"How do you think you feel, _compare_ Menu?"
The poor man could only answer with a whine like a sucking puppy.
"It's a kind of malaria that kills more surely than a rifle bullet,"
said his friends, as they warmed their hands at the fire.
The doctor was called, but it was money thrown away, because the
disease is one of those clear and evident ones which even a boy would
know how to cure; unless the fever happens to be so severe that it
will kill at any rate, a little quinine cures it quickly.
_Compare_ Menu spent the eyes of his head for quinine but it was as
good as thrown down a well.
"Take a good dose of _ecalibbiso_ tea, which does not cost anything,"
suggested _massaro_ Agrippino, "and if it doesn't work as well as
quinine it doesn't ruin you by its cost."
So he took the decoction of eucaliptus, but the fever returned all the
same, and even more violently. Jeli attended to his father the best he
knew how. Every morning before he went off with his colts, he left him
his medicine all prepared in a drinking cup, his bundle of dry
branches within reach, his eggs in the hot ashes, and he came back as
early as he could in the afternoon with more wood for the night, and
the bottle of wine and a little piece of mutton, which he had gone as
far as Licodia to buy for him. The poor lad did everything as handily
as a clever maiden would have done, and his father, following him with
weary eyes in his operations about the hovel, sometimes smiled to
think that the boy would be able to do for himself in case he were
left alone in the world.
On days when the fever left him for a few hours, _compare_ Menu would
get up, all feeble as he was, and with his head wrapped in his
handkerchief, would stagger out to the door to wait for Jeli while the
sun was still warm. When Jeli dropped the bundle of wood at the
door-steps, and placed the bottle and the eggs on the table, he would
say to him,--
"Put the _ecalibbiso_ to boiling for to-night," or, "Remember that
your aunt Agata has charge of your mother's money, when I shall be no
more."
Jeli would nod "yes" with his head.
"It is hopeless," said _massaro_ Agrippino, every time he came to see
_compare_ Menu and his fever. "His blood is all diseased by this
time."
_Compare_ Menu listened without winking, with his face whiter than his
night-cap.
He now no longer got up. Jeli began to weep when he found himself not
strong enough to help him turn from one side to the other; shortly
after _compare_ Menu lay perfectly still. The last words that he
spoke to his boy were,--
"When I am dead, go to the owner of the cows at Ragoleti and let him
give you the three _onze_ and the twelve _tumoli_ of corn, which are
my due from March till now."
"No," replied Jeli, "it's only two _onze_ and a half, because you left
the cows more than a month ago, and one must be fair to one's
_padrone_."
"True!" agreed _compare_ Menu, closing his eyes.
"Now I am quite alone in the world, like a lost colt which the wolves
may eat!" said Jeli to himself, when his father had been carried off
to the cemetery of Licodia.
Mara had been one of those who came to see the dead man's house with
that morbid curiosity which is excited by horrible things.
"Do you see how I am left?" asked Jeli, but the girl drew back so
frightened that he could not induce her to step inside the house where
the dead man had been.
Jeli went to receive the money due his father, and then he started off
with his drove for Passanitello, where the grass was already tall on
the fallow-land, and the fodder was abundant; therefore, the colts
remained there for some time in pasture.
Meantime Jeli had been growing into a big lad, and Mara also must be
grown tall, he often thought to himself, while he played on his
_zufalo_; and when he returned to Tebidi after some little time,
slowly driving forward the mares through the dangerous paths of "Uncle
Cosimo's Fountain," he scanned the little bridge down in the valley,
and the hovel in the _Valle del Jacitano_, and the roof of "the Hall"
where the pigeons were always flying.
But at that time the _padrone_ had dismissed _massaro_ Agrippino, and
all Mara's family were just on the point of moving away.
Jeli found the girl, who had grown tall and very pretty, standing at
the entrance of the yard watching the furniture and things, which
they were loading on the cart. The empty room seemed to him more
gloomy and smoky than ever before. The table, the commode and the
images of the Virgin and of Saint John, and even the nails for hanging
up the gourds for seed had left on the walls the marks where they had
been for so many years.
"We are going away," said Mara, when she saw him looking around. "We
are going down to Marineo, where the great house stands in the plain."
Jeli took hold and helped _massaro_ Agrippino and _la gna Lia_ load up
the cart, and when there was nothing else to carry out of the room he
went and sat down with Mara on the edge of the watering-trough.
"Even houses," he remarked, when he saw the last hamper piled on,
"even houses, when anything is taken away from them, do not any longer
seem the same."
"At Marineo," replied Mara, "we shall have much better rooms, mamma
says, and large as the cheese house."
"Now that you are going away, I shall not want to come here any more;
it seems to me as if winter had come back--to see that door closed."
"At Marineo we shall find other friends, Pudda _la rossa_ and the
_campiere's_ daughter; it will be jolly there; they have more than
eighty harvesters in the season, and the bag-pipes, and they dance on
the threshing-floor."
