Little Anania spent his days among these folk; from them he learned rude

words and actions, and they accustomed him to the sight of drunkenness,

and careless misery. In another smoke-blackened and cobwebby cellar

beside Maestro Pane's workship, a poor, sick girl was withering. Years

ago her father had gone away to work in an African mine, and he had

never been heard of again. The girl, Rebecca, lived alone, diseased and

abandoned, in her squalid den, swarming with flies and other insects. A

little further on lived a widow, whose five children were supported by

begging. Maestro Pane sometimes begged himself. But one and all they

were merry. The five beggar children never stopped laughing. Maestro

Pane talked to himself and related long pleasant tales of the jolly days

when he was young. Only in the long luminous afternoons, when the

streets were silent and the wasps buzzed over the elder flowers,

inducing sleep to the little Anania stretched at the threshold, then in

the hot stillness could be heard the sharp cry of Rebecca. It rose, it

grew, it broke off; it recommenced, it hurled itself on high, it dashed

itself to earth. It seemed, so to speak, to pierce the silence with a

shower of sibilant arrows. In this cry was all the grief, all the evil,

the poverty, the forlornness, the unseen wretchedness of the place and

its dwellers; it was the voice even of things, the lament of the stones

which dropped one by one from the blackened walls of the prehistoric

houses, of the crumbling roof, of the broken stairs and worm-eaten

balconies which menaced ruin; of the spurge which grew on the pathway,

of the wild olive which shadowed the walls, of the children who had no

food, of the women who had no clothes, of the men who drank to stupefy

themselves, and beat their wives and their children and their beasts

because they could not strike at their destiny; it was the voice of all

sickness uncured, of all the misery ineluctably accepted like life

itself. But who heeded?

Little Anania, stretched across the threshold flapping away the flies

and the wasps with a branch of elder, thought sleepily--

"Whew! Why is that girl screaming? What makes her scream? Why are there

any sick people in the world?"

He himself had grown plump, fattened by the abundant food, by idleness,

by sleep. He slept a great deal. In the silent afternoons not even

Rebecca's cry kept him awake. He slept, the branch of elder in his hand,

flies settling on his face. He slept, and he dreamed he was there, far

away, in the house of the widow, in the kitchen watched by the long

black cloak which was like a gibbeted phantom. But Olì his mother was

no longer there. She had fled far away, far away to an unknown land. And

a monk had come out of the convent and was teaching the little lonely

one to read. He wanted to learn, to learn things that he might be wise

and able to journey to find his mother. The monk talked and talked but

Anania could not hear him, because from the long black cloak came an

acute, a lacerating, deafening lament! Ah God! he was afraid! It was the

voice of the ghost of the dead bandit.

And, besides the fear of the ghost, Anania was troubled by a strange

feeling round his nose. That was the flies!

[Footnote 10: Large enclosed pastures.]

[Footnote 11: An insulting nickname equivalent to "witch."]

V

At last came part fulfilment of his dream. One October morning he got up

very early, Aunt Tatàna washed him and brushed him, and dressed him in

his best suit, that one of yellow fustian which was as stiff as the skin

of the devil. Big Anania was at breakfast, eating roast liver. When he

saw his boy dressed for school, he laughed with satisfaction, and said,

threatening with his finger--

"Ho! ho! If you aren't a good boy. I'll send you to Maestro Pane to make

coffins."

Bustianeddu came for Anania and somewhat contemptuously took him under

his wing. It was a splendid morning. The fresh breeze carried pleasant

odours of new made wine, of coffee, of refuse grape-skins. Hens clucked

in the street. Peasants came in from the country their long carts decked

with vine branches, attended by frisking and noisy dogs.

Anania was happy, though his companion reviled the school and the

schoolmaster and the teachers.

"Yours is like a cock," he said, "he has a red cap and a great hoarse

voice. I had to put up with him for a year. May the devil bite his

heels!"

The school was at the far side of Nuoro, in a convent surrounded by

dreary gardens. Anania's class-room was on the ground floor, its windows

facing the deserted street. The walls were flecked with dust; the

master's desk had been gnawed by rats; the benches were adorned with

spots of ink, with carvings, with names scribbled like hieroglyphics.

Anania felt defrauded when instead of the master like a cock he saw a

mistress, dressed in the costume of the place, a pale, small woman with

a little moustache just like Aunt Tatàna's.

Forty idle children made the room lively. Anania was the tallest of them

all. Perhaps for this reason the little mistress turned oftenest to him.

Besides the moustache she had two terrible, fierce, dark eyes, and she

addressed Anania by his surname, speaking partly in Italian, partly in

Sardinian. He was honoured by her persistent attention, though he found

it a little tedious. At the end of three hours he was actually able to

read and to write two letters. One of them was a mere round O, but that

did not detract from the importance of his attainment. At eleven o'clock

he was dead sick of the school and the mistress and his stiff, smart

clothes. He thought longingly of the courtyard, the elder tree, the

basket of fruit into which he was in the habit of thrusting predatory

fingers. He yawned. Was the going away hour never coming? Many of the

children were in tears, and the mistress wasted her breath preaching

about order and the love of lessons.

At last the door burst open. The school officer--also dressed in

costume--showed his shaven face for a single instant and shouted,

"Time!" The children made one simultaneous rush to the door, tumbling

over each other and shouting. Anania was left to the last, and the

mistress began to pat his head with her scraggy fingers.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Bravo! Remember me to your mother."

That, of course, referred to Aunt Tatàna. He suddenly felt quite fond

of his teacher, who now hurried after the rest of the noisy children.

"What style of going out is that?" she cried, capturing as many as she

could. "Come now! Two and two! In a proper line!"

She placed them in order, and they filed down the corridor through the

door, out into the street. There they were set free and they scattered

like birds escaped from a net, screaming and jumping. Older and more

serious scholars issued from the other class-rooms, all in their rows.

Bustianeddu fell upon Anania, slamming his copy books on the child's

head and seizing his arm.

"Did you like it?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Anania, "but I'm so awfully hungry. I thought it was

never going to stop."

"Did you imagine it would only last a minute?" said the other in his

superior voice. "Just you wait a bit. You'll know something of hunger in

a little while! Look! there's Margherita Carboni!"

The little girl with the violet stockings, the rosy handkerchief, the

green woollen sleeves, appeared among the female pupils, who were

dismissed after the boys. She passed in front of Anania and Bustianeddu

without noticing them, followed by other girls, rich and poor, young

ladies and peasants, some nearly grown up, and in training as coquettes.

The older boys stopped to laugh with and admire them.

"They're spooning," said Bustianeddu, "if the master were to catch

them----"

Anania did not answer. Boys and girls of that dignity seemed to him

quite old enough for love-making.

"They even write to each other!" said Bustianeddu importantly.

"I suppose we shall do that when we're in the fourth form," said Anania

simply.

"Oh, indeed, will you, Ninny? Better wash your face first," said

Bustianeddu; then he pulled the little boy's hand and they ran.

After that day, followed many similar ones. Winter came back, the olive

mill was reopened, the scenes of the previous year were re-enacted.

Anania was top of his class. No one doubted that he was to be a doctor

or a lawyer--possibly a judge. All knew that Signor Carboni had promised

to assist his education. He knew it himself, but as yet had no idea of

the worth of that promise. Gratitude began in him later. For the present

he was overpowered by shyness augmented by delight whenever he

encountered his florid and affable godfather. He was often invited to

dinner at Signor Carboni's, but in the kitchen with the servants and the

cats. This was no annoyance to him, as at table with the gentry he could

not have opened his lips for pride and alarm.

After dinner Margherita used to come to the kitchen and entertain him.

She asked questions about the people at the mill, then took him to the

courtyard, to the granaries, to the cellar. She was delighted when,

aping Bustianeddu's grand manner, he said, "Good Lord! What a lot of

things you have!"

She never condescended to play with him, but Anania cared little for

play. He was timid and grave; without understanding its significance he

was already conscious of his position's irregularity.

Years rolled on.

After the mistress with the moustache came the master like a cock: then

an old man, much addicted to snuff, who wept when he pointed to

Spitzbergen and said, "Here Silvio Pellico was imprisoned." Then came a

master with a round face, who was very pale and very lively, and who

presently committed suicide. This lamentable event was morbidly

impressive to the whole school, and for a long time the children neither

spoke nor thought of anything else. Anania could not explain to himself

why a man of such great cheerfulness should have cut his throat; but he

declared before the whole school that he was ready to follow the example

at the earliest opportunity. Fortunately the opportunity was lacking. At

this time he had no sorrows. He was loved at home, he did well at

school. His life unfolded evenly without change in its events, without

change in the faces which surrounded him. One day was like another, one

year was like another, resembling an interminable roll of stuff printed

all over on the same pattern.

In winter the same people assembled round the olive press. In spring the

elder flowered in the courtyard, the flies and the bees buzzed in the

luminous air. The same figures moved in the streets. Uncle Barchitto,

the madman, with his staring blue eyes, his long beard, and flowing

hair, like a Jesus become old and a beggar, continued his harmless

extravagances. Maestro Pane rapped on the table and talked to himself in

a loud voice. Efès and Nanna reeled and stuttered. The ragged children

played with the dogs, and the cats, and the chickens, and the baby pigs.

The women squabbled. The young men sang melancholy love songs in the

serene moonlit nights. Rebecca's lament shook the air like the cry of

the cuckoo across the sadness of a barren landscape. As the sun

sometimes shines out from an unexpected quarter of a cloudy sky, so the

florid figure of Signor Carboni sometimes appeared in this district of

dismal poverty. Then the women came to their doors smiling and saluting;

the men who did no work, and passed their time stretched out indolently

in the sunshine, sprang to their feet and blushed; the children ran

after him and kissed his hand which he carried carelessly behind his

back. In hard winters he gave _polenta_ (maize) and oil to the whole

neighbourhood. People came to him for small loans which they never

repaid. Everywhere in the dirty wind-swept lanes he met boys and girls

who called him Godfather, and men and women whom he addressed as Gossip.

He could not keep count of his god-children, and Uncle Pera declared that

many called him Gossip merely to get his money.

"They all hope he'll educate their sons," said the old gardener, warming

himself at the olive press furnace, his cudgel across his knees.

"Well, there's one he's going to educate," said the miller, looking

proudly at Anania who was gazing out of the window.

"Not even one. The _padrone_ is vain, but he isn't going to ruin

himself."

"Oh, shut up, you old grasshopper," said the miller; "you're just like

the devil--the older you get the more disagreeable you are!"

"Why doesn't the _padrone_ educate his own bastards?" said the old man,

hawking and coughing. Anania, who was looking out of the window felt a

shudder run through him as if he had been struck.

The miller coughed in his turn and wished Anania would go away, but he

could not restrain himself from reply.

"Dead, dirty, malignant rat!" he exclaimed, "how dare you speak of the

master so?"

"Do you suppose it's not known?" said the old man taking up his cudgel

as if to defend himself; "that boy who works for Franziscu

Carchide--he's a son of Jesus Christ, is he? What I say is why doesn't

the _padrone_ educate that boy?"

"He's the son of a priest," said the miller in a loud voice.

"He isn't. He's the _padrone_'s son. Look at him! He's the image of

Margherita."

"Well," said the miller, defeated, "that boy's as bad as the devil.

What's the good of educating him? You can't make a silk purse of a sow's

ear."

"Have it your own way!" murmured Uncle Pera, relapsing into his cough.

