After the Divorce, Grazia Deledda [the giving tree read aloud .txt] 📗

himself, why do you take it so much to heart? It must be for his own good!”

“Why must it?” said Costantino, his head drooping, and both arms hanging down with limp, open palms. “Why must he be better off? Simply because he was poor!”

The King of Spades happened to be in a philosophising mood. He explained, therefore, that poverty was not always a misfortune; nothing of the sort; it might at times be looked upon as a blessing, even an unqualified one!

“There are many worse things than poverty,” said he. “Reflect for a moment; your wife will become reconciled.”

“Oh! of course; she has the sun,” said Costantino, clenching his hands. “This burning sun, and just how is it going to help her?”

“Pff! pff! pff!” puffed the other, inflating his big, yellow cheeks. Then he grew thoughtful, and fell to examining the little finger of his right hand with minute attention.

“Suppose,” he said suddenly, “your wife were to marry again?”

Costantino did not quite take in what he meant, but his arms stiffened instinctively.

“I hardly should have thought,” said he in a hurt tone, “that you would say such a thing as that.”

“Pff! pff! pff!” The ex-marshal swelled and puffed meditatively. Then, after a short pause, he began again:

“But listen, my dear fellow, you don’t understand. I don’t for a moment mean to say that your wife is not a perfectly honest woman; what I do mean is⁠—suppose she were actually to marry some one else? And still you don’t understand? Upon my word, this Christian is extraordinarily slow at taking an idea! One would suppose you were free, you are so innocent. Perhaps, though,” he added, “you don’t know that people can get divorces nowadays. Any woman whose husband has been sentenced for more than ten years, can be divorced and marry some one else.”

Costantino threw his head up for a moment, and his sunken eyes opened round and wide; then the lids dropped again.

“Giovanna would never do it,” he said simply.

There was another brief interval of silence.

“Giovanna would not do it,” he repeated; yet, even as he pronounced the words, he had a strange sensation, as though a frozen steel were slashing his heart in twain; one part was convulsed with agony, while the other shrieked again and again: “She would never do it! she would never do it!” And neither part gave a single thought to the little, dead child.

“She would not do it, she would not do it,” reiterated one half of his heart with loud insistence, until, at last, the other was convinced, and they came together again, but only to find that both were now devoured by that torturing pain.

“See here,” said the King of Spades, “I don’t believe she would either. But tell me one thing; now that the child is dead, and now that the mother has nothing more to hope for, from either him or you, would it not, after all, be the very best thing she could do, supposing she had the opportunity? For my own part, I think that if a chance came along for her to marry again, she would be very foolish not to take it.”

“Brontu Dejas!” said Costantino to himself. But he only repeated: “No, she would not do it.”

“But you are a Christian, my friend; if she were to do it, would she not be in the right?”

“But I am going back some day.”

“How is she to know that?”

“Why, I have told her so all along, and I shall never cease telling her so.”

The King of Spades had a strong inclination to laugh, but he restrained himself, feeling quite ashamed of the impulse. Presently he murmured, as though in answer to some inward question: “It is all utter foolishness.”

“Yes, of course,” said Costantino. But all the time, he was thinking of Brontu Dejas, of his house with the portico, of his tancas and his flocks; and then of Giovanna’s poverty. Alas! the knife was cutting deep into his heart now.

That very night he wrote a long letter to Giovanna, comforting her, and assuring her of his unshaken faith in the divine mercy. “It may be,” he wrote, in the simple goodness of his heart, “that God wishes to prove us still further, and so has taken from us the offspring that we conceived in sin; may his will be done! But now, a presentiment tells me that the hour of my restoration to liberty is at hand.” He considered long whether or no to tell her of the dreadful thing hinted at by the ex-marshal, and thought himself quite shrewd and cunning when he decided it would be better to let her think that he did not so much as know of the existence of that infernal law.

His letter despatched, he felt more tranquil. But a little worm had begun to gnaw and gnaw in his brain. The ex-marshal, moreover, from that day on, with a pity that was heartless in its operations, never ceased to instil the subtle poison into his veins. He must become accustomed to the idea, thought this diplomatist to himself, else the poor, simple soul will die of heartbreak. There were times, however, when he thought that it might be better, after all, to let him die, and have done with it. Then, remembering all his promises about obtaining a pardon, he would pretend to himself that he was really going to do this, and continue the torture so that his victim might survive the shock when news of the divorce actually came. He had no doubt that his friend’s wife was seriously contemplating the step, and it made him angry to hear Costantino speak affectionately of her.

“My dear fellow,” said he one October day, puffing as usual, “you don’t know women. Empty jugs, that’s what they are; nothing but empty jugs! I was once engaged to be married myself. You can hardly believe it? Well, I can hardly believe it either. What then? Nothing, except that she betrayed me