“Ecco!” she murmured. “Now I think you understand. As they say here in England, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie!’ And that proverb applies to our dust.”
“Thank you,” said Gian-Luca, very red in the face, and he quickly looked down at the floor. With a gentleness worthy of the Padrona he caressed the carpet with his brush.
The Padrona went behind the counter of the bar and busied herself with some bottles; from time to time she glanced at Gian-Luca, and her lips twitched into a smile. She began to notice his ash-blond head bent in an effort of attention. The back of his neck looked absurdly young, the hair grew down into a youthful hollow, and where it ended it turned suddenly sideways, forming a little comma.
“Have you not swept enough?” inquired the Padrona. “I think you have swept enough.”
“As you will,” said Gian-Luca, getting to his feet, “but I feel that the floor is not clean.”
“Come here,” said the Padrona. “You shall help me with these bottles; you shall take this damp cloth and wipe them; but first, what is your name and how old are you? Mario brought you, did he not?”
He was staring at her now because he found her lovely; his pleasure overcame his shyness. He said: “I am called Gian-Luca, signora; I am nearly fifteen, I was fourteen last November, I came here with Mario this morning.”
“I see—Gian-Luca; but Gian-Luca what?”
“Boselli,” he told her, and flushed; then quickly, “But I’d like to be called Gian-Luca, please; I have always been called just Gian-Luca.”
“Why not? It’s a very nice name,” she smiled, surveying him calmly with experienced eyes, the color of mountain gentians. “You are tall, very tall for your age, Gian-Luca—” And she nearly added, “and amazingly handsome.” But instead she pointed to the row of bottles, which Gian-Luca proceeded to dust.
The Padrona was thirty; she was also a Venetian; she was also married to the Padrone; three facts which she found no cause to resent—she looked younger than thirty, she was proud of her birthright, and her husband was—well, just the usual husband—a thing it was always essential to possess and to pet into comparative good temper. Her nature was skeptical, sunny and placid; having never expected too much of life, she had never been disappointed. She was conscious of her beauty and in consequence of men, but her technical virtue was perfectly intact, and was always likely to remain so. With the clients she assumed that air of aloofness that had always impressed the good Mario. With her husband she was docile and unfailingly good-tempered, there was no necessity to be anything else; her beauty was the only weapon she needed to subjugate the Padrone. The Padrone was jealous, he adored and he suffered, and the more he suffered the more he adored. He lived in perpetual terror of losing the love of so beautiful a creature. Her docility never made him quite happy—he feared that it might be a cloak; yet so foolish was his love that he cringed to his wife and vented his anguish on the waiters.
But at moments the Padrona felt a little dull; she detested the English climate. It was weary work standing for hours behind the counter, serving out other people’s drinks. There were times when her husband’s ridiculous outpourings had begun to get on her nerves, when she noticed that little inclination to a paunch—it had not been there when they married. So when Gian-Luca turned to her with a smile, because he could not resist it, the Padrona smiled back and said:
“Splendid, Gian-Luca; you polish my bottles to perfection.”
And when he was once more busily at work she began to speculate about him, her speculations being principally concerned with what he would be like in a few years’ time, and with what would happen when he first fell in love, and with whether the woman would be fair or dark, older than he was or younger. For of such fairly harmless but foolish romancing the mind of the Padrona was full. The more strictly virtuous the married woman, the more she will sometimes dally with fancies; and then Gian-Luca being almost a child, what could be the harm in her fancies?
Presently she said: “Is your mother dead, Gian-Luca?”
“Si, signora; she is dead.”
“And your father?”
A long pause and then: “Si, signora; my father is also dead.”
The Padrona sighed. “I see, that is sad; but I also have lost both my parents. What part of Italy do you come from—from Rome?”
“My mother was born here in England, signora, and I too was born in England.”
He stood quite still with a bottle in his hand, dreading the Padrona’s next question. Would she ask if his father had been born in England, too? And if she did, what would he say? The Padrona spared him this embarrassment, however; her mind had reverted to business; it was nearly one o’clock and she had suddenly discovered that she had only two siphons left.
“Go quickly, piccolo, and fetch me six more siphons and twelve small bottles of soda,” she ordered.
He flew to obey and went rushing downstairs, all but upsetting Mario in the process.
“Piano, piano!” cautioned Mario. “You must walk with more repose; a waiter should never appear hurried.”
“Where are the siphons?” said Gian-Luca breathlessly.
“In the cellar at the end of the passage,” Mario told him; “but, Gian-Luca, remember what I say and walk softly; a waiter must not be a whirlwind.”
IV
By half-past one the Capo was crowded. The Padrona took dish after dish from the lift that came up with a bump at the back of the bar, and passed them across to Mario and Schmidt, who grabbed quickly and disappeared. In