Anania stood at the window beside the heap of husks, oppressed by

mysterious sadness. He knew the boy at Carchide's; he was wild, but not

more so than Bustianeddu and many of the schoolboys. Why did not Signor

Carboni take him into his house and give him a home, as the olive miller

had done for his son? Then he thought--

"Has that boy a mother, I wonder?"

Ah! the mother! the mother! As Anania grew and his mind opened, its

ideas and perceptions taking form unobserved like the petals of a wild

flower, so the thought of his mother became ever clearer in the haze of

his new found conscience. He belonged now to the Fifth Elementary Form,

and was associated with boys of every condition and of every character.

He began to have knowledge of the science of good and evil. He was now

intelligently ashamed if any one alluded to his mother, and remembered

that he had always felt ashamed instinctively. Yet he was consumed by

the desire to know where she was, to see her again, and reproach her

with having deserted him. The unknown land, mysterious and far, to which

she had fled, was taking to Anania's eyes clear outline and appearance,

like that land discerned amid the mists of dawn to which the voyaging

ship draws ever nearer. He studied geography with interest; and knew

exactly how he should go from the island to that continent which

concealed his mother. As once in the mountain village he had dreamed of

the town where his father lived, so now he pondered upon the great

cities described by his teachers and his books, and in one of them, and

in all, he saw the figure of his mother. Her physical image, like an old

photograph, was growing fainter and fainter in his memory; but he always

thought of her as dressed in the Sardinian costume, barefoot, slender,

and very sorrowful.

That year an event occurred which was deeply impressive to his

imagination. This was the return of Bustianeddu's mother.

Anania was a pupil at the Gymnasium, secretly enamoured of Margherita

Carboni, and believing himself quite grown up. The woman's reappearance

moved the whole neighbourhood, and Anania wondered over it by day and by

night. Ostensibly, however, he took no interest in the event.

Some time passed before he saw the woman who had hidden herself in the

house of a relative. Bustianeddu, however, who had become grave and

astute beyond his years, spoke frequently of her to Anania.

Uncle Pera was growing old and the olive-miller assisted him in the

cultivation of his beans and teazles. Anania had free ingress to the

garden, and often carried his books to a grassy bank beside the

streamlet, whence under the shadow of the prickly pears he could see the

wild panorama of mountains and valleys. Here Bustianeddu would find him

when he wanted to pour out his confidences. Bustianeddu spoke

sceptically and coldly, unaware of the tumults of emotion working in the

soul of his friend.

"It would have been better for her to stay away," said Bustianeddu,

lying on his face, his legs in the air. "My father was ready to kill

her; but he takes it more quietly now."

"Have you seen her?"

"Of course I have. My father doesn't like me to visit her, but, of

course, I go. She's grown stout. She's dressed like a lady: I didn't

recognize her. The devil!"

"You didn't recognize her?" exclaimed Anania, surprised and thinking of

his own mother. Ah, he would know _her_ at once!

Then he thought--

"She will be dressed like that too, and her hair in the fashion. Oh

God--oh God--what will she be like?"

Her face eluded him, he was bewildered, confused, then tried to console

himself trusting to his instinct.

"I should know her--I'm sure I should," he thought passionately.

"Why has your mother come back?" he asked Bustianeddu once.

"Why? Because this is her own town. She was working at a dressmaker's in

Turin. She got tired of it and came home."

There was a pause. Neither of the lads believed in the dressmaker at

Turin, but they accepted the story. Anania even said--

"Then your father aught to make it up with her."

"No," said Bustianeddu, defending his father, "he's quite right. You see

there was no necessity for her to go away, and work for her living!"

"Your father works himself. What's the shame of working?"

"My father keeps a shop," corrected the other.

"Well, what's she going to do now? And which of them will you live

with?"

"Don't know," said Bustianeddu.

Daily, however, the stories became more interesting.

"No end of people come to my father to beg him to forgive her. Even our

member of parliament! Grand-mother came yesterday. She said, 'Jesus

forgave the Magdalen; remember, my son, that we are all born to die, and

it's only our good deeds we can carry over there. Look at the condition

of your house! Only the rats are at home in it.'"

"What did your father say?"

"He went away," said Bustianeddu with great indignation; "of course he

went away!--for shame!"

Next day he related. "Even Aunt Tatàna has begun to meddle. She

preaches long sermons. She said to my father, 'Fancy you are taking a

friend as a guest. Oh, do take her! She's penitent. She will reform. If

you won't take her back, who knows what will become of her! King Solomon

had seventy women in his house, and he was the wisest man in the

world!'"

"What did your father say."

"Hard as a stone. He said it was the women who made King Solomon

foolish."

The skin-dealer never relented. His wife lived at the far side of the

town near the school. She wore the costume again; but slightly altered,

slightly embellished with tags and ribbons. Her dress proclaimed her a

woman of equivocal character. The husband did not forgive, and she

continued her own life.

Anania saw her whenever he went to the Gymnasium. She lived in a black

house, the windows of which were outlined with white, the white lines

ending in a large cross. There were four steps to the door, and the

woman often sat on these steps sewing or embroidering. She was large and

handsome, very dark, no longer young. In summer her head was bare, her

raven locks raised high on a cushion above her low forehead. Round her

long full throat she wore a handkerchief of grey silk.

When he saw her, Anania grew red. He felt a morbid kindness for her, yet

often thought he hated her. He would have liked to go to his school

another way so as to avoid the sight of her; but an occult and malignant

force drew his steps always to that street.

VI

It was the Easter holiday time.

Anania, studying his Greek grammar as he paced the little path which

divided the expanse of ashy green teazles, heard a rap at the gate. He

had not the garden to himself. His father was there, hoeing and singing

love songs of the poet Luca Cubeddu. Nanna was weeding, helped by Uncle

Pera. Efès, in his usual condition, lay on the grass. The weather was

almost hot. Rosy clouds chased each other over the milky heaven,

disappearing behind the Cerulean summits of Monte Aliena. From the

valley, as from an immense verdure-clad shell, indefinite sounds and

perfumes rose into the sunny air.

Now and then Nanna raised herself upright putting her hand to her back.

She blew kisses to the student. "Bless him!" she said tenderly. "There

he is studying away like a little bishop! Who knows what he mayn't turn

out! He'll be a judge, or an examining Inspector. All the girls of the

place will be picking him up like a sugar plum! Ah, my poor back!"

"Get on with the weeds!" growled Uncle Pera, "or I'll break your back in

good earnest. Get on with the weeds and let the boy alone."

"Bad luck to you, old tyrant! If I were a lass of fifteen, you wouldn't

be talking like that!" she said, bending over the weeds; but after a

minute she looked up again, blowing more kisses to Anania.

When the miller heard the knock he called out--

"Who's there?"

Anania and Efès, one from his book, the other from the grass, looked up

with the same look of faint anxiety. Suppose it were Signor Carboni?

Efès felt all the weight of his degradation when the benevolent

_padrone_, who never worried him with useless reproaches, sat down and

talked to him: Anania thought of his mother and remembered the

incongruity between his position and that of Margherita whom he was yet

daring to love. The knock was repeated.

"I'll go and see who it is," said Anania, running and tossing his book

in the air to encourage himself.

"If it's the master," said Uncle Pera, "Efès must get up and pretend

he's doing something. It's abominable to see him sprawling about like a

dead dog."

Nanna emitted a growl and kilted her ragged petticoat round her red bare

legs.

"Get up, you old blunderbuss!" continued Uncle Pera, attacking the sot,

"get up and pretend you're some use!"

But the alarm subsided when Anania returned bringing a thin, pale, young

man with a face like a scarecrow, dressed in the Fonni costume.

"I suppose you don't know him," said the student to his father; "I

didn't! It's Zuanne Atonzu. What a big fellow he is!"

"Greetings, cousin!" said the miller. "Welcome! How's your mother?"

"She is well," said the young man laughing shyly.

"Why have you come?"

"I'm witness in a case at the Tribunal."

"What have you done with your horse? At the tavern? Why you've forgotten

we're kin. Well? Are we too poor for you to lodge with us?"

"I wish I was as rich," smiled the youth.

"We'll send for the horse," said Anania, hiding his grammar in his

pocket.

They went off together. Anania was childishly pleased at seeing this

humble shepherd in his rough clothes which recalled to him a whole wild

and far off world. Zuanne was overcome by shyness beholding this

handsome young gentleman, fair and fresh with his white collar and

splendid necktie.

"Mother, we want some coffee," called Anania from the street.

Then he took the guest to his own room and began to exhibit his

possessions. Quaint furniture filled the long narrow room. The ceiling

was of cane, whitewashed; there were two wooden chests like antique

Venetian coffers, roughly carved with griffons, eagles, and fantastic

flowers; a pyramidal chest of drawers, baskets suspended from the walls,

and pictures in cork frames: in one corner a vessel of oil, in the other

his bed covered with a quilt knitted by Aunt Tatàna. The window looked

out on the courtyard elder; between the window and the bed was a little

table with a green cover, and a white wood book-case, the corners of

which had been carved by Maestro Pane in imitation of the chests. On the

table were sundry books and much manuscript written by Anania; a few

boxes strangely tied up, almanacs and a packet of Sardinian newspapers.

All was tidy and very dean; sweet odours and waves of light entered by

the window. The tiled floor was cracked in places, and a couple of elder

leaves fluttered over it, chasing each other as if in play. A volume of

_Les Misérables_ lay open on the desk. Anania had intended to show

everything to the visitor as to a long missed brother; but Zuanne's

stupid expression as he opened and shut the mysterious boxes, damped his

friend's enthusiasm.

Why had he brought this bumpkin into his little room? It was fragrant

not only with the scent of honey, of fruit, of lavender which Aunt

Tatàna hoarded in the chests, but also with the perfume of his lonely

dreams. From its windows opening on the elder flower and the moss-grown

roofs of neighbouring cottages, the world was opening for him, virgin

and flowery like the untrodden mountains of the horizon. His pleasure

had changed into disappointment.

Something had detached itself and fallen away from him, as a stone

sometimes detaches itself from the rock, never to return. His native

village, the past, the first years of his life, the homesick memories,

the poetic affection for the brother of his adoption--all seemed to

vanish in a flash.

"Let's go out," he said brusquely; and led the shepherd through the

Nuoro streets, avoiding his schoolfellows lest they should ask who was

this peasant walking awkwardly at his side. They passed before Signor

Carboni's house. Suddenly appeared at the door a plump and rosy face,

illuminated, it seemed, by reflection from a blouse of republican

scarlet.

Anania snatched off his hat and the reflection of the blouse flamed on

his face also. Margherita smiled, and never were the round cheeks of any

maiden marked with more adorable dimples.

"Who's that woman!" asked Zuanne, the lout, when they had moved on.

"Woman? Why, she's a young girl! only nine months older than I am!"

cried Anania.

Zuanne was much confused and said no more; but a most strange thing

happened to Anania. His will became unable to keep his mouth shut; and

he lied, knowing that he lied, but overwhelmed by felicity at the notion

that what he said might have been true.

"That's my sweetheart," he said deliberately.

That evening, the olive-miller lounging in his kitchen, made Zuanne

describe the ruins of Serrabile, an ancient city discovered near Fonni,

and he asked whether there was any chance of treasure being found there.

But Anania stood at the window of his little room, watching the slow

rising of the moon between the black teeth of Orthobene.

At last he was alone! Night reigned, passionate and sweet. Already the

cuckoo was filling the lonely valley with her palpitating cries. Ah!

thus sadly did Anania feel his heart palpitate and cry, out of an

infinite solitude.

