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AFTER THE DIVORCE
_A ROMANCE_
BY
GRAZIA DELEDDA
_Translated from the Italian_
BY
MARIA HORNOR LANSDALE
And they shall scourge him, and put him to death; ...
And they understood none of these things:....
--St. Luke xviii. 33, 34
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1905
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
_Published March, 1905_
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.
PART I
AFTER THE DIVORCE
CHAPTER I
Nineteen Hundred and Seven. In the "strangers' room" of the Porru house
a woman sat crying. Crouched on the floor near the bed, her knees drawn
up, her arms resting on her knees, and her forehead on her arms, she
wept and sobbed continuously, shaking her head from time to time as
though to indicate that there was no more hope, absolutely none at all;
while her plump shoulders and straight young back rose and fell in the
tightly fitting yellow bodice, like a wave of the sea.
The room was nearly in darkness; there were no windows, but through the
open door which gave upon a bricked gallery, a stretch of dull grey sky
could be seen, growing momentarily darker; and far, far away, against
this dusky background, gleamed the yellow ray of a little, solitary
star. From the courtyard below came the shrill chirping of a cricket,
and the occasional stamp of horses' hoofs on the stone pavement.
A short, heavy woman, clad in the Nuorese dress, with a large, fat,
old-woman face, appeared in the doorway; she carried a four-branched
iron candlestick, in one socket of which burned a wick soaked in oil.
"Giovanna Era," said she in a gruff voice, "what are you about all in
the dark? Are you there? What are you doing? I believe you are crying!
You must be crazy! Upon my word, that's just what you are--crazy!"
The young woman began to sob convulsively.
"Oh, oh, oh!" said the other, drawing near, and in the tone of one who
is deeply shocked and amazed. "I said you were crying. What are you
crying for? There's your mother waiting for you downstairs, and you up
here, crying like a crazy creature!"
The young woman wept more violently than ever, whereupon the other hung
the candlestick on a large nail, gazed vaguely about her, and then began
hovering over her disconsolate guest, searching for words wherewith to
comfort her; she could only repeat, however: "But, Giovanna, you are
crazy, just crazy!"
The "strangers' room"--the name given to that apartment which every
Nuorese family, according to immemorial custom, reserves for the use of
friends from the country--was large, white, and bare; it had a great
wooden bedstead, a table covered with a cotton cloth and adorned with
little glass cups and saucers, and a quantity of small pictures hung
close to the unpainted wooden ceiling. Bunches of dried grapes and
yellow pears hung from the rafters, filling the room with a faint
fragrance; and sacks of wool stood about on the floor.
The stout woman, who was the mistress of the house, laid hold of one of
these sacks, dragged it to another part of the room, and then back again
to where she had found it.
"Now then," said she, panting from her exertion, "do stop. What good
does it do? And why should you give up, anyhow? What the devil, my
dearie! Suppose the public prosecutor _has_ asked for the galleys, that
doesn't mean that the jury are all mad dogs like himself!"
But the other only kept on crying and shaking her head, moaning: "No,
no, no!" between her sobs.
"Yes, yes, I tell you," urged the woman. "Get up now, and come to your
mother," and, taking hold of her, she forced back her head.
The action revealed a charming countenance; rosy, framed in a thick mass
of tumbled black hair; the big dark eyes swollen and glistening with
tears, and surmounted by heavy black eyebrows that met in the middle.
"No, no," wailed Giovanna, shaking herself free. "Let me cry over my
fate, Aunt Porredda."[1]
"Fate or no fate, you just get up!"
"No, I won't get up! I won't get up! They'll sentence him to thirty
years at the very least! Do you hear me? Thirty years! That's what
they'll give him!"
"That remains to be seen. And after all, what is
thirty years? Why, you carry on like a wildcat!"
The other gave a shrill cry, and tore her hair in an access of wild
despair.
"Thirty years! What is thirty years!" she shrieked. "A man's whole
lifetime, Aunt Porredda! You don't know what you are talking about, Aunt
Porredda! Go away, go away and leave me alone! for the love of Christ,
oh, leave me to myself!"
"I'm not going away," said Aunt Porredda. "The idea! In my own house!
Get up, you child of the devil! Stop this before you make yourself ill.
To-morrow will be time enough to pull your hair out by the roots; your
husband isn't in the galleys yet!"
Giovanna dropped her head, and began to cry again in a subdued, hopeless
way, heartbreaking to listen to. "Costantino, Costantino," she moaned in
the tone of one bewailing the dead, "I shall never see you again, never
again! Those mad dogs have seized you and bound you fast, and they will
never let you go; and our house will be empty, and the bed cold, and the
family scattered. Oh, my beloved! my lamb! you are dead for this world.
