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Page 56
Miss Abbott was sitting up for him when he got back.
Harriet, it seemed, had gone straight to bed.
"That was he, wasn't it?" she asked.
"Yes, rather."
"I suppose you didn't settle anything?"
"Why, no; how could I? The fact is--well, I got taken by
surprise, but after all, what does it matter? There's no
earthly reason why we shouldn't do the business pleasantly.
He's a perfectly charming person, and so are his friends.
I'm his friend now--his long-lost brother. What's the harm?
I tell you, Miss Abbott, it's one thing for England and
another for Italy. There we plan and get on high moral
horses. Here we find what asses we are, for things go off
quite easily, all by themselves. My hat, what a night! Did
you ever see a really purple sky and really silver stars
before? Well, as I was saying, it's absurd to worry; he's
not a porky father. He wants that baby as little as I do.
He's been ragging my dear mother--just as he ragged me
eighteen months ago, and I've forgiven him. Oh, but he has
a sense of humour!"
Miss Abbott, too, had a wonderful evening, nor did she
ever remember such stars or such a sky. Her head, too, was
full of music, and that night when she opened the window her
room was filled with warm, sweet air. She was bathed in
beauty within and without; she could not go to bed for
happiness. Had she ever been so happy before? Yes, once
before, and here, a night in March, the night Gino and Lilia
had told her of their love--the night whose evil she had come
now to undo.
She gave a sudden cry of shame. "This time--the same
place--the same thing"--and she began to beat down her
happiness, knowing it to be sinful. She was here to fight
against this place, to rescue a little soul--who was innocent
as yet. She was here to champion morality and purity, and
the holy life of an English home. In the spring she had
sinned through ignorance; she was not ignorant now. "Help
me!" she cried, and shut the window as if there was magic in
the encircling air. But the tunes would not go out of her
head, and all night long she was troubled by torrents of
music, and by applause and laughter, and angry young men who
shouted the distich out of Baedeker:--
Poggibonizzi fatti in la,
Che Monteriano si fa citta!
Poggibonsi was revealed to her as they sang--a joyless,
straggling place, full of people who pretended. When she
woke up she knew that it had been Sawston.
Chapter 7
At about nine o'clock next morning Perfetta went out on to
the loggia, not to look at the view, but to throw some dirty
water at it. "Scusi tanto!" she wailed, for the water
spattered a tall young lady who had for some time been
tapping at the lower door.
"Is Signor Carella in?" the young lady asked. It was no
business of Perfetta's to be shocked, and the style of the
visitor seemed to demand the reception-room. Accordingly
she opened its shutters, dusted a round patch on one of the
horsehair chairs, and bade the lady do herself the
inconvenience of sitting down. Then she ran into Monteriano
and shouted up and down its streets until such time as her
young master should hear her.
The reception-room was sacred to the dead wife. Her
shiny portrait hung upon the wall--similar, doubtless, in all
respects to the one which would be pasted on her tombstone.
A little piece of black drapery had been tacked above the
frame to lend a dignity to woe. But two of the tacks had
fallen out, and the effect was now rakish, as of a
drunkard's bonnet. A coon song lay open on the piano, and
of the two tables one supported Baedeker's "Central Italy,"
the other Harriet's inlaid box. And over everything there
lay a deposit of heavy white dust, which was only blown off
one moment to thicken on another. It is well to be
remembered with love. It is not so very dreadful to be
forgotten entirely. But if we shall resent anything on
earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted
room.
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