had waited.
“It concerns my sister, Donna Elisa,” he had said. “She knew your mother,
signorina, and she is consumed with a desire to make your acquaintance.
She is sitting here by the Cathedral. Let me take you to her!”
And then Don Ferrante put her hand on his arm and led her over to Donna
Elisa. And she made no resistance. Donna Elisa would like to see who
could have resisted Don Ferrante to-day.
Donna Elisa rose and went to meet the black lady, and throwing back her
veil, kissed her on both cheeks.
But what a face, what a face! Perhaps it was not pretty, but it had
eyes that spoke, eyes that mourned and lamented, even when the whole
face smiled. Yes, Gaetano perhaps would not wish to carve or paint a
Madonna from that face, for it was too thin and too pale; but it is to be
supposed that our Lord knew what he was doing when he did not put those
eyes in a face that was rosy and round.
When Donna Elisa kissed her, she laid her head down on her shoulder, and
a few short sobs shook her. Then she looked up with a smile, and the
smile seemed to say: “Ah, does the world look so? Is it so beautiful? Let
me see it and smile at it! Can a poor unfortunate really dare to look at
it? And to be seen? Can I bear to be seen?”
All that she had said without a word, only with a smile. What a face,
what a face!
But here Gaetano interrupted Donna Elisa. “Where is she now?” he said. “I
too must see her.”
Then Donna Elisa looked Gaetano in the eyes. They were glowing and clear,
as if they were filled with fire, and a dark flush rose to his temples.
“You will see her all in good time,” she said, harshly. And she repented
of every word she had said.
Gaetano saw that she was afraid, and he understood what she feared. It
came into his mind to tell her now that he meant to go away, to go all
the way to America.
Then he understood that the strange signorina must be very dangerous.
Donna Elisa was so sure that Gaetano would fall in love with her that she
was almost glad to hear that he meant to go away.
For anything seemed better to her than a penniless daughter-in-law, whose
father was a thief.
VI
DON MATTEO’S MISSION
One afternoon the old priest, Don Matteo, inserted his feet into newly
polished shoes, put on a newly brushed soutane, and laid his cloak in the
most effective folds. His face shone as he went up the street, and when
he distributed blessings to the old women spinning by the doorposts, it
was with gestures as graceful as if he had scattered roses.
The street along which Don Matteo was walking was spanned by at least
seven arches, as if every house wished to bind itself to a neighbor.
It ran small and narrow down the mountain; it was half street and half
staircase; the gutters were always overflowing, and there were always
plenty of orange-skins and cabbage-leaves to slip on. Clothes hung on the
line, from the ground up to the sky. Wet shirt-sleeves and apron-strings
were carried by the wind right into Don Matteo’s face. And it felt horrid
and wet, as if Don Matteo had been touched by a corpse.
At the end of the street lay a little dark square, and there Don Matteo
saw an old house, before which he stopped. It was big, and square, and
almost without windows. It had two enormous flights of steps, and two big
doors with heavy locks. And it had walls of black lava, and a “loggia,”
where green slime grew over the tiled floor, and where the spider-webs
were so thick that the nimble lizards were almost held fast in them.
Don Matteo lifted the knocker, and knocked till it thundered. All the
women in the street began to talk, and to question. All the washerwomen
by the fountain in the square dropped soap and wooden clapper, and began
to whisper, and ask, “What is Don Matteo’s errand? Why does Don Matteo
knock on the door of an old, haunted house, where nobody dares to live
except the strange signorina, whose father is in prison?”
But now Giannita opened the door for Don Matteo, and conducted him
through long passages, smelling of mould and damp. In several places in
the floor the stones were loose, and Don Matteo could see way down into
the cellar, where great armies of rats raced over the black earth floor.
As Don Matteo walked through the old house, he lost his good-humor. He
did not pass by a stairway without suspiciously spying up it, and he
could not hear a rustle without starting. He was depressed as before some
misfortune. Don Matteo thought of the little turbaned Moor who was said
to show himself in that house, and even if he did not see him, he might
be said to have felt him.
At last Giannita opened a door and showed the priest into a room. The
walls there were bare, as in a stable; the bed was as narrow as a nun’s,
and over it hung a Madonna that was not worth three soldi. The priest
stood and stared at the little Madonna till the tears rose to his eyes.