_Massaro_ Agrippino and his wife had gone off with the cart. Mara ran
behind them, full of joyous excitement, carrying the baskets with the
pigeons. Jeli was going to accompany her as far as the little bridge;
and when Mara was just on the point of disappearing down the valley he
called after her, "Mara! oh! Mara!"
"What do you want?" demanded Mara.
He knew not what he wanted.
"Oh! what will you do here all alone?" asked the girl.
"I shall stay with the colts."
Mara ran skipping away, and he stood there as if rooted to the spot
so as to catch the last sounds of the cart rattling over the stones.
The sun was just resting on the high rocks of the _Poggio alla Croce_,
the gray crests of the olive trees were shading into the twilight and
over the vast campagna far away, nothing was heard except the tinkling
bell of "Bianca" in the gathering stillness.
Mara, now that she was in the midst of new faces and amid all the
bustle of the grape gathering, forgot about Jeli; but he was always
thinking about her, because he had nothing else to do in the long days
that he spent looking at the horses' tails. There was now no special
reason for him to go down into the valley beyond the bridge, and no
one ever saw him any more at the farm.
Thus it was that he was for some time ignorant that Mara had become
betrothed--so much water had run and run under the bridge. The only
time that he saw the girl was on the day of Saint John's _Festa_,
when he went to the fair with his colts to sell; a festa which changed
everything for him into poison, and caused the bread to fall out of
his mouth by reason of an accident that befell one of the _padrone's_
colts--the Lord deliver us!
On the day of the fair, the factor waited for the colts ever since
dawn, walking impatiently up and down in his well-polished boots
behind the groups of horses and mules that came filing in along the
highway from this direction and that. It was almost time for the fair
to close, and still Jeli with his animals was not in sight beyond the
turn made by the highway. On the parched slopes of _Calvario_ and the
_Mulino a vento_--the Wind-Mill Mountain--there remained only a few
droves of sheep gathered in a circle, with noses drooping and weary
eyes, and a few yoke of oxen with long hair--of the kind that are sold
to satisfy unpaid rent, waiting motionless under the boiling sun.
Yonder toward the valley, the bell of San Giovanni's was ringing for
High Mass, accompanied by the long crackling of the fireworks.
Then the fair grounds seemed to spring up, and there ran a prolonged
cry among the shops of the green grocers, clustered in the place
called _salita dei Galli_, spreading through the country roads and
seeming to return from the valley where the church stood.
"Viva San Giovanni!"
"_Santo diavolone!_" screamed the factor. "That assassin of a Jeli
will make me lose the fair!"
The sheep lifted their heads in astonishment and began to bleat all at
once, and the cattle also made a step or two, slowly looking around
with their great, calm eyes.
The factor was in a rage because he was expected that day to pay the
rent due for the large enclosures--as the contract expressed it, "when
Saint John arrived under the elm;" and to make up the full sum, the
profits on the sale of the colts was necessary. Meantime the colts and
horses and mules were coming in such numbers as the good Lord had seen
fit to make, all curried and shining and adorned with tassels and
cockades and bells; and they were switching their tails to while away
their tedium, and turning their heads toward every one who passed, and
evidently waiting for some charitable soul willing to buy them.
"He must have gone to sleep on the way, the assassin!" yelled the
factor, "and so made me lose the sale of my colts."
In reality, Jeli had travelled all night so that the colts might reach
the fair fresh, and get a good position on their arrival; and he had
reached the _piano del Corvo_, and the "three kings" had not yet set,
but were shining over _monte Arturo_. There was a continuous
procession of carts passing along the road, and people mounted on
horses or mules going to the _festa_. Therefore, the young fellow
kept his eyes open so that the colts, frightened by the unusual
commotion, might not get away, but that he might keep them together
along the ridge of the road behind _la bianca_, the white mare, who
with the bell around her neck, always travelled straight ahead without
minding anything.
From time to time, when the road ran over the crest of the hills, the
bell of Saint John's could be heard in the distance, and in the
darkness and silence of the plain the rumor of the _festa_ was
distinguishable, and along the whole road far away, wherever there
were people on foot or on horseback going to Vizzini, were heard
shouts of "_Viva San Giovanni!_" And the rockets rose up high in the
air and brilliant behind the mountains of la Canzaria, like the rain
of meteors in August.
"It is like Christmas Eve!" Jeli kept saying to the boy, who was
helping him drive the herd. "And in every place there is feasting and
light, and throughout the whole campagna you can see fireworks."
The boy was half asleep as he forced one leg after the other, and he
made no response; but Jeli, who felt his blood stir within him at the
sound of that bell, could not keep quiet, as if each one of those
rockets that left their silent shining trails on the darkness behind
the mountains burst forth from his soul.
"Mara also must be going to the _festa_ of Saint John," he said,
"because she goes every year."