The great room over the kitchen was turned into a laundry for the nonce, for the making ready of Giulia’s modest wardrobe; and there she and la sposa worked together till it was time to prepare the mid-day meal. That Giulia had no objection to venture down to do, for she knew that the men were away in the field. But when the time for dinner came, she had a strong inclination to say that she was not hungry, and would continue their work up-stairs while Sunta went down to dinner. But she was afraid of letting the old lady suspect that she feared meeting Beppo. She was afraid of the remarks that would be made, and the questionings. And especially she was afraid that the inevitable meeting, which must come, would be worse and more significative if it were deferred, and if it followed so unusual an event as her absence from the family mid-day meal.
So she made up her mind to go down to dinner. Only when the sunlight streaming in under the eaves of the farm-house touched that particular beam, which indicated that it was nearly noon, she said to la sposa, “Will you go and take the soup up, Sióra Sunta, while I finish plaiting this collar. I will come down directly it is done.”
But as soon as ever the old farmer’s wife was out of the room, Giulia ran to the window, which was over the kitchen-door, and looked out on the path by which the men would come home from the field; and carefully hiding herself behind the great heavy persiane, so as to be invisible from below, kept watch for their coming.
No chronometer can be more accurately true to time than the Italian peasant is in knocking off his work at mid-day! They carry no watches, but they never miss the time! It was not many minutes therefore that Giulia had to watch before the men came towards the house. Yes! there was Beppo, with his pruning-hatchet hanging from his loins behind, and his broad, shallow white hat on the top of his curly brown hair, just as usual!
Was he just as usual? Generally the men would come in talking to each other. There was something to be said about the morning’s work between the father and his eldest son; but this morning the old man and Carlo were walking in advance, and Beppo was lagging behind. Giulia could not help fancying too that there was not the usual springy elasticity in his step. He was looking down on the ground as he walked, and she could not see his face, therefore, as he entered the kitchen-door below her post of observation.
Giulia allowed a few minutes to elapse, to give them time to seat themselves at the table, and then slipping quietly down the stairs, she noiselessly entered the kitchen, and gliding to her usual place, sate down without raising her eyes or speaking. The meal passed in silence. Such a circumstance was not so strange at the table of a family of peasants, as it would have been at any other. The peasantry are less given to talking than the people of the towns, especially at table, unless indeed on the occasion of some festival. But that is a totally different thing—not differing in degree, so to speak, from the ordinary every-day dinner, but altogether in kind.
No remark therefore was elicited from any one of the party around the family table at Bella Luce, by the silence which prevailed among them. Nevertheless, every one of them knew what the cause of it was. Beppo tried hard to get an answering look from Giulia, as she sate opposite to him at the table, but in vain. She held her eyes obstinately glued to the table. He tried to get between her and the door, by which she had to leave the room when they got up from table; but she perceived or guessed his purpose, and was too quick for him, slipping through the door and bounding up the stair to the upper room, before he could get clear of the bench on which he had been sitting.
And so the dinner was got over! The slow hours of the afternoon wore away in completing the work of the morning by the two women up-stairs in the great room. La Sunta tried two or three times to enter on a little talk about Giulia’s prospects, about Signor Sandro’s kindness, about the place Giulia was going to; but she found her unwilling to talk. She answered in half-whispered submissive monosyllables, and seemed utterly indifferent alike to all the little information Sunta could give her, and her many speculations concerning La Signoria Dossi, and the duties that she, Giulia, would be expected to perform in her new sphere.
But when la padrona ventured on a few observations on the expediency of prudence as to her general conduct amid the dangers and temptations of the great world into which she was about to be launched—on the difficulties apt to arise from the combination of good looks such as hers, with poverty and a dependent position such as hers—and on the necessity of remembering always that she was a Vanni, Giulia’s eyes gleamed in a manner which admonished Sunta that there were signs of “tantrums” in the air! She raised herself up from the work over which she was stooping, as she stood at the long table, and flashing through the tears that rose to her eyes, at the mistress, who was on the other side of the table, opposite to her, she said,
“Would to God that I could forget it! Would to God everybody could forget it! Would to God a pestilence might blotch my face, and leave me as ugly as”
“Lisa Bartoldi” was on her tongue. But a sudden thought of all the revelation there was in such a display of temper dashed through her brain just in time to save her from uttering it. The sudden pull-up brought with it too a change of feeling.
“Not that am I ungrateful, Signora Sunta,” she added, in a submissive tone, “for all your kindness to me. I hope you will never think so. I know how much I owe to you!”
“Va bene! Va bene!” said the old woman, glad that the threatened storm had dissipated itself after one lightning flash and thunderbolt; “there, let us get on with these sleeves and the collar, and then there will be nothing more to be done but to put a new hem to the petticoat; and everything will be ready.”
So they bent in silence over their work again. Sunta, considering that it was perhaps natural that the girl should be a little out of sorts at the