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

“If she were to come back to you, my dear fellow, it would be Brontu Dejas either killing you or having you arrested.”

“Well, you needn’t be afraid; I don’t want her. She’s a fallen woman, as far as I am concerned. I shall go off somewhere, to a distance, and marry someone else.”

“Oh, no! You would never do that,” murmured Isidoro appealingly. “You are too good a Christian.”

“No; I would never do that,” repeated Costantino mechanically.

“Never in the world; you are far too good a Christian.” The old man said it again, but without conviction. The experience of a long life was battling with the tenets of his simple faith.

“If he does not do it,” he sighed to himself, “it will not be merely because he is a good Christian.”

The July evening fell softly, tranquilly, like a bluish veil. Costantino, seated on the stone bench outside the fisherman’s hut, was thoughtfully counting on his fingers.

Yes; it had been sixty-four days since his return. Six-ty-four days! It seemed like yesterday, and⁠—it seemed like a century! The exile’s fustian coat had grown worn and shabby; his face, dark and gloomy; and his heart⁠—yes, his heart as well, had worn away from day to day, from hour to hour. Eaten into by misery, by rage and passion, it, too, had turned black, like a thing on the verge of decay.

A habit of dissembling, a result of prison life, had clung to him; so that now he found it impossible to be really open with anyone, much as he sometimes longed to unburden his heart; while the constant effort to conceal his feelings harassed him and added to his general misery. A frozen void seemed to surround him, like a great sea, calm, but boundless, stretching away in all directions from a shipwrecked mariner. For two months now he had been swimming in this sea, and he was wearied out; his forces were spent. Scan the horizon as he would, his soul could espy no friendly shore across that bleak and desolate expanse; no prospect of an end to the unequal struggle; the icy water and the measureless void were slowly swallowing him up.

Every day he would talk of going away, but nothing more. It was a pretence, like all else that he did; in his heart he knew perfectly well that now he would never go. Why should he? On this side of the water, or on that, life would always be the same. He cared for no one; he hated no one, and he felt that he had become as base and self-centred as his late comrades in prison. Even Uncle Isidoro, who had meant so much to him at a distance, now, in the close companionship of daily intercourse, had become an object of indifference, at times almost of dislike.

When the old man went off on his fishing expeditions, or on the circuits which he made from time to time through the country to dispose of his wares, Costantino felt as though a weight had been lifted from him; the semi-paternal oversight which the other exercised over him having, in fact, come to both frighten and irritate him.

On this particular evening the fisherman was away, and Costantino was sensible of this feeling of freedom from an irksome restraint. Now he could do whatever came into his head, without any one to preach, or that disagreeable sensation of being watched, which, possibly as a result of the long years spent in prison, the mere presence of the old man was sufficient to excite. Moreover, he was expecting a visitor. Although he professed, now, to despise all women, and did, in fact, usually avoid them as much as possible, he had allowed himself to be drawn into relations with a strange creature⁠—a half-witted girl⁠—who lived near Giovanna. She had surprised him one night prowling about the Dejas house and had persuaded him to go home with her.

From this individual he got all the gossip of the white house, and he took refuge with her whenever he thought he had been seen crossing the common. He was waiting for her now at Isidoro’s hut, in the owner’s absence, but he looked down on her, and her foolish talk jarred on him. Presently she arrived, and Costantino told her to sit down out there on the stone bench beside him.

“It’s hot inside, and there are fleas, and spiders, and⁠—devils. Stay here in the fresh air,” he said, without looking at her.

“But we’ll be seen,” she objected, in a deep, rough voice.

“All right; suppose we are! It makes no difference to me, why should it to you?”

“But, as it happens, it does make a difference to me.”

“Why?” he said, raising his voice. “Men cannot matter, since they are all sinners as well; and as for God, he can see us just as well inside as out.”

“Oh, go away!” she said, but without any show of anger. “You’ve been drinking.” Then she turned away and went into the hut. Striking a light, she looked into the cupboard where the food was usually kept, and, as Costantino still did not come, she returned to the door and called to him: “If you don’t come at once I shall go away; but you had better be careful; I have something to tell you.”

He jumped up, and, going inside, took her in his arms. The girl broke into a wild laugh.

“Ah-ha! you come quick enough now. That brought my little shorn lamb, eh?”

She was tall and stout, with a small head and a dark, diminutive face, red lips, and greenish eyes⁠—not ugly, exactly⁠—but rather repellent. Though she never drank anything herself, she gave an impression of being always a little tipsy, and was very prone to think that other people were so, in fact. Still laughing, she went again to the cupboard.

“It’s empty,” she said. “Nothing there at all; and, do you know, I am hungry!”

“If you’ll wait a moment I’ll go and buy something; but