May those who have done it die the same death!"
Aunt Porredda, distracted by Giovanna's grief, and unable to think of
anything more to say, went out on the gallery, and began calling:
"Bachissia Era! come up here; your daughter is losing her mind!"
A step was heard on the outer stair. Aunt Porredda turned back into the
room, and behind her appeared a tall, tragic-looking figure all in
black. The gaunt, yellow face, shaped like that of some bird of prey,
was framed in the folds of a black handkerchief; two brilliant green
spots indicated the eyes, deep set, overhung by fierce, heavy brows, and
surrounded by livid circles. Her mere presence seemed to exercise a
subduing effect upon the daughter.
"Get up!" she said in a harsh voice.
Giovanna arose. She was tall and lithe, though cast in a heavy mould and
having enormous hips. Beneath the short, circular petticoat, adorned
below the waist with a band of purple, and with a broad, green hem,
appeared two little feet shod in elastic gaiters, and the suggestion of
a pair of shapely legs.
"What are you worrying these good people for?" demanded the mother.
"Have done now; come down to supper, and don't frighten the children, or
throw a wet blanket over the happiness of these good people."
The "happiness of these good people" was in allusion to the arrival of
the son of the house, a law student, home for the holidays.
Giovanna, recognising that her mother meant to be obeyed, quieted down
without more ado. Pulling the woollen kerchief from her head, and
thereby disclosing a cap of antique brocade, from whence escaped waves
of coal-black hair, she turned towards a basin of water standing on a
chair, and began to bathe her face.
The two women looked at one another, and Aunt Porredda, taking her lips
between her right thumb and forefinger in sign of silence, noiselessly
left the room.
The other, accepting this hint, said nothing more, and when Giovanna had
finished bathing, and had set her hair in order, silently led the way
down the outer stair.
Night had fallen; warm, still, profound. The solitary yellow star had
been followed by a multitude of glittering asterisks, and the Milky Way
lay like a scarf of gauze embroidered with silver spangles. The air was
heavy with the penetrating odour of new-mown hay.
In the courtyard, the crickets, hidden away in the trelliswork, kept up
their shrill chirping; the ruminative horse still stamped with his
iron-shod hoofs upon the stones, and from afar floated the melancholy
note of a song.
The kitchen opened on the courtyard, as did a ground-floor bedroom
sometimes used as a dining-room. Both doors were standing open.
In the kitchen, beside the lighted stove, stood Aunt Porredda engaged in
preparing the macaroni for supper. A child, clad in a loose black
frock, fair, untidy, and barefooted, was quarrelling with a stout
little urchin, fat and florid like his grandmother.
The girl was swearing roundly, naming every devil in turn; while the boy
tried to pinch her bare legs.
"Stop it," said Aunt Porredda. "There now, will you leave off, you
naughty children?"
"Mamma Porru, she's cursing me; she said: 'Go to the devil who gave you
birth.'"
"Minnia! what a way to talk!"
"Well, he stole my purse, the one with the picture of the Pope, that
Uncle Paolo brought me----"
"It's not so, I didn't!" shouted the boy. "You'd better not be talking
about stealing, Minnia," he added with a meaning look.
The girl became suddenly quiet, as though a spell had been cast over
her, but presently her tormentor, seizing a long stick, tried to hook
the curved handle around her legs. Minnia began to cry, and the
grandmother faced about, ladle in hand.
"I declare, I'll beat you with this ladle, you wretched children! Just
you wait a moment!" she cried, running at them. The children made a dash
for the courtyard, and collided violently with Giovanna and her mother.
"What's all this? What's all this?"
"Oh, those children, they'll drive me wild! I believe the devil is in
them," said Aunt Porredda from the doorway.
At this moment a slim little figure in black emerged from the main
gateway leading into the street, calling excitedly: "They are coming,
Grandmother; here they are now!"
"Well, let them come; you would do better, Grazia, to pay some attention
to your brother and sister; they have been fighting like two cocks."
Grazia made no reply, but taking the iron candlestick from Aunt
Bachissia she blew out the light, and hid it behind a bench in the
kitchen, saying in a low voice: "You ought to be ashamed, Grandmother,
to have such a looking candlestick, now that Uncle Paolo is here."
"Uncle Paolo! Well, I declare! Do you suppose he was brought up on
gold?"
"He has been to Rome."
"To Rome! The idea! They only don't have lights like that there, because
they have to buy their oil by the pennyworth. Here, we can use as much
oil as we want."
"You must be green if you believe that!" said the girl; then, suddenly
catching the sound of her grandfather's and uncle's voices, she flew to
meet them, trembling with excitement.
