“Oh, I cannot count, let me think. Maybe thirty-five, forty cents?”
“Good God. And what did you do in Milano?”
“I was collocata, how you say that?—to a dressmaker. Così I learned, I was the piccinina. I was thirteen years old.” He stood staring at her, watching her leaning there on the barnyard fence, slender—too slender—and a picture of freshness in her long ruffled dress. She looked off in the distance where the fields sloped away towards a clump of woods, and then back at the big red barn, solid and important with its gilded weather-vane and its towering silo. “How is different here from us,” she sighed. “So rich, so much of everything. So much land!” She smiled then. “But not so beautiful,” she said. “In all the world is nothing so beautiful like my country. But,” she shrugged, “is no good to be poor there.”
“When did you start to sing?” he asked. “How?”
“A cliente of the place where I work. She hear me singing while I am doing something and she become interest’ and when I am sixteen she send me to the Conservatorio. Also her husband. Eh, the husband!” She lifted her chin with a telling gesture. “Ma, cosa vuoi? Is like I tell you, the men are the men.”
Randall plucked a long blade of grass and leaned on the fence chewing its sweet white tip.
“I’m not that kind of man,” he said quietly.
“No, is true. You are different and you are good. But you demand no pleasure and this I cannot understand. You are young, you are b—” she stopped and her laughter rang across the barnyard. “Ecco, I didn’t say it again. You are please’?”
“It is you who are beautiful, Renata,” he said. “And I am in love with you.”
“No-no-no,” she said quickly. It was as if she had sprung back upon touching a hot iron. He turned his head and tried to fix her eyes with his, but she was standing very straight, looking away towards the distance. He knew that his hand was trembling, he felt that the last grain of his courage had been dashed to nothing at her feet; but he put out his shaky hand and took her left one and held it hard while he said, “You act as if you were shocked, Renata. But it’s not a shocking idea and certainly you can’t be surprised by it.”
“I am not surprise’. But you give me pain.”
“But—please look at me!” He grasped her hand tighter and waited until her head turned slowly and she looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Perchè non capisci? Is so difficult? Is not for me the love like you say, so profondo … for me is better something different. I have tell you before, I do not want to become confuse’. I am so grateful, I feel such a goodness for you, a goodness like you are. If you let me give you pleasure, what I understand, I make you happy. If is love like you mean, something so grave, I make you unhappy.”
Her voice trembled and he turned sharply from thoughts of himself to say, “You are tired, you’ve been standing too long. I didn’t mean to plague you, Renata, dear.” He drew her hand through his arm and began to walk slowly with her towards the house. “I was selfish, I shouldn’t have said that now, so soon, when you are still shaky.”
“How you are good!”
“Let’s not say that any more. I’d rather just feel—I don’t know. Perhaps time will make a difference. Anyway, you have to get well first. I won’t say another word until you can run everywhere the way you used to, instead of walk.”
“You watch me close then,” she said. Her old deviltry flared. “I run quick right after you.”
He was not sure whether her contented settling down to rural life was a concession to her weak condition or a reversion to the habits of her childhood. He suspected the former, for whenever she saw some heavy piece of farm work under way she made a little mock shudder and said, “This we had to do così—” spreading her handsome, squaretipped fingers, “or così—” moving as if to lift a load onto her slender back.
“My land!” exclaimed Mrs. Maynard, when Renata did that, “you mean women do that kind o’ hard work, too?”
“But yes! Why no?” Her brown eyes were full of surprise.
By the time she was strong enough to walk out over the fields, at whose spaciousness she was amazed, the corn was over a foot high and she was shocked at what she considered Tom Maynard’s wastefulness. Three feet of rich loam lay between the rows. Renata could not understand, and at the noon dinner-table she asked why they wasted all that priceless land.
“In my paese,” she said, “is planted the grano turco—you call corn?—between the grapes. We do not waste the precious ground,” she said virtuously.
“Hanh? What’s that? Grapes in the corn!” Tom Maynard sat with his mouth open, a forkful of food poised in the air. “Miss Tosi, you must be teched. How you goin’ to get a horse and cultivator through there?”
