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

of a pleased child. “Growing, growing,” said he. “The next thing we know they’ll all take flight.”

Grazia shrugged her shoulders, or rather her wings, and neither spoke nor looked up. She frequently found her uncle⁠—that hero of her first, young dream⁠—very trying, and worse than trying⁠—foolish! It was the common talk of the town that the uncle and niece were going to marry, and he, when interrogated on the subject, would answer neither yes nor no.

The conversation continued for some time on impersonal topics. Every now and then Aunt Porredda would get up and pass in and out of the room, and occasionally the talk would die away, and long pauses ensue that were almost embarrassing. Like that other time everyone instinctively avoided the subject uppermost in the minds of the guests; who, on the whole, were just as well pleased to have it so. But, just as before, it was Aunt Bachissia, this time without intending to, who introduced the unwelcome topic. She asked if the report that the “Doctor” was to marry his niece were true or no.

The Porrus looked at one another, and Grazia, bending her head still lower over her plate, laughed softly to herself.

Paolo glanced at the girl, and, with an irony that seemed a little forced, replied:

“Eh, no! She is going to marry the Very Right Honourable Sub-Prefect!”

Grazia raised her head with a sudden movement and opened her lips, then as quickly lowered it, the blood meanwhile rushing up to her forehead.

“Oh! he’s old,” said Minnia. “I know him; he’s always walking about the station. Ugh! he has a long, red beard, and a high hat.”

“A high hat too?”

“Yes, a high hat⁠—a widower.”

“The high hat is a widower?”

“You shut up!” said the child sharply, turning on her sister.

“No, I’m not going to shut up. He’s a Freemason; he won’t have his children baptised, or be married in church. That’s the way of it; he’ll not marry in church.”

“The young lady is well informed,” said Uncle Efes Maria, polished as usual.

Thereupon Aunt Porredda, who had almost shrieked aloud at the word “Freemason,” waved both arms in the air, and burst out:

“Yes, a Freemason! One of those people who pray to the devil. Upon my word, I believe my granddaughter there would just as leave have him! We are all on the road to perdition here, and why not? There’s Grazia, forever reading bad books, and those infernal papers, till now she doesn’t want to go to confession any more! Ah, those prohibited books! I lie awake all night thinking of them. But now, this is what I want to say: Grazia reads bad books; Paolo⁠—you see him, that one over there, Doctor Pededdu⁠—well, he studied on the Continent where they don’t believe in God any more; now that’s all right, at least, it isn’t, it’s all wrong, but you can understand a little why those two poor creatures have stopped believing in God. But the rest of us, who don’t know anything about books and who have never in our lives ridden on a railroad⁠—that devil’s horse⁠—why should we cease to believe in God, in our kind Saviour, who died for us on the cross? Why? why? tell me why. You there, Giovanna Era, tell me why you should be willing to marry a man by civil ceremony when you already have a husband living?”

The final clause of Aunt Porredda’s oration fell with startling effect upon her audience. Grazia, who, with a smile upon her lips, had been busily engaged in rolling pieces of bread into little pellets, raised her head quickly, and the smile died away; Paolo, who, likewise smiling, had been fitting the blade of a knife in and out of the prongs of his fork, straightened himself with a brusque movement; and Uncle Efes Maria turned his dull, round face towards Giovanna, and fixed her with an impassive stare.

Giovanna herself, the object of this wholly unlooked-for attack, though she flushed crimson, replied with cynical indifference:

“I haven’t any husband, my dear Aunt Porredda. Ask your son over there.”

“My son!” exclaimed the other angrily. “I have no son. He’s a child of the devil!”

It almost seemed as though Giovanna had succeeded in throwing the responsibility of her act upon Paolo, because he had won her case for her!

Every one laughed at Aunt Porredda’s outbreak, even Minnia, and the servant who entered the room at that moment, carrying the cheese. Notwithstanding her wrath, Aunt Porredda took the dish and handed it politely to her guests.

“Upon my soul,” said Aunt Bachissia, carefully cutting herself a slice, and speaking in a tone of gentle melancholy, “you are as good as gold, there is no doubt about that, but⁠—you live at your ease, you have a house like a church, and a husband like a strong tower (Uncle Efes Maria coughed), and you have a circle of stars about you⁠—motioning towards them⁠—so it is easy enough to talk like that. Ah! if you knew once what it meant to be in want, and to look forward to having to beg your bread in your old age! Do you understand? In your old age!”

“Bravo!” cried Paolo. “But I would like to have a clean knife.”

“What difference does that make, Bachissia Era?” answered Aunt Porredda. “You are afraid to trust in Divine Providence, and that means that you have lost your faith in God! How do you know whether you will be poor or rich when you are old? Is not Costantino Ledda coming back some day?”

“Yes, to be a beggar too,” said Aunt Bachissia coldly.

“And God alone knows whether he ever will come back,” observed the young lawyer brutally, taking the knife which the servant held out to him, blade foremost.

They had all heard that Costantino was ill, and there was a report that his lungs were affected.

In order to appear agitated⁠—and possibly she really was so to some extent⁠—Giovanna now hid her face in her hands and said brokenly:

“Besides⁠—if it is only to be a civil ceremony⁠—it is⁠—it