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    AFTER THE DIVORCE

    _A ROMANCE_

    BY
    GRAZIA DELEDDA

    _Translated from the Italian_
    BY
    MARIA HORNOR LANSDALE

    And they shall scourge him, and put him to death;...
    And they understood none of these things:....
        --St. Luke xviii. 33, 34

    [Illustration]

    NEW YORK

    HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
    1905




    COPYRIGHT, 1905
    BY
    HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

    _Published March, 1905_

    THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS
    RAHWAY, N. J.




PART I




AFTER THE DIVORCE




CHAPTER I


Nineteen Hundred and Seven. In the "strangers' room" of the Porru house
a woman sat crying. Crouched on the floor near the bed, her knees drawn
up, her arms resting on her knees, and her forehead on her arms, she
wept and sobbed continuously, shaking her head from time to time as
though to indicate that there was no more hope, absolutely none at all;
while her plump shoulders and straight young back rose and fell in the
tightly fitting yellow bodice, like a wave of the sea.

The room was nearly in darkness; there were no windows, but through the
open door which gave upon a bricked gallery, a stretch of dull grey sky
could be seen, growing momentarily darker; and far, far away, against
this dusky background, gleamed the yellow ray of a little, solitary
star. From the courtyard below came the shrill chirping of a cricket,
and the occasional stamp of horses' hoofs on the stone pavement.

A short, heavy woman, clad in the Nuorese dress, with a large, fat,
old-woman face, appeared in the doorway; she carried a four-branched
iron candlestick, in one socket of which burned a wick soaked in oil.

"Giovanna Era," said she in a gruff voice, "what are you about all in
the dark? Are you there? What are you doing? I believe you are crying!
You must be crazy! Upon my word, that's just what you are--crazy!"

The young woman began to sob convulsively.

"Oh, oh, oh!" said the other, drawing near, and in the tone of one who
is deeply shocked and amazed. "I said you were crying. What are you
crying for? There's your mother waiting for you downstairs, and you up
here, crying like a crazy creature!"

The young woman wept more violently than ever, whereupon the other hung
the candlestick on a large nail, gazed vaguely about her, and then began
hovering over her disconsolate guest, searching for words wherewith to
comfort her; she could only repeat, however: "But, Giovanna, you are
crazy, just crazy!"

The "strangers' room"--the name given to that apartment which every
Nuorese family, according to immemorial custom, reserves for the use of
friends from the country--was large, white, and bare; it had a great
wooden bedstead, a table covered with a cotton cloth and adorned with
little glass cups and saucers, and a quantity of small pictures hung
close to the unpainted wooden ceiling. Bunches of dried grapes and
yellow pears hung from the rafters, filling the room with a faint
fragrance; and sacks of wool stood about on the floor.

The stout woman, who was the mistress of the house, laid hold of one of
these sacks, dragged it to another part of the room, and then back again
to where she had found it.

"Now then," said she, panting from her exertion, "do stop. What good
does it do? And why should you give up, anyhow? What the devil, my
dearie! Suppose the public prosecutor _has_ asked for the galleys, that
doesn't mean that the jury are all mad dogs like himself!"

But the other only kept on crying and shaking her head, moaning: "No,
no, no!" between her sobs.

"Yes, yes, I tell you," urged the woman. "Get up now, and come to your
mother," and, taking hold of her, she forced back her head.

The action revealed a charming countenance; rosy, framed in a thick mass
of tumbled black hair;