"I am sure you did not mean to do any; but you disobeyed Madonna
Clelia."
Nernia was silent.
"You are a young girl; you must not roam the country at night. It is
most perilous. Decent maidens and women are never abroad after
moonrise."
Nernia said nothing.
"You will promise me never to go out at night again?"
"I cannot promise that, sir."
"Why?"
"If I be wanted, I shall go."
"If Adone Alba bid you -- is that your meaning?"
Nernia was silent.
"Do you think that it is fitting for you to have secrets from me,
your confessor?"
Nernia was silent; her rosy mouth was closed firmly. It was very
terrible to have to displease and disobey Don Silverio; but she would
not speak, not if she should burn in everlasting flames for ever.
"Take her away. Take her to Alaida," he said wearily to Gianna.
"She only obeys Adone, sir," said the old woman. "All I can say
counts as naught."
"Adone will send her on no more midnight errands, unless he be brute
and fool both. Take her away. Look to her, you and Alaida."
"I will do what I can, sir," said Gianna humbly, and pushed the girl
out into the village street before her.
Don Silverio sat down at his deal writing-table and wrote in his
fine, clear calligraphy a few lines: "_In the name of my holy office
I forbid you to risk the life and good name of the maiden Nernia on
your unlawful errands_."
Then he signed and sealed the sheet, and sent it by his sacristan to
Adone.
He received no answer.
The night which followed was one of the most bitter in its
meditations that he had ever spent; and he had spent many cruel and
sleepless nights ere then.
That Adone could for one fleeting moment have harboured so vile a
thought filled him with nausea and amaze. Betray them! He! -- who
would willingly have given up such years of life as might remain to
him could he by such a sacrifice have saved their river and their
valley from destruction. There was nothing short of vice or crime
which he would not have done to save the Edera water from its fate.
But it was utterly impossible to do anything. Even men of eminence
had often brought all their forces of wealth and argument against
similar enterprises, and had failed in their opposition. What could a
few score of peasants, and one poor ecclesiastic, do against all the
omnipotence of Parliament, of millionaires, of secretaries of State,
of speculators, of promoters, tenacious and forcible and ravenous as
the octopus?
In those lonely night hours when the moonbeams shone on his bed and
the little white dog nestled itself close to his shoulder, he was
tortured also by the sense that it was his duty to arrest Adone and
the men of the Valdedera in their mad course, even at the price of
such treachery to them as Adone had dared to attribute to him. But if
that were his duty it must be the first duty which consciously he had
left undone!
If he could only stop them on their headlong folly by betraying them
they must rush on to their doom!
He saw no light, no hope, no assistance anywhere. These lads would
not be able to save a single branch of the river water, nor a
sword-rush on its banks, nor a moorhen in its shallows, nor a cluster
of myosotis upon its banks, and they would ruin themselves.
The golden glory of the planet Venus shone between the budding
vine-leaves at his casement.
"Are you not tire?" he said to the shining orb. "Are you not tired of
watching the endless cruelties and insanities on earth?"