“Our solicitors shall meet not later than next week, and meanwhile I must send you some help,” he said gravely; then he added: “I thank you for accepting this partner,” and stooping he kissed her hand.
Alone, Teresa sat very still, she was staring down at the table. Millo had saved the Casa Boselli, its debts would be paid, its credit restored, its future secured and cared for. Never again need she lie awake at night tormented by fears for her factory, never again need she worry about money, pacing up and down in her office. True, but never again would the Casa Boselli be all hers, all her own; never again would she unsheath her sword to do battle in its dear defense. She saw herself surrendering that sword. All battered and bent it was—for love of the Casa Boselli she surrendered; so now in the moment of great salvation, she laid down her head and wept bitterly. She who had faced life with hard, dry eyes, she who had shed no tears over Fabio, now wept for love of the Casa Boselli as she had not wept since the death of Olga, thirty long years ago.
The great news spread quickly. Such wonderful news! Everyone congratulated Teresa.
“If only Fabio could know!” sighed Nerone. “He would surely have been so proud.”
An engineer arrived from the Doric, to grease and lay up the factory machines, for Millo advised no more making of pasta until the war came to an end. He had managed to find three Italian women, whom he sent with orders to help in the shop; and many other things he did for Teresa, setting the Casa Boselli in order to withstand the siege of the war.
Maddalena stayed on at Teresa’s side, as head of the new assistants; but Rosa went home again to Nerone, and Mario could rest in the afternoons, for now there were others to polish the brass, to dust, and to clean the windows. Teresa purchased a new black dress; grimmer than ever she stood in her cash-desk—a tall old woman with the face of an eagle, and hair that refused to turn grey.
Now that the storm had been safely weathered, Maddalena wrote of these things to Gian-Luca. She wrote guardedly, however, to spare his feelings; that was how she had written of Fabio’s death, careful to omit the details.
And Gian-Luca sighed as he read her long letters, because he had taken to sighing lately; and his sighs would come from a weariness of spirit, from a sense of futility born of his boredom; for a transfer had not yet been granted Gian-Luca who was such an efficient mess-sergeant.
III
Death, that was striking at heart after heart, now struck at the hearts of Mario and Rosa; for that December Geppe was killed in the twelfth great battle of the Isonzo. Geppe had gone through those weeks of hell without so much as a scratch, and then, zipp! a large splinter of shrapnel in the stomach, and presently no more Geppe!
Mario was unexpectedly quiet, saying little, not weeping at all. He just gathered Rosa into his arms: “Povera, povera donna,” he murmured, rhythmically patting her shoulder.
Rosa’s tears came gushing up from her heart in a great, irresistible flood; she was all dissolving with love and pity, weeping less for the death of her only son than for what she knew must have been his fear in those last few agonizing hours.
Nerone sat silently staring at his birds and rubbing his wooden leg. When at last he did speak his voice was solemn. “A hero has died,” said Nerone slowly; “my daughter Rosa is the mother of a hero. Let it be always remembered among us how nobly our Geppe died.”
There had been nothing noble in poor Geppe’s death, unless death itself be noble—he had died as hundreds of others had done, because there was no escape. Scourged and tormented by vile engines of war, by terrible, nerve-breaking, soul-sickening noise, by the smell and the sight and the slime of blood—crowding, thrusting, yelling, retreating, in a welter of maimed, half-demented men—that was how Geppe had died. But now he must needs be a hero to Nerone, and Rosa must mourn him as a hero, and Mario must speak of “My brave son Geppe,” as though Geppe had been willing and glad to die in that awful retreat of Caporetto.
Nerone went out with his snapshot the next day, and two weeks later there arrived an enlargement—an enormous affair in a wide gilt frame—showing Geppe’s weak face beneath a steel helmet, and a little blurred at that. Nerone hung the picture in the shop, above a low shelf just opposite the door, where all who came in must see it; he draped an Italian flag round the frame, a silk one, befitting a hero. Mario wrote out a little inscription which he stuck at the bottom of the picture: “Of your charity pray for the soul of Giuseppe Varese, who died that Italy might live.” Then he made the sign of the Cross on himself and muttered: “God grant that he rest in peace.” After which he hurried away to the Capo, for the living would be wanting their dinners. But Rosa came later and cleared from that shelf all the tins of tobacco and cigarettes, and in their place she set flowers before Geppe, so that now he looked more like a warrior-saint than the poor, frightened soldier he had been—Geppe, who had always
