"Dario says they summon you to Dan Beda, and that you will not go?"
"He said right."
"But, my son," cried his mother, "go you must! These orders are not
to be shirked. Those who give them have the law behind them. You know
that."
"They have the villainy of the law behind them: the only portion of
the law the people ever suffered to see."
"But how can you know what it is about if you do not go?"
"There is only one thing which it can be. One thing that I will not
hear."
"You mean for the river -- for the land?"
"What else?"
Her face grew as stern as his own. "If that be so... Still you should
go, my son; you should go to hold your own."
"I will hold my own," said Adone; and in his thoughts he added, "but
not by words."
"What is the day of the month for which they call you?" asked his
mother.
"The date is passed by three days. That is a little feat which
authority often plays upon the people."
They went within. The meal was eaten in silence; the nut-brown eyes
of Nerina looked wistfully in their faces, but she asked nothing; she
guessed enough.
Adone said nothing to Don Silverio of the summons, for he knew that
the priest would counsel strongly his attendance in person at San
Beda, even though the date was already passed.
But the Vicar had heard of it from the postman, who confided to him
the fears he felt that Adone would neglect the summons, and so get
into trouble. He perceived at once the error which would be committed
if any sentence should be allowed to go by default through absence of
the person cited.. By such absence the absentee discredits himself;
whatsoever may be the justice of his cause, it is prejudiced at the
outset. But how to persuade of this truth a man so blind with pain
and rage and so dogged in self-will as Adone had become, Don Silverio
did not see. He shrank from renewing useless struggles and disputes
which led to no issue. He felt that Adone and he would only drift
farther and farther apart with every word they spoke.
The young man viewed this thing through a red mist of hatred and
headstrong fury; it was impossible for his elder to admit that such
views were wise or pardonable, or due to anything more than the
heated visions evoked by a great wrong.
That evening at sunset he saw the little girl Nerina at the river.
She had led the cows to the water, and they and she were standing
knee deep in the stream. The western light shone on their soft,
mottled, dun hides and on her ruddy brown hair and bright young face.
The bearded bulrushes were round them; the light played on the broad
leaves of the docks and the red spikes of great beds of willow-herb;
the water reflected the glowing sky, and close to its surface numbers
of newly-come swallows whirled and dipped and darted, chasing gnats,
whilst near at hand on a spray a little woodlark sang.
The scene was fair, peaceful, full of placid and tender loveliness.
"And all this is to be changed and ruined in order that some sons of
the mammon of unrighteousness may set up their mills to grind their
gold," he thought to himself as he passed over the stepping-stones,
which at this shallow place could be crossed dryfoot.
"Where is Adone?" he called to the child.
"He is gone down the river in the punt, most reverend."
"And his mother?"
"Is at the house, sir."
Don Silvero went through the pastures under the great olives. When he
reached the path leading to the house he saw Clelia Alba seated
before the doorway spinning. The rose-tree displayed its first
crimson buds above her head; on the roof sparrows and starlings were
busy.
Clelia Alba rose and dropped a low courtesy to him, then resumed her
work at the wheel.
"You have heard, sir?" she said in a low tone. "They summons him to
San Beda."
"Old Dario told me; but Adone will not go?"
"No sir; he will never go."
"He is in error."
"I do not know sir. He is best judge of that."
"I fear he is in no state of mind to judge calmly of anything. His
absence will go against him. Instead of an amicable settlement the
question will go to the tribunals, and if he be unrepresented there
he will be condemned _in contumacium_."
"Amicable settlement?" repeated his mother, her fine face animated
and stern, and her deep dark eyes flashing. "Can you, sir, dare you,
sir, name such a thing? What they would do is robbery, vile robbery,
a thousand times worse than aught the men of night ever did when they
came down from the hills to harass our homesteads."
"I do not say this otherwise; but the law is with those who harass
you now. We cannot alter the times, good Clelia; we must take them as
they are. Your son should go to San Beda and urge his rights, not
with violence but with firmness and lucidity; he should also provide
himself with an advocate, or he will be driven out of his home by
sheer force, and with some miserable sum as compensation."
Clelia Alba's brown skin grew ashen grey, and its heavy lines
deepened.
"You mean... that is possible?"
"It is more than possible. It is certain. These things always end so.
My poor dear friend! do you not understand, even yet, that nothing
can save your homestead?"
Clelia Alba leaned her elbows on her knees and bowed her face upon
her hands. She felt as women of her race had felt on some fair morn
when they had seen the skies redden with baleful fires, and the
glitter of steel corslets shine under the foliage, and had heard the
ripe corn crackle under the horses' hoofs, and had heard the
shrieking children scream, "The lances are coming, mother! Mother!
save us!"
