AFTER THE DIVORCE
A ROMANCE
BY
GRAZIA DELEDDA
Translated from the Italian
BY
MARIA HORNOR LANSDALE
And they understood none of these things:....
—St. Luke xviii. 33, 34
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
CHAPTER I
Nineteen Hundred and Seven. In the"strangers' room" of the Porru house awoman sat crying. Crouched on the floor near thebed, her knees drawn up, her arms resting on herknees, and her forehead on her arms, she wept andsobbed continuously, shaking her head from timeto time as though to indicate that there was no morehope, absolutely none at all; while her plump shouldersand straight young back rose and fell in thetightly fitting yellow bodice, like a wave of the sea.
The room was nearly in darkness; there were nowindows, but through the open door which gaveupon a bricked gallery, a stretch of dull grey skycould be seen, growing momentarily darker; andfar, far away, against this dusky background,gleamed the yellow ray of a little, solitary star.From the courtyard below came the shrill chirpingof 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 thedoorway; she carried a four-branched iron candlestick,[4]in one socket of which burned a wick soakedin oil.
"Giovanna Era," said she in a gruff voice,"what are you about all in the dark? Are youthere? What are you doing? I believe you arecrying! 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, andin the tone of one who is deeply shocked andamazed. "I said you were crying. What are youcrying for? There's your mother waiting for youdownstairs, and you up here, crying like a crazycreature!"
The young woman wept more violently than ever,whereupon the other hung the candlestick on a largenail, gazed vaguely about her, and then began hoveringover her disconsolate guest, searching forwords wherewith to comfort her; she could onlyrepeat, however: "But, Giovanna, you are crazy,just crazy!"
The "strangers' room"—the name given to thatapartment which every Nuorese family, accordingto immemorial custom, reserves for the use offriends from the country—was large, white, andbare; it had a great wooden bedstead, a table coveredwith a cotton cloth and adorned with littleglass cups and saucers, and a quantity of small pict