As the full moon rose over the eastern mountains that evening, coming
from the unseen waves of the Adriatic Sea, the mule-cart was driven
into the courtyard of the hunting-lodge as she had promised. She was
alone in it; Lucio had slipped off when near the gates, and gone
homewards by short cuts known to him across the woods. His heart was
black against her with the rage of a wolf robbed of a fine meal off
fawn or kid; he was thirsty to pour his chagrin into the yet blacker
bosom of his elder brother.
“Stop here to-night, child,” said old Caterina, coming out into the
courtyard to greet her. “’Tis late, and you must be tired.”
The girl demurred and resisted, but the old woman, who had known her as
a swaddled baby, would take no denial. Cyrille came out of the great
doorway, the light of the moon shining on his face, which looked to her
so strange, so fair, so angelic, like the St Michael above a side altar
in the Cathedral at her birthplace of Viterbo.
She thought the stranger of another race, another humanity, to Lucio or
herself. She had never seen a man so fair, so calm, so delicately pale,
and yet so cool in courage as any tusked boar in the woods.
She had noticed him much oftener and more curiously than he had noticed
her; and she knew, as he did not know, the hate against him which
smouldered in the breasts of all the people scattered through the
solitudes of Le Selve.
“Yes, rest here to-night,” he said, “we should be churls to let you go.
Take her within, good Caterina.”
Though her muscles were as steel, and her limbs as untiring as those
of a deer’s, she was fatigued that night, and she did not care to sup
off the black looks and bitter upbraidings of her uncles, who, to her,
would make no secret of their disappointment and their rage.
The old woman took her to the kitchen, and warmed, and fed, and
welcomed her.
“You are as strong as a man,” said Caterina enviously, for her own
strength had also once been great.
“Stronger than many men,” said Muriella with pride. “They know it all
through the Selve.”
“Strength is a guardian angel,” said the elder woman. “But a woman’s
strength is a devil in disguise sometimes; she trusts to it; and
lo!--it snaps, and she falls.”
“That may well be,” said Muriella gravely.
As she bent down over the brazier its red reflection shone on the fine
outline of her brow and cheek, on the thickness of her raven hair, on
the dark line of her up-curling lashes.
“You are a morsel for a monarch,” thought Caterina, but she did not say
it; it was known that the girl did not like such jokes.
Instead, she said:
“I am going to change the mattress in Ser Cirillo’s room. Come and give
me a helping hand.”
Muriella went without demur.
When the lifting and changing of the mattress on the great mediæval bed
with its gilded baldachino and crown was done, she stood and looked
around her.
“What are these?” she said, pointing to the telescope upon its stand
and the celestial globe.
“Uncanny things that bring no good to anyone,” answered Caterina. “That
big tube lets you get up to the moon quite close; you can hear the
people in it talking.”
“Saints above us!” said the girl, much astonished; “I always thought
the moon was a lamp.”
“So do all folks as keep their senses,” said Caterina, with that
contempt of ignorance for knowledge, which is of all scorn the most
derisive.
The eyes of Muriella surveyed the chamber with awe. It was very large,
with vast windows, a tessellated floor, faded frescoed walls, and the
grand bed with hangings in purple satin, once a cardinal’s. There were
some oaken tables and dressers, and a few huge chairs with leathern
seats, and from the centre of the ceiling hung a bronze Etruscan lamp
found centuries earlier in the forest underground. On one of the tables
stood an earthen jar filled with the autumn colchicum, and there were
many books and many drawings. Bare and plain though the room was, it
had that nobility which comes from ancient usage, and the indefinable
grace in it which is given to their habitations by those whose pursuits
are intellectual and whose tastes are artistic.
“It feels like a church,” said Muriella to herself: she had always in
her memory the churches of Viterbo, where she had gone with her mother,
and above all of the Duomo of San Lorenzo there, where Guy de Montfort
slew Henry of Cornwall before the high altar, and where an English Pope
forced a German Emperor to hold his stirrup as vassal of the Holy See.
This chamber, with its three great windows facing the west, filled
her with a dim pleasure and veneration as the altars and aisles of San
Lorenzo had done.
But she looked for one thing which she did not see.
“There are no arms,” she said to Caterina; “not even a hunting-knife.”