Those women had had no power to save homestead or child; they had
seen the pikes twist in the curling locks, and the daggers thrust in
the white young throats, and the flames soar to heaven, burning
rooftree and clearing stackyard, and they had possessed no power to
stay the steel or quench the torch. She was like them.
She lifted her face up to the light.
"He will kill them."
"He may kill one man -- two men -- he will have blood on his hands.
What will that serve? I have told you again and again. This thing is
inevitable -- frightful, but inevitable, like war. In war do not
millions of innocent and helpless creatures suffer through no fault
of their own, no cause of their own, on account of some king's
caprice or statesman's blunder? You are just such victims here.
Nothing will preserve to you the Terra Vergine. My dear old friend,
have courage."
"I cannot believe it, sir; I cannot credit it. The land is ours; this
little bit of the good and solid earth is ours; God will not let us
be robbed of it."
"My friend! no miracles are wrought now. I have told you again and
again and again you must lose this place."
"I will not believe it!"
"Alas! I pray hat you may not be forced to believe; but I know that I
pray in vain. Tell me, you are certain that Adone will not answer
that summons?"
"I am certain."
"He is mad."
"No, sir he is not mad. No more than I, his mother. We have faith in
Heaven."
Don Silverio was silent. It was not for him to tell them that such
faith was a feeble staff.
"I must not tarry," he said, and rose. "The night is near at hand.
Tell your son what I have said. My dear friend, I would almost as
soon stab you in the throat as say these things to you; but as you
value your son's sanity and safety make him realise this fact, which
you and he deny: the law will take your home from you, as it will
take the river from the province."
"No, sir!" said Clelia Alba fiercely. "No, no, no! There is a God
above us!"
Don Silverio bade her sadly farewell, and insisted no more. He went
through the odorous grasslands, where the primrose and wild hyacinth
grew so thickly and the olive branches were already laden with small
green berries, and his soul was uneasy, seeing how closed is the mind
of the peasant to argument or to persuasion. Often had he seen a poor
beetle pushing its ball of dirt up the side of a sandhill only to
fall back, and begin again, and again fall; for any truth to
endeavour to penetrate the brain of the rustic is as hard as for the
beetle to climb the sand. He was disinclined to seek the discomfiture
of another useless argument, but neither could he be content in his
conscience to let this matter wholly alone.
Long and dreary as the journey was to San Beda, he undertook it
again, saying nothing to any one of his purpose. He hoped to be able
to put Adone's contumacy in a pardonable light before the Syndic, and
perhaps to plea his cause better than the boy could plead it for
himself. To Don Silverio he always seemed a boy still, and therefore
excusable in all his violence and extravagances.
The day was fine and cool, and walking was easier and less exhausting
than it had been at the season of his first visit; moreover, his
journey to Rome had braced his nerves and sinews to exertion, and
restored to him the energy and self-possession which the long,
tedious, monotonous years of solitude in Ruscino had weakened. There
was a buoyant wind coming from the sea with rain in its track, and a
deep blue sky with grand clouds drifting past the ultramarine hues of
the Abruzzo range. The bare brown rocks grew dark as bronze, and the
forest-clothed hills were almost black in the shadows, as the
clustered towers and roofs of the little city came in sight. He went,
fatigued as he was, straight to the old ducal palace, which was now
used as the municipality, without even shaking the dust off his feet.
"Say that I come for the affair of Adone Alba," he said to the first
persons he saw in the ante-room on the first floor. In the little
ecclesiastical town his calling commanded respect. They begged him to
sit own and rest, and in a few minutes returned to say that the most
illustrious the Count Corradini would receive him at once in his
private room; it was a day of general council, but the council would
not meet for an hour. The Syndic was a tall, spare, frail man, with a
patrician's face and an affable manner. He expressed himself in
courteous terms as flattered by the visit of the Vicar Ruscino, and
inquired if in any way he could be of the slightest service.
"Of the very greatest, your Excellency," said Don Silverio. "I have
ventured to come hither on behalf of a young parishioner of mine,
Adone Alba, who, having received the summons of your Excellency only
yesterday, may, I trust, be excused for not having obeyed it on the
date named. He is unable to come to-day. May I offer myself for his
substitute as _amicus curie_!"
"Certainly, certainly," said Corradini, relieved to meet an educated
man instead of the boor he had expected. "If the summons were delayed
by any fault of my officials, the delay must be inquired into.
Meanwhile, most reverend, have you instructions to conclude the
affair?"
"As yet, I venture to remind your Excellency, we do not even know
what is the affair of which you speak."
"Oh no; quite true. The matter is the sale of the land known under
the title of the Terra Vergine."
"Thank Heaven I am here, and not Adone," thought Don Silverio.