Orsino travelled down to Naples with San Giacinto in that peculiar state
of mind in which an unsentimental but passionate man finds himself when
he is leaving the woman he loves in order to go and do something which
he knows must be done, which he wishes to do, and which involves danger
and difficulty.
San Giacinto did not say much more about brigands, or the mafia, but he
talked freely of the steps to be taken on arriving in Messina, in order
to get a proper escort of soldiers from Piedimonte to Camaldoli, and it
was perfectly clear that he anticipated trouble. Orsino was surprised to
find that he expected to have four or five carabineers permanently
quartered at Camaldoli, by way of protection, and that he had already
applied in the proper quarter to have the men sent to meet him. Then he
began to talk of the projected railway and of the questions of
engineering involved.
Orsino felt lonely in his society, and it was a sensation to which he
was not accustomed. It was long since he had known what it was to miss a
woman's eyes and a woman's voice, and he had not thought that he should
know it again. As the train ran on, hour after hour, he grew more
silent, not wondering at himself, but accepting quite simply the fact
that it hurt him to leave Vittoria far behind, and that he longed for
her presence more and more. He could not help thinking how easy it would
be for him to refuse to go on, and to take the next train back from
Naples to Rome, and to see her to-morrow. He would not have done such a
thing for the world, but he could not escape from the rather
contemptible pleasure of thinking about it.
Late in the afternoon the steamer that was to take them to Messina got
under way--an old-fashioned, uncomfortable boat, crowded with people of
all kinds, for the vessel was to go on to Malta on the next day. At the
bad dinner in the dim cabin the tables were full, and many of the people
were talking in the Maltese dialect, which is an astonishing compound of
Italian and Arabic, perfectly incomprehensible both to Arabs and
Italians. They stared at San Giacinto because he was a giant, and
evidently talked about him in their own language, which irritated
Orsino, though the big man seemed perfectly indifferent. Neither cared
to speak, and they got through their abominable dinner in silence and
went up to smoke on deck.
Orsino leaned upon the rail and gazed longingly at the looming
mountains, behind which the full moon was rising. He was not
sentimental, for Italian men rarely are, but like all his
fellow-countrymen he was alive to the sensuous suggestions of nature at
certain times, and the shadowy land, the rising moon, the gleaming
ripple of the water, and the evening breeze on his face, brought
Vittoria more vividly than ever to his mind. He looked up at San
Giacinto, and even the latter's massive and gloomy features seemed to be
softened by the gentle light and the enchantment of the southern sea.
Unconsciously he was more closely drawn to the man of his own blood,
after being jostled in the crowd of doubtful passengers who filled the
steamer.
It was not in his nature to make confidences, but he wished that his
friend and kinsman knew that he was in love with Vittoria and meant to
marry her. It would have made the journey less desolate and lonely. He
was still young, as San Giacinto would have told him, with grim
indifference, if Orsino had unburdened his heart at that moment. But he
did not mean to do that. He leaned over the rail and smoked in silence,
looking from the moon to the rippling water and back again, and wishing
that the night were not before him, but that he were already in Messina
with something active to do. To be doing the thing would be to get
nearer to Vittoria, since he could return with a clear conscience as
soon as it should be done. At last he spoke, in a careless tone.
'My grandfather gave me some advice last night,' he said. 'Never to
marry a Sicilian girl, and always to shoot first if there were any
shooting to be done.'
'Provided that you do not marry the Corleone girl, I do not see why you
should not take a Sicilian wife if you please,' answered San Giacinto,
calmly.
'Why should a man not marry Vittoria d'Oriani?' enquired Orsino,
startled to find himself so suddenly speaking of what filled him.
'I did not say 'a man' in general. I meant you. It would be a bad match.
It would draw you into relationship with the worst blood in the country,
and that is a great objection to it. Then she is a niece, and her
brothers are nephews, of that old villain Corleone who married one of
the Campodonico women. She died of unhappiness, I believe, and I do not
wonder. Have you noticed that none of the Campodonico will have anything
to do with them? Even old Donna Francesca--you know?--the saint who
lives in the Palazzetto Borgia--she told your mother that she hoped
never to know a Corleone by sight again. They are disliked in Rome. But
you would never be such an arrant fool as to go and fall in love with
the girl, I suppose, though she is charming, and I can see that you
admire her. Not very clever, I fancy,--brought up by a museum of old
Sicilian ladies in a Palermo convent,--but very charming.'