Why had he told that lie? And why had the stupid shepherd said not a

word on hearing the stupendous falsehood? Clearly he knew nothing of

love--love for a superior creature, love without limit and without hope.

But why had Anania stooped to a lie? For shame! He had calumniated

Margherita, put himself further than ever from her. It must be the same

spirit of vanity, the same desire of the marvellous, which once upon a

time had made him tell Zuanne of an imaginary encounter with robbers.

Ah! God!

He pressed his cold hands upon his burning cheeks; he fixed his eyes on

the melancholy visage of the moon. He shuddered. Then he remembered a

bright cold winter moon, the theft of the hundred _lire_, the figure of

Margherita appearing before him like the shadow of a flower against the

golden disc of the moon. Ah! his love must have dated from that night;

only now after years and years had it burst forth breaking the stone

beneath which it had lain buried, like a spring which can no longer keep

its course below ground.

These similes of the flower against the moon, of the rising spring, came

ready made to Anania. He was pleased with his poetic fancies, but they

could not lay the remorse which tormented him. "How vile I am!" he

thought; "vile enough to lie, and about her. Well, I may be successful

at my books, I may become a great lawyer; but morally I shall never be

anything but the son of that lost woman!"

He stood a long time at the window. Some one passed down the street

singing, and somehow the song reawakened his memories of infancy and of

Fonni, Fonni with its crimson sunsets! He fell into a dream, luminous

and melancholy like the moon he was watching. He imagined himself still

at Fonni. He had never gone to school, had never felt the shame of his

birth. He was a shepherd, simple like Zuanne. And he saw himself

standing at the extremity of the village, in a rosy summer twilight; and

behold Margherita passed, Margherita she also poor and an exile in the

mountain village, wearing that narrow skirt characteristic of the place,

the amphora on her head, as if she were a woman out of the Bible. He

called to her and she turned, radiant in the sunset dazzle, and she

smiled to him rapturously.

"Where are you going, beauty?" he asked.

"I am going to the fountain."

"May I come with you?"

"Come, Nania."

He went. They walked together by the road high up on the shoulder of the

valley in whose depth night was waiting, waiting till the purple should

fade in the heavens and veils of shadow should fall upon all things.

Together they descended to the fountain. Margherita set the amphora

under the silver stream of gurgling water, and immediately it changed

its tone to one of merriment, as if the descent into the jug had

agreeably interrupted the eternal tedium. The two young things sat on a

stone bench before the fountain, and they talked of love. The amphora

filled, the water overflowed, and for some moments was quite silent as

if listening to the lovers. And now the sky was grey and the veils of

shadow had fallen on the higher peaks, the more luminous folds of the

mountains. And as night enwrapped the valleys, the desire of Anania

waxed bolder. He put his arm round the girl's waist, she laid her head

on his shoulder, and he kissed her.

At this time Anania was seventeen. He had no friends and mixed little

with his schoolfellows. He was painfully conscious of the stain upon his

birth. Once overhearing the remark, "If I were he, I would not stay with

my father," he fancied the words must refer to himself.

"That's it!" he thought; "why am I here with this man who betrayed my

mother and flung her into a bad life? I don't exactly love him, and I

certainly don't hate him, but what I ought is to despise him. He is not

wicked; he's not completely trivial like the majority of our neighbours.

Sometimes I feel quite fond of him, when I hear his simple talk about

treasure hunting, when I see his respectful affection for his elderly

wife, his unchanging fidelity to his master. But I ought to despise him!

I wish to despise him! What claim has he on me? Did I ask him to bring

me into the world? I ought certainly to leave him now I understand----"

But gratitude, affection, much confidence, bound him to Aunt Tatàna.

She lived almost exclusively for him. She adored him, though she had not

succeeded in making him what she would have liked, a pious and obedient

boy, reverent of God and the king and the priests. She saw, alas I that

he was wrong-headed and self-sufficient, but she loved him none the

less. She laughed and jested with him; she taught him to dance; she

amused him with all the gossip of the place. Every morning before he was

up she brought him a cup of coffee. Every Sunday she promised him money

if he would go to mass.

"I'm too sleepy," he would say. "I worked so hard last night."

"Go later," she would insist. Anania did not go, but Aunt Tatàna gave

him the money all the same.

The day after his idyllic dream, woven of the moonlight which streamed

in at his little window, Anania took Zuanne for a walk, starting with

the intention of treating his friend to a cup of aniseed at the tavern.

"Who knows when we shall meet again!" sighed the shepherd. "When are you

coming to see us?"

"I can't" said Anania, seeking an excuse, "I have to work so hard. I

ought to finish with the Gymnasium this year."

"And then where are you going? To the continent?"

"Yes! to Rome!"

"There are a great many convents at Rome, aren't there? And more than a

hundred churches."

"A good many more than a hundred. Who told you?"

"Your father, last night. He said when he was a soldier----"

"Are you to be a soldier?"

"No; my brother. I----" He interrupted himself.

They entered the tavern. It was empty, smelling of tobacco and spirits,

swarming with flies.

A girl was sitting on the bench. She was dark, and very handsome, though

untidy and dirty.

"Good-morning. Agata."

"What do you want?" she asked, getting up and turning familiarly to

Anania.

"What would you like?" Anania asked the shepherd.

"I don't mind," said Zuanne embarrassed.

The girl mimicked him, looking Anania in the face. He returned her look.

Zuanne grew red, and looked at the floor. When they came out he asked

shyly.

"Is that one your sweetheart too?"

Anania was half-flattered, half-angry. "What makes you think that?

Because she looked at me? Good gracious, what are eyes for? You intend

to be a monk, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Zuanne simply.

"You're going to be a monk!" repeated Anania astounded. "Come along,

then! we'll visit the churchyard. That's what will suit you."

"We shall all go there some day," said Zuanne gravely.

It was soon after Zuanne's visit that the boys at the Gymnasium acted a

comedy. They had wanted Anania to take the part of the heroine, but he

had obstinately refused. Nor did he repent his resolution, for when the

night of the performance came he had a place in the second row of the

spectators immediately behind his godfather (now Syndic of Nuoro) by

whose side sat Margherita in a white hat and a red dress which shone

like a flame.

The Captain of the Carabinieri, the Secretary of the Sub-Prefecture, the

Assessor and the Director of the Gymnasium, sat in the front row with

the Syndic and his resplendent daughter; but the young lady did not seem

pleased with her company; she kept turning her head, though haughtily,

to look at the students.

The hall had once been a convent church; now it was the theatre,

exhibition-room, centre of reunion for all Nuoro. A curtain, not

innocent of patches, concealed the stage, but it blew about in the wind

and gave visions of boyish legs jumping and dancing. At last it was

drawn with much difficulty and the comedy began.

The time was that of the Crusades, the scene an ancient and much

turreted castle, of which, however, nothing was visible but one room

containing a round mahogany table and six Vienna chairs.

The faithful Hermengild (a diminutive school-boy, his face rouged with

red paper, his legs awkwardly astraddle, his costume one of Signora

Carboni's dresses) was embroidering a scarf for the no less faithful

Godfrey, a warrior away on some distant expedition.

"Here she pricks her finger," whispered Anania leaning towards

Margherita.

She leaned towards him, hiding her laughter with her handkerchief.

The Captain of the Carabinieri seated by her side, turned his head

slowly, and glared at the student. But Anania was so happy he wanted to

laugh, and wanted to impart to Margherita all the joy which her nearness

had waked in him.

At the sixth mocking criticism whispered by the little student, the

Captain could endure no more.

"Hold your stupid tongue, will you?" he shouted. Anania shivered, and

drew back as a snail withdraws into its shell. He was so angry that for

some minutes he could neither hear nor see.

_Hold your tongue._ Exactly; he was not to be allowed to make his

harmless jokes, not to be allowed to speak. Oh yes! he quite understood!

He must not lift his eyes, because he was poor and dependent and a

foundling. What was he doing here among all these great folk, among all

these rich and courted young people? How had he dared to lean towards

Margherita Carboni to whisper with her, to make trivial jokes for her

smile? He was quite conscious of the triviality of his conversation. How

could the son of an olive-miller, the son of an Olì, be expected to

talk otherwise? "Hold your tongue, do!" the Captain had said.

Presently Anania revived. He looked contemptuously at the fringe of red

hair round the Captain's bald head. He saw deformed ears and the end of

a waxed moustache. He felt a ferocious wish to box the deformed ears as

many times as there remained hairs on his hideous head. Margherita

presently turned round, surprised by Anania's silence. Their eyes met.

Seeing him depressed, Margherita's eyes became shadowed. Anania saw it

and he smiled. In a moment they were both merry again. Margherita tried

to give her attention to the stage, but felt that Anania was smiling

still, and that his long, half-closed eyes were still fixed on her.

A delicate intoxication overpowered them both. After the comedy there

was a farce at which Signor Carboni laughed immoderately. Margherita was

vexed to see her father laughing like a baby. She had read that

fashionable persons never attend to the play, still less are amused by

it. The Secretary of the Sub-Prefecture frequently turned his back on

the stage, and Margherita would have liked her father to do the same.

It was near midnight when Anania accompanied the Carboni's to their

home. The Assessor--old and a babbler--walked with the Syndic, telling

of an American medical discovery: that microbes are essential to the

human organism. The boy and girl walked in front, laughing when they

slipped on the cobbles of the miry streets. Other persons went by,

laughing and chattering. The night was dark, warm, velvety. Now and then

a breeze from the east came, went, returned wafting a wild perfume from

the woods outside the town. Stars, infinite like human tears, sparkled

in the limitless heaven. Jupiter flamed over Orthobene.

Who does not remember in his early youth some such night, some such

hour? Stars quivering in the depths of a night more luminous than

twilight, stars not seen but felt--ready to descend upon our brow; the

brilliant bear like a golden chariot waiting to carry us to the land of

dreams; a dark pathway; felicity so near, she can be grasped and

retained for ever and for ever.

More than once Anania felt the girl's hand touch his. The mere thought

that he might take it and press it seemed sacrilege. He felt a sort of

double consciousness. He spoke yet seemed silent, his thoughts far away.

He walked and stumbled yet seemed scarce to touch the earth. He laughed

yet was sad almost to tears. He saw Margherita by his side, so near,

that he might touch her, yet she appeared far away, intangible like the

breath of the wind which went and came. She laughed and jested with him.

In her eyes he had seen the reflection of his own distress; yet he told

himself she could only regard him as a faithful dog. He thought--

"Could she guess I was consumed with the desire to press her hand she

would cry out with horror; she would regard me then as a rabid dog."

What did they say to each other that starlit night, in the dark streets

swept by the odorous breeze? He never was able to remember; but, for a

long, long time the dull talk between the old Assessor and Signor

Carboni remained in his mind.

At last, however, the Assessor's high nasal voice became silent.

Margherita and Anania stopped, bid him good-night, went on their way;

but now the boy felt himself awakened from a dream, once more solitary,

sad and shy, stumbling in the darkened street. The Syndic had interposed

his portly person between the poor young creatures!

"Bravo! bravo!" said he, "how did you like the play?"

"It was rot!" replied Anania.

"Bra--a--vo!" repeated the godfather. "You're a cruel critic."

"What else could you expect? Our Director's a fossil--he couldn't choose

better. Life's not like that--never has been! If the theatre isn't like

life, its ridiculous. If they must have chosen something mediæval,

still it might have been something less absurd--something true, human,

touching. They might have had Eleonora d'Arborea dying because she had

helped the plague-stricken----

"But," said Signor Carboni, astonished by the boy's eloquence, "I don't

think our theatre's equal to such a grandiose subject."