“He has a revolver,” said the old woman. “But you are right, my dear.
There should be more weapons nigh at hand. The _guardiani_ have all
guns, it is true.”
Muriella said nothing. She had little faith in the forest guards. Were
they the stranger’s friends or foes? Of one’s own hand one is sure--but
of any other?
“Tell your master to get more defence for himself,” she said as she
lingered on the threshold.
“He is not my master,” said Caterina, huffed and on her dignity. “He
is a mere servant of the Gandolfo, like me, like Fausto and Gian, and
Falko, and Dreino, and all the rest.”
“No; he rules those,” said Muriella quickly. “He is in authority over
them. Perhaps not over you, but over them certainly.”
“And God and the Gandolfo are over us all,” said Caterina testily.
“Over him as well as the least of us. Come to supper, wench.”
Supper was eaten in the wide long kitchen, black with smoke and age,
with the sweet herbs and the dried pork hanging from the rafters, and
a great fire burning in a hearth vast enough to hold a dozen men on
its settles. There were more than a dozen men and women seated along
the tables with the light from the brass _lucerne_ shining on their
swarthy faces. The males looked greedily and glowingly at Muriella,
but they did not delay the great business of their hungry jaws and
thirsty throats to pay her compliments. Moreover, Caterina ruled them
with a rod of iron, and tolerated no amorous follies in her presence.
Bean-soup, roast kid, fennel and salsify and macaroni were their fare,
washed down by a rough, stinging red wine. Their strong and comely
women ate and drank as copiously as the men: they had few words to
waste, and their white teeth worked like a mill. Italians have not
always as much as they could eat, but when they get the chance they
can feed like Gargantua’s self. Two Franciscan friars who were passing
through the woods and slept at the fattoria as a matter of course,
were as loudly munching and as thirstily drinking as the others, and
conveying at short intervals remnants of meat and bread into their
wallets, under pretext of feeding the dogs who lay under the table.
“Trust the holy men to take all they can lay their hands on,” thought
Caterina, noting their adroit manœuvres. Through as many centuries as
the oaks without were old, monks of all orders had come and gone, and
eaten, and drunk, and been feasted, and welcomed at those tables in Le
Selve. The mendicant-friars were now few in number, and poor in worldly
goods, but at all the Gandolfo’s houses they were ever as honoured as
they had been of old, except in the innermost heart of Caterina.
Cyrille supped later, alone, in a small stone chamber which opened out
of his bedroom. His place at the steward’s table was filled by the
under-steward, Fausto.
Fausto was a Roman, with the head and face, the throat and shoulders,
of a gladiator in the galleries of the Vatican; thickly-curling locks
encircled his broad low brow, and rich blood mantled in his olive
cheeks.
He and the Franciscans spoke in cordial amity where they sat together
at his end of his table.
“You have a stranger here since we passed by this time two years,” said
one of the friars.
“We have,” said Fausto, and his tone was sullen.
“A man from the North, a schismatic,” said the friar.
“Of that I know naught,” replied Fausto.
“A pagan, one may say,” added the monk. “Why did your good lord place
him here? ’Tis a sin against the Holy Ghost.”
Fausto shrugged his shoulders; he was no theologian.
“Does he know aught of forestry?” asked the other Franciscan.
“Yes,” said Fausto reluctantly. “But all new-fangled northern ways. We
always used to cut wood when we wished, and fell timber when we wanted
a sum of money. But under his rule there is to be none of that. Only
one tree in eight, and never even so much as this save in November and
December, and no pollarding or cropping, and no fuel-making, and even
the furze and heather cut by rule, and rarely.”
He snorted scornfully like an angry bull, and drank a draught of the
rough red wine.
He had taken the extreme step of going to solicit audience at the
palace of his employers in Rome, but had not been received by anyone
higher than the house steward, who in answer to his grievances had
declared that he could not place them before their lords, since he knew
well that in regard to Le Selve all the new-comer did was well done--an
unanswerable Italian formula.
“All the old feudal rights are swept away,” Fausto continued. “Rights
of pasturage, of dead wood, of snaring, of shooting, of barking and
burning, of grazing and broom cutting--all are done away with I tell
you, holy men. ’Tis enough to make the folks of the soil rise and fire
the forests. Maybe they will do it one day.”
