“I know something better, yes, much better, than tha-at!” he sang gaily in a moment, to the air from the operetta. “I have had a letter, yes, a letter, from who? from who do you think?”
He slipped his hand into the breast of his overcoat and brought out one of the regulation envelopes sent to Italian prisoners of war, addressed in a neat pointed hand feminine as a silk stocking.
“A girl! Does it smell sweet?” and Emilio snatched at it but Fabrio held it just out of reach, smiling at his friend, while his face caught the golden advance from the rising sun.
“From a girl, yes! a girl. Twenty years old, with beautiful—” Fabrio made an immemorial admiring gesture, “and her name is Maria.”
“Well! and now I suppose you’re happy?” said Emilio sarcastically. Emilio himself received copious letters from his wife every two or three days mostly concerned with such matters as boots, macaroni, the rent, and the misdoings and progress of the
bambini
, but Fabrio had no regular correspondents, and this made him exceptional among the prisoners: the Italian soldier is the most written-to combatant in the world, judging by the letters scattered over any battlefield on which he has fought, and fallen. Very occasionally did Fabrio receive a letter, and they were always short and laboriously written in a hand so clumsy as to be almost unreadable, and Fabrio, without encouraging comment, let it be known that the writer was his elder brother Giuseppe. Emilio, who had been born in the slums of Genoa and been forced to school by the
Fascisti
, had used his quick wits to master reading and writing thoroughly, and those same wits had long ago told him the secret that Fabrio was so haughtily trying to conceal. But he kept it a secret, and he, who loved to jeer at all the world, did not tease Fabrio.
His enormous, quarrelsome, dirty family at home in the Port had once, for a few days, housed a dog: a pedigree red setter belonging to a wealthy old Englishman living in the fashionable quarter, which a member of the Rossi tribe had stolen in hope of obtaining a reward. The dog had fascinated the young Emilio; it was the first creature with fine blood in its veins that he had seen, and in studying its behaviour and habits he had found endless occupation and surprise. He called it
Il Signor
(The Gentleman) and when it had been taken off to be restored to its owner, Emilio, alone of all the family, had seen it go with passionate regret.
Fabrio reminded him of
Il Signor
. He had the same reserve,
and
the pride softened by gentleness, the same flashes of gaiety and affection, even the same shining chestnut hair. Emilio thought that in many ways both Fabrio and
Il Signor
, were fools; slow-witted, half-asleep; and he, the sharp one, the one who was never taken in, despised them both, but had Fabrio confided in him that he was descended from that beautiful
principessa
of the old days, Emilio would not have been in the least surprised, for
Il Signor
, the gentleman-dog (born, as his stealer swore, of a line of dog-princes) and Fabrio Caetano had the same air.
“She lives over the other side of the hills from our place,” Fabrio went on, while the chorus of another popular song soared tunefully all about him, “but she has been away working in a shop in Santa Margherita,” (here he resumed a conversational tone) “she is a friend of my sisters.”
“And of yours, no doubt, poor girl!”
“A little,” said Fabrio, and smiled.
But the smile quickly faded, as he remembered that last night before Maria had left her home to go to Santa Margherita. It had been during the grape harvest, and he and some of his brothers and sisters had walked over the hills to Maria’s village, some eight miles away, to strip the blue grapes from their nestling places amidst the green-blue leaves, and pile them, snapped vines and foliage and clusters that were transparent gold where the bloom had been brushed away, into the deep baskets. It was a little harvest but merry, as such festivals always were; they had sung until midnight and laughed much and danced to the music from the wireless that was old Amato’s pride, and then, with aching arms and hands still sticky with bloom and sap, the young ones had set out to walk home, still singing as they went, by the path that ran in and out of olive groves a hundred feet above the sea. In the warm moonlight they followed the narrow white path as it climbed or descended among the groves; the cicada hidden in the grass shrilled swiftly, and far below, between falling terraces of unstirring white leaves,
moved
and murmured the sea, dark between those leaves, but silver where it touched the cliffs. Now and again Fabrio’s wet shirt lifted coolly against his breast as a faint gust of wind stirred the groves and died away; his arm was about Maria’s waist and he looked down on her black head and felt her soft side warm against his own.