"Good-evening, Giovanna; Aunt Bachissia, how goes it with you?" said the
hearty voice of the student. "I? Very well, the Lord be praised! I was
sorry to hear of your misfortune. Never mind, courage! Who knows? The
sentence is to-morrow, is it not?"
He led the way into the room where the supper-table was laid, followed
by the two women and the children, whom their uncle's presence filled
with mixed terror and delight.
He was short and limped slightly, one foot being smaller than the other,
and the leg somewhat shorter; this circumstance had earned him the
nickname of Dr. Pededdu,[2] a jest which he took in very good part,
declaring that it was far better to have one foot smaller than the
other, rather than a head smaller than those of other people.
His fresh, round, smiling face, with its little blond moustache, was
surmounted by a big, tattered black hat. He proclaimed himself a
Socialist. Sitting down on the side of the bed, with both legs swinging,
he threw an arm around each staring, open-mouthed child, and drew it to
him, giving his attention meanwhile to Aunt Bachissia's recital of their
misfortunes. From time to time, however, his gaze wandered to Grazia,
the angles of whose girlish, undeveloped figure were accentuated by an
ill-fitting black frock much too small for her. Her own hard,
light-coloured orbs never left her uncle's face.
"Listen," said Aunt Bachissia, in her harsh voice, "I will tell you
the whole story. Costantino Ledda had an uncle by blood, his own
father's brother. His name was Basile Ledda, but they called him 'the
Vulture'--may God preserve him in glory if he's not fast in the devil's
clutches already--because he was so grasping.
"He was a wretch, a regular yellow vulture. God may have forgiven him,
but there, they say he starved his wife to death! He was Costantino's
guardian; the boy had some money of his own, his uncle spent it all,
and then began to ill-use him. He beat him, and sometimes he would tie
him down between two stones in the open field, so that the bees would
come and sting him on the eyes. Well, one day Costantino ran away; he
was sixteen years old. For three years nothing was heard of him; he
says he was working in the mines; I don't know, but anyhow, that's
what he says."
"Yes, yes, he was working in the mines," interrupted Giovanna.
"I don't know," said the mother, pursing up her lips with an air of
doubt, "well, anyway, the fact remains that one day, during the time
that he was off, some one fired at Basile the Vulture out in the field.
It is true he did have enemies. When Costantino came back he admitted
that he had run away for fear he might be tempted to kill his uncle, he
hated him so.
"Afterwards, though, he tried to make his peace with him, and succeeded
too. But now listen to this, Paolo Porru----"
"Dr. Porru! Dr. Porreddu!" shouted the small nephew, correcting the
guest. The latter, turning on the boy angrily, started to box his ears,
whereupon Giovanna laughed. On beholding their heartbroken guest--she
who up to that moment had been surrounded by a halo of romance and
tragedy--actually laughing, the pale, lank Grazia broke into a nervous
laugh as well, and then Minnia laughed, and then the boy, and then the
student.
Aunt Bachissia glared about her, and, lifting one lean, yellow hand, was
about to bring it down on some one--she had not quite decided whether
her daughter or the boy--when Aunt Porredda appeared in the doorway,
bearing a steaming dish of macaroni.
She was followed by Uncle Efes Maria Porru, a big, imposing-looking man,
whose broad chest was uncomfortably contracted in a narrow blue velvet
jacket. He was a peasant, but affected a literary turn; his large,
colourless face resembled a mask of ancient marble; he wore a short,
curling beard, and had thick lips always parted, and big, clear eyes.
"Come, sit down at once," said Aunt Porredda, planting the dish in the
centre of the table. "What! laughing, are you? The little doctor is
making you all laugh?"
"I was just about to give your grandson a box on the ear," said Aunt
Bachissia.
"And why were you going to do that, my soul? Come now, sit down, all of
you; Giovanna, here; Dr. Porreddu, over there."
The student threw himself back full-length on the bed, stretched out his
arms, lifted his legs high in air, dropped them again, sat up, and
jumped to his feet with a yawn.
The children and Giovanna began to laugh again.
"A little gymnastic exercise does one good. Great Lord! how I shall
sleep to-night! My bones feel as though they had lost all their joints.
How tall you have grown, Grazia; you look like a bean-pole."
The girl reddened and dropped her eyes; while Aunt Bachissia thrust out
her lips, annoyed at the student's lack of interest, as well as at the
general indifference to Costantino's fate. To be sure, Giovanna herself
had apparently forgotten, and it was only when Aunt Porredda placed
before her a bountiful helping of macaroni covered with fragrant red
gravy, that she suddenly recollected herself; her face clouded over, and
she refused to eat.
