“That is Pancrazia’s hair, signore.”
“Pancrazia’s hair! Who is, or was, Pancrazia?”
An expression came into the priest’s face that transformed it—a look so
human, so tender, even so mystical, that suddenly I loved this old man
in his rusty soutane and his wrinkled, patched boots.
I sat down on a wooden box that stood just below the statue, and the
priest told me the story of the tress of hair.
I give it in his words, so far as I remember them. But I cannot give
the look in his eyes while he was speaking, or the almost childishly
beautiful simplicity and sincerity of his manner.
“Pancrazia was never a handsome girl, but always she looked a good
girl. And then she had the most beautiful hair in the village, or,
indeed, in all the country round. When she was a child it was full of
gleams of gold, but the underneath was always dark; and, as she grew,
the darkness of it crept up, till all over her head the hair was black.
Only in the front, by her temples, there remained little feathers of
gold, which fell down near her kind, pious eyes—eyes that could be
merry, too, and laugh as readily as the eyes of the wicked and the
wanton.
“Pancrazia was not one of the melancholy who must cry when they pray.
She thought it no wrong to smile at the Madonna; and I have seen her
run out of school in the summer days, and blow kisses to the Mother of
God—where the shrine is by the gateway of the village—as a child might
to her own mother coming down to meet her over the rocks, with, maybe,
the little pig trotting alongside. Why not, signore? She had confidence
in the Madonna; and what is more beautiful than the confidence which
runs out of a young heart like a stream out of a hazel wood? The
Madonna loved it, you may be sure.
“As Pancrazia grew up, despite her piety—she was the purest-minded
child I ever blessed—the natural feelings grew with her. They come
early, signore, in sunny places; and, thank God, the sun is never long
away from us here. She began to know there’s a life for a maiden that
follows after the child’s life.
“Ah, signore, I watched over the girl as I have watched over a flower
growing in my little garden—you must see my little garden, signore,
before you go.
“Often I thought: ‘What a mother she will make!’ And sometimes I would
run over the boys of the village to choose a husband for her when she
should be a bit older. But somehow it always ended the same way: I
never could settle on the husband.
“Well, signore, you know what girls are. She didn’t wait for me to
choose, though nobody respected me as she did. She didn’t think so
much of herself as I thought of her. And while I was saying to myself:
‘Giovanni won’t do, and Stefano won’t do, and Paolo’s not the one,
and may the Madonna preserve her from Giorgio!’ she says to herself:
‘Angelo!’ Not a word more, you may be certain. I can hear her say it,
and see her lips smiling over the word—‘Angelo!’
“I’d come to him, in my numbering, and I’d said to myself: ‘Angelo
won’t quite do.’ Not that he was a bad boy. And he was a handsome one;
strong, merry, and could play the guitar and dance the tarantella,
and sing ‘O sole mio!’ till you could hear it from Acireale to Capo
Sant’ Alessio pretty near. But— Well, in my eyes, nobody would do for
Pancrazia.
“In her heart, all the same, she chose Angelo, and it seemed that in
his he chose her. When I saw him with her one twilight by the shrine
at the gateway, and saw her kneel down, while he stood beside her, and
crossed himself and looked at her as she was praying—for him, signore,
you may be sure, knowing women—I understood how it was, and I said to
myself: ‘Perhaps the Madonna has done the numbering too, and stopped at
Angelo.’
“And so I left it, trusting all was right for that pure child, even in
this world of sin.
“Angelo was a seaman, and was often away. One night when I was in
my garden watering my roses—they are worth seeing, as you will know
presently, signore—I saw Angelo and Pancrazia coming up to the gate
together. I set down the pot of water. Pancrazia was smiling, and he
looked brave—you know how a boy of courage looks when he’s just found
someone who wants to be taken care of, signore?
“I understood, but I pretended not to, and said innocently: ‘What is
it, my children?’
“Then she told me, while he just stared at her, with his eyes getting
graver at every word she said. They were going to be husband and wife,
and I was the first to know it. Angelo had to go away in the morning
to Messina. He’d got a job to sail on an orange boat to the Lipari
Islands, and was to be away two months in all. For those two months the
secret was to be kept among us three.
“It was Pancrazia’s wish. She didn’t want to face the village talk till
Angelo could stay beside her. There was always something more retiring
about her than about the other girls. It seemed to go with her purity.
I blessed them both, and, when I’d finished watering my roses, I prayed
for them and for their children.
“Angelo went away in the morning, and Pancrazia kept up bravely. The
village folk gossiped and laughed, and spoke of the faithlessness of
the men of the sea, but Pancrazia only smiled to herself. And I smiled
too. You see, we knew what had been settled, but they, poor, silly
souls, were ignorant. Yet, as it turned out, I don’t know⸺”
“Time went on, and one evening, after a month had gone, Pancrazia came
rushing into my garden like a mad thing, with a bit of paper in her
hand. Angelo was desperately ill with fever far away in Lipari, and the
orange boat had had to sail from there and leave him. I scarcely knew
Pancrazia. There was a passion in her I’d never suspected, although I
know the fires that slumber in us, who are almost the sucking children
of Etna, signore, as you might say.
“‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ she kept on crying out.
“‘Pray,’ I said. ‘Pray, my child, to the Madonna della Rocca.’
“When she left me it was night. Very late I walked out to the wall
above the precipice to look at Etna and the stars, and there, beyond
the gateway, on the stones before the shrine, I saw a figure kneeling,
and I heard a little noise of sobbing. I went, and whispered:
“‘You must not cry thus when you pray, Pancrazia. The Madonna will
think you doubt her.’
“Then, signore, the sobbing stopped.
“A week went by, two weeks, and then came news that Angelo was worse,
was dying out there in the islands. That day Pancrazia came again to my
house. She was calm, signore, calm, and her face white and still as a
pan of milk.
“‘Padre,’ she said, ‘shut the door.’
“I shut it.
“‘Padre,’ she said, ‘I’m going to give something to the Madonna della
Rocca, and no one is to know but you. Will you promise never to tell?’
“I promised solemnly, as she desired.
“‘Come with me to the church now, padre.’
“I went with her. She had in her hands a length of red ribbon, and
there was a scissors hanging at her waist.
“When we were in the church she shut the door, and said:
“‘Unlock the cupboard in the sacristy, please, padre.’
“We went into the sacristy, and I unlocked this cupboard, and looked at
her.
“‘What is it you are giving to the Madonna, my child?’ I asked.
“She never said a word, but took the scissors from her waist, and
before I could stop her she had cut off her beautiful hair. Not that
I would have prevented her; no, signore, but it was her one beauty,
except the look of goodness in her face. And somehow it seemed to me
that the Madonna would have wished— But she was right. We should keep
back nothing. She tied the ribbons as they are now, and hung the hair
up there upon the Madonna’s hand, and knelt down, and told her that
she offered it for Angelo, in the hope that her love of him might be
regarded in heaven, and that his life might be spared. That was all.
“She put a shawl over her poor head, and we came out.
“Well, presently there was a fine to-do in the village. When the folk
saw Pancrazia’s head they stared, and asked, and laughed. And the
children pointed, and cried out. And the boys—I beat the boys, signore,
and never asked forgiveness. But Pancrazia wouldn’t say a word.
“Pancrazia’s offering found favour with the Madonna, signore. Her
prayer was heard. Angelo recovered, and returned.”
The old priest paused. His face was working. The mystical expression I
had observed in his eyes was replaced for a moment by a very different
look. After a silence he continued:
“No one knew then what we all knew later: that he had been nursed back
to life—those were Angelo’s words, and a lie, signore, for his recovery
was the miracle of the Madonna—by a woman of the islands, and that
already his heart was going out to this stranger. He had come back,
though, to keep his word. That I know. But when he saw Pancrazia’s
poor, shorn head he thought again of the island woman, and⸺”
The old man coughed, and paused.
“Signore,” he resumed in a loud voice, “when Pancrazia saw his look,
and that his heart was turned by such a thing, she would not say where,
and why, the hair was gone. And I—I had promised. Angelo was but a
lad, his passions were hot, the lust of the eye was awake within him,
and—God and the Madonna forgive him!—where he should have seen the
heart he⸺”
He paused again.
“Signore, he went back to the islands, and married the woman who had
nursed him in Lipari.”
“And Pancrazia?” I asked. “Did she not—pardon me if I hurt you—but did
she not cease to pray to the Madonna?”
“Cease to pray!” said the old man, and again the mystical look was in
his eyes.
He drew out his watch, then softly he whispered:
“Come, signore!”
We went out to the wall above the precipice. Here there is an old
gateway, arching the narrow track by which I had ascended. Just beyond
it, under the towering rocks, is a shrine with a crude picture of the
Madonna and Child. Now, as the old priest pointed with his finger,
I saw on the step before the shrine a plain, dark woman kneeling. A
handkerchief was folded over her head, and fell upon her shoulders. Her
hands were clasped. Her lips were moving. She was absorbed, and did not
see us.
“That is Pancrazia!” whispered the priest. “She has never married. Each
day at this hour she comes here. Do you know why?”
“To ask for⸺”
“She is asking for nothing. She is blessing the Madonna.”
“Blessing the Madonna!”
“For having answered her prayer.”
“But⸺”
“Signore, when Pancrazia gave her hair to the Madonna della Rocca she
did not think of self. She only asked that her love might be regarded
in heaven, and that Angelo’s life might be spared. Her prayer was
granted. Angelo lives. And each day at this hour Pancrazia comes here
to give thanks to God, and to praise and bless the Holy Madonna della
Rocca.”