With the blessed self-assurance and temerity of youth, he selected this poem as his model. “I will write about myself,” he thought complacently, “I will write in big and lovely-sounding words.”
“ ‘Sono Gian-Luca—Gian-Luca—’ ” he began, and he suddenly added, “ ‘poverino.’ ” Then he tore up the paper; no, it was not quite right, the words sounded neither big nor lovely. He reread his model and started again, this time he composed four verses.
“Dio!” said Gian-Luca, “they are very bad indeed.” And once more he tore up the paper.
By the end of a week he had written an epic with which he was not at first ill pleased; but the more he admired it, the more he became certain that the epic ought not to be admired.
“Che, che!” he grumbled; “how is this, I wonder? I feel but I cannot express; perhaps I had better try something little—I will write about the bluebells at Kew.”
The bluebells at Kew proved still harder to express, for he felt that they required so few words. He knew just what they looked like and just what they meant, but when he had finished his lyric about bluebells, it might have been written about onions. He consulted the “Gioia della Luce” once more, and this time while he read it he scowled; he was growing very angry, and he swore a fat oath that Rocca occasionally used. He wanted to punish the “Gioia della Luce,” and proceeded to slam the book.
“Now you cannot get out to annoy me,” he said fiercely; “I will keep all your beautiful words in prison, I will keep them shut up for a month.” After which he hurled the book under the bed, where it lay amid old dust and boxes.
“It is no good,” sighed Gian-Luca, feeling calmer now, but sad; “I can read but I cannot write.”
And some instinct told him that he would never write, however hard he might try. He might live to grow rich, to grow very, very old—older than Fabio and Teresa; he might do many splendid and wonderful things, but one thing he would not do, he would never write a poem that in any way equaled “Gioia della Luce.”
IX
I
“Fabio,” said Teresa, “come here, my Fabio, there is something I want to show you.”
She was sitting at the table which was strewn with papers; a ledger and two passbooks lay open before her, and her voice when she spoke was unusually gentle, there was something caressing about it. Fabio drew up a chair to her side and adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses.
“So many papers!” he exclaimed with a smile.
“So much good money,” she answered.
Her hand began straying among invoices and bills, letters and order-sheets: “Today I have heard from yet one more restaurant; they send a large order for immediate delivery—I am thinking we had better get another cart and horse, and another young man to drive it.”
Fabio scratched his head and looked rather frightened: “It seems that we grow,” he murmured.
“We grow,” agreed Teresa; “we are getting quite well known; the Casa Boselli prospers.” She let her eyes dwell on one of the passbooks, then she pushed it over to Fabio. “The total will show you that we grow,” she said, pointing; “that sum represents our deposit alone, and here is the drawing account.”
He stared incredulously, frowning a little. “I had not realized—” he stammered.
“We have not gone over the accounts together for more than a year,” she remarked, smiling quietly. “Will you now check these figures, Fabio?”
He fished a stump of pencil from his waistcoat pocket and wetted the lead with his tongue.
“First the ledger,” said Teresa, “and then the two passbooks, after which you might total up the orders.”
Fabio ran his pencil down the long columns: “Trenta, trentotto, cinquanta—” he muttered, then: “Cento, cento dieci, duecento, trecento—” From time to time he sucked at his pencil or licked the end of his thumb. Presently he raised his eyes to Teresa. “Our Lady is good,” he said softly.
Teresa shrugged her shoulders: “Our wares are good, you mean; I am very well pleased with our business.”
“It would seem,” said Fabio, “that you and I grow rich.” But his voice lacked enthusiasm. He was thinking: “We grow rich—yes—but Olga is dead—the dead have no use for money.”
Perhaps Teresa divined his thoughts, for her face closed up like a secret door that, in closing, is one with the surrounding structure; when she spoke her voice was no longer caressing. “I have not let life crush either of us, Fabio.”
“That is true,” he said humbly; “you speak the truth, Teresa—but somehow—” He paused and began to rub his eyes. “But somehow, those pains in my back, when they come, make me timid—they make me feel old. I am old to to be useful in so large a business, it begins to frighten me a little. I am stupid about money, and the pains in my back—”
“They are only lumbago; you drink too much red wine,” she told him, closing the ledger.
He nodded: “I know—but I love my Chianti, it takes my hand like a friend—when I feel it in my gullet I am more of a man—however, those pains in my back—”
Teresa, strong as a tall steel girder, surveyed him a moment in silence. “I will rub you tonight. Does it pain now?” she inquired.
He shook his head.
“Very well, then, that is good, for I want to talk about Gian-Luca.”
He had known that this was coming, that it had to come—the boy
