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Page 30
She did not call any more, for she felt very ill, and
fainted; and when she revived she was lying in the road,
with dust in her eyes, and dust in her mouth, and dust down
her ears. There is something very terrible in dust at night-time.
"What shall I do?" she moaned. "He will be so angry."
And without further effort she slowly climbed back to
captivity, shaking her garments as she went.
Ill luck pursued her to the end. It was one of the
nights when Gino happened to come in. He was in the
kitchen, swearing and smashing plates, while Perfetta, her
apron over her head, was weeping violently. At the sight of
Lilia he turned upon her and poured forth a flood of
miscellaneous abuse. He was far more angry but much less
alarming than he had been that day when he edged after her
round the table. And Lilia gained more courage from her bad
conscience than she ever had from her good one, for as he
spoke she was seized with indignation and feared him no
longer, and saw him for a cruel, worthless, hypocritical,
dissolute upstart, and spoke in return.
Perfetta screamed for she told him everything--all she
knew and all she thought. He stood with open mouth, all the
anger gone out of him, feeling ashamed, and an utter fool.
He was fairly and rightfully cornered. When had a husband
so given himself away before? She finished; and he was
dumb, for she had spoken truly. Then, alas! the absurdity
of his own position grew upon him, and he laughed--as he
would have laughed at the same situation on the stage.
"You laugh?" stammered Lilia.
"Ah!" he cried, "who could help it? I, who thought you
knew and saw nothing--I am tricked--I am conquered. I give
in. Let us talk of it no more."
He touched her on the shoulder like a good comrade, half
amused and half penitent, and then, murmuring and smiling to
himself, ran quietly out of the room.
Perfetta burst into congratulations. "What courage you
have!" she cried; "and what good fortune! He is angry no
longer! He has forgiven you!"
Neither Perfetta, nor Gino, nor Lilia herself knew the
true reason of all the misery that followed. To the end he
thought that kindness and a little attention would be enough
to set things straight. His wife was a very ordinary woman,
and why should her ideas differ from his own? No one
realized that more than personalities were engaged; that the
struggle was national; that generations of ancestors, good,
bad, or indifferent, forbad the Latin man to be chivalrous
to the northern woman, the northern woman to forgive the
Latin man. All this might have been foreseen: Mrs. Herriton
foresaw it from the first.
Meanwhile Lilia prided herself on her high personal
standard, and Gino simply wondered why she did not come
round. He hated discomfort and yearned for sympathy, but
shrank from mentioning his difficulties in the town in case
they were put down to his own incompetence. Spiridione was
told, and replied in a philosophical but not very helpful
letter. His other great friend, whom he trusted more, was
still serving in Eritrea or some other desolate outpost.
And, besides, what was the good of letters? Friends cannot
travel through the post.
Lilia, so similar to her husband in many ways, yearned
for comfort and sympathy too. The night he laughed at her
she wildly took up paper and pen and wrote page after page,
analysing his character, enumerating his iniquities,
reporting whole conversations, tracing all the causes and
the growth of her misery. She was beside herself with
passion, and though she could hardly think or see, she
suddenly attained to magnificence and pathos which a
practised stylist might have envied. It was written like a
diary, and not till its conclusion did she realize for whom
it was meant.
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