VI
Three months later his train steamed into Victoria, and there on the platform stood Maddalena, scanning the passing windows. The train stopped and she had him safe in her arms, all the bigness and the manhood of him. Her cheek was pressed tightly against his shoulder; and because she could feel the roughness of his coat, and the strong, even beat of his living heart, her gratitude leapt to her lips in words.
“Blessed be God!” said Maddalena.
He kissed her, then pushed her gently from him, as though in some way he rebuked her; but her joy was too great to feel his rebuke.
“Amore, amore, you are safe—” she whispered.
“Yes, I am quite safe,” he answered.
That evening she urged him to talk about himself, to tell her about his life out in France: “Your letters told nothing at all, caro mio, why did you tell me so little?”
“Because there was so little to tell—” said Gian-Luca; “they never gave me my transfer.”
“Oh, I am glad, I am glad!” she murmured. “Day and night I have prayed to the Virgin.”
But at that he smiled, and seeing the smile she must get up and kiss his mouth.
Then he took her in his arms, for was she not a woman made more lovely through her love of him? And he kissed her again and again on the lips, until she must needs believe that he loved her—that at last he had come to love her.
“Amore mio—amore,” she whispered, filled with the joy of his nearness.
And he answered: “Amore mio, amore,” while he strove to find peace and contentment of spirit, even as she had found it.
All night they lay in each other’s arms, and her cup of happiness was full, for she thought that all night he came nearer and nearer—yet all night he was slipping farther away from the arms that she fancied held him.
The next day he was gentle but strangely silent, and she studied his face more closely. Then it was that she knew that her husband had aged.
“Can it be that he has fretted himself, my Gian-Luca, because they would not transfer him?” she mused. “But why should he fret?—he was doing his duty, he was doing all that they asked.”
But now she discovered yet another thing about him; he preferred not to talk of the war.
He said: “It is over, let us try to forget it; the English did not wish me to fight—va bene, and now I must think of Millo and the Doric, I must go and see Millo tomorrow.”
As the weeks went on Maddalena was puzzled by a curious change in Gian-Luca. “They worked him too hard out in France,” she would think; but this explanation was unsatisfactory, for he did not seem physically tired.
To interest him she talked of Aunt Ottavia, and of all the money she had left them: “You will soon be the head of your own restaurant,” she told him, smiling proudly.
“Yes, I know, but not just yet,” he answered; “I cannot leave Millo in the lurch—I shall stay at the Doric for a few years longer—at least, I think I shall stay.” And then he quite suddenly changed the subject, as though it actually bored him.
His place had been waiting for him at the Doric, he was Millo’s chief headwaiter, and far more important than Riccardo had been, who had only had charge of the restaurant. Everything was just as he had wished it to be; he had four very excellent aides-de-camp, to say nothing of a large, well-trained staff of waiters, now that the war was over. Yet he seldom discussed his work with Maddalena, and this made her anxious and unhappy. He had grown very careful these nights not to wake her, he would steal through the hall and into their bedroom, having first taken off his shoes. And suspecting this, she would keep herself awake, feeling lonely at sleeping without him.
“Is that you, Gian-Luca?” she would say, sitting up.
And then he would frown: “Go to sleep, Maddalena, it is past two o’clock in the morning.”
Then Maddalena would talk to the Madonna: “Blessed Mary, help me with Gian-Luca,” she would whisper; “you who so mercifully kept him out of danger, show me what I must do. He is changed, he no longer wants to tell me about things—he is not like a child any more—how can I make him grow younger again—I who have no other child?”
And perhaps she might pause as though expecting an answer, an answer that did not come—for not in poor, faltering human speech could the Mother of God reply to Maddalena.
Book III
I
I
There had never been such a season at the Doric as the season that followed the Armistice; everyone was flocking to the restaurants now, in a kind of hilarious reaction. Millo was in the seventh heaven of delight, and so were most of his waiters, for people were recklessly spending their money, eating up banknotes with every mouthful, and washing them down with champagne or spirits, so that, naturally, when they got up to go, they left a fat tip behind them.
Millo had long since had to duplicate his band, for a supper without dancing was unheard of. It was said that among other excellent things, he possessed the best jazz-bands in London. The craze for dancing was on the increase, and now there was no age limit; the white-haired, the portly, the withered, the ailing, young
