Now, the Signora

Now, the Signora Gemma held her husband together whilst he undid
the screw that fixed the spring. If they had been alone, she would have
done it, pretending to be under his direction. But since I was there, he
did it himself; a grey, shaky S1W , highly-bred little gentleman, standing on a
chair with a long screw-driver, whilst his wife stood behind him, her
hands half-raised to catch him if he should fall. Yet he was strangely absolute,
with a strange, intact force in his breeding.
They had merely adjusted the strong spring to the shut door, and
stretched it slightly in fastening it to the door-jamb, so that it drew together
the moment the latch was released, and the door flew open.
We soon made it right. There was a moment of anxiety, the screw was
fixed. And the door swung to. They were delighted. The Signora
Gemma, who roused in me an electric kind of melancholy, clasped her
hands together in ecstasy as the door swiftly shut itself.
'Ecco!' she cried, in her vibrating, almost warlike woman's voice: 'Ecco!'
Her eyes were aflame as they l Owen ooked at the door. She ran forward to
try it herself. She opened the door expectantly, eagerly. Pouf!—it shut
with a bang.
'Ecco!' she cried, her voice quivering like bronze, overwrought but
triumphant.
I must try also. I opened the door. Pouf! It shut with a bang. We all exclaimed
with joy.
Then the Signor di Paoli turned to me, with a gracious, bland, formal
grin. He turned his back slightly on the woman, and stood holding his
chin, his strange horse-mouth grinning almost pompously at me. It was
an affair of gentlemen. His wife disappeared as if dismissed. Then the
padrone broke into cordial motion. We must drink.
He would show me the estate. I had already seen the house. We went
out by the glass doors on the left, into the domestic courtyard.
It was lower than the gardens round it, and the sunshine came
through the trellised arches on to the flagstones, where the grass grew
fine and green in the cracks, and all was deserted and spacious and still.
There were one or two orange-tubs in the light.
Then I heard a noise, and there in the corner, among all the pink
geraniums and the sunshine, the Signora Gemma sat laughing with a
baby. It was a fair, bonny thing of eighteen months. The Signora was
concentrated upon the child as he sat, stolid and handsome, in his little
white cap, perched on a bench picking at the pink geraniums.