While he stood so Signorina Palmeri came into the room. She kept her head
bent and moved slowly, as if wounded. When the priest saw her he wished
to say to her: “You and I, Signorina Palmeri, have met in a strange old
house. Are you here to study the old Moorish inscriptions or to look for
mosaics in the cellar?” For the old priest was confounded when he saw
Signorina Palmeri. He could not understand that the noble lady was poor.
He could not comprehend that she was living in the house of the little
Moor.
He said to himself that he must save her from this haunted house, and
from poverty. He prayed to the tender Madonna for power to save her.
Thereupon he said to the signorina that he had come with a commission
from Don Ferrante Alagona. Don Ferrante had confided to him that she
had refused his proposal of marriage. Why was that? Did she not know
that, although Don Ferrante seemed to be poor as he stood in his shop,
he was really the richest man in Diamante? And Don Ferrante was of an
old Spanish family of great consideration, both in their native country
and in Sicily. And he still owned the big house on the Corso that had
belonged to his ancestors. She should not have said no to him.
While Don Matteo was speaking, he saw how the signorina’s face grew stiff
and white. He was almost afraid to go on. He feared that she was going to
faint.
It was only with the greatest effort that she was able to answer him. The
words would not pass her lips. It seemed as if they were too loathsome
to utter. She quite understood, she said, that Don Ferrante would like
to know why she had refused his proposal. She was infinitely touched and
grateful on account of it, but she could not be his wife. She could
not marry, for she brought dishonor and disgrace with her as a marriage
portion.
“If you marry an Alagona, dear signorina,” said Don Matteo, “you need not
fear that any one will ask of what family you are. It is an honorable
old name. Don Ferrante and his sister, Donna Elisa, are considered the
first people in Diamante, although they have lost all the family riches,
and have to keep a shop. Don Ferrante knows well enough that the glory
of the old name would not be tarnished by a marriage with you. Have no
scruples for that, signorina, if otherwise you may be willing to marry
Don Ferrante.”
But Signorina Palmeri repeated what she had said. Don Ferrante should
not marry the daughter of a convict. She sat pale and despairing, as if
wishing to practise saying those terrible words. She said that she did
not wish to enter a family which would despise her. She succeeded in
saying it in a hard, cold voice, without emotion.
But the more she said, the greater became Don Matteo’s desire to help
her. He felt as if he had met a queen who had been torn from her throne.
A burning desire came over him to set the crown again upon her head, and
fasten the mantle about her shoulders.
Therefore Don Matteo asked her if her father were not soon coming out of
prison, and he wondered what he would live on.
The signorina answered that he would live on her work.
Don Matteo asked her very seriously whether she had thought how her
father, who had always been rich, could bear poverty.
Then she was silent. She tried to move her lips to answer, but could not
utter a sound.
Don Matteo talked and talked. She looked more and more frightened, but
she did not yield.
At last he knew not what to do. How could he save her from that haunted
house, from poverty, and from the burden of dishonor that weighed her
down? But then his eyes chanced to fall on the little image of the
Madonna over the bed. So the young signorina was a believer.
The spirit of inspiration came to Don Matteo. He felt that God had sent
him to save this poor woman. When he spoke again, there was a new ring in
his voice. He understood that it was not he alone who spoke.
“My daughter,” he said, and rose, “you will marry Don Ferrante for your
father’s sake! It is the Madonna’s will, my daughter.”
There was something impressive in Don Matteo’s manner. No one had ever
seen him so before. The signorina trembled, as if a spirit voice had
spoken to her, and she clasped her hands.
“Be a good and faithful wife to Don Ferrante,” said Don Matteo, “and the
Madonna promises you through me that your father will have an old age
free of care.”
Then the signorina saw that it was an inspiration which guided Don
Matteo. It was God speaking through him. And she sank down on her knees,
and bent her head. “I shall do what you command,” she said.
* * * * *
But when the priest, Don Matteo, came out of the house of the little Moor
and went up the street, he suddenly took out his breviary and began
to read. And although the wet clothes struck him on the cheek, and the
little children and the orange-peels lay in wait for him, he only looked
in his book. He needed to hear the great words of God.