"There now! what did I tell you?" cried Aunt Porredda. "She is crazy,
absolutely crazy! Why can't you eat? What has eating your supper
to-night to do with the sentence to-morrow?"
"Come, come," said Aunt Bachissia crossly. "Don't be foolish, don't go
to work and spoil these good people's pleasure."
"A brave heart," said Uncle Efes Maria pompously--fastening his napkin
under his chin and seeing an opportunity for a learned observation--"a
brave heart defies fate, as Dante Alighieri says. Come now, Giovanna,
prove yourself a true flower of the mountains; more enduring than the
rocks themselves. Time softens all things."
Giovanna began to eat, but with a lump in her throat that made
swallowing a difficult matter.
Paolo, meanwhile, had not spoken a word, but sat bowed over his plate,
which, by the time Giovanna had managed to get down her first mouthful,
was entirely clean.
"Why, you are a perfect hurricane, my son!" said Aunt Porredda. "What a
ravenous appetite you have, to be sure! Do you want some more--yes?--and
more still--yes----?"
"Well done!" cried Uncle Efes Maria. "It looks as though you had found
very little to eat in the Eternal City!"
"Eh, that is precisely what I was saying just now," said Aunt Porredda.
"Beautiful streets, if you will; but--when it comes to buying
anything--the pennies have to be counted down! I've been told all about
it! On my word, they say that there are no provisions stored in the
houses as there are here, and you all know for yourselves that with no
provisions in the house it is not easy to satisfy one's appetite!"
Aunt Bachissia nodded affirmatively; she knew only too well what happens
when there is nothing in a house to eat.
"Is that true or not, Dr. Porreddu?"
"True, perfectly true," said he, laughing, and eating, and waving his
large, white hands with their long nails, in the air.
"It is that that makes him such a leech, a regular vampire," said Uncle
Efes Maria, turning to his guests. "I'll not have a drop of blood left
in my veins. Body of the devil! how the money must go in Rome!"
"Ah, if you only knew!" sighed Paolo. "Everything, every single thing is
so frightfully dear. Twenty centimes for a single peach! There, I feel
better now."
"Twenty centimes!" exclaimed all the company in chorus.
"Well, Aunt Bachissia, and then? After Costantino came back?" asked
Paolo.
"Well, Paolo Porru--you see I go on addressing you familiarly, even
though you will be a doctor soon; when you were a little chap I used to
go so far as to give you a cuff now and then----"
"I have no recollection of it, but go on with your story," said the
young man, while Grazia's nostrils fairly dilated with anger.
"Well, as I said, Costantino disappeared for three years, and----"
"He was working in the mines, all right; then he came back and was
reconciled to his uncle. What then?"
"He met my Giovanna here, and they fell in love with each other; but the
uncle made objections because my girl was poor. Then they began to hate
one another worse than ever. Costantino was working for the Vulture, and
he would never let him have a centime. So, then, one day Costantino
came to me and said: 'I'm a poor man; I haven't got any money to buy
trinkets for the bride, or to provide a feast and all the rest for a
Christian wedding; and you are poor, too. Now then, suppose we do this
way: we will have the civil ceremony, and all live and work together;
then, when we have saved enough, we will be married by God. A great many
do it that way, why shouldn't we?' So we did; we had the civil ceremony
very quietly, and afterwards we all lived together and were happy
enough. But the Vulture was furious; he used to come and yell things at
us even in our own street, and he tried to interfere with Costantino in
every way he could. But we just kept on working. So at last, when the
vintage was over last autumn, we began preparing the sweets and things
for the wedding, and then Basile Ledda was found dead one day, murdered
in his own house! The evening before, Costantino had been seen going in
there; what he went for was to tell his uncle about the wedding, and to
try to make his peace with him. Ah, poor boy! he would not run off and
hide somewhere as I begged and implored him to do, so of course they
arrested him."
"He would not go because he was innocent, mamma, my----"
"There you go, you simpleton, beginning to cry again! If you don't stop,
I'll not say another word, so there! Well, then, Costantino was
arrested, and now the trial is just over, and the public prosecutor has
asked to have him sent to the galleys; but he's a dog, that public
prosecutor! They have evidence, to be sure; Costantino was seen on the
night of the murder entering his uncle's house, where he lived all by
himself, like the wild beast that he was; and then their relations in
the past--all true enough, but there are no proofs. Costantino was very
contradictory, and full of remorse about something; he kept repeating:
'It is the mortal sin'; for you must know that he is a good Christian,
and he thinks that this misfortune has been sent as a punishment because
he and Giovanna lived together before they were married by religious
ceremony."
