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

flowing forms could be seen on dark nights, floating on the surface of the river; he asked Bellini if he had ever seen them.

“I? No; I don’t believe in such foolishness.”

“Ah! you think it’s foolishness, do you?” said the other in a dull, monotonous tone, and staring into the shoe he was at work on.

“Calf!” murmured another, without looking up from his work.

The believer in ghosts thereupon raised his head with an angry movement, and was about to reply in kind, when the first broke in, protestingly: “Oh, really,” said he, “can’t I talk to myself? If I choose to say⁠—calf⁠—or ram⁠—or sheep⁠—or dog⁠—what business is it of yours? Can’t I say things to my shoe, I’d like to know?”

It was at this point that the guard had come, and called Costantino away, and the latter, who had passed a sleepless night, had opened his drowsy eyes, turned pale, and leaped to his feet. “Who wants me?” he had asked, and then he had followed the guard.

He was taken to a dingy room, filled with shelves of dusty papers. The dirty windows were closed; beyond them, through a red grating, could be seen the sky⁠—dull and grey, as though it too were dirty. A man was seated writing, at a tall, dusty desk, piled so high with papers that between the papers and the dust the man himself could hardly be seen. As the prisoner entered he raised a flushed face, the small chin completely hidden by a heavy, blond moustache. He fixed a pair of big, round, dull-blue eyes upon Costantino, but apparently without seeing him, for he dropped them again immediately, and went on writing.

Costantino, who had seen this man before, stood waiting, his heart thumping in his breast. Mechanically his thoughts dwelt upon the description of the water-phantoms he had just been listening to, and the voice saying: “calf”; he wondered vaguely if one would be justified in feeling angry at that. Not a sound broke the stillness of the room, except the scratch, scratch, of the pen, as it travelled over the coarse paper. Again the pale blue eyes were fixed upon the prisoner, and again lowered to the sheet. Costantino, trembling and unnerved, gazed desperately around the room. Still the man wrote on. The prisoner could feel his heart beating furiously; a thousand dark fancies, hideous, terrifying, rushed through his brain, like clouds driven before an angry tempest. And still the man wrote on, and on. Suddenly, without warning, all the dark fancies vanished⁠—dispersed and swallowed up, as it were, in a single glorious flood of light. A thought, so dazzling and beautiful as almost to be painful, shot into his mind. “They have discovered that I am innocent!”

The idea did not remain for long, but it left behind it a vague, tremulous light.

The man was still writing, and did not stop as he presently said in a loud, hard voice: “You are named⁠—?”

“Costantino Ledda.”

“Where from?”

“Orlei, in Sardinia, Province of Sassari.”

“Very good.”

Silence. The man wrote a little while longer; then suddenly he dug his pen into the paper, raised his red face, and fastened his round, expressionless eyes upon the man standing before him. Costantino’s own eyes dropped.

“Very good. Have you a wife?”

“Yes.”

“Any children?”

“We had one, but he died.”

“Are you fond of your wife?”

“Yes,” replied Costantino, and raised his terrified eyes as far as the fat, red hand resting on the desk, with a ring on one finger having a purple stone; and between the thumb and forefinger, the stiff, black point of the pen. Not knowing where to fix his perplexed gaze, Costantino followed the movements of this pen, conscious all the while only of a feeling of supreme agony, as when one dreams that he is about to be swallowed up in a cataclysm.

The hard voice was speaking again, in a low, measured tone.

“You know, of course, that your wife’s whole life has been ruined by your fault. Young, handsome, and blameless, the rest of her days must be spent in struggle and privation. The world holds out no promise of happiness for her, and yet she has never done any harm at all. As long as your child lived she endured her lot patiently, her hopes were fixed upon him. But now that he is dead what has she left? When you return to her⁠—if, indeed, God should be so merciful as to allow you to do so⁠—you will be old, broken-down, useless, and she will be the same. She sees stretching before her a terrible future⁠—nothing but sorrow, shame, poverty, and a miserable old age. No resource but to beg; thus her life is a worse punishment even than yours⁠—”

Costantino, as white as death, panting, agonising, tried to protest, to say that he would surely be liberated before long, but the words died away on his lips; the other, meanwhile, gave him no chance, but pursued his theme in smooth, even tones, his dull eyes never leaving the prisoner’s face.

“Her life is thus a worse punishment even than yours. You should think of these things, and, abandoning all hope, repent doubly of your crime.” He cleared his throat, and then continued in a different tone: “Now, however, the law has provided a means by which this great injustice can be rectified. You of course know very well that an act of divorce has gone into effect which enables a woman whose husband is guilty of a certain class of crime, to marry again. Should your wife⁠—sit down, keep quiet⁠—should your wife apply for such a divorce, it would be your duty to grant it at once. I know that you are, or pretend to be, after all, a good Christian⁠—”

Costantino, who was leaning on the table, shaking in every limb, but making a heroic effort to control himself, now broke in. “Has she applied for it?” he demanded.

“Sit down, sit down there,” said the other, motioning with his pen; he wanted to continue his harangue, but Costantino again spoke, in a