passive self, and his family passion. His masculine mind and
intelligence had its home in the little public square of his
village. She knew this as she watched him now, with all his body
talking politics. He could not break off till he had finished. And
then, with a swift, intimate handshake to the group with whom he had
been engaged, he came away, putting all his interest off from
himself.
She tried to make him talk and discuss with her. But he wouldn't. An
obstinate spirit made him darkly refuse masculine conversation with
her.
"If Italy goes to war, you will have to join up?" she asked him.
"Yes," he said, with a smile at the futility of the question.
"And I shall have to stay here?"
He nodded, rather gloomily.
"Do you want to go?" she persisted.
"No, I don't want to go."
"But you think Italy ought to join in?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then you _do_ want to go--"
"I want to go if Italy goes in--and she ought to go in--"
Curious, he was somewhat afraid of her, he half venerated her, and
half despised her. When she tried to make him discuss, in the
masculine way, he shut obstinately against her, something like a
child, and the slow, fine smile of dislike came on his face.
Instinctively he shut off all masculine communication from her,
particularly politics and religion. He would discuss both,
violently, with other men. In politics he was something of a
Socialist, in religion a freethinker. But all this had nothing to do
with Alvina. He would not enter on a discussion in English.
Somewhere in her soul, she knew the finality of his refusal to hold
discussion with a woman. So, though at times her heart hardened with
indignant anger, she let herself remain outside. The more so, as
she felt that in matters intellectual he was rather stupid. Let him
go to the piazza or to the wine-shop, and talk.
To do him justice, he went little. Pescocalascio was only half his
own village. The nostalgia, the campanilismo from which Italians
suffer, the craving to be in sight of the native church-tower, to
stand and talk in the native market place or piazza, this was only
half formed in Ciccio, taken away as he had been from Pescocalascio
when so small a boy. He spent most of his time working in the fields
and woods, most of his evenings at home, often weaving a special
kind of fishnet or net-basket from fine, frail strips of cane. It
was a work he had learned at Naples long ago. Alvina meanwhile would
sew for the child, or spin wool. She became quite clever at drawing
the strands of wool from her distaff, rolling them fine and even
between her fingers, and keeping her bobbin rapidly spinning away
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