At vespers on the fete of St. Antonino, and in his church, I saw the
Signorina Fiammetta. I stood leaning against a marble pillar near the
altar-steps, during the service, when I saw the young girl kneeling on
the pavement in act of prayer. Her black lace veil had fallen a little
back from her head; and there was something in her modest attitude
and graceful figure that made her conspicuous among all her kneeling
companions, with their gay kerchiefs and bright gowns. When she rose and
sat down, with folded hands and eyes downcast, there was something so
pensive in her subdued mien that I could not take my eyes from her. To
say that she had the rich olive complexion, with the gold struggling
through, large, lustrous black eyes, and harmonious features, is only
to make a weak photograph, when I should paint a picture in colors and
infuse it with the sweet loveliness of a maiden on the way to sainthood.
I was sure that I had seen her before, looking down from the balcony of
a villa just beyond the Roman wall, for the face was not one that even
the most unimpressible idler would forget. I was sure that, young as she
was, she had already a history; had lived her life, and now walked amid
these groves and old streets in a dream. The story which I heard is not
long.
In the drawing-room of the Villa Nardi was shown, and offered for sale,
an enormous counterpane, crocheted in white cotton. Loop by loop, it
must have been an immense labor to knit it; for it was fashioned in
pretty devices, and when spread out was rich and showy enough for the
royal bed of a princess. It had been crocheted by Fiammetta for her
marriage, the only portion the poor child could bring to that sacrament.
Alas! the wedding was never to be; and the rich work, into which her
delicate fingers had knit so many maiden dreams and hopes and fears, was
offered for sale in the resort of strangers. It could not have been want
only that induced her to put this piece of work in the market, but the
feeling, also, that the time never again could return when she would
have need of it. I had no desire to purchase such a melancholy coverlet,
but I could well enough fancy why she would wish to part with what must
be rather a pall than a decoration in her little chamber.
Fiammetta lived with her mother in a little villa, the roof of which is
in sight from my sunny terrace in the Villa Nardi, just to the left
of the square old convent tower, rising there out of the silver
olive-boughs,--a tumble-down sort of villa, with a flat roof and odd
angles and parapets, in the midst of a thrifty but small grove of lemons
and oranges. They were poor enough, or would be in any country where
physical wants are greater than here, and yet did not belong to that
lowest class, the young girls of which are little more than beasts of
burden, accustomed to act as porters, bearing about on their heads great
loads of stone, wood, water, and baskets of oranges in the shipping
season. She could not have been forced to such labor, or she never would
have had the time to work that wonderful coverlet.
Giuseppe was an honest and rather handsome young fellow of Sorrento,
industrious and good-natured, who did not bother his head much about
learning. He was, however, a skillful workman in the celebrated inlaid
and mosaic woodwork of the place, and, it is said, had even invented
some new figures for the inlaid pictures in colored woods. He had a
little fancy for the sea as well, and liked to pull an oar over to Capri
on occasion, by which he could earn a few francs easier than he could
saw them out of the orangewood. For the stupid fellow, who could not
read a word in his prayer-book, had an idea of thrift in his head, and
already, I suspect, was laying up liras with an object. There are one
or two dandies in Sorrento who attempt to dress as they do in Naples.
Giuseppe was not one of these; but there was not a gayer or handsomer
gallant than he on Sunday, or one more looked at by the Sorrento girls,
when he had on his clean suit and his fresh red Phrygian cap. At least
the good Fiammetta thought so, when she met him at church, though I feel
sure she did not allow even his handsome figure to come between her and
the Virgin. At any rate, there can be no doubt of her sentiments after
church, when she and her mother used to walk with him along the winding
Massa road above the sea, and stroll down to the shore to sit on the
greensward over the Temple of Hercules, or the Roman Baths, or the
remains of the villa of C. Fulvius Cunctatus Cocles, or whatever those
ruins subterranean are, there on the Capo di Sorrento. Of course, this
is mere conjecture of mine. They may have gone on the hills behind the
town instead, or they may have stood leaning over the garden-wall of
her mother's little villa, looking at the passers-by in the deep lane,
thinking about nothing in the world, and talking about it all the sunny
afternoon, until Ischia was purple with the last light, and the olive
terraces behind them began to lose their gray bloom. All I do know is,
that they were in love, blossoming out in it as the almond-trees do here
in February; and that all the town knew it, and saw a wedding in the
future, just as plain as you can see Capri from the heights above the
town.
It was at this time that the wonderful counterpane began to grow, to the
continual astonishment of Giuseppe, to whom it seemed a marvel of
skill and patience, and who saw what love and sweet hope Fiammetta was
knitting into it with her deft fingers. I declare, as I think of it, the
white cotton spread out on her knees, in such contrast to the rich olive
of her complexion and her black shiny hair, while she knits away so
merrily, glancing up occasionally with those liquid, laughing eyes to
Giuseppe, who is watching her as if she were an angel right out of the
blue sky, I am tempted not to tell this story further, but to leave
the happy two there at the open gate of life, and to believe that they
entered in.
This was about the time of the change of government, after this
region had come to be a part of the Kingdom of Italy. After the first
excitement was over, and the simple people found they were not all made
rich, nor raised to a condition in which they could live without work,
there began to be some dissatisfaction. Why the convents need have been
suppressed, and especially the poor nuns packed off, they couldn't
see; and then the taxes were heavier than ever before; instead of being
supported by the government, they had to support it; and, worst of
all, the able young fellows must still go for soldiers. Just as one was
learning his trade, or perhaps had acquired it, and was ready to earn
his living and begin to make a home for his wife, he must pass the three
best years of his life in the army. The conscription was relentless.