"But tell me one thing----"
"Just wait a moment. I should add that now they _have_ been married by
religious ceremony--in prison! Yes, my dear, in prison; fancy what a
horrid thing that was! Now don't begin crying again, Giovanna; if you
do, I'll throw this salt-cellar at your head. There she is, the goose!
Every one told her not to do it. 'Don't be married now,' they said. 'If
he's found guilty and sentenced, you can marry some one else!'"
"How contemptible!" began the young woman, with flashing eyes, but the
mother merely turned a cold, penetrating look upon her, and she broke
off at once.
"Did _I_ say so?" demanded the other. "No, it was other people, and they
said it for your own good."
"For my good, for my good," moaned Giovanna, burying her face in her
hands; "there is no more good for me, ever again, ever again!"
"Have you children?" asked Paolo.
"Yes, one, a boy. If it were not for him--alas, alas! if Costantino is
sentenced, and there were no child--then, oh, misery, misery----!" And
she seized her hair by the roots, and began to drag her head violently
from side to side, like an insane person.
"You mean that you would kill yourself, my beloved?" asked Aunt
Bachissia ironically.
To the student there was something artificial in the action; it reminded
him of a famous actress whom he had once seen in a French comedy, and
this open display of grief only aroused his cynicism.
"After all," said he, "the new divorce law has been approved, and any
woman whose husband is serving a sentence can regain her freedom."
Giovanna did not appear so much as to take in what he said, and
continued to rock her head from side to side. Aunt Porredda, however,
spoke up in a decided tone: "What an idea! as though any one but God
could undo a marriage!"
"Yes, I read about that in the papers," said Uncle Efes Maria jocularly.
"Those are the divorces they get on the Continent, where men and women
marry over and over again without troubling themselves about priests, or
magistrates either, for that matter, but here!--shame!"
"No, Daddy Porru, that's not on the Continent, it's in Turkey," said
Grazia.
"Here too, here too," said Aunt Bachissia, who had eagerly followed
every word.
As soon as supper was over the two Eras went off to see their lawyer.
"What room have you given them?" asked Paolo. "The 'strangers' room'?"
"Why, of course; why?"
"Because I really thought I should like to sleep there myself; it is
suffocating down here. What better 'stranger' could there be than I?"
"Be patient just till to-morrow, my boy. Remember these are poor
guests."
"O Lord! what barbarous customs! Will there ever be an end to them?" he
exclaimed impatiently.
"That's just what I should like to know," said Uncle Efes Maria. "These
women are draining my pockets. Well, what do you think of the new
Ministry?"
"I don't think anything of it at all!" laughed the student, recalling a
character in the _Dame chez Maxim_, a favourite play at the Manzoni
Theatre, which he frequented. Then he sauntered off to look at some
books he had left on a shelf at the other end of the room. Minnia and
the boy had run out into the courtyard; Grazia, seated at the table,
with both cheeks resting on her closed fists, was still gazing at her
uncle. He turned towards her:
"You read novels, don't you?"
"I? No," she answered, turning red.
"Well, I only wanted to say that if I ever catch you reading certain
books--I'll rap you over the head with them."
Her under-lip began to tremble, and, not to let him see her cry, she
jumped up and ran out. In the courtyard she found the two children still
quarrelling over the purse with the picture of the Pope. "As for
stealing," the boy was saying, "you had better keep quiet about that;
you, and she there--the bean-pole--you two sold some wine to-day, and
kept the money!"
"Oh, what a lie!" cried Grazia, falling upon him and dealing him a blow,
but crying herself bitterly all the while.
The courtyard was filled with the chirping of the crickets and the noise
of the horses' hoofs; and the warm, starlit air was heavy with the scent
of the hay.
"You must not be hard on her, she is a poor orphan," said Aunt Porredda,
speaking in Grazia's behalf (they were the three children of an older
son of the Porrus', a well-to-do shepherd whose wife had died the year
before). "And why not let her read if she wants to?"
"Yes, yes, let her read by all means," said Uncle Efes Maria pompously.
"Ah! if they had only allowed _me_ to read when I was young--I would
have been an astronomer, as learned as a priest!" To Uncle Efes Maria an
astronomer represented the height of learning and cultivation--a
philosopher, as it were.
"Have you seen the Pope, my son?" asked Aunt Porredda, from an
association of ideas.
"No."
"What! You have never seen the Pope?"
"Oh! what do you expect? The Pope is kept shut up in a box; if you want
to see him, you've got to pay well for it."
"Oh, go along!" said she. "You are an infidel," and, going out to where
the children were still fighting, she made a rapid descent upon them,
separated the belligerents, and sent each flying in a different
direction. "On my word!" she cried, "you are just like so many cocks.