"Then a modern comedy would be better--something moving. These stupid

legends have had their day," said Margherita, catching up Anania's tone.

"What, Miss? you too? Well, I agree they might have had something more

interesting. What's that you said about the Director?"

"I said he's a fossil."

"Good Lord! Suppose I tell him?"

"I don't care! I'm going away next year."

"And pray where may you be going?"

Anania grew red, remembering he couldn't go anywhere without Signor

Carboni's assistance. What did the question mean? Had his godfather

forgotten? Was he mocking him? Did he want to make the boy feel the

weight of his obligation, keeping him on tenter hooks, exhibiting him as

at his patron's mercy?

"I don't know," he murmured.

"Do you really want to go, my lad? Then you shall, you shall. You're

shaking your wings like a young bird. Oh! you shall fly--you shall fly!"

He made the gesture of throwing a bird in the air; then slapped his

godson's shoulder. Anania heaved a sigh of relief. He felt as light as

if he had really been launched in flight. Margherita laughed. That laugh

vibrating in the stillness of the night seemed to Anania the rose-bush's

obscure desire for the bird which perches on it to sing.

VII

Autumn drew on.

These were Anania's last days at home, and heavy weight of sentiment

oppressed him. He was still the young bird joyfully ready for flight;

but he was sad and tormented by vague fears of the unknown. What was the

world like, which had already usurped his thoughts? And the adieu was

painful to that humble world in which his childhood had monotonously

passed, unstained by active grief, brightened by his evolving love for

Margherita. The languor and sweetness of early autumn contributed to

render him sentimental. Light clouds veiled the sky. Behind the

mountains a vaporous horizon concealed yet suggested worlds of ineffable

dream. The pale green twilights were brightened by rosy cloudlets,

meandering slowly and interruptedly over the glaucous heaven. In the

garden was the rustle, the odour of burning weeds; it seemed to Anania

that something of his soul vanished in the smoke of these melancholy

fires.

Good-bye! good-bye! gardens and orchards, guardians of the valley!

Good-bye! distant roar of the torrent which announced the winter!

Good-bye, cuckoo, which foretold the return of spring! Good-bye! grey

and savage Orthobene with his holm-oaks outlined against the clouds like

upstanding hairs on a sleeping giant. Good-bye! distant cerulean

mountains! and good-bye, tranquil and kindly hearth, little room scented

with fruit, with honey, and with dreams! Good-bye, humble companions,

unconscious of their own ill-fortune, wicked old Uncle Pera, miserable

Nanna and Efès, suffering Rebecca, extravagant Maestro Pane, crazy

beggars, girls careless of their beauty, children born to want--all of

them mean and distressful persons whom Anania did not love, whom he was

leaving gladly, yet with a wrench.

And good-bye, Margherita! Light and sweetness among shadows, a rainbow

in the cloud, a frame of pearl glorifying the dingy painting of dull

memory I Margherita, good-bye!

The day of departure drew near. Aunt Tatàna made endless preparations.

She provided shirts and socks, fruit, and cakes white as ivory, cheese,

a fowl, dozens of salted eggs, wine, honey, raisins, saddle-bags, and

baskets filled to the brim.

"But these are stores for a whole army!" said Anania.

"Hush, my son! You will find it all necessary. _There_ you will have no

one to care for you, poor child. Oh! what will become of you?"

"Never fear. I'll look after myself."

The miller and his wife had long, secret consultations and Anania

guessed their tenor. One evening they went out together and he anxiously

awaited their return.

Aunt Tatàna came in alone.

"Anania, where do you intend to go? To Cagliari or to Sassari?"

Till that moment he had expected to cross the sea: now he understood

that some one had decided against that plan.

"Signor Carboni, I suppose?" he said, with ill-concealed bitterness and

pride; "don't deny it. What's the good of keeping me in the dark? I see

through you. Why won't he send me to the continent? I'll pay all his

money back to him in the end."

"Bah!" said Aunt Tatàna alarmed by these symptoms of pride, "whatever

have you taken into your head?"

Anania panted, bent his head over a book without seeing a word of it.

The woman caressed him.

"Well, what do you wish, my son? Cagliari or Sassari? You mentioned them

both yesterday. Why on earth should you go further? Jesus! Mary! The

sea's a horrible thing! People get sick on the sea--so I have

heard--sometimes they die. And the storms. Do you never think of the

storms?"

"You don't understand," said Anania, turning his pages.

"You never said a word about it! You mustn't be so capricious. You can

study just as well in Sardinia as on the continent? Why should you go to

the continent?"

Ah yes, why? What did Aunt Tatàna know of his secret desires? It was

not for the sake of his studies that he wanted to cross the sea. Had he

not, since the first day, that sunny autumn day when Bustianeddu had led

him to the Convent school, had he not been thinking of something very

different from mere study?

However Aunt Tatàna's gentle talk calmed his annoyance.

"You are still a child, my son. At seventeen do you want to run about

the world alone? Would you die at sea away from every one, or wither in

a city which you tell me is as big as a forest? Go to Cagliari. Signor

Carboni will give you introductions. He knows everybody at Cagliari,

even a Marquis. Well, then, be reasonable. You shall go further when you

are older. You are like a leveret just weaned. It leaves the form and

runs away to the very wall of the _tanca_, then it comes back. Presently

it goes further, and further still. It learns what it may do; it sees

the path along which it will run. You must wait. Think how near we shall

be, think how you can run back to us if anything goes wrong. At

Christmas you'll be able to come back----"

"Very well. I'll go to Cagliari," said Anania.

Next day he began his leave-takings. He visited the Director of the

Gymnasium, a priest who was a great friend of Aunt Tatàna's, the

doctor, the Deputy; then the tailor, the grocer, and the shoemaker,

Franziscu Carchide, the handsome young man who had been one of the

_habitués_ of the olive-mill. Carchide had, however, made a fortune, no

one knew how; he had a big shop with five or six workmen, he dressed

like a gentleman, talked affectedly and flirted with the young ladies

whose feet he measured.

"Have you any commissions for Cagliari?" said Anania entering his shop.

"Send him a diamond ring," said one of the workmen, "for he's engaged to

the Syndic's daughter."

"Well, why not?" said Carchide, with conceit. "Sit down, Anania."

But Anania, irritated by the joke which he thought an insult to

Margherita, would not sit down and hurried away. As he went out he met

the lad whom rumour called the _padrone_'s son, a tall boy with blue

eyes really very like Margherita's, but sadder.

"Good-bye, Antonino," said the student, and the other looked at him with

flashes of hatred and envy in his melancholy pupils.

When he came in Anania told everything to Aunt Tatàna, who was

preparing a sweetmeat, compounded of oranges, honey and almonds, for him

to present to some great person at Cagliari.

"Look," said the boy, "your priest gave me a crown, and the doctor gave

me two lire. I don't like to take it."

"Oh, bad child! It's the custom to give presents to a boy going away for

the first time!" said the woman, shaking and stirring the slender strips

of orange-peel in the shining copper saucepan. Strong smell of boiling

honey perfumed the kitchen. Everywhere were little yellow baskets packed

with the stores for the student. Anania sat down with the cat on his

knee.

"I wonder where I shall be in a week? Stay quiet, Mussittu, put your

tail down! Your priest read me such a long sermon."

"I suppose he told you to make your confession and take the Communion

before starting?"

"That was necessary twenty years ago, when one went to Cagliari on a

horse and took three days over it. It's not the fashion now!"

"You bad child! don't you believe in God? Holy Saint Catharine, what

will become of you at Cagliari? I hope you'll anyhow go to La Sea (the

cathedral), where there's a picture that does miracles. Cagliari's a

very pious place. You won't speak against religion, I hope?"

"Never mind Cagliari! Every one believes what he can and what he likes.

I venerate God more in my heart than all the hypocrites."

These words were somewhat consolatory to the good woman. She told him

the Bible story of Eli, and then let him continue the description of his

visits.

The kitten had climbed on his shoulder and was licking his ear, tickling

him in a way that somehow reminded him of Margherita. He was telling the

vulgar joke about Carchide's engagement when Nanna came in, Aunt Tatàna

having sent her to buy comfits for her sweetmeat. Her skirt was torn,

and she looked even worse than usual, as she stood unrolling her package

and trying to listen to the conversation.

"Did you hear," said simple Aunt Tatàna, "that horrid Franziscu

Carchide wants to marry Margherita Carboni?"

"No, that's not what I said!" cried Anania.

"Oh, I know Franziscu," said Nanna, "he's mad. He asked first for the

doctor's daughter. They chased him out with the broom handle, and now he

thinks he'll get Margherita because he made her shoes too small."

"He wants a kick in the face!" cried Anania jumping up, the cat round

his neck.

Nanna looked at him, her little eyes shining shrewdly.

"That's what I say. But there's an officer, a general I think, who wants

to marry Margherita. No, I say, she's a rose and she must marry a

pink--fresh and sweet, both of them. Take it!" she went on offering a

comfit to Anania. He drew back, while the kitten vainly stretched its

paw to the little white object.

"Keep off! You smell like a wine barrel!" said the boy, and Nanna

staggered and dropped all her comfits on the floor.

"My pink!" she said coaxingly. "You shall be Margherita's pink! Why are

you going away? But I know! it's to become a judge----"

Anania laughed and picked up the comfits.

"And all the girls are to pick me up like a sugar plum, isn't that it?"

He danced the kitten up and down, feeling quite affectionate to Nanna.

Then suddenly became very gloomy. Who was the officer who wanted to

marry Margherita? Was it that horrible Captain with the red neck who had

said, "Hold your tongue, do!" Then he thought of something still worse.

Margherita married to some young man, handsome--rich--eternally lost to

the poor student.

He set the cat down, and went away, shut himself up in his own room and

looked out of the window. He was suffocating. It had never occurred to

him that Margherita might marry.

"No, no!" he said, squeezing and shaking his head between his hands.

"She mustn't marry. She must wait. She must wait till--till I----. But

why should she wait? How could I marry her? I am the son of a lost

woman. I have no mission in life but to find my mother and draw her out

of the abyss. Margherita could never stoop to me. But until I have

fulfilled my mission, I need Margherita as I need a lighthouse.

Afterwards--I can die content."

He did not think that his "mission" might be prolonged indefinitely and

without success. It did occur to him that he might aspire to Margherita

if he were to renounce his mission; but this seemed monstrous, and he

put the idea away.

The thought of finding his mother had grown and developed with his

growth. It palpitated with his heart, vibrated with his nerves, flowed

with his blood. Only death could eradicate it; but it was of his

mother's death that he thought when he wished that their meeting might

not take place. The yearning for this solution, however, seemed to him

great cowardice.

Later he asked himself if it were natural sentimentality which had

created this thought of his mission; or whether the thought had made him

sentimental. At present he accepted his preoccupations and sentiments

without analysis. Accepting them thus childishly he rooted them so

firmly in his soul and in his flesh, that no logic, no conscious

reasoning could have sufficed to pluck them up.

He spent a fevered night. Already far distant was the time in which he

had been content to see Margherita in the orchard garden, without caring

for the colour of her hair, the grace of her bosom. Then his dreams had

been all fantastic; raptures, meetings, flights to mysterious places,

preferably to the white tablelands of the moon; but had he learned she

was about to marry, it would have occasioned him no suffering. Once he

had thought of persuading her to follow him to the mountains where they

might poison themselves with a poison that would not disfigure their

corpses; yes, they would lay themselves on the rocks among the wild

flowers and the ivy, and they would die together; but into this dream

entered the desire neither for a kiss nor for a pressure of the hand.