“A what? A which?”
Randall looked at her and laughed and shook his head. Neither she nor Tom Maynard had the means—the vocabulary, the least grasp of another world’s necessities and habits—to explain that they were not both crazy. They got along delightfully because nobody could resist Renata’s laughter and her funny language and naturalness.
Randall was scarcely ever in New York now; the summer services at St. Timothy’s required little preparation since the skeleton choir sang no special works. He was able to stay at the farm most of each week. The days went by, lovely rich June days, long, glowing evenings when the light lasted until after nine; exquisite fragrant nights. He was very careful of Renata, watching to see that she did not overdo, always ready with a light shawl in case the air should turn suddenly cool. They explored the farm and the surrounding countryside, the shores of the prosaic lake which only evoked from her the wish that he could see her native paradise—and in the next breath she laughed, “How I was fortunate to escape from there!”
“Weren’t your relatives good to you, Renata?”
“They were good,” she said thoughtfully, “but what means good, that depend on many things. For poor contadini is good a different thing from you, per esempio. You are good—and also rich,” she sighed.
“No I’m not. Not at all.”
“You have spend’ such ricchezze upon me, is no use to deny.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know very much. Is impossible conceal from a person like me. We always know.”
“You did have a hard childhood.”
“Not more, not less than the others. But my uncle Gandolfi, when my mother die he has already the many family. A fine, good man. He is like the papà for me, my zia Paola like the mamma. They are very good, very pious. But already they have the many sons and daughters, and this is not easy, you understand. Is not better I work in Milano?”
He indicated his doubt. “I should think the country—”
“Oh, no,” she said with a little laugh. “I like too much enjoy the life. In the city is more—you know.”
More opportunity, she meant. She had certainly made the most of hers. He was beginning to wonder uneasily how soon this existence would pall on her.
He was lying awake in bed late on a June night, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes wide open, watching the full moon ride slowly, high past the top of the big maple tree outside his window. The sky had the live, warm luminosity of summer, and he felt warm and alive too, alive as he had never been before. But he was worried. He had not found a way to tell Renata what he had made up his mind to say; she had parried his few cautious beginnings and he was full of the increasing sense that not only could matters not stay as they were now; Renata would soon begin to be restless; he must seize the initiative. He was wondering what to do, how to appeal to her. His eyes had been circling the room; now he stiffened as they saw the door open slowly, very clear in the moonlight. There was not a sound. Renata came into the room, wrapped in a long pale robe. She shut the door noiselessly and walked lightly towards him. Her hair hung dark and long around her.
“Renata!” he whispered, drawing himself up. “You shouldn’t be here.”
/> She ignored that and sat down lightly on the edge of the bed. “You are not sleeping,” she said, her voice so close to a whisper that she could not have been heard a foot away. “I do not sleep either.”
She sat looking down at him, quite calm and quite as frank in her silence as in any words she had ever spoken.
“I wish you hadn’t come in here,” he said.
“No, that is childish. I come because I decide is ridiculous, how we are. Randalo,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, “why you will not cease to be così? You are a man, I am—I. You do not like me?”
“Like you! Oh, my God.” He flung his forearm across his eyes. “I love you desperately.”
“Non esagerare. I tell you many times, is not wise, is not prudente be like that. Basta we enjoy together the pleasure, the gioia. Believe me, I know. I learn too much already. I would like to give you pleasure, because not only I like you, I am grateful. Is every reason why I am right.”
He did not speak for a time, and then he moved his arm from his face and looked at her and said, “Renata, I want you too. But not in the way you say.”
“Why no?”
“Would you even try to understand me? I don’t want to touch you because—just because you are grateful. In fact—” he raised himself on his elbow and thrust his chin forward stubbornly. “I don’t want you as my mistress. I want to marry you.”
She drew away, with a hurt, blank expression. She thrust her fingers into the hair at her temples. “Sei impossibile, tu! Is impossible to content you. First, you say must be gone Baldini. Now is gone Baldini you say must be first the matrimonio. Why you don’t understand I am not such a woman? I am honest, you should thank the God for it. Why you don’t understand?” she said again.
