Gian-Luca calmly brought in his coffee and poured out his liqueur brandy; very calmly, too, he presented the bill, which Doria paid with scarcely a glance. Then Milady got up, and as she did so, she smiled and nodded at Gian-Luca. Then Doria got up, but heavily, slowly; and he handed Gian-Luca a tip of two pounds in order to impress Milady. Not that he was rich, Ugo Doria, far from it—it costs money to make the beau geste; and all his life he had made the beau geste, whenever it seemed worth while.
He said to Gian-Luca: “It have been a fine meal,” and his voice was a little husky.
Gian-Luca bowed and held open the door: “Buon giorno, signore, e grazie.”
When Doria looked back, Gian-Luca was still standing with his hand on the open door.
And that was how Gian-Luca served his father; and that was how Doria was served by his son—neither of them any the wiser.
IV
That night, while Maddalena slept, Gian-Luca burnt Doria’s books. He burnt them deliberately, one by one, and the pound notes that Doria had given him he burnt also; and the flames that consumed these things were less searing than the anger within his heart.
Now he no longer felt weary and indifferent, he was terribly alive with this anger. It shone in his eyes, it tightened his muscles; he felt young with the will that he had to hate, and as he watched Doria’s verses burning he leant forward and spat into the fire.
He talked to the shrinking, shriveling things: “You hypocrites! You impostors! You liars! Here is Gian-Luca who believed you all these years, who went to you for comfort when he was so lonely, who went to you for courage when he was afraid, who set you apart as though you were worthy to live all alone in your grandeur; and all the while you were nothing but lies. He is small, small, small, the man who conceived you; his vanities are small and his lusts and his sins. His sins are the sins of an overcharged belly, he must drink in order to sin. I must fill up his glass many times while he sits there in order that your Doria may be sinful! Dio buono, if I could not sin better than that I would call myself less than a man!”
All the years of his lonely, outraged childhood, of his painful adolescence, his maturity of toil with its bitter will to succeed; all the dull resentment of that period in France, and the weariness of spirit that had followed after; yea, and strangely enough, that occasional yearning towards the ideal that had come to the son from the father who had written the “Gioia della Luce”—all these things now struck with the blows of a hammer on nerves too long sternly repressed; a hammer in the hand of Ugo Doria, who struck and struck and struck. Fantastically enormous he loomed, that poor creature, by very reason of his smallness; a monster, an outrage, an idol in ruins, a god with feet of coarse clay.
The flames that had destroyed the “Gioia della Luce” illumined Gian-Luca’s face, a face that seen thus in the gleaming firelight came perilously near to madness. And now he turned, as though Doria were present, and began to revile him also:
“You beast, you fool, you ridiculous bladder! You say to Gian-Luca: ‘Quick, open the champagne!’ You say to Gian-Luca: ‘It is excellent, this chicken!’ You say to the woman: ‘You are beautiful like morning, you are like my “Gioia della Luce”!’ And all the while she is splitting with laughter. Do you hear? She is splitting her sides with laughter! And her eyes are on someone who is stronger and younger, because she is greedy; I know her, the Milady—and all the while your eyes are on her, and your eyes make Gian-Luca go mad with anger, because of the ‘Gioia della Luce.’ But you are not alone, there are many more like you, the Doric is full of you, the whole world is full of you, eating and drinking and moving your jaws, pouring the wine down your gullets. You say to Gian-Luca: ‘Come here, my good fellow, and tell me what I must eat.’ He is such an obliging headwaiter, the Gian-Luca; he bows, he smiles, he produces his menu, he recommends this, he recommends that, he feeds you up like a lot of stud cattle. Damn you!” he shouted, shaking his fists, suddenly beside himself with anger; “damn you and your children and your children’s children! May you all eat and drink yourselves to hell.”
Upstairs, Maddalena moaned in her sleep as if she were suffering with him; and as though he heard her, Gian-Luca fell silent, while his face took on a brooding expression.
“I must be very careful with Maddalena, or else she will think I have gone mad,” he muttered. “What shall I say about all this burnt paper? I think I will get it out of the house, I can dump it somewhere in the street. And if she asks me about Doria’s books, I will say that I have lent them to Roberto; and if she says that they were all there this evening, I will say that she has made a mistake; and if she asks me about Ugo Doria, I will say that he is all and more than I thought him—it is lucky that I found her asleep when I got home, it is very lucky indeed!”
And stooping, he
