, yellow man whom he despised so in his heart, was, nevertheless, indispensable to him; his sole comfort, in fact. He alone in that place understood him, was sorry for him, and listened to him. He was paid for it all, to be sure, but what did that signify? He was necessary in the same way to a great many of the convicts, but to none, probably, as much as to Costantino, who already, with a somewhat selfish regret, was dreading the time when, his term expired, the _King of Spades_ would finally depart.

On this particular day a new inmate made his appearance in the workroom.

He was a Northerner; long and sinuous, with a grey, wrinkled face, and small, pale eyes. It was not easy to tell his age, but the men laughed when he announced himself as twenty-two. He began at once to complain of the heat and of the sickening smell of fish that filled the room. Ah, he was no cobbler; no, indeed! He was the only son of a wealthy wholesale shoe-dealer,--a gentleman, in fact. And thereupon he recounted his unfortunate history. He had, it appeared, been so unlucky as to kill a rival in love; there had been provocation and he had ripped him open in the back,--simply that! The woman who was the real cause of the crime had consumption, and now she was dying from grief,--dying, simply that!

Moreover, there was a child in the question, a son of the prisoner's by the sick woman. If she died, the boy would be left orphaned and abandoned. Costantino trembled at this; not, indeed, that the man's story affected him particularly, but because the picture of the woman and the child reminded him of Giovanna and the sick Malthineddu.

The newcomer, who was cutting a pair of soles with considerable skill, now became silent, and bent over, intent upon his work, his under lip trembling like that of a child about to cry. Costantino, watching him, reflected that though he knew that this man must be suffering intensely he felt as indifferent as did any of the others: he too, then, had lost the power of sympathising with the sorrows of others! The thought filled him with dismay and made him more insanely anxious to get out than ever.

That day, as soon as he saw the _King of Spades_, he drew him over to a corner where the sun-baked wall cast a little spot of shade; but when he had got him there he could not bring himself to begin on his own troubles. Instead he repeated the story told by the new arrival. The other shrugged his shoulders and spat against the wall.

"If he wants to, even he can write," he said. "But I should advise prudence, some one is nosing about."

"How are we ever going to manage after you have gone?" said Costantino thoughtfully.

"You would like to keep me here forever, you rascal?" demanded the other in a rallying tone.

"Heaven forbid! No, indeed; I only wish you might get out to-morrow!"

The _King of Spades_ sighed. His enemies, he declared, were forever devising new and diabolical schemes for keeping him out of the way; he had abandoned all hope now of a pardon. In any case, however, his term would expire before long; then he would go at once to the King, and lay a plain statement of the facts before him. The King would order an instant reversal of the verdict, and he himself, his innocence finally established, would be restored to his post. Who could tell, there might even be another medal conferred, to keep the rest company! But his first care would be to obtain pardons for all his friends, especially for Costantino. "That would be a n.o.ble work," he observed, self-approvingly.

Indeed, by virtue of making such a.s.surances frequently, he had come actually to believe in them himself.

"To-morrow? Yes, indeed; a pardon might very possibly come to-morrow, and a good thing that would be for every one."

"Good, or bad," said Costantino despondently.

"After all," continued the other, "when I am gone it may be that you will no longer have any use for my services."

The moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted having spoken, but seeing that Costantino merely shook his head, evidently supposing that he alluded to a possible pardon, he regarded him compa.s.sionately.

"Are you really and truly innocent?" he asked. "By this time I should think you would be willing to talk to me quite openly. Do you remember that first time when I asked you? You said: 'May I never see my child again, if I am guilty.'"

"Yes, so I did; and now, you mean to say, I am perhaps not going to see him again? Well, G.o.d's will be done; but I am innocent, all the same."

The _King of Spades_ turned, and again spat upon the wall. "Patience, old fellow, patience, patience," he said; and there was a note of real warmth and feeling in his tone. He felt, in fact, quite proud of himself for recognising and esteeming honesty when he saw it in others, and it was this taste that drew him to Costantino. He saw with wonder that his fellow-countryman was so good, that his soul was so pure, and his whole nature formed of so fine a material, that even the boundless corruption of prison life could not sully him.

Now it happened that the ex-marshal allowed himself--as one of the privileges of his position of go-between--to read the letters that pa.s.sed through his hands. Not long before, an anonymous letter had come for Costantino, written in a villainous hand, with great sprawling characters that looked like insects crawling over the page. Venomous creatures they proved, indeed, to be, and capable of inflicting wounds as deadly as those of any living reptile. In short, the letter announced that Giovanna, wife of the prisoner, was permitting Brontu Dejas to pay court to her, and that Aunt Bachissia was about to go to Nuoro to consult a lawyer about applying for a divorce for her daughter.

On reading this precious communication the ex-marshal became furious; his friend, the _Delegate_, immersed as he was in his great scientific researches, heard him snorting, and puffing out his fat, yellow cheeks.

"Idiots! Fools! Sardinian a.s.ses!" he sputtered. "Why on earth tell him about it at all! What can he do, except batter out his brains against the wall?"

He did not deliver the letter, and every time he saw his friend he regarded him compa.s.sionately, feeling at the same time pleased at his own goodness of heart for caring so much.