“It’s three, the others are all grown-up. Go away at once, folly!” he commanded sternly; “you’re much too corpulent to fit into my study, in another minute you’ll get stuck.” But the infant continued to stare at Gian-Luca, and its father apparently forgot it. “You were saying,” he went on, “that you think of people’s stomachs—a revolting portion of the body.”
“Why?” said Gian-Luca, a little offended. “I cannot buy books and I cannot write them; so I am going to be a waiter.”
The Librarian seemed to be thinking aloud: “Dull, very dull, very ugly—” he murmured.
“It will interest me,” said Gian-Luca, with dignity, “to see where all the food goes to. We have hundreds of pounds of food at our shop, it arrives in enormous cases!”
“I know where it ultimately goes,” said the Librarian; “but come on, I expect tea’s ready.” And seizing his latest folly by the hand, he led the way to the dining-room.
“You observe,” he smiled, motioning Gian-Luca to a chair, “that we have not forgotten the Swiss roll!”
The plump little lady who looked like a sparrow, beamed across the table at Gian-Luca. She seemed to feel that he must need comforting, and put four lumps of sugar in his tea. Gian-Luca preferred two, but he drank his tea politely, he was obviously growing very thoughtful.
“If you had fewer children, could you then not buy more books?” he suddenly inquired of the Librarian.
“Dear me!” said the hostess, looking rather startled. But Gian-Luca continued to be thoughtful.
“Or suppose,” he went on dreamily, “that you read fewer books, could you not afford to have more children?”
“I’m greedy!” smiled his host; “I’m greedy, I want both; that’s why I wear carpet slippers on a Sunday—it’s not to ease my feet, but to save my boots—and that is what comes of being greedy!”
“I do not understand you,” said Gian-Luca, frowning.
“I don’t understand myself,” said the Librarian. Then he looked at Gian-Luca: “Now, you’re what the world calls wise, you don’t neglect the substance for the shadow; that’s what we all do here, we all neglect the substance, in spite of this disgracefully stout offspring whom you see. However, if at moments you should come to long for the shadow—well, Gian-Luca, we’ll be very glad to see you.”
“Yes, indeed, always glad,” said the hostess gently; “you must come very often, Gian-Luca.”
She was looking at her guest with pity in her eyes, a pity that she could not have explained. “Undoubtedly, a very prosperous child,” she was thinking, “he’s well dressed—I suppose his grandparents must be rich, these Italians only come here to make money!” Yet the mother that was in her was not quite satisfied, it was thinking too, but not about prosperity—it was thinking that never in its life had it seen such a queer, unresponsive and lonely little boy—so self-sufficient and so lonely.
VIII
That evening Gian-Luca went up to his room and found his pencil and paper. A vague spirit of discontent was upon him, a vague longing to find self-expression.
“The Librarian lives in the shadows,” he wrote, “But Gian-Luca must live in the daylight.”
Only rhymes could appease the ache that was in him, he disdained the idea of prose. But the rhymes would not come; there was no rhyme for shadows and nothing that seemed to go very well with daylight. So Gian-Luca lost his temper and tore up his paper, and hurled his pencil to the floor. He sat glaring into space:
“It is all wrong!” he muttered. “Something is all wrong with me. I wish to write poems, I wish to be a waiter; yet a waiter cannot write, and a poet cannot wait—I am greedy like the Librarian. Also, I am sometimes greedy over food, I should very much dislike to go hungry.”
“Piccino!” came Fabio’s voice up the stairs; “come quick! We have minestrone for supper!”
The would-be poet got up with some haste, he was feeling very hungry at that moment. A most enticing odor was pervading the whole house.
“I come now at once!” replied Gian-Luca.
X
I
The Capo di Monte was in Dean Street, Soho. It occupied the whole of a tall, blistered house that had once been painted brown, and on either side of its swing glass doors sat two white Capo di Monte cherubs, perched on pedestals of carved Italian walnut. Judging from their smiles and the contours of their figures, the food at the Capo was good, a fact which they proclaimed to the hungry of Dean Street—or at least had been put there to proclaim. The Padrone was intensely proud of his cherubs, he dusted them himself every morning; they had come with him all the way from Italy, and had given their name to the restaurant.
The Padrone was still quite young in years, but old in the ways of business. He had soft brown eyes and a devilish temper. His skin was sallow and luminously greasy; his nose was aggressive, his mouth overripe, and his teeth were magnificently healthy. He was tall, but already his soiled white waistcoat showed signs of a little paunch. For the rest he was obviously born to succeed, being quite untroubled by scruples.
Fabio had felt a little doubtful about him when it actually came to the point, but Gian-Luca had preferred the life of the restaurant to the more monotonous career of the shop.
“I would like to see things outside,” he had said, “a waiter sees all sorts of people, Nonno; I think I would rather go to the Capo, Mario likes it so much.”
So Fabio had nodded and murmured: “Si, si,” as he usually did when afraid of an argument, and one morning Gian-Luca started off with Mario en route for the Capo di Monte.
Gian-Luca was carrying a brown paper parcel which contained his
