nothing. If I had been able to inflame all Etna, the whole circle of
towns round about Etna! Then they would have understood us! they would
have listened to us! Now they are shooting down a few hungry peasants to
make a few hungry mouths the less. They do not yield an inch to us.”
He strove to break through his cobwebs. Could he venture to go up to her,
to tell her that all that was of no importance? He did not need to think
of politics. He was an artist; he was free! And he wanted to possess her!
Suddenly it seemed as if the air trembled. A shot echoed through the
night, then another and another.
She came forward to him and grasped his wrist. “Is that the uprising?”
she asked.
Shot upon shot came thundering. Then were heard the cries and din of a
crowd rushing down the street.
“It is the uprising; it must be the uprising! Ah, long live socialism!”
He was filled with joy. Entire faith in his belief came back to him. He
would win her too. Women have never refused to belong to the victor.
They both hurried without another word through the garden to the door.
There Gaetano began to swear and call. He could not get out. There was no
key in the lock. He was shut into the garden.
He looked about. There were high walls on three sides, and on the fourth
an abyss. There was no way out for him. But from the town came a terrible
noise. The people were rushing up and down; there were shots and cries.
And they heard them yell: “Long live freedom! Long live socialism!” He
threw himself against the door, and almost shrieked. He was imprisoned;
he could not take part.
Donna Micaela came up to him as quickly as she could. Now, since she had
heard him, she no longer thought of keeping him back.
“Wait, wait!” she said. “I took the key.”
“You, you!” he said.
“I took it when I came. It occurred to me that I could keep you shut in
here if you should want to cause an uprising. I wished to save you.”
“What folly!” he said, and snatched the key from her.
While he stood and fumbled to find the key-hole, he still had time to say
something.
“Why do you not want to save me now?”
She did not answer.
“Perhaps so that your God may have a chance to destroy me.”
She was still silent.
“Do you not dare to save me from His wrath?”
“No, I do not dare,” she said quietly.
“You believers are terrible!” he said.
He felt that she threw him aside. It froze him, and took away his
courage, that she did not make a single attempt to persuade him to stay.
He turned the key forward and back without being able to open the door,
paralyzed by her standing there pale and cold behind him.
Then he suddenly felt her arms about his neck and her lips seeking his.
At the same moment the door flew open and he rushed away. He would not
have her kisses, which only consecrated him to death. She was as terrible
as a spectre to him with her ancient faith. He rushed away like a
fugitive.
XI
THE FEAST OF SAN SEBASTIANO
When Gaetano rushed away, Donna Micaela stood for a long time in Donna
Elisa’s garden. She stood there as if turned to stone, and could neither
feel nor think.
Then suddenly the thought came that Gaetano and she were not alone in the
world. She remembered her father lying sick, whom she had forgotten for
so many hours.
She went through the gate of the court-yard out to the Corso, which lay
deserted and empty. Tumult and shots were still audible far away, and she
said to herself that they must be fighting down by Porta Etnea.
The moon shed its clear light on the façade of the summer-palace, and it
amazed her that at such an hour, and on such a night, the balcony doors
stood open, and the window shutters were not closed. She was still more
surprised that the gate was standing ajar, and that the shop-door was
wide open.
As she went in through the gate, she did not see the old gate-keeper,
Piero, there. The lanterns in the court-yard were not lighted, and there
was not a soul to be seen anywhere.
She went up the steps to the gallery, and her foot struck against
something hard. It was a little bronze vase, which belonged in
the music-room. A few steps higher up she found a knife. It was a
sheath-knife, with a long, dagger-like blade. When she lifted it up a
couple of dark drops rolled down from its edge. She knew that it must be
blood.
And she understood too that what she had feared all the autumn had now
happened. Bandits had been in the summer-palace for plunder. And everyone
who could run away had run away; but her father, who could not leave his
bed, must be murdered.
She could not tell whether the brigands were not still in the house. But
now, in the midst of danger, her fears vanished; and she hurried on,
unheeding that she was alone and defenceless.
She went along the gallery into the music-room. Broad rays of moonlight
fell upon the floor, and in one of those rays lay a human form stretched
motionless.