Afterwards had come the idyllic dream of the mountains at Fonni, of the

lover's kiss, of Margherita's surrender. Then came the night of the

acting, when the immediate vision of her hair, her eyes, her bosom, had

caused him a delicate intoxication.

Now he was racked by the thought that she might be destined for another.

In his fevered slumber he was in agony, in his dreams he was writing,

writing, at a despairing letter which he never succeeded in bringing to

a termination. Then, still dreaming, he remembered having composed a

sonnet in dialect for her, and he decided on sending it. He awoke. He

rose and flung the window wide. It was near dawn. The heaven was quite

clear, a great red star was setting behind the black obelisk of

Orthobene, like a dying flame on a candlestick of stone. Cocks were

crowing, answering each other with rivalry of raucous cries, each

apparently angry with the other, and all with the delay in the coming of

the light. Anania looked at the sky; he yawned, and a cold shiver ran

from his feet to his head. Oh God! what was happening to him? Part of

his soul must detach itself from him, must remain here, under that clear

heaven, in sight of those wild mountains whose crests were candlesticks

for the stars. As a wayfarer, burdened by too heavy a load wishes to

drop some of it so as more lightly to follow his path, so Anania felt a

great longing to leave part of his secret with Margherita. He shut the

window, seated himself at his table, trembling and yawning. "How cold!"

he said aloud.

The sonnet was already written out on pink paper ruled with violet

lines. It bore the poetic title "Margherita," and was in the form of an

allegory, also highly poetic.

A most lovely marguerite grew in a green meadow. All the flowers admired

her, but specially a pale and lowly buttercup which had grown by her

side. The buttercup was sick with love for his beauteous neighbour. And

lo! on a sweet spring morning, a lovely maiden passed through the

meadow, and plucked the daisy, kissing it and hiding it in her bosom,

never noticing that she had squashed the unhappy buttercup. But the

buttercup seeing his adored neighbour snatched away was glad to die.

The poet read his verses with breaking heart, for instead of the

symbolic maiden he saw a captain of Carabinieri with a long moustache.

He folded the sheet, enclosed it in an envelope, but remained long

undecided whether or no it should be sealed. What would Margherita think

of it? Would she receive a sonnet from him? Yes; because when the

postman rapped out his three terrible knocks, which seemed a knocking of

the iron hand of destiny. Margherita would herself run to take in the

letters. That is if she were at home at the time of the postman's

coming. She would be there at midday certainly. Therefore it was

necessary to post the poetic epistle early.

Feverish agitation preyed upon the student. He could neither hear nor

see. He sealed the envelope, left the house, and roamed the dark,

deserted streets like a somnambulist. What o'clock was it? He did not

know. Cocks were still crowing behind the walls. The damp air smelt of

straw. A poor woman who baked barley bread in the poorer houses, came

and went on her fatiguing business. The steps of two tall black

Carabinieri resounded on the pavement. There was no one else.

Though it was still dark, Anania feared he might be seen. He slunk along

the wall, and the moment he had posted the letter he took to his heels.

He saw the Carabinieri again at the end of the street, changed his

direction and made his way home almost without noticing it. But he could

not go in. He was choking. He wanted air, he wanted immensity, and again

he ran, his hat in his hand, his feet hurrying towards the high road.

But when he had reached it he was still unrelieved. The horizon was

clouded, the great valley dark. He went on and up. Only when he was at

the foot of Orthobene could he breathe, expanding his nostrils like a

colt escaped from the halter. He would have liked to shout aloud for

excitement and joy.

It was getting light. Thin azure veils covered the great damp valley.

The last stars had vanished. Involuntarily Anania repeated the line--

"_Care stelle dell'Orsa, io non credea_--"

("Dear stars of the Bear, I believed not--")

and tried to forget what he had done, though the thought of it was

causing him acute spasms of happiness.

He began the ascent of Orthobene, plucking the leaves, the tufts of

grass, throwing stones and laughing aloud. He seemed mad. The turf smelt

sweet. The heaven was the colour of cyclamen behind the immense purple

rocks of Monte Albo. Anania stood upon a rock looking at the huge

cloister of the far mountains, upon which streamed the delicate

reflection of the sunrise. Suddenly he became pensive.

Good-bye! To-morrow he would be away beyond the mountains, and

Margherita would think in vain of the forgotten buttercup who loved her

and who was himself.

A finch sang from its wild nest in the heart of an ilex tree, expressing

in its trembling note, all the solitude of the place and of the hour.

The note found its echo in the young lad's soul; and he remembered the

song of another little bird which had sung from out the damp leafage of

a chestnut tree on a morning long ago. A morning long ago, over there,

over there, on one of those far distant hills, perhaps on that rosy spur

thrust out towards the morning! And again he saw the child merrily

descending the slope, beside a sorrowful woman; the child all

unconscious of sorrow.

"And now again," he said to himself, "I am glad to go, and who knows

what may be awaiting me?"

He came in pale and weary.

"Where have you been, _galanu meu_ (my treasure)? What took you out

before sunrise?" asked Aunt Tatàna.

"Give me my coffee," replied Anania.

"Here it is. But what's the matter, dear heart? Cheer up. Get back your

colour before you go to your godfather. What? Aren't you going to him

to-day? What are you staring at? Has an ant got into your coffee?"

He was staring at a little gold bordered cup reserved exclusively for

him. Good-bye, little cup! Just once more to-morrow, and then, Good-bye.

A lump rose in his throat.

"I'll go to my godfather later. I've got to finish packing," he said, as

if talking to the cup.

"Suppose we never see each other again?" he said to Aunt Tatàna.

"Suppose I die before I come back? I daresay it would be better. What's

the good of living to be old?"

Aunt Tatàna, looked at him anxiously, crossed herself and said, "Have

you been having bad dreams last night? Why does my little lamb without

wool talk like this? Have you the headache?"

"You don't understand!" he cried, springing to his feet. He went to his

room and packed his books and dearest possessions, now and then his eyes

turned to the window.

What would he see from the window of the room which awaited him at

Cagliari? The sea? The real sea? The infinite distance of azure water,

under the infinite distance of azure heaven? The thought of all that

azure had a soothing effect. He repented having been cross to Aunt

Tatàna. He was very ungrateful--still nerves are nerves and

uncontrollable. But he would not be ungrateful. No! throw down

portmanteau, books, boxes, rush to the kitchen, where the good woman is

sweeping with an air half sad, half philosophical, grieving probably

over the tragic words of her lamb without wool, fall upon her, enfold

her and her broom in one embrace, and drag her into a vertiginous whirl

of a dance!

"Bad boy, what's the matter with you?" cried the elderly woman

palpitating with joy. And then in the middle of the dance he was off

again, running and imitating the puffing of a train.

His packing done, he went on with his good-bye visits, going first to

Maestro Pane. The old carpenter's shop, generally thronged, was at the

moment deserted, and Anania had to wait some time sitting on the bench,

his feet among the abundant shavings which strewed the floor. A light

breeze blew in from the door, agitating the great cobwebs and the layers

of sawdust.

At last Maestro Pane came in, put on an old soldier's tunic, its buttons

carefully polished, and smiled with childish satisfaction when Anania

told him he looked like a general.

"I have the helmet too," he said, "but when I put it on the children

laugh. So you're off, my boy? God go with you and help you. I have

nothing to give you."

"Never mind that, Maestro Pane."

"My heart is not wanting, but heart isn't enough. Well, when you're

Doctor of Laws I'll make you a writing desk. I've got the pattern!"

He looked up a furniture catalogue and showed a splendid bureau with

columns and carving.

"You think I can't do it? You don't know Maestro Pane. If I've not made

much precious and expensive furniture it's only because I lack capital.

It will be well done."

"I'm sure it will, and when I'm a doctor and a rich man I'll have you to

make all the furniture of my palace."

"Will you really?" cried the old hunchback, delighted. "In how many

years will it be?"

"That I can't tell you. Ten perhaps, or fifteen."

"Too long. I shall be in heaven by that time. In the workshop of the

glorious St Joseph." (He crossed himself.)

"And tell me, what does this catalogue mean by furniture

Lui-gi-de-ci-mo-quart-o," (Louis XIV.) he asked reading in syllables.

"He was a king," began Anania.

"I know that much. He was a king very fond of women," said the old man

with a grin on his great toothless mouth.

"Maestro Pane, how do you know that?"

"Because I'm not a scholar do you think I know nothing? Victor Emmanuel

liked hoeing his garden, and Queen Esther liked picking lavender in the

fields, and that King Luigi liked girls."

"You seem to have read a great deal."

"I? I wish I had. My dear boy, all are not born under a lucky star, like

you!"

Anania next knocked at Nanna's low door, but the old madman sitting on a

stone close by told him she wasn't at home.

"I'm waiting for her myself, you must know. Last night Jesus Christ told

me he was wanting a servant."

"Where did you see Jesus Christ?"

"Down there, in the lane. He had a long cloak and his shoes were burst.

Why don't you give me a pair of shoes, Nania Atonzu?"

"They're too tight," said the boy, looking at his feet.

"Then go barefoot, strike you dead!" shouted the lunatic menacingly.

"Good-bye," said Anania; "I'm off to college."

"To Iglesias?"

"No, to Cagliari."

"There are pole cats and vampires at Iglesias. Well good-bye. Shake

hands. I won't eat you. And where's that mother of yours now, I wonder?"

"Good-bye, take care of yourself," said Anania, freeing his hand from

the madman's hard fingers.

"I'm going away myself; to a place where one feasts all day; beans,

lentils, sheep's fry----"

"Good appetite to you. Good-bye."

"Eh!" cried the old man, when he had gone some distance, "write to me

when you're gone, and don't fall into the hands of the scarlet women."

Anania had other friends to see including the beggar widow, who received

him in a little chamber beautifully clean, and gave him a cup of

first-rate coffee.

"Are you going to Rebecca?" she said jealously. "_She_'s taken to

begging. A shame, isn't it, for a girl like that? Tell her so."

"She's a cripple."

"Not she. She's cured. What are you looking at? My reaping hook?"

"Why's it hanging on the door?"

"For the vampire. When the vampire comes in at night she stops to count

the teeth of the sickle. She can't count further than seven so she keeps

beginning again. Then the dawn comes, and the moment she sees the light

she flies off. Why do you laugh? It's quite true. God bless you, dear;

good journey and do the place credit!" said the beggar, going with him

to the street.

He went to Rebecca. Huddled up in her dark hole she seemed a wild beast

sick in its den--though considerably more than twenty she was still the

size of a child.

Seeing the lad, she flushed all over and offered him a bunch of black

grapes on a rude cork-tray.

"Take them. I've nothing else!"

"Say 'thou'[12] to me," said Anania, taking one from the bunch.

"I'm not worthy. I'm not Margherita Carboni. I'm a poor wretch," said

the girl excitedly. "Take the whole bunch. It's quite clean. I haven't

touched it. Uncle Pera _su gattu_ brought it."

"Uncle Pera?" said Anania, who believed all the scandals about the old

gardener.

"Yes, poor old fellow. He always remembers me and brings me something

every day. Last month I was ill, for my sores broke out again. Uncle

Pera sent for the doctor and brought me my medicines himself. He's what

my father ought to have been. But my father has left me! Well, never

mind." (for she saw that touched Anania). "Why won't you take the whole

bunch? It's really quite clean!"

