Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/330

 end Riccardo rescued Giuliana and they were married amid celebrations in which the joyous and carefree natives of Brinoë and all the foreigners living there took part. He told Mrs. Winnery that he thought he had found at last the proper medium for the expression of his literary talents. During the last month or two of her pregnancy he read aloud to her chapter after chapter as they were completed.

She was confined six weeks earlier than they had expected. It was the month of October when the goatherd Pietro kept a perpetual heap of offerings before the statue in the garden and it was Sister Annunziata who brought him, pacing up and down in the ancient garden, before the statue, the news that he was the father of twin boys. They no longer kept Sister Annunziata shut up because her madness seemed of a harmless nature and madness was a thing never taken seriously in Italy. She simply believed that Miss Annie Spragg was an unappreciated saint and that Saint Francis was her guardian and companion day and night. In a vague gesture of gratitude toward the pagan gods of fertility, Mr. Winnery made a rich gift of money to Sister Annunziata's convent. It was used to restore abominably a series of famous frescoes by Gozzoli, which had faded almost into oblivion. So in the end Aunt Bessie's money came to embellish a non-conformist chapel in Bloomsbury and a Roman Catholic convent in Brinoë.

Mr. Winnery has completed his romance, for which he was granted the very rare honor of an interview with the Dictator and he has been made a