It was an unexpectedly long speech, on an unexpected theme, and it was
fortunate that it contained nothing which could wound Orsino's feelings
through Vittoria; for, in that case, he would have quarrelled with his
cousin forthwith, not being of a patient disposition. As it was, the
young man glanced up sharply from time to time, looking out for some
depreciatory expression. He was glad when San Giacinto had finished
speaking.
'If I wished to marry her,' said Orsino, 'I should not care who her
relations might be.'
'You would find yourself caring a great deal afterwards, if they made
trouble with your own people. But I admit that the girl has charm and
some beauty, and it is only fools who need clever wives to think for
them. Good night. We may have a long day to-morrow, and we shall land
about seven in the morning. I am going to bed.'
Orsino watched the huge figure as it bent low and disappeared down the
companion, and he was glad that San Giacinto had taken himself off
without talking any more about Vittoria. He stayed on deck another hour,
watching the light on the water, and then went below. He and his cousin
had a cabin together, and he found the old giant asleep on the sofa,
wrapped in a cloak, with his long legs resting on a portmanteau and
extending half across the available space, while he had widened the
transom for his vast shoulders by the help of a camp stool. He slept
soundly, almost solemnly, under the small swinging oil-lamp, and there
was something grand and soldier-like about his perfect indifference to
discomfort. In a corner of the cabin, among a quantity of traps, the two
rifles stood upright in their leathern cases. It was long before Orsino
fell asleep.
He was glad when they got ashore at last in the early morning. Messina
has the reputation of being the dirtiest city in all Italy, and it has
the disagreeable peculiarity of not possessing a decent inn of any sort.
San Giacinto and Orsino sat down in a shabby and dirty room to drink
certain vile coffee which was brought up to them on little brass trays
from a café at the corner of the street. San Giacinto produced a silver
flask and poured a dose of spirits into his cup, and offered Orsino
some; but the younger man had not been bred in the country and had never
acquired the common Italian habit of strengthening bad coffee with
alcohol. So he consoled his taste with cigarettes.
San Giacinto found that it would be impossible to proceed to Camaldoli
till the following day, and the two men spent the morning and most of
the afternoon in making the necessary arrangements. It was indispensable
to see the officer in command of the carabineers and the prefect of the
province, and San Giacinto knew that it would be wiser to send certain
supplies up from Messina.
'I suppose that someone is there to hand the place over?' said Orsino.
'Tebaldo Pagliuca said that we should make enquiries of an old notary
called Basili, in Randazzo, as his brother, being displeased with the
sale, would probably refuse to meet us. Basili is to have the keys and
will send a man with us. We shall have to rough it for a day or two.'
'Do you mean to say that they have locked the place up and left it
without even a servant in charge?' asked Orsino.
'Apparently. We shall know when we get there. I daresay that we may have
to make our own coffee and cook our own food. It is rather a lonely
neighbourhood, and the people whom Ferdinando Pagliuca employed have
probably all left.'
'It sounds a little vague,' observed Orsino. 'I suppose we shall find
horses to take us up?'
'That is all arranged. We shall go up in a carriage, with four or five
mounted carabineers, who will stay with us till they are relieved by
others. They will all be waiting at the town of Piedimonte, above the
station. I daresay that ruffian has carried off the furniture, too, and
we may have to sleep on the floor in our cloaks.'
'It would have been sensible to have brought a servant with us.'
'No. Servants get into the way when there is trouble.'
Orsino lighted another cigarette and said nothing. He was beginning to
think that the whole thing sounded like an expedition into an enemy's
country. They were dining in a queer little restaurant built over the
water, at the end of the town towards the Faro. It was evidently the
fashionable resort at that time of the year, and Orsino studied the
faces of the guests at the other tables. He thought that many of them
were like Tebaldo Pagliuca, though with less malignity in their faces;
but now and then he heard words spoken with the unmistakable Neapolitan
accent, showing that all were not Sicilians.
'They killed a carabineer close to Camaldoli last week,' said San
Giacinto, thoughtfully dividing a large slice of swordfish, which is the
local delicacy. 'One of them put on the dead soldier's uniform, passed
himself off for a carabineer, and arrested the bailiff of the Duca di
Fornasco that night, and marched him out of the village. They carried
him off to the woods, and he has not been heard of since. He had given
some information against them in the winter, so they will probably take
some pains to kill him slowly, and send his head back to his relations
in a basket of tomatoes in a day or two.'
