Teresa sprang up with a low cry of anger, then she groaned because of her knee. Nevertheless she ignored its stabbing and started to pace the floor. Shame and sorrow?
Change? Progress? Old age and its ailments? Away with them all! they could not break the strong.
“Miss Dobell!” she called loudly to the clever young person, “be good enough to bring me that invoice!”
II
Two days later Teresa sent for her grandson, and he went the same afternoon, but he would not allow Maddalena to go with him, suspecting why he had been sent for.
Even Teresa must exclaim when she saw him standing in his shabby old clothes. “You are not yet a pauper,” she began sharply, then she shrugged her shoulders. “But why do I talk? You will do as you please, Gian-Luca.”
He drew up a chair, then he noticed her stick: “What is that?” he inquired, surprised.
“It is nothing,” lied Teresa. “I have sprained my left knee.” And she threw the stick on to the sofa. Then she said: “I have sent for you to come here, Gian-Luca, because Millo asked me to do so; as for me, I do not want to see you at all, you are idle and I have no patience with the idle. But that is beside the point, I suppose, since Millo wishes to know of your plans for the future.”
Gian-Luca said calmly: “I have not got any plans, so far I have not made any.” And his mouth looked willful, as when long ago a small boy had confronted Teresa.
“Then do you propose to let Maddalena starve?” inquired old Teresa, quite as calmly.
He smiled: “She will never do that, I think, Nonna—she has Aunt Ottavia’s money to fall back on, and besides, there are all my savings.”
“I see,” said Teresa, “and what of yourself? You propose to live on your wife?”
He shook his head: “No, I am spending very little, as little as I can of my savings.”
“So I observe from your clothes,” she said dryly; “you are obviously spending nothing.”
Then he suddenly wanted to stop this useless fencing, and he tried to explain his situation; but try as he would he explained it very badly, because put into words it sounded foolish.
As Teresa listened she tightened her lips, and her black brows met in a line: “It is not I who will tell all this nonsense to Millo, you had better write yourself, and not later than tonight.”
He nodded: “Va bene, I will write to him, Nonna—” he told her, “and now you would like me to go—”
“It is true that I have nothing more to say,” she answered grimly, “and all that I have said has been wasted.”
She tried to get up but her weak knee gave way because of that discarded stick; and going to Teresa Gian-Luca raised her gently, but as soon as she could stand she leant on the table, unwilling to let him support her.
Yet he thought: “She is gallant indeed this old woman, see how she tries to stand alone!” For nothing she did could make him resent her, and this had been so all his life.
But before he went he must pause in the doorway, and take a last look at Teresa, and she looked back at him with deep scorn in her eyes, and Gian-Luca saw that scorn. Then all of a sudden the light of her scorn had kindled a lamp in his mind; and his mind grew clear and calm and illumined, for his vision stretched far beyond old Teresa, and he knew the thing that he must do.
“Remember, you have always got Maddalena, that is if you need her,” he said gravely.
After he had gone she stared at the wall as she had done many years ago, and now as then, she was thinking of his hair, and his curious, alien eyes.
Gian-Luca walked down the street to Nerone’s, and there he saw Mario and Rosa. Nerone he saw, and Berta’s twin daughters who were paying a visit to their Nonna. Albert had gone to Paris, it seemed, and Berta had wanted to go with him: “Look after the kids, there’s a dear!” she had said—so Rosa looked after the kids.
The twins were as alike as twins ought to be, it amused Gian-Luca to see them, for not contented with looking like each other, they were also the dead spit of Albert. They had greasy, blond hair, which however was bobbed, and they spoke with a strong Cockney accent. Of Italian they knew nothing, for Albert despised it, and Berta had not bothered to teach them. They most unexpectedly hated each other, and this always shocked the poor Rosa, for as Rosa would say: “What can God do more? He makes them as one, yet they wish to be as two—they hit and they kick, and if one of them says ‘yes,’ then the other will say ‘no.’ It cannot be right, I am sure our dear Lord is offended.”
But on this particular afternoon the twins