Donna Micaela bent down over that motionless body. It was Giannita. She
was murdered; she had a deep, gaping wound in her neck.
Donna Micaela laid the body straight, crossed the hands over the breast,
and closed the eyes. In so doing, her hands were wet with the blood; and
when she felt that warm, sticky blood, she began to weep. “Alas, my dear,
beloved sister,” she said aloud, “it is your young life that has ebbed
away with this blood. All your life you have loved me, and now you have
shed your blood defending my house. Is it to punish my hardness that God
has taken you from me? Is it because I did not allow you to love him whom
I loved that you have gone from me? Alas, sister, sister, could you not
have punished me less severely?”
She bent down and kissed the dead girl’s forehead. “You do not believe
it,” she said. “You know that I have always been faithful to you. You
know that I have loved you.”
She remembered that the dead was severed from everything earthly, that it
was not grief and assurances of friendship she needed. She said a prayer
over the body, since the only thing she could do for her sister was to
support with pious thoughts the flight of the soul soaring up to God.
Then she went on, no longer afraid of anything that could happen to
herself, but in inexpressible terror of what might have happened to her
father.
When she had at last passed through the long halls in the state apartment
and stood by the door to the sick-room, her hands groped a long time for
the latch; and when she had found it, she had not the strength to turn
the key.
Then her father called from his room and asked who was there. When she
heard his voice and knew that he was alive, everything in her trembled,
and burst, and lost its power to serve her. Brain and heart failed her
at once, and her muscles could no longer hold her upright. She had still
time to think that she had been living in terrible suspense. And with a
feeling of relief, she sank down in a long swoon.
Donna Micaela regained consciousness towards morning. In the meantime
much had happened. The servants had come out of their hiding-places, and
had gone for Donna Elisa. She had taken charge of the deserted palace,
had summoned the police, and sent a message to the White Brotherhood.
And the latter had carried Giannita’s body to her mother’s house.
When Donna Micaela awoke, she found herself lying on the sofa in a room
next her father’s. No one was with her, but in her father’s room she
heard Donna Elisa talking.
“My son and my daughter,” said Donna Elisa, sobbing; “I have lost both my
son and my daughter.”
Donna Micaela tried to raise herself, but she could not. Her body still
lay in a stupor, although her soul was awake.
“Cavaliere, Cavaliere,” said Donna Elisa, “can you understand? The
bandits come here from Etna, creeping down to Diamante. The bandits
attack the custom-house and shout: ‘Long live Socialism!’ They do it only
to frighten people away from the streets and to draw the Carabiniere down
to Porta Etnea. There is not a single man from Diamante who has anything
to do with it. It is the bandits who arrange it all, to be able to
plunder Miss Tottenham and Donna Micaela, two women, Cavaliere! What did
those officers think at the court-martial? Did they believe that Gaetano
was in league with the bandits? Did they not see that he was a nobleman,
a true Alagona, an artist? How could they have sentenced him?”
Donna Micaela listened with horror, but she tried to imagine that she was
still dreaming. She thought she heard Gaetano ask if she was sacrificing
him to God. She thought she answered that she did. Now she was dreaming
of how it would be in case he really had been captured. It could be
nothing else.
“What a night of misfortune!” said Donna Elisa. “What is flying about
in the air, and making people mad and confused? You have seen Gaetano,
Cavaliere. He has always been passionate and fiery, but it has not been
without intelligence; he has not been without sense and judgment. But
to-night he throws himself right into the arms of the troops. You know
that he wanted to cause an uprising; you know that he came home for
that. And when he hears the shooting, and some one shouting, ‘Long live
Socialism!’ he becomes wild, and beside himself. He says to himself,
‘That is the insurrection!’ and he rushes down the street to join it.
And he shouts the whole time, ‘Long live Socialism!’ as loud as he can.
And so he meets a great crowd of soldiers, a whole host. For they were
on their way to Paternó, and heard the shooting as they passed by, and
marched in to see what was going on. And Gaetano can no longer recognize
a soldier’s cap. He thinks that they are the rebels; he thinks that they
are angels from heaven, and he rushes in among them and lets them capture
him. And they, who have already caught all the bandits sneaking away with
their booty, now lay hands on Gaetano too. They go through the town and
find everything quiet; but before they leave, they pass sentence on their
prisoners. And they condemn Gaetano like the others, condemn him like
those who have broken in and murdered women. Have they not lost their
senses, Cavaliere?”
