Gian-Luca thanked him, and received a prescription containing valerian and bromide. After which he was able to go home to Maddalena and assure her that he was quite sound.
VIII
In the evening Millo arrived as he had promised.
“Nerves—all nerves—as I told you,” he said kindly. “The doctor says that you need a long rest, at least three or four months, and I think he is right. While you are away I propose to pay your salary, you can look upon that as a retaining fee, Gian-Luca. And now I want to know where you two will go, have you made up your minds?” It seemed that they had not, so Millo continued: “Well I have a suggestion to make; you should go to Italy with Maddalena, you should give the blue sky and the sunshine a chance. After all, Gian-Luca, you are an Italian, and yet you have never seen our fine sunshine.” Then he laughed, “I too must try to have a breakdown, I have not been home for ten years!”
Gian-Luca thanked him, and Millo talked on in order to cheer Maddalena. It was not his way to do anything by halves, and once having made up his mind to be generous, he spared neither money nor kindness. “You will see, he will come back a lion, Maddalena!” he said cheerfully, patting her shoulder.
After he had gone they looked at each other: “Italy!” murmured Maddalena; and all the ineffable longing of the exile was in that name as she spoke it. Her anxious brown eyes were pleading with Gian-Luca, asking him to take her home.
He nodded: “Yes, we will go, Maddalena—”
“Blessed be God!” she whispered.
They sat on discussing ways and means. It was nearly the end of September. Maddalena said they could be ready in two weeks, they would board with her cousins who lived near the coast on the Riviera di Levante. Her cousins were always writing, these days, urging her to go out and see them; they were anxious, it seemed, to know Gian-Luca, of whom she herself wrote so often. It would not be Rome and the wonderful Campagna, but then, it would be cheaper than Rome; if they went to her cousins they could live very cheaply, especially with the exchange.
“I would like to go to your cousins,” said Gian-Luca, “they live in the country away from people; that is what I long for, to get away from people, there are too many people in the world.”
Then Maddalena told him about her cousins; he had heard it all many times before, but he let her talk on because it made her happy, since it was talking of home. Her cousins lived in a good-sized farmhouse on the hills behind Levanto. Sisto was a person of some importance, fattore, he was, to Marchese Sabelli. An excellent position to be fattore to such a noble estate. Lidia his wife was a simple creature, but kind, oh! intensely kind. They had a fine son in the Bersaglieri, and a younger son who must now be sixteen, and who helped his mother on the farm. They would get there in time for part of the vendemmia; the Marchese owned most of the neighboring vineyards—all day they would sit on the hillside in the sunshine—they would hear the peasants laughing and singing as they stooped to gather the grapes. She talked on and on, and Gian-Luca, as he listened, began to catch something of her joy, so that his eyes grew as bright as Maddalena’s.
“I have not yet seen our country,” he said thoughtfully, and as he said this he felt suddenly hopeful. “A man might find peace in Italy,” he murmured; “do you think that I shall find peace?”
Then Maddalena laughed in her infinite contentment; “Is it not your own soil, Gian-Luca? You are homesick for the sunshine and the big blue sky; long ago I told you that your eyes looked homesick; that was when I first met you, amore—”
“Yes,” he answered, “I think you are right—I think I have always been homesick; only—” he hesitated a moment, “only I have never felt perfectly certain where I am homesick for, Maddalena.”
Then she kissed him and began to play with his hair, twisting it as though he were a child: “For us there is only one home that we long for, and that is the home of our people, beloved.”
And because he so very much wished to believe her, he kissed her too, acquiescing.
VI
I
There are some experiences that remain in the mind as possessing a charm all their own, so that no matter what may follow after, they stand forth unblemished as something to remember with a sense of deep gratitude. And of these, the first glimpse of that lovely coastline that curves like a sickle round the Genoese Gulf is surely not the least, for nothing more perfect could ever be wedded to sunshine.
The train had steamed out of Genoa station and was moving slowly by the side of the water, now into a long dark rumbling tunnel, now out into the glorious sunshine again, the rich, orange sunshine of mid-October. The sea and the sky were incredibly blue, and the peace of the sky stooped down to the sea, and the peace of the sea reached up to the sky, and the drowsy, motherly peace of autumn encircled them both, as with arms.
Gian-Luca stood in the corridor of the train with Maddalena at his side; they were holding each other’s hands, and their faces were steadfastly turned to the window. The peace had got into Maddalena’s eyes so that they were full of contentment; from time to time they rested on her husband, and then she must murmur in a voice of rapture: “Com’ e bella, la nostra Italia!”
Gian-Luca silently pressed