“Because I love you. You might try to understand too. If I didn’t really love you I’d have—we’d have—had already what I had once before.” He shut his mouth hard. “I didn’t like it and I’m not cut out for it.”
“You are a man,” she said quietly. “You don’t want what wants a man?”
He looked at her and she saw him struggling with some decision. Then he said, his mouth nearly closed, “I want you so much right now that I’m in agony. But I’m not going to take you except as my wife. I wish you’d go away now, Renata. Go back to your room.”
“I have never know’ a man like you.” Her voice was dull.
“Well, you know one now.”
“But I do not,” she said. “Why you think I will not marry you? Because is too different, what you are and what I am. Will not make a matrimonio, such a mixture, also you are a stranger.”
“A stranger! Good God, Renata, after the past two months?”
“Yes, a stranger. Is so different your country, your mondo, is everything I am not. Also I tell you before, the marriage is una responsabilità tremenda and I do not want. Even,” she said, the protest going out of her voice and a tenderness coming into it that he seldom heard, “I do not want to hurt you. If I am a bad wife, I hurt you very much.”
“You hurt me enough right now.”
“That seem to me is your fault. But is inutile stay here and talk like this.” She bent close to him and laid her hand on his cheek. “Randalo,” she whispered. Her hair brushed his face and she saw his jaw tighten. “You are sure I must go away now?”
“Yes.” She heard him breathing very loud. “Go away. And think about what I said. One of us has got to give in and I’m not going to. If you do this again, I’ll go away. You haven’t really thought about marrying me. Think about it enough to see if you won’t change your mind.”
She shook her head a little and moved, saying, “Well, I try to think.”
He would not look at her, he lay there turned away with his hand covering his eyes. “Please marry me, Renata,” he said, choking; “but for God’s sake go away now.”
When she had gone he lay with tears on his cheeks, looking at the closed door.
CHAPTER 13
On a lovely evening a few days later they were all sitting after supper, rocking on the farmhouse porch. Tom Maynard was resting after his heavy day, with his feet up on the porch railing, smoking his corncob pipe. Mrs. Maynard was hemming a tablecloth for the hope chest of her daughter, Emma, who was going to be married in the autumn. Renata too was sewing. She had surprised and delighted the Maynards by picking up one of the plain white petticoats for Emma’s wedding outfit, and whipping onto it yards of pretty ruffling which she made lightning-fast by hand. When Mrs. Maynard asked where in the world she had learned to do that, Renata only winked at Randall. He was leaning back in his chair, silent and pondering what to do about the impasse he had created.
Renata, with other people about, was as lively, chattering, and funny as she had ever been before her illness. When she was alone with him she was subdued and distant. He was worried; the strain between them was increasing. He went out of his way now to avoid being alone with her. Times like this were better than the blank stretches of mid-morning and early afternoon, when everybody except the boarders was hard at work; and he had begun to dread the evenings after the Maynards had gone to their early bed. There were moments then when his hands ached to touch her, when he did not dare speak lest his voice gave him away. And sometimes she raised to him her dark, deepset, gentle eyes, full of bewildered chagrin and protest. Whatever was to come next, Randall doubted that she would want to stay here much longer.
Nobody was saying much; there were comfortable comments about the weather or the young stock or the coming Fourth of July fireworks on the village green; then there was a roar, a popping noise, and a great puffing somewhere beyond the bend of the road along the row of big elm trees. Randall held his breath and looked at the ends of his fingers. He heard Mrs. Maynard exclaim, “Land o’ Jerusalem, what’s that?” and as Tom Maynard got heavily to his feet, the scarlet Stevens-Duryea hove around the curve and stopped with a snort at the Maynards’ mailbox. Renata’s eyes grew round as saucers, her mouth dropped open, and she clapped her hands. Seymour sat high on his throne with the usual laughing lady in motoring costume perched beside him. Randall could have groaned as he recognized Marietta Pawling. The Maynards and their son Walt and Emma and her young man and the hired hands and Renata all stood in a row on the porch, staring and wondering. But Randall sat still. Seymour leaped down from his seat, lightly vaulting the gear and brake levers at his right, and started up the walk to the house. Randall sighed faintly, rallied his manners, and got up to go and meet Seymour. They shook hands affectionately.