For within that black house everything had seemed certain and sure, but
when he came out into the sunshine he began to worry about the promise he
had given in the name of the Madonna.
Don Matteo prayed and read, and read and prayed. Might the great God in
heaven protect the woman, who had believed him and obeyed him as if he
had been a prophet!
Don Matteo turned the corner into the Corso. He struck against donkeys
on their way home, with travelling signorinas on their backs; he walked
right into peasants coming home from their work, and he pushed against
the old women spinning, and entangled their thread. At last he came to a
little, dark shop.
It was a shop without a window which was at the corner of an old palace.
The threshold was a foot high; the floor was of trampled earth; the door
almost always stood open to let in the light. The counter was besieged by
peasants and mule-drivers.
And behind the counter stood Don Ferrante. His beard grew in tufts; his
face was in one wrinkle; his voice was hoarse with rage. The peasants
demanded an immoderately high payment for the loads that they had driven
up from Catania.
VII
THE BELLS OF SAN PASQUALE
The people of Diamante soon perceived that Don Ferrante’s wife, Donna
Micaela, was nothing but a great child. She could never succeed in
looking like a woman of the world, and she really was nothing but a
child. And nothing else was to be expected, after the life she had led.
Of the world she had seen nothing but its theatres, museums, ball-rooms,
promenades, and race courses; and all such are only play places. She had
never been allowed to go alone on the street. She had never worked. No
one had ever spoken seriously to her. She had not even been in love with
any one.
After she had moved into the summer palace she forgot her cares as gayly
and easily as a child would have done. And it appeared that she had the
playful disposition of a child, and that she could transform and change
everything about her.
The old dirty Saracen town Diamante seemed like a paradise to Donna
Micaela. She said that she had not been at all surprised when Don
Ferrante had spoken to her in the square, nor when he had proposed to
her. It seemed quite natural to her that such things should happen in
Diamante. She had seen instantly that Diamante was a town where rich men
went and sought out poor, unfortunate signorinas to make them mistresses
of their black lava palaces.
She also liked the summer-palace. The faded chintz, a hundred years old,
that covered the furniture told her stories. And she found a deep meaning
in all the love scenes between the shepherds and shepherdesses on the
walls.
She had soon found out the secret of Don Ferrante. He was no ordinary
shop-keeper in a side street. He was a man of ambition, who was
collecting money in order to buy back the family estate on Etna and the
palace in Catania and the castle on the mainland. And if he went in short
jacket and pointed cap, like a peasant, it was in order the sooner to be
able to appear as a grandee of Spain and prince of Sicily.
After they were married Don Ferrante always used every evening to put on
a velvet coat, take his guitar under his arm, and place himself on the
stairway to the gallery in the music-room in the summer-palace and sing
canzoni. While he sang, Donna Micaela dreamed that she had been married
to the noblest man in beautiful Sicily.
When Donna Micaela had been married a few months her father was released
from prison and came to live at the summer palace with his daughter. He
liked the life in Diamante and became friends with every one. He liked
to talk to the bee-raisers and vineyard workers whom he met at the Café
Europa, and he amused himself every day by riding about on the slopes of
Etna to look for antiquities.
But he had by no means forgiven his daughter. He lived under her roof,
but he treated her like a stranger, and never showed her affection.
Donna Micaela let him go on and pretended not to notice it. She could
not take his anger seriously any longer. That old man, whom she loved,
believed that he would be able to go on hating her year after year! He
would live near her, hear her speak, see her eyes, be encompassed by
her love, and he could continue to hate her! Ah, he knew neither her
nor himself. She used to sit and imagine how it would be when he must
acknowledge that he was conquered; when he must come and show her that he
loved her.
One day Donna Micaela was standing on her balcony waving her hand to her
father, who rode away on a small, dark-brown pony, when Don Ferrante came
up from the shop to speak to her. And what Don Ferrante wished to say was
that he had succeeded in getting her father admitted to “The Brotherhood
of the Holy Heart” in Catania.
But although Don Ferrante spoke very distinctly, Donna Micaela seemed not
to understand him at all.
He had to repeat to her that he had been in Catania the day before, and
that he had succeeded in getting Cavaliere Palmeri into a brotherhood. He
was to enter it in a month.