Donna Micaela could not hear what her father answered. She wished to ask
a thousand questions, but she was still paralyzed and could not move. She
wondered if Gaetano had been shot.
“What do they mean by sentencing him to twenty-nine years’
imprisonment?” said Donna Elisa. “Do you think that he can live so long,
or that any one who loves him can live so long? He is dead, Cavaliere; as
dead for me as Giannita.”
Donna Micaela felt as if strong fetters bound her beyond escape. It was
worse, she thought, than to be tied to a pillory and whipped.
“All the joy of my old age is taken from me,” said Donna Elisa. “Both
Giannita and Gaetano! I have always expected them to marry each other.
It would have been so suitable, because they were both my children, and
loved me. For what shall I live now, when I have no young people about
me? I was often poor when Gaetano first came to me, and people said to me
that I should have been better off alone. But I answered: ‘It makes no
difference, none, if only I have young people about me.’ And I thought
that when he grew up he would find a young wife, and then they would have
little children, and I would never need to sit a lonely and useless old
woman.”
Donna Micaela lay thinking that she could have saved Gaetano, but had
not wished to do so. But why had she not wished? It seemed to her quite
incomprehensible. She began to count up to herself all her reasons for
permitting him to rush to destruction. He was an atheist; a socialist; he
wished to cause a revolt. That had outweighed everything else when she
opened the garden gate for him. It had crushed her love also. She could
not now understand it. It was as if a scale full of feathers had weighed
down a scale full of gold.
“My beautiful boy!” said Donna Elisa, “my beautiful boy! He was already
a great man over there in England, and he came home to help us poor
Sicilians. And now they have sentenced him like a bandit. People say that
they were ready to shoot him, as they shot the others. Perhaps it would
have been better if they had done so, Cavaliere. It had been better to
have laid him in the church-yard than to know that he was in prison. How
will he be able to endure all his suffering? He will not be able to bear
it; he will fall ill; he will soon be dead.”
At these words, Donna Micaela roused herself from her stupor, and got up
from the sofa. She staggered across the room and came in to her father
and Donna Elisa, as pale as poor murdered Giannita. She was so weak that
she did not dare to cross the floor; she stood at the door and leaned
against the door-post.
“It is I,” she said; “Donna Elisa, it is I--”
The words would not come to her lips. She wrung her hands in despair that
she could not speak.
Donna Elisa was instantly at her side. She put her arm about her to
support her, without paying any attention to Donna Micaela’s attempt to
push her away.
“You must forgive me, Donna Elisa,” she said, with an almost inaudible
voice. “I did it.”
Donna Elisa did not heed much what she was saying. She saw that she had
fever, and thought that she was delirious.
Donna Micaela’s lips worked; she plainly wished to say something, but
only a few words were audible. It was impossible to understand what she
meant. “Against him, as against my father,” she said, over and over. And
then she said something about bringing misfortune on all who loved her.
Donna Elisa had got her down on a chair, and Donna Micaela sat there and
kissed her old, wrinkled hands, and asked her to forgive her what she had
done.
Yes, of course, of course, Donna Elisa forgave her.
Donna Micaela looked her sharply in the face with great, feverish eyes,
and asked if it were true.
It was really true.
Then she laid her head on Donna Elisa’s shoulder and sobbed, thanked her,
and said that she could not live if she did not obtain her forgiveness.
She had sinned against no one so much as against her. Could she forgive
her?
“Yes, yes,” said Donna Elisa again and again, and thought that the other
was out of her head from fever and fright.
“There is something I ought to tell you,” said Donna Micaela. “I know it,
but you do not know it. You will not forgive me if you hear it.”
“Yes, of course I forgive you,” said Donna Elisa.
They talked in that way for a long time without understanding each other;
but it was good for old Donna Elisa to have some one that night to put to
bed, comforted and dosed with strengthening herbs and drops. It was good
for her to still have some one to come and lay her head on her shoulder
and cry away her grief.