The lorry stopped with a jolt that flung the men forward in confusion. How wet and cold everything is! thought Fabrio, jumping down into the muddy road; even the sun feels cold in this horrible country, and in a minute I shall see her—she who has no proper feelings and does not appreciate me.
“And is little Maria going to write to you regularly?” asked Emilio as they tramped along the causeway through the marshy meadows.
“I am not quite sure what she says.” Fabrio felt in his pocket again and brought out the letter. He held it out, saying simply:
“Read it to me, my Emilio.”
Thereupon the sharp one, the one who was never taken in, Nature’s nose-tapper, read rapidly and faithfully aloud:
“Dear Fabrio,
“How surprised you will be to see the name at the end of this letter—Maria Amato! For two years I did not know where you were and your sisters did not answer my letters, and I did not go home because of my stepfather. Now he is dead, and I am at home again to look after my mother, who is ill. I walked over to San Angelo and saw your sister Gioja and she told me where you were. Now I will tell you all the news. Your father walks with a stick now. They got three barrels of wine from your harvest last year. Your nephew Antonio is very strong and fat and last week your sister Elena had a girl, a niece for you. Her name is Giulia. I will write to you every week if you would like me to. I hope you are well. Our Lady bless and keep you.
“Your friend,
“Maria Amato.”
“Thank you,” said Fabrio, who had listened with bent head
to
every word, when Emilio had finished. “I knew about the wine, Giuseppe told me. So I have a nephew! And Elena is married! And who to, I wonder? They never told me. And a niece, too!”
“That is nothing surprising. It is only surprising that there are not more. When once they start coming—” and Emilio spread his hands helplessly abroad. “She’s beautiful, you say, this Maria?” he went on.
“Yes. On Sundays she has a black silk dress with white lace round the neck and black silk stockings.”
“Is she little or big, eh?”
“Little; little and round.”
“Is she a blonde?” demanded Emilio; he knew that the girls in the northern mountainous regions, where Fabrio came from, often had fair hair. It is an inheritance, perhaps, from some Gothic ancestress who crossed the mountain passes with the barbarian hordes in the sixth century.
But Fabrio answered blithely:
“Yes, she is a blonde.”
“Ah, you lucky dog!” cried Emilio, looking at him with a new respect. “And a fair complexion, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Ah-ha, I can just see her! And how do you feel about her?”
Fabrio smiled but did not answer. He never spoke of his thoughts: “What an Italian thinks remains his own treasure hidden away in a safe, to the unlocking of which he alone guards the elaborate secret,”
1
and to the natural secrecy of his subtle race he added the inarticulacy of a peasant.
“You’ll have to write to her, you know,” said Emilio not without malice: friendship was all very well, but now that Fabrio had a correspondent at home, and a blonde one at that, one could no longer pity him quite so much: one felt a little envy and one’s feelings would have vent. “You’d better let me do it for you.”
Fabrio shook his head.
“You’re my friend,” he said, dropping his arm for an instant round Emilio’s shoulders. “But I will ask Father Francesco to help me.”
Father Francis was incumbent of the little Roman Catholic church at Sillingham. He heard the confessions of such of the Italian prisoners as attended the services there and administered the Sacraments to them.
“You’d better stick to me,” muttered Emilio, who was not devout, and they shouldered mattocks and spades in readiness for the day’s work.
Sylvia had now determined to be friendly towards Fabrio, for her policy of international co-operation, her natural sociability, and an unconscious desire to break down his reserve all suggested the same line of behaviour. But she did not get much opportunity, because he avoided her. She would have approached him with comments on the weather and the work a dozen times a day, but he simply hid.
At first Mrs. Hoadley had kept a sharp eye on the three of them. Her own chilly nature would not have suspected Goings On had not the frequency, indeed, the inevitability, of Goings On between men and women, of all kinds, and almost all ages, been so often thrust under her fastidious nose. But within limits she was a shrewd judge of character and she quickly discovered that Sylvia was innocent in mind and body. Her boldness was a child’s boldness, and any coarseness of speech or forwardness of behaviour sprang from inexperience. There’s no harm in her, the silly great lump, decided Mrs. Hoadley.