The time came to Giuseppe, as it did to the others. I never heard but he
was brave enough; there was no storm on the Mediterranean that he
dare not face in his little boat; and he would not have objected to a
campaign with the red shirts of Garibaldi. But to be torn away from his
occupations by which he was daily laying aside a little for himself and
Fiammetta, and to leave her for three years,--that seemed dreadful to
him. Three years is a longtime; and though he had no doubt of the pretty
Fiammetta, yet women are women, said the shrewd fellow to himself, and
who knows what might happen, if a gallant came along who could read and
write, as Fiammetta could, and, besides, could play the guitar?
The result was, that Giuseppe did not appear at the mustering-office on
the day set; and, when the file of soldiers came for him, he was nowhere
to be found. He had fled to the mountains. I scarcely know what his
plan was, but he probably trusted to some good luck to escape the
conscription altogether, if he could shun it now; and, at least, I
know that he had many comrades who did the same, so that at times the
mountains were full of young fellows who were lurking in them to escape
the soldiers. And they fared very roughly usually, and sometimes nearly
perished from hunger; for though the sympathies of the peasants were
undoubtedly with the quasi-outlaws rather than with the carbineers, yet
the latter were at every hamlet in the hills, and liable to visit every
hut, so that any relief extended to the fugitives was attended with
great danger; and, besides, the hunted men did not dare to venture from
their retreats. Thus outlawed and driven to desperation by hunger, these
fugitives, whom nobody can defend for running away from their duties as
citizens, became brigands. A cynical German, who was taken by them some
years ago on the road to Castellamare, a few miles above here, and held
for ransom, declared that they were the most honest fellows he had
seen in Italy; but I never could see that he intended the remark as
any compliment to them. It is certain that the inhabitants of all these
towns held very loose ideas on the subject of brigandage: the poor
fellows, they used to say, only robbed because they were hungry, and
they must live somehow.
What Fiammetta thought, down in her heart, is not told: but I presume
she shared the feelings of those about her concerning the brigands, and,
when she heard that Giuseppe had joined them, was more anxious for the
safety of his body than of his soul; though I warrant she did not forget
either, in her prayers to the Virgin and St. Antonino. And yet those
must have been days, weeks, months, of terrible anxiety to the poor
child; and if she worked away at the counterpane, netting in that
elaborate border, as I have no doubt she did, it must have been with a
sad heart and doubtful fingers. I think that one of the psychological
sensitives could distinguish the parts of the bedspread that were
knit in the sunny days from those knit in the long hours of care and
deepening anxiety.
It was rarely that she received any message from him and it was then
only verbal and of the briefest; he was in the mountains above Amalfi;
one day he had come so far round as the top of the Great St. Angelo,
from which he could look down upon the piano of Sorrento, where the
little Fiammetta was; or he had been on the hills near Salerno, hunted
and hungry; or his company had descended upon some travelers going to
Paestum, made a successful haul, and escaped into the steep mountains
beyond. He didn't intend to become a regular bandit, not at all. He
hoped that something might happen so that he could steal back into
Sorrento, unmarked by the government; or, at least, that he could escape
away to some other country or island, where Fiammetta could join him.
Did she love him yet, as in the old happy days? As for him, she was now
everything to him; and he would willingly serve three or thirty years
in the army, if the government could forget he had been a brigand,
and permit him to have a little home with Fiammetta at the end of the
probation. There was not much comfort in all this, but the simple fellow
could not send anything more cheerful; and I think it used to feed the
little maiden's heart to hear from him, even in this downcast mood, for
his love for her was a dear certainty, and his absence and wild life did
not dim it.
My informant does not know how long this painful life went on, nor does
it matter much. There came a day when the government was shamed into
new vigor against the brigands. Some English people of consequence (the
German of whom I have spoken was with them) had been captured, and
it had cost them a heavy ransom. The number of the carbineers was
quadrupled in the infested districts, soldiers penetrated the fastnesses
of the hills, there were daily fights with the banditti; and, to show
that this was no sham, some of them were actually shot, and others were
taken and thrown into prison. Among those who were not afraid to stand
and fight, and who would not be captured, was our Giuseppe. One day the
Italia newspaper of Naples had an account of a fight with brigands; and
in the list of those who fell was the name of Giuseppe---, of Sorrento,
shot through the head, as he ought to have been, and buried without
funeral among the rocks.
This was all. But when the news was read in the little post office in
Sorrento, it seemed a great deal more than it does as I write it; for,
if Giuseppe had an enemy in the village, it was not among the people;
and not one who heard the news did not think at once of the poor girl
to whom it would be more than a bullet through the heart. And so it was.
The slender hope of her life then went out. I am told that there was
little change outwardly, and that she was as lovely as before; but a
great cloud of sadness came over her, in which she was always enveloped,
whether she sat at home, or walked abroad in the places where she and
Giuseppe used to wander. The simple people respected her grief, and
always made a tender-hearted stillness when the bereft little maiden
went through the streets,--a stillness which she never noticed, for she
never noticed anything apparently. The bishop himself when he walked
abroad could not be treated with more respect.
This was all the story of the sweet Fiammetta that was confided to
me. And afterwards, as I recalled her pensive face that evening as
she kneeled at vespers, I could not say whether, after all, she was
altogether to be pitied, in the holy isolation of her grief, which I am
sure sanctified her, and, in some sort, made her life complete. For I
take it that life, even in this sunny Sorrento, is not alone a matter of
time.