Oh, but he was tired! He had gone much too far; he had not intended to go far. His legs were trembling, and his hands, and his lips—Wait, he would smoke, that would steady the trembling—he groped for a cigarette. He found one, but now he could not find his matches—what had he done with his matches? He began to ransack all his pockets in a panic, so intent on this process that he passed a tobacconist’s without having noticed the shop. Now the urge to smoke was becoming a torment, he must stop that trembling of his hands. The cruelty of it, to have come without his matches! So harmless a longing, just to light a cigarette, and yet he had come without his matches! He stood still, staring round him in a kind of despair, with the cigarette lolling from his mouth; then he started to run forward; he had seen a woman who was selling matches at the corner.
“Give me a box of matches!” he panted. “Quick, give me a box of matches!” Without waiting, he snatched what he wanted from her tray and started to light his cigarette.
The woman was battered and dirty and dejected; her face looked humble yet sly; for hers was the face of the intolerably poor, of those who must cringe to the lash of Fate and fool him behind his back. But by her side stood a thin little boy who clung to her threadbare jacket, and his face, unlike hers, was wonderfully quiet. Resigned, too, it seemed, as only the faces of very young children can be. Something was terribly wrong with his eyes—what was it that was wrong with his eyes? The closed lids were shrunken and flat and disfigured—so woebegone somehow, they looked, those closed lids, in spite of that quiet expression. And Gian-Luca, who cared not at all for children, must gaze and gaze at this child as though he were suddenly suffering with him, as though in some curious way he belonged to those woebegone, sightless eyes.
He said: “That child—who is he, what is he?”
And the woman answered: “ ’E’s mine.”
And the child stood very still as though listening, with his head a little on one side.
Then Gian-Luca said: “But his eyes, his poor eyes—”
And the woman answered: “They’re gone. ’E ain’t got no eyes, they was both taken out, they was all diseased like, ’is eyes.”
She lifted the lids one after the other, showing the empty sockets; and the child never spoke, and neither did he flinch, nor indeed show any resentment.
Down the street came a jolting coster’s barrow, and the barrow was full of spring flowers. All the colors of heaven seemed to be passing, drawn by a mangy donkey. The sun came out from behind a cloud, making the flowers more lovely: and because of a child who could not see, Gian-Luca realized the flowers. Then he looked again at the face of the child, at that face of dreadful resignation, and all in a moment he had pulled out his purse and was emptying it into the tray. Something rose up in his throat and choked him, and suddenly he was weeping; the great tears went trickling down his cheeks and splashed on his coat unheeded.
The woman mumbled her words of thanks: “Thank yer, mister; God bless yer, mister.” She thought he was mad, but what did that matter, he had given her nearly five pounds! She pushed the child forward: “Just look at ’im, mister—ain’t he a poor little feller!” For she hoped that this softhearted, weeping madman might be tempted to still further madness.
But Gian-Luca had turned and was rushing away; away and away from the sightless child, away and away from suffering and affliction, and the great, blind sadness of the world. And even as he ran something ran beside him, he could feel it close at his elbow. A quiet, persistent, intangible presence—the great, blind sadness of the world.
III
When at last he got home he went to Maddalena, and he laid his head down on her knee, and he told her about the child without eyes, and all the while he was talking he wept; and over and over again he must tell her about the child without eyes.
She sat there gently stroking his hair, murmuring her pity for the little blind creature, murmuring her pity for the desolate man who crouched there sobbing at her knee. And when he had cried for more than an hour he looked up into Maddalena’s face.
“I struck you—” he whispered. “I struck you, Maddalena.” And his tearful eyes were amazed.
She shook her head slowly: “It was only your hand—you have never struck me, Gian-Luca.” And stooping, she kissed the guilty hand and forgave it and pressed it to her cheek.
Then he said: “I am very tired, Maddalena, and tomorrow I must go to the Doric; I think I should like to sleep for a little, only—sit by me, Maddalena.”
IV
That night he dreamt about the beggar who sold matches, and about the child without eyes. And in his dream he thought that they looked different; curiously different, for although they were beggars, there was something noble about them. The face of the child was serene in its suffering, and wise—oh, intensely wise; and the face of his mother was no longer as it had been; now it seemed to Gian-Luca to be full of high courage, a steadfast, enduring face.
She said: “This is my little son, Gian-Luca, who must bear so much for the world. Will you not see for my little son who must bear the blindness of the world?”
Then Gian-Luca wept afresh, in his sleep, for the eyes that were not there to weep. And hearing him, Maddalena woke him:
“You are dreaming, Gian-Luca—wake up, amore, and tell me what you have been dreaming.”
He tried to tell her but somehow he
