AT CORTINA.
Early in the morning Trevor found his way to the cemetery, and the
gravedigger, who was digging a grave in the dreary and neglected
quadrangle, pointed out to him a desolate corner, where the young
Englishwoman lay alone. It was strewn over with broken pots and sherds
among which a few nettles were growing, and only a little mound, hardly
visible, marked the spot where she had been laid in the earth. Even
Trevor felt his heart stirred a little at the thought of this unnamed
and uncared-for grave. The sexton told him precisely the same story as
Chiara had done, and was more than satisfied with the few kreutzers the
foreigner gave to him.
Following the gravedigger's directions, Trevor took a narrow, winding
path, plentifully bestrewn with stones, which led up the mountain. His
brain was too busy with his absorbing discovery to allow him to see the
magnificent views opening up to him at almost every turn. He might as
well have been threading his way through the crooked streets of the
city, so blind and intent was he. The great peaks hanging over the
valley were still burning with the bright colors painted on them by the
summer sun, before the rains and snows of winter washed them away, and
the pine woods through which he passed were full of the pungent scent
of the resinous cones hanging in rich clusters on every branch. The
channels of the mountain torrents were almost dry, and the huge
bowlders in them were bleached nearly as white as ivory. Higher up the
air grew very keen; but the sun was hot, until he passed under the
shadow of a precipitous wall of rock, into a long, lateral valley, or
hollow, in the slope of the mountains, which the sun had ceased to
visit, and would shine upon no more that year. Then he shivered, and
looked about him curiously for any human habitation.
He walked for about half a mile in the depressing chill of this
unbroken shadow before he came suddenly upon a group of hovels, with
neither windows nor chimneys, which were hardly to be discerned as not
forming part of the barren scene about them. The low wooden roofs were
loaded with heavy stones, telling of the tempestuous winds which swept
the mountain slopes up here. But amid the rocks were little patches of
sward, where a few sheep were browsing, and some goats were climbing
the higher points to nibble any tuft of grass found growing there. A
dozen children or so were loitering about listlessly until they caught
sight of the extraordinary apparition of a visitor, and then they ran
toward him with a savage howl that brought some half-clad, red-eyed
women to the doors of the huts. He made haste to fight his way through
the clamorous crew of children, and to address the nearest of them.
"I come from Cortina," he cried in a loud voice, "from Chiara Lello,
who says her sister lives up here."
"That's Chiara's sister," answered the woman, pointing to another who
stood in a doorway amid a cloud of wood smoke.
Trevor approached her, catching a glimpse of the dark and filthy
interior of the hut, in which a goat and a kid were lying beside the
wood fire. But he shrank from putting his foot inside it, and beckoned
to the woman to come forward to him.
"Send these howling children away," he said.
She caught up a thong of leather and lashed it about them as if there
was no other mode of dispersing them, and they scattered out of the
way, yelping like dogs. Trevor looked on, wondering if any one of
these almost naked and wholly filthy brood could be Sidney Martin's son.
"Tell me," he said, "which is the English boy."
Without a word the woman turned into the hut, and dragged out a child,
with no clothing on but a ragged shirt scarcely reaching to his knees.
The child's eyes were dazzled with the light, but they were red and
weak; his skin was grimy with thick dirt, and his uncombed hair hung in
matted tufts about his face and neck. No sooner did the other children
see him than they began to howl and yell again; and the boy, tearing
himself away from the woman's grasp, sprang like a monkey up the rocks,
and having reached a safe height, looked down with a savage, uncouth
grin upon those below him. The other children tried in vain to
dislodge him by throwing stones at him; he had them at an advantage,
and hit so many of them with the larger stones he hurled from above
that they gave up the attack and went back to their sheep and goats.
"Good Heavens!" cried Trevor, with a sudden emotion of pity flooding
his cold nature, "is it possible that this can be Sidney Martin's son?"
He sat down on a rock and looked around him. Here almost all traces of
civilization were absent. These hovels were not fit for human
habitation--hardly fit for pigs, he said to himself. Certainly there
was a hideous crucifix erected in a conspicuous spot; but it was only a
brutal and distorted representation of the central fact of
Christianity, and appeared to partake of the savagery of its
surroundings. There was nothing to be seen from this point but a
gloomy circle of rocks, barren and hard and cold, upon which neither
tree nor flower grew, and as his eye glanced round them it fell upon
the nearly naked but vigorous form of Sidney's child, standing erect on
a peak, and jabbering in some unknown and barbarous dialect. Chiara's
sister shook her clenched fist at him, and screamed out some rough
menace.
"What do you call the boy?" he asked.
"Martino," she said; "that was his father's name."
"Does he know anything? Does he learn anything?" Trevor inquired.
"He knows as much as the rest," she answered sullenly; "there's no
schoolmaster up here. Besides, he is the child of heathen parents,
though our good _padre_ did baptize him. His mother was buried like a
dog in the cemetery; only Chiara and the gravedigger went to her
funeral, and no masses were said for her. Martino isn't like the child
of Christian people. His mother is in hell, and his father will go
there when he dies. It was very good of our _padre_ to have him
baptized."
"What does he do all day?" he asked.
"He lies by the fire or sits up there out of the way on the rock," she
replied; "the other children will not play with him, and they are
right. He's not a little true Christian like them."
"Poor little fellow!" cried Trevor passionately. He had had children
of his own, whom he loved, and to whom he was a beloved father. It
appeared monstrous to him that Sidney Martin's son should be here,
among these barbarians, the object of their tyranny and persecution.
If he had been any other boy Trevor would have borne him away at once,
resolved not to leave an English-born child to such a fate. But if
Sidney had actually been married this was his son and heir; heir to the
large estates entailed by Sir John Martin on Sidney's eldest son. It
was a secret of incalculable value to him. What was he to do?
This was a question not to be decided in a hurry. He must first see
clearly how to turn it most fully to his own advantage. He was not
altogether a bad man; but he had had a city training. Such an avenue
to prosperity and power had never been open to him before, and he must
be careful how he took his first step along it.
"Be kind to the little lad," he said, giving a gulden to the woman,
"and when I come back you shall have ten of them before I take him
away."
Ten gulden! The thought of so magnificent a sum had never entered into
the head of Chiara's sister. She thought a good deal of the hundred
and fifty kreutzers paid every month by Chiara; but ten gulden all at
once! These English, heathen as they were, must be made of money.
She watched the foreigner as he retraced his way along the rocky path
until he was quite lost to sight. She would indeed be kind to the
child of people so rich and generous.
So for a few weeks Martino had the richest draught of goat's milk and
the sweetest morsels of black bread, and the warmest corner by the
fire. But she grew weary of indulgence as the months passed by, and
the Englishman failed to return and redeem his promise.