* * * * *
Donna Micaela, who had loved Gaetano for nearly three years without a
thought that they could ever belong to each other, had accustomed herself
to a strange kind of love. It was enough for her to know that Gaetano
loved her. When she thought of it, a tender feeling of security and
happiness stole through her. “What does it matter; what does it matter?”
she said, when she suffered adversity. “Gaetano loves me.” He was always
with her, cheering and comforting her. He took part in all her thoughts
and undertakings. He was the soul of her life.
As soon as Donna Micaela could get his address, she wrote to him. She
acknowledged to him that she had firmly believed that he had gone to
misfortune. But she had been so much afraid of what he proposed to
accomplish in the world that she had not dared to save him.
She also wrote how she detested his teachings. She did not dissemble at
all to him. She said that even if he were free she could not be his.
She feared him. He had such power over her that, if they were united, he
would make her a socialist and an atheist. Therefore she must always live
apart from him, for the salvation of her soul.
But she begged and prayed that in spite of everything he would not cease
to love her. He must not; he must not! He might punish her in any way he
pleased, if only he did not cease to love her.
He must not do as her father had. He had perhaps reason to close his
heart to her now, but he must not. He must be merciful.
If he knew how she loved him! If he knew how she dreamed of him!
She told him that he was nothing less than life itself to her.
“Must I die, Gaetano?” she asked.
“Is it not enough that those opinions and teachings part us? Is it not
enough that they have carried you to prison? Will you also cease to love
me, because we do not think alike?
“Ah, Gaetano, love me! It leads to nothing; there is no hope in your
love, but love me; I die if you do not love me.”
Donna Micaela had hardly sent off the letter before she began to wait for
the answer. She expected a stormy and angry reply, but she hoped that
there would be one single word to show her that he still loved her.
But she waited several weeks without receiving any letter from Gaetano.
It did not help her to stand and wait every morning for the
letter-carrier out on the gallery, and almost break his heart because he
was always obliged to say that he did not have anything for her.
One day she went herself to the post-office, and asked them, with the
most beseeching eyes, to give her the letter she was expecting. It
must be there, she said. But perhaps they had not been able to read
the address; perhaps it had been put into the wrong box? And her soft,
imploring eyes so touched the postmaster that she was allowed to look
through piles of old, unclaimed letters, and to turn all the drawers in
the post-office upside down. But it was all in vain.
She wrote new letters to Gaetano; but no answer came.
Then she tried to believe what seemed impossible. She tried to make her
soul realize that Gaetano had ceased to love her.
As her conviction increased, she began to shut herself into her room. She
was afraid of people, and preferred to sit alone.
Day by day she became more feeble. She walked deeply bent, and even her
beautiful eyes seemed to lose their life and light.
After a few weeks she was so weak that she could no longer keep up, but
lay all day on her sofa. She was prey to a suffering that gradually
deprived her of all vital power. She knew that she was failing, and she
was afraid to die. But she could do nothing. There was only one remedy
for her, but that never came. While Donna Micaela seemed to be thus
quietly gliding out of life, the people of Diamante were preparing to
celebrate the feast of San Sebastiano, that comes at the end of January.
It was the greatest festival of Diamante, but in the last few years it
had not been kept with customary splendor, because want and gloom had
weighed too heavily on their souls.
But this year, just after the revolt had failed, and while Sicily was
still filled with troops, and while the beloved heroes of the people
languished in prison, they determined to celebrate the festival with all
the old-time pomp; for now, they said, was not the time to neglect the
saint.
And the pious people of Diamante determined that the festival should be
held for a week, and that San Sebastiano should be honored with flags and
decorations, and with races and biblical processions, illuminations, and
singing contests.
The people bestirred themselves with great haste and eagerness. There
was polishing and scrubbing in every house. They brought out the old
costumes, and they prepared to receive strangers from all Etna.
The summer-palace was the only house in Diamante where no preparations
were made. Donna Elisa was deeply grieved at it, but she could not induce
Donna Micaela to have her house decorated. “How can you ask me to trim a
house of mourning with flowers and leaves?” she said. “The roses would
shed their petals if I tried to use them to mask the misery that reigns
here.”
