nd help me out, Luigi
following; and we would stroll up under the fig trees, and she would
begin showing me this and that new piece of furniture, or pot, or
kettle, or new bread knife, or scissors, or spoon, which Vittorio had
added to their store since my last visit. Or I would find them both
busy over the gondola,--he polishing his brasses and ferro, and she
rehanging the curtains of the tenda which she had washed and ironed
with her own hands.
In truth it was a very happy little nest that was tucked away in one
corner of that old abandoned garden with its outlook on the broad water
and its connecting link with the row of neighbors' houses flanking the
side canal,--and no birds in or out of any nest in all Venice ever sang
so long and so continuously nor were there any others so genuinely
happy the livelong day and night as these two.
Did I not know something of the curious mixture of love, jealousy, and
suspicion which goes into the making-up of an Italian, it would be hard
for me to believe that so lovely a structure as this dovecote, one
built with so much hope and alight with so much real happiness, could
ever come tumbling to the ground. We Anglo-Saxons flame up indignantly
when those we love are attacked, and we demand proofs. "Critica," that
bane of Venetian life--what this, that, or the other neighbor tattles
to this, that, and the other listener, we dismiss with a wave of the
hand, or with fingers tight clenched close to the offender's lips, or
by a blow in the face. Not so the Italian. He also blazes, but he will
stop and wonder when his anger has cooled; think of this and that; put
two and two together, and make ten of what is really only four. This is
what happened to the nest under the grapevines.
I was in my own garden at the Britannia leaning over the marble
balcony, wondering what kept Luigi--it was past ten o'clock--when the
news reached me. I had caught sight of his white shirt and straw hat as
he swung out behind the Salute and headed straight toward me, and saw
from the way he gripped his oar and stretched his long body flat with
the force of each thrust, that he had a message of importance, even
before I saw his face.
"A Dio, Signore!" he cried. "What do you think? Vittorio has cursed
Loretta, torn her wedding ring from her finger, and thrown it in her
face!"
"Vittorio!"
"Yes,--he will listen to nothing! He is a crazy fool and I have done
all I could. He believes every one of the lie
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