And in Fabrio she detected sensitiveness. He was lazy, deceitful, insolent at times, but he was not gross, and she thought that he avoided Sylvia because she was “loud.”
“She gets on his nerves,” said Mrs. Hoadley to Mr. Hoadley. “Nerves!” was all Mr. Hoadley said, and moved his big boot as though the toes itched.
Emilio was quite another matter; Emilio would be up to
goodness
-knew-what if he got the chance, but Sylvia did not give him the chance. Had not Mrs. Hoadley herself, from an upper window, seen Sylvia give Emilio a push that sent him sprawling? That told you all you wanted to know. Quite right too; there were enough things a girl had to put up with anyway, later on, without horrible suggestions from low foreigners.
So they were lucky, she told Mr. Hoadley, to employ a straight girl like Sylvia and an Italian like Fabrio, “who didn’t care about that sort of thing and had some self-respect”; between them, Emilio’s low habits had no chance. Mr. Hoadley, who was not such a shrewd judge of character, expressed agreement and, feeling that sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof, kept his intuitions to himself.
“Dear Mr. Waite,” began a note which Mr. Waite discovered in his letter-box on returning from Horsham some days later,
I have now read all the books you kindly lent me and would like to return them to you. It would be so nice if you could come to tea on Wednesday afternoon about four o’clock. I hope that this is not an inconvenient time for you.
We shall look forward to seeing you.
Yours sincerely,
Alda Lucie-Browne.
He carefully replaced the note in its envelope and arranged it on the mantelpiece before going upstairs to put on his slippers. His boots he had left in the porch.
Meadow Cottage, the house in which he lived, was another Prewitt perpetration, and even smaller, darker and more inconvenient than Pine Cottage. He had taken it partly furnished, and the peculiarly hideous pictures, and the ghastly shades (conjuring visions of vaults and crypts) of blue and pink favoured by Mrs. Prewitt were strongly in evidence, but the cottage was not dirty, because an old woman who lived on the Froggatt road trudged out every day, wet or fine, to take up ashes, lay fires, dust, sweep
and
scrub, impelled by that Victorian spirit of devotion to the male, just as a male, which lingers on in most women over sixty. (Its gradual disappearance from domestic life is the cause of that silent, bewildered grief, that sense of aching loss, felt by many men who do not realise what is the matter with them.)
In his icy, neat bedroom, with the large photograph of Mother and The Girls on the mantelpiece, he thought over the invitation as he put on his slippers. He wondered what she (this Mrs. Lucie-Browne) was Up To. She probably wanted something. Money? No, that was going a bit far; she looked a silly, excitable woman but she had, in spite of her shabbiness, an air of solvency. Advice? That was more likely; husband abroad, three kiddies to bring up, equally silly friend staying with her (oh yes, he knew about the friend; the man who delivered the groceries had told him); she probably wanted advice. What about? Might be anything from gardening to drains.
Eggs! Of course! Three growing kiddies to feed. Mr. Waite surely can’t want to send all his eggs to the packing station; he must have a few to spare for his friends. Let’s ask him to tea and try and get round him. Well, she would find that he was not so easy to get round. He stood up and took off his jacket, replacing it by the shabbier one he wore in the house.
There is always a sense of surprise in the beholder when a shapely figure and handsome face produce an unpleasing effect. Mr. Waite looked as if he walked perpetually in a cloud composed of suspicion, grievances and disapproval. The faces of Mother and The Girls, now looking out at the empty room through the lengthening spring dusk as their son and brother went heavily downstairs, offered no clue to the impression he gave. The girls were three in number; square, bonny women in the late thirties with cheerful faces and determinedly fashionable hair and surprisingly smart jumpers, while mother resembled a handsome rabbit. On the other side of the mantelpiece was Dad, a small but dynamic personality in horn rims.