A VILLAGE "FESTA."
Philip went down to the presbytery and had a short interview with the
padre. Chiara was dying at last; the sacraments had been administered
to her, and her life could not linger on through many hours. What did
the English signore propose to do for his penniless countryman?
Philip answered briefly that he would take steps to restore him to his
family. He then went to the telegraph office and dispatched another
message to his father. "Received yours. Urgent reasons for your
presence here."
He would accompany his mother to-morrow to Toblach; but he could not
quit the neighborhood until something could be decided about his
brother. His brother! He stood still abruptly in the village street,
with a half laugh of stupefied amazement. His brother! It must be
some egregious blunder of his own imagination; his brain had been
weakened by the fever. He turned away into a by-road and cautiously
took out the letter and the morocco case. No, that was his father's
portrait; he recognized it too well. The eyes looking out of the faded
daguerreotype resembled the sad, frank, frightened eyes of the
oppressed and persecuted outcast.
He did not venture indoors again until dinner time, and immediately
after dinner he complained of fatigue. Margaret went to his room
before going to bed herself, entering very softly through the door
between their two chambers lest he should be sleeping. He knew she
stood for a minute or two beside him, shading the lamp with her hand;
but he dared not move or speak. She bent over him and laid her lips on
his hair that she might run no risk of awakening him. He had never
loved her so much as at this moment, and he longed to throw his arms
round her neck and tell her what was troubling him, as he had done when
he was a boy not so very long ago. But he could not tell her this
sorrow; would it not crush her to death? Would to God he could die if
his death would save her!
The morning was wonderfully bright and sunny, and through the
transparent thinness of the air the most distant peaks shone clearly,
with their soft colors and delicate tracery of snow. The _festa_ began
early with the ringing of bells and the firing of musketry. Long files
of peasantry came down in troops along the narrow tracks leading from
the valley to the mountains. Margaret and Dorothy hurried over their
coffee and rolls to hasten down to the church. But it was already
full, and hundreds of women and children were kneeling outside the
western door, and a similar crowd of men outside the northern door.
Some women sitting on a bench offered a seat to Margaret, whose
beautiful face was lit up with an expression of sympathy with their
devotion. The women, like the men, were praying with their hats in
their hands, bareheaded under a burning sun. Margaret shared a prayer
book with the peasant woman beside her, and read the prayers and
meditations in Italian; while here and there the woman marked with her
thumb some special words, and looked up into her face to see if she was
"_sympatica_"; and she and her companions smiled as they saw Margaret's
lips move with the uttering of the same prayers they were themselves
repeating.
Presently, amid the ringing of the bells and to the music of a brass
band, a procession was formed, and all the congregation thronged out of
the church, and those who had been praying without fell into their
places--men, and women, and children. There were altars erected in the
streets, at which mass was to be celebrated; and the long procession
filed away with many banners fluttering along it. Last of all, and at
a little distance from the rest, there came a man whom Margaret had
already noticed as standing aloof, half hidden behind a corner of a
wall. He was an uncouth creature, tall and ungainly, with uncut,
matted hair, and a coarse beard; yet there was something in his whole
appearance that reminded her of somebody she knew.
"Why!" exclaimed Dorothy in accents of surprise. "Look! look! How
like that poor fellow is to Andrew Goldsmith!"
Yes, that was it. This awkward Tyrolean peasant, who hardly knew how
to use his great limbs, was like Andrew--oddly like him; he might have
been Andrew's own son. She smiled at the oddity of such a resemblance;
but apart from this, the man's solitariness and aloofness interested
her greatly. She turned to the old woman beside her, who was sitting
still, waiting for the procession to accomplish part of its route
before she joined it.
"Who is that poor man?" she inquired.
"He is English," replied the woman, "an Englishman who was born here in
the very hotel itself where the signora is staying. Will she wish to
hear all the circumstances? Because I know; I was a servant there when
Martino was born."
"Is his name Martino?" asked Margaret.
"Yes, signora," she went on eagerly; "I will tell the English lady. It
is nearly thirty years ago, a little later than this _festa_. An
English signore and signora came to the hotel, and the name written in
the register by the signore was Martino. So when the child was born he
was named Martin; and Saint Martin is his patron, but the saint has
done nothing for him, because his parents were heretics, and not
Christians."
"Martin!" repeated Margaret, with growing interest; "but what became of
the parents?"
"The little mother died, poor soul, in giving him birth," said the old
woman, "and lies buried yonder in the cemetery, and Chiara took the boy
for her own. Chiara was the head servant in the hotel, and folks say
she made money by it in some way; but there was not much money in the
signora's trunks--only enough to bury her; or if there was money, it
never did Chiara any good, poor soul! They say she lies dying this
morning up yonder in a hut on the hills, and all she will hear of the
_festa_ is the ringing of the bells and the firing of the cannon.
She's no older than I am; and you behold me!"
"But the father of Martino," said Margaret, "what became of him?"
"An old story," she answered; "he had forsaken her three or four weeks
before the boy was born. He was a fine, handsome signore, and she
worshiped him. But what then? Young signori cannot trouble themselves
about girls. Why should they? Girls are too plentiful. He went off
one fine day, and nobody ever saw him again."
"But did no one try to find him on account of his child?" asked
Margaret.
"Once," said the woman, "about six years after, a strange Englishman
came here in the winter, and made inquiries, and saw the boy. But he
went away again, and no more was heard of him. Chiara brought the boy
up to be her servant. Her servant? Her slave! His life was worse
than a dog's. We are poor here, signora, but Martino is the poorest
creature of us all. He never had as much as he could eat; not once in
his life. Old Chiara is a skinflint."