But Donna Elisa was very eager for the festival, and expected much good
to result from honoring the saint as in the old days. She could talk of
nothing but of how the priests had decorated the façade of the Cathedral
in the old Sicilian way, with silver flowers and mirrors. And she
described the procession: how many riders there were to be, and what high
plumes they were to have in their hats, and what long, garlanded staves,
with wax candles at the end, they were to carry in their hands.
When the first festival day came, Donna Elisa’s house was the most
gorgeously decorated. The green, red, and white standard of Italy waved
from the roof, and red cloths, fringed with gold, bearing the saint’s
initials, were spread over the window-sills and balcony railings. Up
and down the wall ran garlands of holly, shaped into stars and arches,
and round the windows crept wreaths made of the little pink roses from
Donna Elisa’s garden. Just over the entrance stood the saint’s image,
framed in lilies, and on the threshold lay cypress-branches. And if one
had entered the house, one would have found it as much adorned on the
inside as on the outside. From the cellar to the attic it was scoured and
covered with flowers, and on the shelves in the shop no saint was too
small or insignificant to have an everlasting or a harebell in his hand.
Like Donna Elisa, every one in penniless Diamante had decorated along
the whole street. In the street above the house of the little Moor there
was such an array of flags that it looked like clothes hung out to dry
from the earth to the sky. Every house and every arch carried flags, and
across the streets were hung ropes, from which fluttered pennant after
pennant.
At every tenth step the people of Diamante had raised triumphal arches
over the street. And over every door stood the image of the saint, framed
in wreaths of yellow everlastings. The balconies were covered with red
quilts and bright-colored table-cloths, and stiff garlands wound up the
walls.
There were so many flowers and leaves that no one could understand how
they had been able to get them all in January. Everything was crowned
and wreathed with flowers. The brooms had crowns of crocuses, and each
door-knocker a bunch of hyacinths. In windows stood pictures with
monograms, and inscriptions of blood-red anemones.
And between those decorated houses the stream of people rolled as mighty
as a rising river. It was not the inhabitants of Diamante alone who were
honoring San Sebastiano. From all Etna came yellow carts, beautifully
ornamented and painted, drawn by horses in shining harness, and loaded
down with people. The sick, the beggars, the blind singers came in great
crowds. There were whole trains of pilgrims, unhappy people, who now,
after their misfortunes, had some one to pray to.
Such numbers came that the people wondered how they all would ever find
room within the town walls. There were people in the streets, people
in the windows, people on the balconies. On the high stone steps sat
people, and the shops were full of them. The big street-doors were thrown
wide, and in the openings chairs were arranged in a half-circle, as in a
theatre. There the house-owners sat with their guests and looked at the
passers-by.
The whole street was filled with an intoxicating noise. It was
not only the talking and laughter of the people. There were also
organ-grinders standing and turning hand-organs big as pianos. There
were street-singers, and there were men and women who declaimed Tasso in
cracked, worn-out voices. There were all kinds of criers, the sound of
organs streamed from all the churches, and in the square on the summit
of the mountain the town band played so that it could be heard over all
Diamante.
The joyous noise, and the fragrance of the flowers, and the flapping of
the flags outside Donna Micaela’s window had power to wake her from her
stupor. She rose up, as if life had sent for her. “I will not die,” she
said to herself. “I will try to live.”
She took her father’s arm and went out into the street. She hoped
that the life there would mount to her head so that she might forget
her sorrow. “If I do not succeed,” she thought, “if I can find no
distraction, I must die.”
Now in Diamante there was a poor old stone-cutter, who had thought of
earning a few soldi during the festival. He had made a couple of small
busts out of lava, of San Sebastiano and of Pope Leo XIII. And as he knew
that many in Diamante loved Gaetano, and grieved over his fate, he also
made a few portraits of him.
Just as Donna Micaela came out into the street she met the man, and he
offered her his wretched little images.
“Buy Don Gaetano Alagona, Donna Micaela,” said the man; “buy Don Gaetano,
whom the government has put in prison because he wished to help Sicily.”
Donna Micaela pressed her father’s arm hard and went hurriedly on.