She only asked: “What does that mean? What does that mean?”
“Oh,” said Don Ferrante, “can I not have wearied of buying your father
expensive wines from the mainland, and may I not sometimes wish to ride
Domenico?”
When he had said that, he wished to go. There was nothing more to say.
“But tell me first what kind of a brotherhood it is,” she said.--“What
it is! A lot of old men live there.”--“Poor old men?”--“Oh, well, not
so rich.”--“They do not have a room to themselves, I suppose?”--“No,
but very big dormitories.”--“And they eat from tin basins on a
table without a cloth?”--“No, they must be china.”--“But without a
table-cloth?”--“Lord, if the table is clean!”
He added, to silence her: “Very good people live there. If you like to
know it, it was not without hesitation they would receive Cavaliere
Palmeri.”
Thereupon Don Ferrante went. His wife was in despair, but also very
angry. She thought that he had divested himself of rank and class and
become only a plain shop-keeper.
She said aloud, although no one heard her, that the summer palace was
only a big, ugly old house, and Diamante a poor and miserable town.
Naturally, she would not allow her father to leave her. Don Ferrante
would see.
When they had eaten their dinner Don Ferrante wished to go to the Café
Europa and play dominoes, and he looked about for his hat. Donna Micaela
took his hat and followed him out to the gallery that ran round the
court-yard. When they were far enough from the dining-room for her father
not to be able to hear them, she said passionately:--
“Have you anything against my father?”--“He is too expensive.”--“But you
are rich.”--“Who has given you such an idea? Do you not see how I am
struggling?”--“Save in some other way.”--“I shall save in other ways.
Giannita has had presents enough.”--“No, economize on something for
me.”--“You! you are my wife; you shall have it as you have it.”
She stood silent a moment. She was thinking what she could say to
frighten him.
“If I am now your wife, do you know why it is?”--“Oh yes.”--“Do you also
know what the priest promised me?”--“That is his affair, but I do what
I can.”--“You have heard, perhaps, that I broke with all my friends in
Catania when I heard that my father had sought help from them and had not
got it.”--“I know it.”--“And that I came here to Diamante that he might
escape from seeing them and being ashamed?”--“They will not be coming
to the brotherhood.”--“When you know all this, are you not afraid to do
anything against my father?”--“Afraid? I am not afraid of my wife.”
“Have I not made you happy?” she asked.--“Yes, of course,” he answered
indifferently.--“Have you not enjoyed singing to me? Have you not liked
me to have considered you the most generous man in Sicily? Have you not
been glad that I was happy in the old palace? Why should it all come to
an end?”
He laid his hand on her shoulder and warned her. “Remember that you are
not married to a fine gentleman from the Via Etnea!”--“Oh, no!”--“Up here
on the mountain the ways are different. Here wives obey their husbands.
And we do not care for fair words. But if we want them we know how to get
them.”
She was frightened when he spoke so. In a moment she was on her knees
before him. It was dark, but enough light came from the other rooms for
him to see her eyes. In burning prayer, glorious as stars, they were
fixed on him.
“Be merciful! You do not know how much I love him!” Don Ferrante
laughed. “You ought to have begun with that. Now you have made me angry.”
She still knelt and looked up at him. “It is well,” he said, “for you
hereafter to know how you shall behave.” Still she knelt. Then he asked:
“Shall I tell him, or will you?”
Donna Micaela was ashamed that she had humbled herself. She rose and
answered imperiously: “I shall tell him, but not till the last day. And
you _shall_ not let him notice anything.”
“No, I _shall_ not,” he said, and mimicked her. “The less talk about it,
the better for me.”
But when he was gone Donna Micaela laughed at Don Ferrante for believing
that he could do what he liked with her father. She knew some one who
would help her.
* * * * *
In the Cathedral at Diamante there is a miracle-working image of the
Madonna, and this is its story.
Long, long ago a holy hermit lived in a cave on Monte Chiaro. And this
hermit dreamed one night that in the harbor of Catania lay a ship loaded
with images of the saints, and among these there was one so holy that
Englishmen, who are richer than anybody else, would have paid its weight
in gold for it. As soon as the hermit awoke from this dream he started
for Catania. In the harbor lay a ship loaded with images of the saints,
and among the images was one of the holy Madonna that was more holy than
all the others. The hermit begged the captain not to carry that image
away from Sicily, but to give it to him. But the captain refused. “I
shall take it to England,” he said, “and the Englishmen will pay its
weight in gold.” The hermit renewed his petitions. At last the captain
had his men drive him on shore, and hoisted his sail to depart.