“To be sure, poor souls,” said the friar with compassion, “and the
saints will excuse them.”
Who would now give a Franciscan, when he passed through the Selve, a
plump quail, or a young hare, or a brace of coots shot on the pond?
“To be sure, indeed!” echoed Fausto; “whoever saw wild forest land kept
as though it were a Madonna’s garden? No goats must crop, no mules must
browse, no guns go on the marshes, no nests be taken high or low, no
bark be stripped, no undergrowth be cut, no gins be set, nor netting;
the Lord grant me patience! The people look to me for help. They come
to me weeping and groaning; what can I say? What did he do when I had
covered a teal with my gun last June? Struck the barrel up with his
stick; and the bird away over the reeds. ‘It’s close time,’ said he.
‘Close time, close time!’ By the Lord! was ever ‘close time’ heard of
in those woods? Have we not shot when and where as we chose all the
year round? Eh? Many’s the head of game I have got shooting a sitting
hare or nesting plover. ‘Close time!’ Great powers above us! Who ever
heard tell of the like since the hills were piled one a-top of another?
But so it is now, and no redress against it to be got in Rome. ‘All
that he does is well done’--no other answer but that. Damnation! I am
nothing here any more. I am no more than a sere twig, than a strangled
mole. I go to Rome; and what say they to me there? ‘All that he does
is well done.’ They will not even hear or enquire, and even the wild
boar hunting is stopped. He is a second St Francis. He talks with the
pigs and the wolves!”
“Do not speak the name of a saint of our Church in the same breath with
a vile schismatic outside her pale,” said the elder Franciscan; and he
was so greatly shocked that he drank out of the flask of wine nearest
him instead of out of his glass tumbler, and only set it down when it
was half empty.
Muriella, where she sat beside the Massaja, was too far off to hear
much that they said, but a little reached her, and she saw the lowering
brows and tempestuous gestures of Fausto. She spoke across the length
of the table to him.
“Your pardon, Messir Fausto,” she said in a clear, steady voice; “you
forget to add one thing. For all the feudal rights taken up, there
has been paid compensation; it is but the abuse of them which has been
checked and stopped.”
Fausto looked over the lighted wicks of the brass lamps at the speaker.
He was betrothed to the daughter of a wealthy vintner in Montefiascone,
but that fact had not closed his eyes to the other fact that the niece
of Alcide and Lucio had great and uncommon beauty.
He had often seen her, for her uncles were favourites with him; men
who understood that he was in his place for his own interests, not for
those of Le Selve, or of the owners of Le Selve. “Between the wise a
wink suffices,” says an Italian proverb; and that wink had been often
exchanged betwixt him and Alcide and Lucio. The coldness with which
she had always treated him, when any other young woman between the
Apennines and the Liris was but too proud of his notice, had attracted
him all the more by its rarity and offence, for _il bel Faustone_ was
accustomed to easy conquests. He was disconcerted now by what she said
to him; for he knew that it was true. He was saved from reply by a
great clamour which uprose from the throats of all the farm servants
and others present; for whenever yet since the world began would people
of their kind admit that any compensation, however generous and just,
could make amends for the loss of old and dear abuses enjoyed with
impunity, and turned to profit unexamined?
Such abuse is the very marrow of their bones, the supreme joy of their
souls; no bird which is brought has the flavour of the bird which is
poached; no oaken log which is given burns so boisterously and so
warmly as the one which is hewn by stealth and stolen.
In speaking as she did Muriella aroused against her all the wrath of
her own class; she seemed to them an apostate allied with the enemy.
Time, temperament, inclination, habit, were all arrayed against her;
the dearest privilege of all who heard her was to pilfer and to
plunder, a privilege confirmed by centuries of usage; who was she,
forest bred if not forest born, to take the part of one who suppressed
the time-honoured thefts of foresters?
_L’uso fa legge_ in this country more than in all others.
Who was she to set herself up against that time-honoured axiom?
The hubbub was so great, the roar of crossing voices, and the scream of
angry denunciation, were so loud that Caterina rapped sharply on the
table with her horn-handled carving knife.