“This is my brother, Seymour Holt,” he said, and gravely named the row of wonder-struck faces along the porch, coming last to Renata whose eyes were dancing. Seymour greeted everybody with his usual elegant flair and said, “May I go and fetch Miss Pawling?” He presented Marietta, and Mrs. Maynard who, after years of city boarders, was used to anything short of automobiles, hospitably urged them to sit down.
Randall asked where they had come from, and when Seymour said, “From town,” there was a chorus of incredulous questions.
“Oh, it didn’t take so long,” said Seymour. “We left at eleven this morning. I made pretty good time considering three punctures.”
“How far you reckon it is by road?” Tom Maynard was still eyeing the red monster with suspicion and dislike.
“Just fifty-five miles. I’d have made better time if some of the roads hadn’t been so bad.” He smiled at Randall and said, “We thought we’d take you and Miss Tosi off somewhere for a jaunt tomorrow. My brother must have bored you to death by this time,” he joked, turning to Renata.
“Oh, I am never bore’. Sometimes he is very serious, is true—” She tipped her chin towards Randall and gave him a wink that was a mixture of mischief and tenderness. “But we accept with pleasure, you agree, Randalo?”
“Why, yes. But where are you going to stop tonight, Seymour?”
“Well—” Seymour looked at Mrs. Maynard. “I wasn’t sure there would be room here, but I just thought I’d
find out when we arrived.”
Mrs. Maynard said, “Might be a tight squeeze, but if you don’t mind sort of squaring around I guess we can manage it. Emma, you move your things up to the loft and fix up your room for Miss Pawling. And I s’pose you wouldn’t mind doubling up with your brother, Mr. Holt? That’s about the best we can do.”
Randall watched Seymour, knowing how he loathed sharing a room. But Seymour beamed and said, “That would be fine. It’s awfully good of you, isn’t it, Ran?”
“Awfully,” said Randall. “Thanks ever so much, Mrs. Maynard.”
“And how about your supper?” asked Mrs. Maynard. “You wouldn’t have had a chance to eat, driving that thing, would you?”
“Oh, we had a big luncheon at White Plains.” Marietta Pawling turned from her inconspicuous scrutinizing of Renata to thank Mrs. Maynard. “I’m not a bit hungry, really.”
“Well, Mr. Holt must be. I’ll have something ready in a jiffy. There’s cold fried chicken left, and cherry pie and lots of fresh buttermilk and a coconut cake. Come on, Emma.” She went away. Randall did not trust himself to look at Seymour: cherry pie and coconut cake and buttermilk!
When they were going to bed Randall asked Seymour why he had not sent word that they were coming.
“I never thought of it. I just did it on the spur of the minute, I thought you’d be glad to see me.”
“Oh, I am, Brother. But what about Marietta?”
Seymour gave a benevolent chuckle. “What can I do, Ran? She’s all right if I keep my foot on her neck. You know. I told you, I’m fond of her. I threw one scare into her and it worked. She’s been behaving herself ever since.”
“You—you’ve—I mean—”
“I am still privy to her not inconsiderable favors, if that’s what you’re trying so tactfully to ask me. I must be getting old, I simply find her less trouble on that footing than on any other.”
“Well, just see you don’t try to palm her off on me again.”
“On you!” Seymour widened his weak, milky-grey eyes. “You’re sealed off in your paradise as if there were nobody else on the planet. She’s enchanting, Ran. Absolutely bewitching.” He did not expect, knowing his own instinct to hide emotion, and Randall’s in lesser degree, that Randall would vouchsafe any measure of his feelings about Renata Tosi. But much less did he expect the sense of anxiety, of uncertainty and strain which he felt in Randall as surely as he could have smelled it had somebody been peeling an orange in the room. What in God’s name has gone wrong, he thought. If the boy hasn’t settled into it in this feathered nest, he must be the clumsiest damn fool in Christendom. That was too cruel a verdict to believe; and whatever the truth might prove to be, it was already a challenge to Seymour’s curiosity.
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