"Give it to me. But where can I put it? Let me wrap it in this

newspaper. I'm off to-morrow. Going to Cagliari. I do hope you'll get

well."

"Good-bye," she said, tears in her eyes, "I wish I were going away."

Next Anania saw the handsome Agata at the tavern door so he stepped

across to take leave of her.

"She smiled, her big eyes sparkling, and kissed her hand.

"Yes, it's good-bye," said Anania, coming closer.

"You've been flirting with that lump of dirt," she said, pointing to

Rebecca. "Go away, you smell of her."

For some reason, Anania remembered Margherita, and felt shocked.

"She's jealous of me!" continued Agata, making eyes at him. "Look! she's

watching you. The silly fool! She's always thinking of you because last

New Year's Eve she drew you for a sweetheart."

"Oh, shut up! I'm off to-morrow. Can I do anything for you?"

"Take me with you!"

A shepherd, who had been drinking a cup of brandy, came out and pinched

the girl as he passed.

"_Sas manas siccas_ (wither your hands), skinned hare!" cried Agata. She

beckoned Anania into the tavern, and asked what he would drink.

"Nothing. Good-bye! good-bye."

However, she fetched white wine, and, as he drank, leaned languidly

against the bar watching him. She said, "I'm going to Cagliari as soon

as I've bought a new dress with gold buttons for the chemisette. I'll go

to Cagliari and get a place. We shall meet again. The devil! Here comes

Antonino! he's my sweetheart, and is mad jealous of you. Ah, my jewel,

good-bye! good-bye!"

Saying this she flung herself upon him with a wild cat spring and kissed

him hotly on the lips. Then she pushed him away, and he went out,

confounded and agitated, hurrying past Antonino whose look of hate he

now understood. For some minutes he walked not knowing whither. He was

new to kisses, and could only think of Margherita, the longing to see

her making his blood boil.

"Oh!" he cried suddenly finding himself in the arms of another woman.

"Child of my heart!" cried Nanna, crying and laughing, and offering him

a parcel, "are you really going? God go with you and bless you as he

blesses the ears of corn. We shall see you again, but meantime--here

take this, my darling. Don't refuse or I shall die of grief."

To prevent Nanna's death he accepted the parcel, but shuddered, feeling

something very unpleasant on his cheek.

"There!" said Nanna, when she had kissed him, "I couldn't help it. It

will wash off, dear. It won't prevent the flower-smelling kisses of the

golden girls who will pick you up like a sugar plum."

Anania made no protests, but this thrust into reality restored his moral

equilibrium and cancelled the burning sensation given him by the kiss of

Agata.

When he got home he opened Nanna's parcel, and found it contained

thirteen _soldi_ (half-pence).

"I hope you've been to your godfather," said Aunt Tatàna.

"I'm going at once after dinner," he replied.

But after dinner he went into the courtyard and stretched himself on a

mat under the elder tree, round which buzzed the bees and the flies. The

air was warm. Between the boughs Anania saw great white clouds floating

across the blue heaven. An infinite sweetness fell from those clouds. It

seemed a rain of warm milk. Distant memories, wandering, changing, like

the clouds, passed through his mind confused with recent impressions.

Now he was back in the dreary landscape guarded by the sounding pines,

where his father had ploughed and sown the _padrone_'s corn. The

sounding of the pines is like the voice of the sea. The sky is deeply,

monotonously blue. Anania remembered the lines--whose? Baudelaire's

perhaps?--

"Blue the colour of her eyes,

Deep and empty as the skies."

The eyes of Margherita? No, that was an insult to her! But it was

satisfactory to be able to quote such an original verse--

"Blue the colour of her eyes,

Deep and empty as the skies."

Who is that behind the pine-tree? The postman with the red whiskers! On

his head he wears a crow with outstretched wings. It is pecking hard at

the poor man's forehead.

"Rat-tat-tat!" Margherita runs to the door, receives the pink letter,

and begins to fly. Anania wants to follow her, but he can't move, can't

move, can't speak. It's because the postman is shaking him.

"My son, it's three o'clock. When are you going to your godfather?" asks

Aunt Tatàna.

She it is, not the postman, who is shaking him. Anania springs to his

feet, one eye still shut, one cheek pale, the other red.

"I'm rather sleepy. It's because I was awake all last night. Very well,

I'll go now."

He washed, combed his hair, spent half an hour in making his parting

first at the side, then in the middle, then doing away with it

altogether.

"What an idiot I am!" he thought, trying to control his feelings but in

vain.

"Are you there still? When ever are you going?" called the good woman

from the courtyard. He looked out of the window and asked--

"What shall I say to him?"

"Say you are going to-morrow. Say you'll get on well, that you'll always

be a good boy."

"Amen. But what will he say to me?"

"He'll give you good advice."

"Won't he say anything about----"

"About what?"

"About money," said Anania in a whisper, putting his hand over his

mouth.

"Bless me, what have you to do with money? You know nothing about it!"

said the old woman raising her hands.

"Then I'll go."

On the contrary, he visited Bustianeddu; then went to the garden to take

leave of Uncle Pera, also of the figs, the teazles, the far-reaching

landscape.

He found the old gardener stretched on the grass, his stick by his side,

at rest like its master.

"I'm off. Uncle Pera, good-bye. Keep well and take care of yourself."

"Eh?" said the old fellow who was growing blind and deaf.

"I'm going away!" shouted Anania. "I'm going to Cagliari to college."

"Going to sea? Oh yes, there's sea at Cagliari. God bless you, my lad.

Old Uncle Pera has nothing to give you but his prayers."

Anania repented his frequent mockery of the old man, who at any rate was

kind to Rebecca. He bent down, his hands on his knees. "Have you any

commissions?"

The old man sat up, stared, then smiled.

"Commissions? I? But I'm going away myself very soon."

"You?" said the boy, amused at the mania all men, even decrepit ones,

have for going away.

"Yes, I'm starting too."

"For what place. Uncle Pera?"

"Ah, for a distant one," said the old man, pointing to the horizon; "for

eternity."

Not till evening, nor till he had passed and repassed vainly before

Margherita's window did Anania knock and ask for his godfather.

"There's no one at home. They'll be back soon, if you'll wait," said the

maid. "Why didn't you come earlier?"

"Because I do what I choose," said Anania entering.

"Oh, very well. It's better to waste your time with that scum Agata,

than to come and visit your benefactors."

"Pshaw!" said Anania, leaning against the window.

The servant was insulting as she had been that long ago night when he

and Bustianeddu had come for the basin of soup. Nothing was changed. He

was still a dependent, an object of charity.

"But I'm grown up!" he thought. "I can renounce it all, go to work, be a

soldier--anything that's not abject!"

He moved from the window, brushing against the writing desk, which was

already illuminated by the moon. Among the papers, untidily tossed

about, he spied a pink envelope lined with green.

The blood rushed to his face. His ears burned, he shook from head to

foot. Mechanically he bent and took up the envelope. Yes, it was _that_

one, torn and empty. He felt as if he were touching the remains of some

sacred thing which had been violated and destroyed. It was all over! His

soul was empty and torn to pieces like this envelope.

Suddenly, brightness flooded the room. Margherita had come in! He tried

to drop the envelope, but perceived that the girl had seen it in his

hand. Shame now was added to his grief.

"Good evening," said Margherita, placing a lamp on the desk; "they've

left you in the dark."

"Good evening," he murmured. He resolved to explain, then to escape,

never to be seen in this house again.

"Take a seat."

He looked at her in astonishment. Yes, it certainly was Margherita. At

that moment he hated her.

"Forgive me," he stammered, "I didn't do it intentionally. I'm not a

beast; but I saw this--this envelope, and I couldn't help--looking----"

"Is it yours?"

"Yes."

Margherita blushed and seemed confused; but Anania as if freed from a

burden began to recover his wits. Wounded pride counselled him to assert

the sonnet a jest. But Margherita in her walking dress, with her small

waist and her bright green ribbon was so beautiful and so rosy that his

hatred all disappeared. He wished he might put the lamp out and be alone

with her in the moonlight, he wished he might fall at her feet and name

her with sweetest names. But he couldn't, he couldn't! though he saw she

also was raising and dropping her eyes in delicious alarm, expecting his

cry of love.

"Did your father read it?" he whispered.

"Yes, and he laughed," she answered in the same tone.

"Did he laugh?"

"Yes, he laughed. Then he gave it to me and said, 'Who in the world has

sent it?'"

"And you--you----?"

"I----"

They spoke anxiously and very low, already involved in a delicious

conspiracy. Suddenly Margherita changed her voice.

"Oh, it's Papa! Anania is here," she cried, running to the door.

She hurried out, and the boy remained in the greatest perturbation. He

felt the warm, soft hand of his godfather clasping his own, and he saw

the blue eyes and the shining gold chain. But he hardly heard the good

advice and the pleasantries with which Margherita's father favoured him.

Bitter doubt tormented him. Had Margherita understood the significance

of the sonnet? She had said nothing to the point in those precious

moments, which he had stupidly not turned to profit. Her agitation was

not enough. It told nothing. No, he must really know more--know all.

"Know what?" he asked himself ruefully. "There's nothing to know." It

was all useless. Even if she cared for him--but this was folly. Nothing

was any good. Great emptiness surrounded him, and in this emptiness the

voice of Signor Carboni lost itself and was unheard.

"You're lucky in having only your studies to mind," ended the godfather

hearing a sigh from the boy. "Be cheerful; be a man and do us credit."

Margherita now came back accompanied by her mother, who in her turn was

prodigal of counsel and encouragement. The girl went hither and thither

about the room. She had dressed her hair coquettishly with a curl on her

left temple. What was still more important, she had powdered herself.

Eyes and lips were resplendent. She was a wonder; and Anania followed

her about deliriously, his thoughts running on kisses. She must have

understood, she must have been attracted by the fascination of his gaze,

for when he was going away--she followed him to the great entrance door!

The court was bathed in moonlight, as it had been that night long ago,

when the proud, sweet vision of her had waked his childishness to a

sense of duty. So now she was proud and sweet. She stepped lightly, with

a rustle of wings, ready to fly. Ah! she was a true angel! Anania

thought himself still dreaming. Presently she would float up and vanish,

and he would not be able to follow her. And the desire to put his arm

round that slender waist with its green ribbon made him giddy.

"I shall never see her again!" he told himself; "I shall fall dead the

instant she has shut the door!"

Margherita pulled the chain; then turned and extended her hand. She was

pale.

"Good-bye. I'll write to you," she whispered.

"Good-bye!" said he, shivering with joy.

The contact of their hands perhaps caused some grand explosion. For they

felt as it were a great booming in their ears, and the heat and the

light of a thunderbolt fell round them, while--rapturously--they kissed

each other.

[Footnote 12: Sign of familiarity and friendship.]

VIII

At Cagliari Anania went through the Lyceum course, then two years at the

University. He was studying Law. These years were like an _intermezzo_

in his life; sweet and inspiriting music.

He began a new existence from the moment he set foot in the train, and

was carried across the lonely plains, the dreariness of which was

aggravated by autumn. He felt a new person clothed in a new vesture,

soft and comfortable after one torn and narrow. Was it Margherita's kiss

which made him so happy? or the good-bye to all the petty wretchednesses

of the past? or the somewhat timorous joy of liberty with the thought of

the unknown world to which he was hurrying? He neither knew nor sought

to know. How beautiful, how easy was life! He felt strong, handsome,

victorious. All women loved him, all the doors of life opened to his

feet. Pride and enjoyment enwrapped his soul like an odorous, an

intoxicating vapour, through which he discerned horizons as yet

undreamed.