It looked as if the holy image was to be lost to Sicily; but the hermit
knelt down on one of the lava blocks on the shore and prayed to God that
it might not be. And what happened? The ship could not go. The anchor
was up, the sail hoisted, and the wind fresh; but for three long days
the ship lay as motionless as if it had been a rock. On the third day
the captain took the Madonna image and threw it to the hermit, who still
lay on the shore. And immediately the ship glided out of the harbor. The
hermit carried the image to Monte Chiaro, and it is still in Diamante,
where it has a chapel and an altar in the Cathedral.
Donna Micaela was now going to this Madonna to pray for her father.
She sought out the Madonna’s chapel, which was built in a dark corner of
the Cathedral. The walls were covered with votive offerings, with silver
hearts and pictures that had been given by all those who had been helped
by the Madonna of Diamante.
The image was hewn in black marble, and when Donna Micaela saw it
standing in its niche, high and dark, and almost hidden by a golden
railing, it seemed to her that its face was beautiful, and that it shone
with mildness. And her heart was filled with hope.
Here was the powerful queen of heaven; here was the good Mother Mary;
here was the afflicted mother who understood every sorrow; here was one
who would not allow her father to be taken from her.
Here she would find help. She would need only to fall on her knees and
tell her trouble, to have the black Madonna come to her assistance.
While she prayed she felt certain that Don Ferrante was even at that
moment changing his mind. When she came home he would come to meet her
and say to her that she might keep her father.
* * * * *
It was a morning three weeks later.
Donna Micaela came out of the summer palace to go to early mass; but
before she set out to the church, she went into Donna Elisa’s shop to
buy a wax candle. It was so early that she had been afraid that the shop
would not be open; but it was, and she was glad to be able to take a gift
with her to the black Madonna.
The shop was empty when Donna Micaela came in, and she pushed the door
forward and back to make the bell ring and call Donna Elisa in. At last
some one came, but it was not Donna Elisa; it was a young man.
That young man was Gaetano, whom Donna Micaela scarcely knew. For Gaetano
had heard so much about her that he was afraid to meet her, and every
time she had come over to Donna Elisa he had shut himself into his
workshop. Donna Micaela knew no more about him than that he was to leave
Diamante, and that he was always carving holy images for Donna Elisa
to have something to sell while he was earning great fortunes away in
Argentina.
When she now saw Gaetano, she found him so handsome that it made her
glad to look at him. She was full of anxiety as a hunted animal, but no
sorrow in the world could prevent her from feeling joy at the sight of
anything so beautiful.
She asked herself where she had seen him before, and she remembered that
she had seen his face in her father’s wonderful collection of pictures in
the palace at Catania. There he had not been in working blouse; he had
had a black felt hat with long, flowing, white feathers, and a broad lace
collar over a velvet coat. And he had been painted by the great master
Van Dyck.
Donna Micaela asked Gaetano for a wax candle, and he began to look for
one. And now, strangely enough, Gaetano, who saw the little shop every
day, seemed to be quite strange there. He looked for the wax candle in
the drawers of rosaries and in the little medallion boxes. He could not
find anything, and he grew so impatient that he turned out the drawers
and broke the boxes open. The destruction and disorder were terrible. And
it would be a real grief to Donna Elisa when she came home.
But Donna Micaela liked to see how he shook the thick hair back from his
face, and how his gold-colored eyes glowed like yellow wine when the sun
shines through it. It was a consolation to see any one so beautiful.
Then Donna Micaela asked pardon of the noble gentlemen whom the great Van
Dyck had painted. For she had often said to them: “Ah, signor, you have
been beautiful, but you never could have been so dark and so pale and
so melancholy. And you did not possess such eyes of fire. All that the
master who painted you has put into your face.” But when Donna Micaela
saw Gaetano she found that it all could be in a face, and that the
master had not needed to add anything. Therefore she asked the noble old
gentlemen’s pardon.