The Lord have mercy on me! Here they are, the chicken-cocks! Bad
children, every one of you, bad, bad children!"
And the lamentations of the youngsters arose and mingled with the noises
of the summer evening.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Porredda, female diminutive for Porru.
[2] Piedino,--little foot.
CHAPTER II
The next morning Giovanna was the first to awaken. Through a pane of
glass set in the door came a faint, roseate, sunrise glow; and the early
morning silence was broken only by the chattering of the swallows. Not
yet fully aroused, her first sensations were agreeable; then, all at
once it was as though a terrific clap of thunder had sounded in her ear.
She remembered!
This was the day that was to decide her husband's fate. She knew for a
certainty that he would be condemned, and yet she persisted in hoping
still. It mattered very little to her whether or no he were guilty;
probably she had not at any time troubled herself much with that aspect
of the case, and what wholly concerned her now were the consequences.
The thought of being parted, perhaps forever, from this man, young,
strong, and active as a greyhound, with his caressing hands and ardent
lips, was agony; and as the full consciousness of her misery came over
her, she jumped out of bed, and began drawing on her clothes, saying
breathlessly: "It is late, late, late."
Aunt Bachissia opened her little firefly eyes, and then she also got up;
but she realised too clearly what that day, and the next, and the year
following, and the next two, and five, and ten years would probably be
like, to be in any haste to begin them. She dressed deliberately,
plunged her hands into water, passed them across her face, and dried it,
then carefully arranged the folds of her scarf about her head.
"It is late," repeated Giovanna. "Dear Lord, how late it is!" But her
mother's calm demeanour presently quieted her. Aunt Bachissia went down
to the kitchen and Giovanna followed. Aunt Bachissia prepared the
_cafe-au-lait_ and bread for Costantino (the two women were allowed to
take food to the prisoner), placed them in a basket, and started for the
jail, Giovanna still following.
The streets were deserted; the sun, just appearing above the granite
peaks of Orthobene, filled the atmosphere with fine, rose-gold dust. The
sky was so blue, the little birds so gay, and the air so still and
fragrant, that it was like the early morning of some festal day, before
the human bustle and the ringing of the church bells have disturbed the
stillness and charm.
Giovanna, crossing the street that leads from the station--near which
the Porrus lived--to the prison, gazed upon her own violet-coloured
mountains in the distance, hemming in the wild valleys below like a
setting of amethysts; she inhaled the delicious air filled with the
perfume of growing things; she thought of her little slate-rock house,
of her child, of her lost happiness, and it seemed as though her heart
would burst.
The mother walked briskly on in front, poising the basket on her head.
Presently they reached the great, round, white, desolate pile in which
are the prisons. A sentry stood, mute and immovable, looking in the
morning light like a statue carved out of stone. A single green shrub
growing against the blank expanse of wall seemed the rather to
accentuate the dreariness of the spot. A huge, green door, which from
time to time opened and shut like the mouth of a dragon, now opened and
swallowed up the two women. Every one in that dismal abode had come to
know them; from the florid, important-looking head-keeper, who might
have been a general at the very least, down to the junior custodian,
with his pale face, his straight blond moustache, and his pretensions to
elegance.
The visitors were not allowed to penetrate beyond the gloomy passageway,
whose fetid atmosphere, however, gave some idea of the horrors that lay
beyond. The pale and elegant guard, coming forward, took their basket,
and Giovanna asked in a low voice if Costantino had slept.
Yes, he had slept, but he kept dreaming all the time. He did nothing but
repeat over and over again the words--"_The mortal sin!_"
"Ah! may he go to the devil with his mortal sin!" exclaimed Aunt
Bachissia angrily; "he ought to stop it!"
"Mamma, dear, why need you swear at him? Has not fate cursed him enough
as it is?" murmured Giovanna.
The women now left the building and stood outside, waiting for the
prisoner to be brought forth. When Giovanna's eyes fell upon the group
of carbineers who were to escort him to court, she fell to trembling
violently, although on all the preceding days she had seen precisely the
same thing; and her big, black eyes, stretched to their widest extent,
fastened upon the great doorway with the unseeing stare of a crazy
woman. Slowly the minutes lagged by, then the dragon mouth opened, and
once more, surrounded by stony-faced guards with fierce black
moustaches, the figure of Costantino appeared.
He was tall and as lithe as a young poplar tree; a long lock of lustrous
black hair hung down on either side of a face, beardless, pallid from
prison confinement, and almost feminine in its beauty. The eyes were
large, and chestnut-brown in colour; the mouth small, and as innocent as
a child's, and there was a little cleft in the middle of the chin. He
looked like a young Apollo.