'Are those things positively true?' asked Orsino, incredulous even now.
'The story was in the paper this morning, and I asked the prefect. He
said it was quite exact. You see the rifles may be useful, after all,
and the carabineers are rather more indispensable than food and drink.'
Again Orsino thought of all Vittoria had told him, and he realised that
whether the wild tales were literally true or not, she was not the only
person who believed them. Just then a long fishing-boat ran past the
little pier, close to the place where he was sitting at table. Six men
were sending her along with her sharp stern foremost, as they generally
do, standing to their long oars and throwing their whole strength into
the work, for they were late, and the current would turn against them
when the moon rose, as everyone knows who lives in Messina. Orsino did
not remember that he had ever seen just such types of men, bare-headed,
dark as Arabs, square-jawed, sinewy, fierce-eyed, with grave, thin lips,
every one of them a fighting match for three or four Neapolitans. They
were probably the first genuine Sicilians of the people whom he had ever
seen, and they were not like any other Italians. San Giacinto watched
them too, and he smiled a little, as though the sight gave him
satisfaction.
'That is the reason why there is no salt-tax in Sicily,' he said. 'That
is also the reason why Italy is ruled by a single Sicilian, by Crispi.
Good or bad, he is a man, at all events--and those fellows are men. I
would rather have one of those fisherman at my elbow in danger, than
twenty bragging Piedmontese, or a hundred civilised Tuscans.'
'But they are treacherous,' observed Orsino.
'No, they are not,' answered the older man thoughtfully. 'They hate
authority and rebel against it, and the mafia idea keeps them together
like one man. Successful revolution is always called patriotism, and
unsuccessful rebellion is always branded as treachery or treason. I have
heard that somewhere, and it is true. But what we want in Italy is men,
not ideas; action, not talk; honesty, not policy.'
'We shall never get those things,' said Orsino, who was naturally
pessimistic. 'Italian unity has come too late for a renascence, and too
soon for a new birth.'
San Giacinto smiled rather contemptuously.
'You are an aristocrat, my dear boy,' he answered. 'You want the clear
wine without the filthy, fermenting must.'
'I think we have the same name, you and I,' observed Orsino.
'Yes, but I should be what I am, if I had been called Moscetti.'
'And I?' inquired Orsino, his eyes kindling a little at the implied
contrast of powers.
'If you had been plain Signor Moscetti, you would have been a very
different kind of man. You would have worked hard at architecture, I
suppose, and you would have acquired an individuality. As it is, you
have not much more than the individuality of your class, and very little
of your own. You are a product, whereas I was forced to become a
producer when I was very young--a worker, in other words. Socially, I am
a Saracinesca, like you; morally and actually, I have been a man of the
people all my life, because I began among the people. I have made myself
what I am. You were made what you are by somebody who lived in the
twelfth century. I do not blame you, and I do not boast about myself. We
like each other, but we are fundamentally different, and we emphatically
do not like the same things. We are different kinds of animals that
happen to be called by the same name.'
'I tried to work once,' said Orsino, thoughtfully.
'A man cannot do that sort of work against the odds of sixty-four
quarterings and an unlimited fortune. But you had the instinct, just as
I have it. You and I have more in common with those fishermen who just
went by, than we have with most of our friends in Rome. We are men, at
all events, as I said of Crispi.'
Orsino was silent, for he was not in the humour to argue about
anything, and he saw the truth of much that his cousin had said, and
felt a hopelessness about doing anything in the world with which he had
long been familiar.
The sun had gone down, leaving a deep glow on the Calabrian mountains,
on the other side of the straits, and the water rippled with the current
like purple silk. To the left, the heights above Scilla were soft and
dreamy in a wine-coloured haze, and the great lighthouse shot out its
white ray through the gathering dusk. To the right, the royal yards and
top-gallant rigging of the vessels in the harbour made a dark lace
against the high, white houses that caught the departing twilight. It
was near moonrise, and the breeze had almost died away. The lights of
the city began to shine out, one by one, then quickly, by scores, and
under the little jetty, where the two men sat, the swirling water was
all at once black and gleaming as flowing ink. Far off, a boat was
moving, and the oars swung against the single tholes with an even,
monotonous knocking that was pleasant to hear.
Orsino poured out another glass of the strong black wine and drank it,
for the air was growing chilly. San Giacinto did the same and lighted a
cigar. They sat almost an hour in silence, and then went slowly back to
their squalid hotel on the quay.