“Silence, children! Who dares speak here? Quiet! Quiet at once, or no
wine will be drunk by anyone to-morrow.”
Under so dire a threat, which they knew would be inexorably carried out
if they disobeyed her, the men and women held their peace, and hung
their heads sheepishly. Even the mendicant-friars were mute.
“Come, wenches,” said Caterina, and as she rose all the other women
rose also and left the kitchen in her train, Muriella with them.
Against the will of the Massaja there is no appeal in the household
which she rules. When she had sent the servants to their several
evening tasks, Caterina took the girl to her own room, and showed her a
little closet out of it where she was to sleep.
“You are plunging your arm into a hornet’s nest,” she said, with
not unkind severity. “The woodlanders will never suffer you to go
preaching against them and their rights.”
“What they call rights are not rights,” said Muriella. “They are
wicked, thievish, knavish ways. They should be grateful for all your
gentleman does for them. He is merciful and just. They should rejoice.”
Caterina gave a short gruff laugh like an owl’s hoot.
“A clear cloudless night is a nice thing,” she answered, “but when a
man is going to tryst with a neighbour’s wife, or waiting with his
knife to avenge an old grudge, he likes a murky night better, doesn’t
he, my dear? Ways are crooked, and plunder has been easy got in Le
Selve. No one of the woodlanders wants to be set straight. Each one
likes to crawl on his belly and go crooked as he chooses. Your uncles
as much as any.”
“That I know,” said Muriella. “But to crawl on the belly is for
snakes, not men.”
“Fine words, my dear, but they’ll cost you heavy,” answered the old
woman. “Look after yourself, child; you’ll find that enough to do. I
don’t like Faustone’s hot look at you. He is a lewd fellow, and stands
pledged to wed with a wench in Montefiascone come next Easter.”
Muriella smiled slightly. “Messir Faustone may look as he likes, and
wed when he wishes. He will not trouble my peace, be sure.”
“Best that nobody should,” said Caterina. “You should leave those bad
men you belong to, and marry,” she added.
Muriella shook her head. “Not I.”
“Why not?” said Caterina. “There are only two things for a woman to
choose between--the nuptial bed or the convent cell; and you are not
one for a convent life, my wench.”
“Nor yet one to be a man’s beast of burden,” said the girl. “It is a
cow’s life; for ever yoked to the plough, though pregnant and in pain;
for ever toiling over the furrows, though with udders throbbing and
aching in milk. Not for me! Not for me! Death sooner!”
“There are good men to be had,” said Caterina, not very firmly nor with
much conviction.
“Not in these woods,” said Muriella; “and even were one of our men
good, what could he do? His woman is his for his pleasure and her pain,
like the cow in the yoke.”
“’Tis nature,” said Caterina.
“I do not say otherwise,” replied Muriella, and she leant her arms
on her knees and her cheeks on her hands, and looked into the fire.
Nature was rude and rough, brutal and ugly, in its human shapes; only
beautiful in its trees, in its waters, in its clouds. She did not know
much, she could not read a line, she had never been out of the woods,
but she could read human faces and human hearts, and she generally
found what she read in them to be as foul as the forest swamps, where
the newts and the adders lived, and the night-shade hung over the slime.
Caterina went on with her spinning by the light of the three-wicked
brass lamps.
“If you won’t marry, I do not see what can become of you,” she said
with some severity.
Muriella smiled. “I am a good worker; I can earn my day’s wage any time
anywhere. I would go away to-morrow, but I am loth to leave the woods.
They are like father and mother, child and cradle, to me.”
“That is rubbish,” said the older woman roughly. “The woods are dumb,
like the beasts they harbour.”
Muriella did not reply. They were not dumb to her, nor were the beasts
either, but she was shy in speech, and the sympathies which moved
within her were rather instincts than conscious feelings. She was not
often capable of unravelling and explaining them, and the good Caterina
did not invite such confidences.
“You are a ripe cherry, and Fausto is a wasp,” said Caterina darkly,
clinging to her ideas.
“I am a cherry that stings like a nettle,” answered the younger woman
with her slow, faint smile.
“Don’t trust to that,” said the older woman. “Well, it is late; get you
to bed.”
In a few minutes’ time both she and her guest were sound asleep in the
dreamless slumber of healthy fatigue.