The moment his eyes fell upon Giovanna, although he too had been waiting
for that moment, he grew whiter than ever, and stopped short, resisting
the guards. Giovanna rushed forward, sobbing, and seized hold of his
manacled hands.
"Forward!" said one of the carbineers; then, gently, to her: "You know,
my girl, it is not allowed."
Aunt Bachissia now stepped forward as well, darting rapid glances out of
her little green eyes. The escort halted for an instant, and Costantino,
smiling bravely, said in a voice that was almost cheerful: "Courage!
Courage!"
"The lawyer is waiting for you," said Aunt Bachissia, and then the
guards pushed the women gently aside.
"Stand back, good people! Out of the way!" said one, and they led the
prisoner off, still smiling back at Giovanna, his gleaming white teeth
showing between lips that were still round and full, albeit colourless.
Thus he disappeared from view between his stony-faced conductors.
Aunt Bachissia now, in her turn, dragged off Giovanna, who wanted to
follow her husband, and insisted that she should return first to the
Porrus' for breakfast.
They found the courtyard bathed in sunlight. It played upon the shining
leaves of the grape-vines, from which hung bunches of unripe grapes like
pale-green marble; the swallows disporting in it were moved to pour
forth floods of song; and it tricked out Uncle Efes Maria, preparing to
set out for the country on his chestnut horse. How full of light and
cheerfulness seemed that little, enclosed spot, with its low stone-wall,
beyond which could be seen a broad expanse of open country, stretching
away to the distant horizon! The children sat on the threshold
of the kitchen door, devouring their breakfast of bread soaked in
_cafe-au-lait_; Grazia had taken hers to a retired corner, possibly
in order not to be seen engaged upon anything so prosaic by the
student-uncle. He, meanwhile, stood in his shirt-sleeves in the middle
of the enclosure, gulping down the contents of a great bowl.
"How large is St. Peter's?" asked Aunt Porredda, who was polishing the
doctor's shoes, and marvelling the while to hear of the wonderful things
he had seen.
"How large? Why, as large as a _tanca_.[3] You can't even pray there; no
one could say his prayers in a _tanca_. The angels are as large as that
gateway--the littlest ones--those that hold the holy-water basins."
"Ah! then you have to go upstairs to reach the water?"
"No; they are on their knees, I think. Give me a little more
_cafe-au-lait_, mamma; is there any?"
"Of course there is. It seems to me you have come back very hungry, my
little Paolo; you're a regular shark!"
"Do you know how much this breakfast would cost in Rome? One franc! not
a centime less; and then the milk is all water!"
"The Lord preserve us! Why, that is frightful!" "What do you think? I
saw some dolphins at sea; the strangest-looking creatures----Oh! here
are our guests; good-morning; what have you been about?"
Giovanna described the meeting with her husband, and was beginning to
cry again, when Aunt Porredda took her by the hand and led her into the
kitchen.
"You have need of all your strength to-day, my soul," said she, setting
before her a large cup of _cafe-au-lait_. A little later the two women
started out again for the Court of Assize; Paolo promising to join them
there.
"Courage!" said Aunt Porredda, as she took leave of Giovanna, and the
latter heard her husband's sentence in the kind hostess's tone, and went
off with the look of a whipped dog.
Paolo followed her with his eyes; then, limping across the courtyard to
his mother, he said a singular thing:
"Listen to me, mamma; before two years have gone by that young woman
will be married to some one else!"
"What do you mean by saying such a thing, Dr. Pededdu!" cried the
mother, who always addressed her son by his nickname when she was angry
with him. "Upon my word, you must be crazy!"
"Oh! mamma, I have crossed the sea," he replied. "Let us hope, at all
events, that she will engage me as her lawyer."
"That young man devours his food like a dog," said Giovanna to her
mother, as they descended the steep little street. "May the Lord have
mercy on him!"
Aunt Bachissia, walking along plunged in thought, answered through her
clenched teeth, "He will make a good lawyer; he will gnaw his clients to
the bone and then swallow them whole!"
Then the two walked on in silence, but a moment later Aunt Bachissia
stumbled, and as she did so, for some reason that she could not fathom,
it flashed into her mind that, should it ever so fall out that Giovanna
were to apply for a divorce, she would ask Paolo to be their lawyer.
It was eight o'clock when they reached the Cathedral Square, and the
small windows of the Court House close by were sending back dazzling
reflections of the early morning sun.
The little granite-paved square was already crowded with country friends
and neighbours, witnesses in the trial. Some of these immediately
approached the two women, and greeted them with the inevitable
commonplace: "Courage! Courage!"
