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My aunt would fume about it, but she did nothing. We were all under Deolda's enchantment. As for me, I adored her; she had a look that always disarmed me. She would sit brooding with a look I had come to know as the "Deolda look." Tears would come to her eyes and slide down her face. "Deolda," I would plead, "what are you crying about?" "Life," she answered.
And so was Johnny Deutra, for from that first glance of Deolda's that dared him, love laid its heavy hand on his young shoulders. "What's your name, dear?" my aunt asked. "Deolda Costa," said she. "Oh, you're one-armed Manel's girl. I don't remember seeing you about lately." "I been working to New Bedford. My father an' mother both died. I came up for the funeral.
When my aunt was ready for bed there was no Deolda. Later came the sound of footsteps and my aunt's voice in the hall outside my room. "That you, Deolda?" "Yes'm." "Where were you all evening?" "Oh, just out under the lilacs." "For pity's sake! Out under the lilacs! What were you doing out there?" Deolda's voice came clear and tranquil. "Making love with Johnny Deutra." I held my breath.
That night I was tired out and went to bed. But I couldn't sleep; Deolda sat staring out into the dark as she had the night before. Next morning I was standing outside the house when one of Deolda's brothers came tearing along. It was Joe, the youngest of one-armed Manel's brood, a boy of sixteen who worked in the fish factory. "Deolda!" he yelled. "Deolda, Johnny's all right!"
My mind went back to that night twenty years ago, with the rain beating its devil's tattoo against the window, when all night long I sat holding Deolda's hand while she never spoke or stirred the hours through, but stared with her crazy, smut-rimmed eyes out into the storm where Johnny Deutra was. I heard again the shuttle of her feet weaving up and down the room through the long hours.
"I want to write out a weddin' present for Deolda," he said. "Wouldn't do to have her without a penny." So he wrote out a check for her. And then in two months old Conboy died and left every other cent to Deolda. You might have imagined him sardonic and grinning over it, looking across at Deolda's luck from the other side of the grave. But what had happened wasn't luck.
There she sat before me, large, mountainous, her lithe gypsy body clothed in fat. Her dark eyes, beautiful as ever, still with a hint of wildness, met mine proudly. And as she looked at me the old doubts rose again in my mind, a cold chill crawled up my back as I thought what was locked in Deolda's heart.
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