The procession was out of sight, but the monotonous chant droned by
thousands of voices came plainly to their ears. Margaret listened to
the strange sound, with eyes dim with tears for the poor fellow, whose
life was so desolate and hard.
"Will the lady wish to see the grave of the pretty English girl?" asked
the woman, with an eye to a possible gratuity. "It is not far off in
the cemetery, and we shall be there before the procession passes."
"I will go," said Margaret in a pitying voice. "Dorothy, stay and
bring Philip to me."
The murmur of the chanted prayers filled the quiet air as they passed
down a side lane toward the cemetery, broken only by the clashing of
the bells and the firing of cannon at the moment when the Host was
elevated. This triumphal burst of noisy sound came as they passed
through the gates of the neglected burial ground, and Margaret's guide
fell down on her knees and waited until the chant was renewed. Then
she led the way to the corner, apart from the other graves, and
somewhat more overgrown with weeds and nettles, where Sophy lay buried.
There was a rude cross at the head of the grave, made of two bits of
wood nailed clumsily together; and round it lay an outline of white
pebbles. To-day, a handful of blue gentians lay upon it. There was a
pathetic sadness about these awkward efforts to care for the grave, as
if some bungler had done his best to express his grief, and had
scarcely known what to do. The tears fell fast from Margaret's eyes as
she laid her hand reverently on the rough wood of the cross.
"Has that poor fellow done this?" she asked.
"Yes, signora," was the answer, "it's his mother's grave. The pretty
English girl is buried here. I can recollect her well, with blue eyes
and gold hair, and a skin like roses and lilies. He called her Sophy."
Margaret started. A sudden pang shot through her heart. After all
these years was she to discover the fate of the poor girl, whose loss
she had mourned so long, in this remote spot? Could this be Sophy
Goldsmith's grave? And oh! how sorrowful beyond all their fears must
her sad lot have been! Dying, alone, deserted; leaving behind her a
child who had grown into this miserable pariah of the mountains.
Swiftly the thought of Andrew Goldsmith, and his dark, deep grief when
he learnt all, passed through her mind.
The refrain of the chant came nearer, and the long procession had
reached the doors of the church close to the cemetery. Suddenly the
peasant woman broke the silence with which she had respected Margaret's
tears.
"Will the signora pardon me if I leave her?" she asked. "They are
going into church now. God!" she cried in a tone of terror, "here is
the young English signore himself! the signore who forsook the poor
English girl. Oh, my God!"
Margaret turned round, with a sickening sensation of terror, such as
she had never felt before, as if she would be compelled to see some
dreaded vision. Coming slowly toward them down the weedy path of the
cemetery was Philip, with Dorothy at his side. Both looked grave, as
if they felt the desolation of the neglected spot; but there was an air
of moody preoccupation about Philip, as though his thoughts were
dealing with some subject a thousandfold more sad than the uncared-for
dead.
"No, no," continued the woman, "it cannot be! The signore would be an
old man now; it is thirty years ago. But just so he looked, and just
so he walked. Did the signora know the poor girl who is buried here
called Sophy, Martino's mother?"
"Hush! hush!" cried Margaret, in an agony of apprehension; "say nothing
more now. This is my son. Go away to church, and I will see you again
some time soon."
A moment afterward Philip was standing opposite to her, looking down on
the rudely outlined grave and the rough cross. Neither of them spoke.
He did not ask whose grave it was; and her parched lips could have
given him no answer.
"It looks like a God-forsaken spot," said Dorothy, pityingly. "Oh, how
can people leave their dear ones in such a desolate graveyard? I
always fancy 'the field to bury strangers in,' which was bought with
the money Judas flung away, must have been such a place as this."
But neither Margaret nor Philip answered her, and she looked up in
surprise. Margaret's face was like that of one stunned and almost
paralyzed by a sudden shock; her eyes were fixed, and her lips half
open, as if she was gazing on some sight of horror. It was but for a
brief half minute; then she sighed heavily, and tears fell fast and
thick down her pale cheeks.
"O Philip!" cried his mother, "let us go away quickly from this place.
Let us start at once. I am not myself here. Take me away as quickly
as we can go."
"Yes, mother," he answered, drawing her hand tenderly through his arm.
He did not dare to ask her any question. He guessed whose grave this
was by which she was standing, and felt sure that she knew something of
the dread secret that oppressed himself. But it was impossible for him
to ask her. She stood nearer to his father even than he did. The
close, inseparable, sacred nature of the tie that unites man and wife
struck him as it had never done before. Any sin of her husband would
be an intolerable burden to her.
He hurried their departure from the hotel, though it was difficult to
get a carriage on a _festa_ day like this. But at length they started,
and he felt that every step taking them away from Cortina was a gain.
They passed little groups of peasants going homeward; and the sound of
church bells ringing joyous peals pursued them for several miles. But
they left the valley behind them after a time. The drive they were
hurrying over was one of the most beautiful in Europe, but only Dorothy
saw it that day. Once, when she saw a red peak, with clouds rolling
across it, and the spots of crimson gleaming like flames beneath the
vapor, and a pale gray rock close by looking ghostlike beside it, she
turned to Margaret with a low exclamation of delight. But Margaret's
eyes were closed, and her ears were deaf. A vague, undefined terror in
her soul had almost absolute rule over her. She must have been blind
and deaf to the glories of heaven itself, with that fear of an almost
impossible crime in her husband which was haunting her.