The whole way from Nuoro to Macomer, Anania stood in the corridor of the

railway carriage, violently shaken by the jerks of the little train. Few

persons got in or out at the desolate stations, where bored acacia trees

seemed waiting for the train, to hurl upon it companies of fast

yellowing leaves.

"Take them!" said the acacias to the train, "take them, contemptuous

monster; we are stuck always here, and you move about. What more do you

want?"

"Yes," thought the joyous student, "life is movement." And he understood

the jocund strength of running water. Till now his soul had been a

morass, its edge smothered in fetid weeds. Yes! the acacias stuck in the

stagnant Sardinian solitudes knew the truth. Yes! move, run, hurry! that

is to live!

"Is this devil of a train never going on!" asked the student during one

of the interminable delays.

The railway official, who knew Anania by sight as he knew almost all his

passengers, calmly lit his pipe and said, sucking its stem:--

"You'll arrive all in good time. If you're in a hurry get out and fly."

Ah t if he could fly! Anania looked at a black _nuraghe_ on a high rock,

like a nest of gigantic birds, and wished he could fly thither with

Margherita; to be alone with her and with the memories which floated on

the wild scent of the heather; alone, inspired by the shadows and by the

phantoms of epic passions. Ah, how great he felt!

But now the cerulean heights of his native Barbagia vanished at the

horizon. One peak of Orthobene towered behind the others, violet against

the pale sky. Still an outline--a point, one alone--then nothing. The

mountains were setting like the sun or moon, leaving a pensive twilight

in the soul of the spectator.

Good-bye, good-bye! Anania felt a moment's sadness, then again his

thoughts turned to Margherita's kiss. Ah! he seemed to have the

delicious creature beside him. The vivid impression of her person, the

electric contact of her fresh lips, still gave him delirium. At moments

he shivered. Had it not all been a dream? If she were to forget? or to

repent? But hope soon returned: pride, intoxication, and the joy in his

new existence, endured for days. Everything went well with him. Fortune

favoured him in the smallest things. Arrived at Cagliari, he found at

once a delightful room with two balconies to the windows. From one he

could see the hills and the great luminous sea, sometimes so calm that

the reflection of steamers and sailing-boats was clear as if engraved on

steel. From the other, almost the whole town was visible, rising like a

Moorish city in bastions to the castle, overgrown with palms and

flowers.

At first Anania liked this balcony best. Beneath was a wide white

street, opposite a row of small old houses tinted with rose colour (like

old painted beauties), and with Spanish balconies full of carnations and

of ragged coloured garments put out to dry in the sun. Anania scarcely

noticed the cottages. His fascinated eye passed on to the grand view of

the Moorish city, where coloured houses rose one above the other to the

pyramid of mediæval towers profiled against an oriental sky.

At the end of October it was still summer. The air was impregnated with

strange fragrance, and the ladies who passed under Anania's balcony were

dressed in muslins and gauze. The student felt himself in an enchanted

land. The scented and enervating air, the new conveniences of his fine

room, the pleasure of a new life, all combined to give him a sense of

dream. He fell into a somnolent languor, through which the impressions

of his new existence and the records of his recent past came to him

veiled and sweet. Everything seemed beautiful and grand--the streets,

the churches, the houses. And oh! how many people there were at

Cagliari! What fashion! What luxury!

The first time he passed before the Caffé Montenegro, and saw the smart

young men sitting there with their straight moustaches and their yellow

shoes, he remembered with a strange feeling of contrast the

toil-stained, unkempt figures who assembled at the mill. What was going

on there now? The humble life of the poor neighbourhood was certainly

pursuing its melancholy course, while here in the shining Caffé, in the

luminous streets, in the tall, sunlit, wind-kissed, spray-freshened

houses all was light and luxury and joy.

His happiness was increased by a letter from Margherita, first of many.

It was a simple, tender letter, written on large white note-paper in a

round, almost boyish hand. Anania had been expecting a little azure

epistle with a flower in it. Was this unconventionality to show him her

superiority? But the simple and affectionate expressions of this girl,

who seemed in her first letter to be continuing a long and uninterrupted

correspondence, convinced him of her ingenuous and deep love, of her

sincerity and force of character. He experienced an ineffable joy. Every

evening, said Margherita, she stood long hours at the window, fancying

that at any moment he might pass by. Their separation was a great pain,

but she comforted herself thinking he was working and preparing for

their future. She told him where to direct his reply, and enjoined the

greatest secrecy, for of course if her family suspected their love it

would be vigorously opposed. Vibrating with love and happiness, Anania

wrote his reply at once. He was, however, remorseful at the thought of

deceiving his benefactor, and could hardly satisfy himself with the

sophistry: "Making the daughter happy is doing good to the father."

He wrote of the marvels of the city and of the season. "At this moment

the frogs are croaking in the distant gardens, and I see the moon rising

like an alabaster face in the warm twilight heaven. It is the same moon

that I used to watch from Nuoro, the same round melancholy face that I

used to see looking down on the rocks of Orthobene. Now it seems sweeter

to me; how changed, how smiling!"

After posting the letter Anania felt the same impulse, to run to the

fresh air of the mountains, that he had felt after posting the sonnet.

He restrained himself somewhat, but walked swiftly towards the hill of

Bonaria.

Evening was falling with almost Eastern softness. The moon shone pale

through the moveless trees; above the mother-o'-pearl sea-line the blue

of the heaven melted into green, furrowed with rosy and purple clouds.

The broad road leading to the Santuario was deserted. He seemed in a

dream.

Anania sat on the lofty terrace of the Santuario, broadly moonlit. He

intoxicated himself with the splendid vision of the sea. The waves

mirrored the light-permeated heaven, the rosy clouds, the moon: then

broke themselves beneath the cliff, like immense shells of pearl

dissolving into silver. Four sailing-boats, drawn up in line against the

luminous background, seemed to Anania huge butterflies come down to

drink and to rest upon the waters. Never had he been so happy as in that

hour. Waves, great and resplendent as the sea, seemed rolling over his

soul. He felt as if some beneficent sorcery had wafted him to a

mysterious orient land, and dropped him on the threshold of an enchanted

palace, open to receive him for ever.

By the moonlight, by the dying rays of day, he reread Margherita's

letter. He kissed the sheet, put it away, and unwillingly rose to return

to the town. As night came on, the moon seemed to strew the pathway with

silver carvings and with coins. Far off a chorus of fishermen was heard,

and still the pleasant croaking of the frogs. All was sweetness; but now

the lad felt a strange invasion of melancholy, a presentiment perhaps.

For when he had reached the little garden of San Lucifero, he heard loud

cries, shrieks, shrill screeching of women, oaths of men. He ran. Before

the pink cottages opposite to his own balcony was a group of persons

engaged in a quarrel. It would seem the neighbours were not astonished,

for no heads appeared at the windows of the larger houses. Apparently

the place was used to such scenes, to the madness of these persons who

took each other by the ears, spitting out the grossest insults. Quite

close was a big man dressed in black velvet, motionless, watching, it

would seem enjoying, the excitement.

"The police! Where are the police?" cried Anania.

The man turned his eyes slowly on the young student. "The police? Oh,

the police come every week. They give a push here, and a blow there, and

finish it off. Next day it begins again. They'll have to turn those

women out," said the big man, pointing at two of the brawlers. "I'll

have to take it in hand myself, and get a petition to the authorities

signed by all the respectable householders."

"But what women are they?" asked Anania, bewildered.

The big man looked at him contemptuously.

"Women of the streets, of course, innocent!"

Anania went in so pale and panting that his landlady observed his

agitation.

"Never mind" she said, "it's only some stupid matter of jealousy.

They'll soon be turned out. We're going to appeal to the government."

"Where do--those women come from?" asked Anania.

"One belongs to Cagliari. The other, I rather think, is from Capo di

Sopra."

The shouts redoubled. A woman cried out she was being killed. A child

sobbed. God! How horrible! Anania, trembling and attracted by some

irresistible force, rushed to his balcony. Above him was the purest of

heavens, the moon, the stars; below, at the foot of the vaporous picture

of the city, the savage scene, the group of demons, belching forth roars

of rage, abominable words. Anania watched in anguish, his soul oppressed

by a tremendous thought.

Then came the police. Two of the brawlers ran away, the rest calmed

down, the women shut themselves into their houses. In a short time all

was silence, broken only by the distant rumble of a carriage, by the

hoarse croaking of the frogs.

But in Anania's soul dolorous tumult raged still. Alas! the illumined

sea which had flooded his soul while he poured over his letters on the

hill of Bonaria, had grown dark, and was tossed and torn by tempest.

"Oh God! oh God! grant she may be dead. Have pity on me, Lord!" he

sobbed that night, racked with insomnia and sad thoughts.

The idea had shot through his mind that one of the brawling women who

lived in the pink cottage might be his mother. He no longer however

thought that, for the landlady when she brought his supper had told him

particulars of the women which would not fit for Olì. But what matter?

If she were not here, she was there; in some unknown but real place; at

Cagliari, in Rome, somewhere, she was living or had been living, a life

like that of the women whom the decent inhabitants of the Via S.

Lucifero wanted to chase from their vicinity.

"Why did Margherita write to me?" said Anania in anguish, "and why have

I replied? _That woman_ will always stand between us. What have I been

dreaming? To-morrow I must write to Margherita and tell her all."

"But how can I tell her?" he asked, again turning and tossing on his

bed. "And if _that woman_ is dead? Why must I renounce my happiness?

Doesn't Margherita probably know about my birth? If it shocked her, she

would not have written to me. Yes, but she thinks my mother is dead, or

at any rate dead for me. While I _feel_ she is alive, and that it is my

duty to seek her, and find her, and lift her out of hell. Perhaps she

has reformed already. No, she hasn't. I am sure she hasn't! Oh, it's

horrible! I hate her! I hate her, hate her! I'll murder her."

Atrocious visions appeared before his eyes. He saw his mother brawling

with other women of her own sort, with lurid and bestial men. He heard

cries. He shook with hatred and disgust.

At midnight he wept, smothering his sobs, biting the pillow, wringing

his hands, tearing his breast. He snatched away the amulet Olì had

given him on the day of their flight from Fonni, and flung it against

the wall. Could he but tear out and hurl from him the whole memory of

his mother!

Suddenly he marvelled at his tears, rose, and found the amulet, but did

not again put it round his neck. He asked himself whether he would have

minded so much about his mother if he were not in love with Margherita.

He answered himself, Yes, just as much. A sort of emptiness filled his

mind. He wearied of his self-torment. Then other thoughts came to him.

He heard the moaning of the wind, the loud roar of the sea. He thought

of a forest searched by the wind, silvered by the moon; he remembered

the woods of Orthobene, where so often while he was picking violets the

sound of the wind in the ilexes had seemed to him the sound of the sea.

Then suddenly the cruel problem assaulted him with renewed fury.

"Suppose she has reformed? It will be just the same, just the same. I've

got to seek her, and find her, and help her. It was for my good she

deserted me. Otherwise, I shouldn't have had a name or a place in

society. If I had stayed with her I'd have been a beggar. I'd have lived

in shame, I'd have been a thief, a criminal. But isn't it all the same?

Am I not ruined just the same? No! no, it's not the same! I am the son

of my own deeds. Only Margherita won't have me because--Oh why, why? why

shouldn't she have me? Am _I_ dishonoured? What fault is it of mine? She

loves me. Yes, she loves me because I'm the son of my own deeds. And

probably _that woman_ is dead. Ah, why do I delude myself? She is not

dead, I feel it. She's alive, and she is still young! How old is she?

