“You ought to have been a librarian, Gian-Luca,” his friend would say, beaming at him.
But at that Gian-Luca would shake his head slowly: “Ma no, I am very well content as I am. Books are for sometimes, my work is for always. I have chosen the safer part.”
“I wonder,” the Librarian would murmur softly. “I very much wonder, Gian-Luca.”
They were excellent friends whenever they met, which naturally could not be often, and each Christmas Gian-Luca would send a large hamper to the redbrick villa in Putney. He would buy its contents from Fabio and Teresa, paying just as a stranger might have done. Teresa took the money as a matter of course, and she thanked Gian-Luca gravely, politely, much as she might have thanked a stranger. However, there were times now when she talked to her grandson, consulting him about her business. She was full of innumerable new ideas for the glorification of the Casa Boselli. Gian-Luca would listen and advise and quote Millo, his methods, his rules at the Doric.
“Si, si,” she would say, as she nodded with approval. “I am glad to know what he feels about that—I am sure he is pleased with our macaroni factory.”
So now at last they had something in common, a ground upon which they could meet; the Casa Boselli, the Doric and Millo; Millo, the Doric, the Casa Boselli—and Gian-Luca, looking at her, would feel no resentment; indeed, he would think her a rather splendid figure with her hard eyes and clever, calculating brain that was more like a man’s than a woman’s.
No good telling Teresa that one sometimes felt lonely; she would only have stared and stared. “Nonna, I feel lonely!” The childishness of it, for the smartest headwaiter at the Doric. For that was what he was, their smartest headwaiter—he had no doubt at all about that.
And Teresa knew it too: “You do well, Gian-Luca, I always knew you would do well.”
He would think: “One cannot have everything, it seems—and I have a great deal already.” Aloud he would say: “We all prosper, Nonna; we all work hard and we prosper.” And she would reply: “We work hard to grow rich. Never forget that your money, Gian-Luca, is the best friend you have, apart from yourself.”
III
I
The spring is perhaps the time of all others when the lonely most realize their loneliness; and this had always been the case with Gian-Luca—he felt terribly lonely in the spring. His desire for companionship had been growing of late, becoming a kind of craving; even Fabio and Teresa saw more of him now; he would hang about the shop in his time off from the Doric; or if they were too busy he would go to Nerone’s on the pretext of buying cigarettes. Schmidt had gone back to Switzerland, and Gian-Luca did not regret him. He hated Schmidt as one hates the creature who has helped one to gratify one’s lower instincts; unjust, perhaps, since but for those instincts there would be no occasion to hate. He might have made friends of his fellow headwaiters, Riccardo, the head of the large restaurant, or Giuliano, who had charge of the grillroom. But he felt that they were jealous, as indeed they were, of the favor he stood in with Millo; and this knowledge made him stiff and a little awkward with them, while they on their part always eyed him with suspicion, as one who was waiting to jump into their shoes. Geppe, Gian-Luca could not endure, and besides he was more than four years his junior; Geppe, who was always asking him for money in order to run after girls. He still feared Berta with her flashing brown eyes, her temperamental moods and her affectations. He felt that Berta would have liked him to propose, and he thought her extremely unattractive. “It is strange,” he would think, “that I have so few friends.” And then he would wonder if the fault lay in himself, and this thought would make him unhappy.
But the spring that was thrusting the sap along the branches and filling the parks with flowers and lovers, and making Teresa’s old heart feel young because of her new macaroni factory—the spring brought Maddalena to the Doric; and chance or the spring, both impulsive and freakish, took Gian-Luca down to the still-room one morning, and there he saw Maddalena.
Maddalena was standing by a mound of golden butter, with the large wooden pats just raised in her hands. She was looking towards the little square opening through which the waiters gave their orders. The still-room had the kindly innocent smell of butter and milk and fresh bread. On a table in a corner stood a huge bowl of salad, green and glistening with sunshine and water, and over by the fireplace a girl was grinding coffee; she was humming under her breath.
There were several other young girls in the room, they were dressed in white and wore large white caps. A sense of cleanliness and youth hung about them, as about the cool little room itself; a sense of peace, pleasant, homely peace after the noise of the restaurant, and the hellish heat of the kitchens.
Maddalena was tall, strong-limbed and full-breasted; her face was oval and pale. Either side of her face curved her dark brown hair, covering her little ears. Her eyes were large and indulgent and soft, like the eyes of a mothering doe; and as she stood there in a patch of sunlight, she turned them full on Gian-Luca. There was nothing inviting in that gaze of hers, only it seemed to question; and his eyes questioned back—yet neither of them knew at that moment what they were asking.
Then he smiled. “Buon giorno,” he said politely, “you are new to the Doric, is it not so?”
“I came yesterday,”