Thirty-three, perhaps; ah yes, quite young!"

The idea that she was still young softened him somewhat. "If she were

fifty I couldn't forgive her, that would make it impossible. Oh, why did

she desert me? If she had kept me with her she wouldn't have gone back

into sin. I would have worked for her. By this time I'd have been a

labourer, a shepherd, a workman. I should never have known Margherita. I

should have been quite happy."

But the dream of what he might have been disgusted him. He did not love

labour. He did not love poor people. He had endured the poverty of the

environment in which he had lived till quite lately, only because he had

good hope of rising above it in the future.

"My God, my God! grant she may be dead!"

"But why do I make this stupid prayer?" he asked angrily; "she is not

dead! After all, why must I seek her? Didn't she give me up? I'm a fool.

Margherita would laugh if she knew I was thinking anything so silly. And

I'm neither the first nor the last illegitimate son who has raised

himself and grown to be respected. Yes; but _that woman_ is the shadow.

I've got to find her and make her live with me, and live properly; and

an honest woman won't ever live with us. Us! I and she are all one.

To-morrow I must write to Margherita. To-morrow. Suppose she loves me

still in spite of it?"

He felt almost faint at the sweetness of this thought. Then was

conscious of its improbability and fell back into despair. Neither the

next day nor later could he bring himself to write to Margherita. The

unfulfilled resolve pursued him, goaded, prostrated him, as if he were a

leaf in the grip of the blast.

"I will tell her by word of mouth," he thought; yet feared he would have

even less courage for that, and reviled himself for a coward; then found

unconfessed comfort in the shameful certainty, that this very cowardice

would always hinder him from accomplishing what he called "his mission."

Often, however, this mission appeared so heroic that the idea of

deliberately giving it up distressed him.

"My life would be pointless like the lives of most men, if I gave that

up." And in these romantic moments he was not averse to the conflict

between his duty and his love, love morbidly increased by the conflict.

After that evening of the brawl, Anania deserted the balcony which gave

on the street. The appeal to the government was unsuccessful in

uprooting the women, and the sight of the pink cottages hurt his eyes.

However, going out and coming in he often encountered the two women, or

saw them on their balcony among the carnations and the washed rags hung

out to dry.

One of them, she of Capo di Sopra, was tall and lithe, with black hair

and dark bright blue eyes. She it was who especially attracted Anania's

attention. Her name was Marta Rosa; she was often drunk, and some days

miserably attired, roaming the streets dishevelled, barefoot, or in old

red slippers. At other times she wore a hat trimmed with feathers, and a

smart cape of violet velvet. Sometimes she sat in her balcony pretending

to sew, and sang in a voice fairly clear and melodious, the pretty

_stornelli_[13] of her native place, interrupting herself to scream

insolences to the passers-by who had mocked her, or to her neighbours

with whom she was in continual hot water for seducing their sons or

husbands. When she sang her voice reached to Anania's room, and he

suffered keenly in hearing it.

Often she sang this _stornelli_:--

_Su soldadu in sa gherra The soldier die he must

Nan chi s' est olvedadu In war and be forgot;

No s'ammentat de Deu. Not even God remembers

Torrat su colpus meu My body He dismembers,

Pustis ch' est sepultadu When buried 'tis, I wot,

A sett' unzas de terra._ To ounces six of dust.

"Why doesn't she think what she's singing?" Anania asked himself; "why

doesn't she think of death, and of God, and reform? But how can she

reform? No one will give her work. Society doesn't believe in the

repentance of such women. She could commit suicide; that's the only

remedy!"

Marta Rosa filled him with pity and with rage. Though he knew where she

came from, and what family she belonged to, he could not entirely get

rid of the fancy that she might be his mother. At any rate his mother

must be very like her. Hideous thought!

One evening Marta Rosa and her companion, a fair-haired woman, pitted

with small-pox, stopped the student in the street, and invited him to

visit them. He pushed the fair one away and fled, shivering with horror

and disgust. Oh God! It seemed as if had spoken to him. After that the

two woman jeered at him whenever they met. He signed a second and a

third appeal to the Prefecture, but afterwards regretted he had done so.

Meantime the days passed on. The warm autumn was followed by a mild

winter. Except on rare days of wind and dust, it felt like spring.

Anania studied hard, and he wrote long letters to Margherita.

Their love was no different from that of a hundred thousand poor

students and rich young ladies. But Anania thought no couple in the

world had ever loved as they loved. Never had man been born who had felt

fires like his. Notwithstanding the dread that Margherita might give him

up if she knew about his mother, he was happy in his love. The mere

thought of seeing the girl again gave him giddiness of delight He

counted the days and the hours to the meeting. In the whole veiled and

mysterious future, he discerned but one luminous point:--his return home

for the Easter holiday, which meant the meeting with Margherita. As time

passed on his fever increased. He remembered nothing but her blue eyes,

her softly tinted cheeks. All other figures disappeared behind this

beloved image.

During his first year at the Lyceum at Cagliari, just as at the Nuoro

gymnasium, Anania made no friends, scarce even acquaintances. He sat at

his books, or wandered solitary on the seashore, or stood dreaming on

his balcony, from which he saw the shining picture of waves and sky, the

sailing-boats and steamers apparently carved upon a metallic background.

One day, however, when it was nearing the hour of sunset, he went off

towards Monte Urpino, beyond the groves where the almond trees had been

in flower since the first days of January; and this excursion had its

results. He discovered a pine forest with lonely, moss-carpeted paths.

Between the rosy fir-stems patches of delicate brilliance were thrown by

the sinking sun. On the left were visions of green meadow, of almond

flower, of hedges red in the evening glory; on the right pine groves and

shadowed banks, covered with iris blossoms.

The lad wandered hither and thither, full of delight. He could have gone

on for ever. The foreground was delicious, but the distance was

enchantment. He plucked the iris flowers, murmuring the name of

Margherita. He ascended a hill green with asphodel, from which he had a

vision of the city so red in the sunset, of the sea which seemed an

immense cauldron of boiling gold. The sky flamed, the earth exhaled

delicate fragrance. Little purple clouds lost on the horizon suggested a

caravan with men and camels, vanishing in splendour. Anania felt so

happy that he fluttered his handkerchief and cried aloud, saluting the

invisible being who was the soul of the sea, the glory of the heaven,

the spirit of that ineffable distance--Margherita!

After this that pine forest on Monte Urpino was the country of his

dreams. He fancied himself its proprietor, and was irritated if he met

other persons on the lonely paths. Often he lingered till it was night,

was present at the red sea-reflected sunset, or sat among the irises

watching the rise of the moon, great and golden behind the motionless

pines. Once when he was seated on a grassy slope beside a little ravine,

he heard the tinkle of grazing flocks, and home-sickness, as yet

unknown, overpowered him. Before him, beyond the ravine, the path lost

itself in the mystery of distance; the rose-flooded trees blended into

the purity of the sky, the velvet moss caught the sunshine. Above the

horizon Venus shone out, solitary and smiling, as if she had preceded

the stars to enjoy the sweetness of the hour undisturbed.

Of what was the solitary star thinking? Had she a distant love? Anania

dared to compare himself with the radiant star alone in the heaven as he

was alone in the forest. Perhaps Margherita was looking also at the

evening star. And what was Aunt Tatàna doing? The fire was burning on

her hearth, and the kind, good, elderly woman was preparing the evening

meal, and thinking of her dear boy so far away. And he--he was hardly

thinking of her at all! He was ungrateful, selfish! How could he help

it? If in Aunt Tatàna's place had been another woman, his thought must

have flown to her continually. But that woman was--Ah, where was _that

woman_? What was she doing at this moment? Did her eyes also see the

evening star? Was she dead? Was she alive? Was she rich? or was she a

beggar? Suppose she were blind! or in prison! This last fancy was

perhaps caused by the distant tinkle of a flock led as Anania knew by a

jailbird, an old shepherd let out from the prison of S. Bartolomeo on

ticket-of-leave. Enough! the boy rose, scattering his sad thoughts. He

descended into the ravine, scrambled up again, and went back to the

town, comforting himself with the thought that Easter was drawing near.

At last came the day of return. Anania left Cagliari almost sick with

delight. He feared he might die on the way, might never see the dear

mountains, the familiar street, the fair landscape, the face of

Margherita.

"Yet if I were to die now," he thought, leaning his forehead on his

hand, "she would never forget me--never!"

Fortunately he arrived quite safe and sound. He saw his dear mountains,

his wild valleys, the whole fair landscape; and the purple countenance

of Nanna who had come to meet him at the station. She had waited for

more than an hour. When she saw the lad's handsome face she opened her

arms and cried:--

"My little son! my little son!"

"How do you do? Here, catch this!" and to protect himself from her

embraces, he tossed into her arms the portmanteau, a parcel, and a

basket.

"Come along!" he cried, "you go out that way. I have to go this way. Go

on!"

He ran and disappeared, leaving the woman stupefied. Ah! Here he was in

the familiar street. _She_ would be waiting at the window, and no

witness, not even Nanna, was wanted for that greeting. But how small

were the houses of Nuoro! and the streets how narrow and empty! All the

better! It's cold too at Nuoro! Spring has come, but it's still pale and

delicate like a child who has been ill. Here are some people coming

towards him, among them Franziscu Carchide. Franziscu recognizes the

young student, begins to make signs of welcome. What a bore!

"Well, how are you? Glad to see you back. How you've grown! Smart too!"

Carchide could not take his eyes off Anania's yellow shoes. The boy was

chafing with annoyance. At last he escaped. On! on! His heart beat

louder and louder. A woman came to her door, looked at him as he ran by,

and said:--

"I declare it's he!"

Well yes, it was he! What business was it of hers? Ah! here, here is the

street which leads to another, to the well known, the beloved street! At

last! It is no dream. Anania hears footsteps and is vexed. Luckily it is

only some children who run, shout, rush away again. And who will there

be in the other street? He longs to run like the children. But he

mustn't, he can't. On the contrary, he assumes an aspect of the greatest

rigidity. He is quite composed. He adjusts his necktie, brushes the

lapels of his coat. He is wearing a long, light overcoat which she has

never seen. Will she know him at once in this coat? Perhaps not. Now he

is in the street. Here is the red door, the white house with the green

window shutters. But she is not there! Oh God, why is she not there!

Anania stood still with beating heart. By happy chance the street was

empty. Only a black hen passed quietly by, lifting her claws very high

before setting them on the ground, amusing herself pecking at the wall.

What can be the pleasure of that? Is she looking for ants, or testing

the wall's strength? Well! he must go away, to avoid the observation of

curious eyes. He begins to walk away as slowly as the hen, and though

there is still no one at the window he does not take his eye from it for

an instant. His heart suddenly comes into his mouth! He turns quite

faint. Margherita has come! She is pale with passion, and she looks at

him with burning eyes! Anania also grows pale, and no thought of

salutation comes to him, nor a smile. He cannot think. For some instants

he can see nothing but those burning eyes from which rains unspeakable

joy.

He walked on automatically, turning his head at each step, followed by

those intoxicating eyes. Only when Nanna, the portmanteau on her head,

the parcel in one hand, the basket in the other, appeared puffing and

blowing at the end of the street, did astonishment overpower him and

quicken his halting step.

[Footnote 13: These _stornelli_ called _mutos_ are improvised by the

women of the Nuoro district. The subject of the first three lines is

always independent of the subject of the second three, the two verses

being connected only by the rhyme.]