"Oh! courage; yes, we have plenty of it, thank you," said Aunt
Bachissia. "Now leave us in peace." And she continued on her way, as
proud and erect as a race-horse. The road was only too familiar already,
and she followed it straight to the fateful hall. Behind her came
Giovanna, and behind her, the others: heavily bearded, roughly clad men;
a handful of idlers; last of all, a near-sighted old woman with no
teeth.
The jury, most of them old and fat, were already in their places. One of
them had an enormous hooked nose; two others, fierce-eyed, thickly
bearded men, looked like bandits; three sat in a little group with their
heads close together, laughing over something in a newspaper.
In a few moments the judge appeared, his rosy face surrounded by a
straggling white beard. Then came the public prosecutor, a young man
with a fair, drooping moustache, flushed and tyrannical-looking. Then
the registrar, the ushers--all of these functionaries looking to
Giovanna, in their black robes, like so many evil genii come to weave
their fatal spells about poor Costantino.
And there he was himself! Erect in the cage, like some frightened animal
held in leash by the two stony-faced carbineers. His gaze was fastened
upon Giovanna, but now there was no smile; he seemed overpowered by the
weight of his misery; and, as his glance fell upon those men, the
arbiters of his fate, his clear, childlike eyes contracted and grew dark
with terror.
Giovanna, too, seemed to feel the grip of an iron hand on her heart, and
at times the sensation was so acute as to give her actual physical pain.
The lawyer for the defence, a little pink-and-yellow man, with a
high-pitched, querulous voice, began his speech.
His defence had been sufficiently unfortunate from the first; now he
merely repeated what had already been said; and his words seemed to fall
into space like drops of water dripping into a great empty vessel. The
public prosecutor, with his drooping moustaches, maintained an air of
insolent indifference. A few of the jury appeared to take credit to
themselves for sitting through it with patience; while the others, so
far as could be observed, did not so much as pretend to listen. The only
persons present, in fact, who really took any interest in the summing up
of the defence were Aunt Bachissia, Giovanna, and the prisoner; and the
longer their advocate talked, the more did these feel that their case
was hopelessly lost.
From time to time some new arrival would take one of the seats behind
Giovanna, and whenever this happened, she would turn quickly to see if
it were Paolo. For some reason she found herself ardently wishing for
him; she felt as though his mere presence in the courtroom might help
them in some way.
At last the lawyer ceased. Instantly, Costantino arose, and, growing
very red in the face, asked if he might speak. "The--the"--said he,
pointing in the direction of the advocate--"the gentleman-lawyer has
spoken--he has defended me--and I thank him kindly; but he has not
spoken the way I could have wished; he did not say--well, he did not
say----"
He stopped, breathing hard.
"Add anything to your defence that occurs to you," said the judge.
The prisoner stood for a moment with his eyes cast down, in an attitude
of deep thought. The flush died out of his face, leaving it whiter than
before; presently he passed his hand across his forehead with a
convulsive movement, and raised his head.
"This is it," he began in a low tone. "I--I----" but again his voice
failed; then, suddenly clenching his fists, he turned towards the
lawyer, and burst out in a voice of thunder: "But I am innocent! I tell
you I am innocent!"
The lawyer hastily motioned with his hand to quiet him; the judge raised
his eyebrows, as though to say: "And suppose he had said so a hundred
times, is it our fault that we are not convinced?" And a woman's sob was
heard through the courtroom.
Giovanna had broken down, and Aunt Bachissia at once dragged her towards
the door, reluctant and tearful. Every one but the public prosecutor
watched the struggle between the two women.
A little later the court withdrew to deliberate.
Aunt Bachissia, followed by two of the neighbours, hauled Giovanna into
the square, where, instead of trying to comfort her, she fell to
scolding her roundly. Was she quite mad? Did she want to be removed by
force? "If you don't behave yourself," she concluded, "I declare I'll
give you a good beating!"
"Mamma, oh! mamma," sobbed the other. "They are going to condemn him!
They are going to take him from me, and I can do nothing, I can do
nothing----!"
"What do you expect to do?" asked one of the neighbours. "As sure as I
am alive there is nothing for you to do. Be patient, though, and wait a
little longer----"
At this moment three figures in black appeared, one of them laughing and
limping. They were Paolo Porru and two young priests, friends of his.
"There she is now," said the student. "It looks as though he had been
sentenced already!"
"Upon my word," remarked one of the priests, "she is indeed a young
colt! One that knows how to kick, too! She looks----"
The other one, meanwhile, was staring curiously at Giovanna, and as they
all three approached the Eras, Paolo asked if the argument had closed.
"It's the man who murdered his uncle, isn't it?" enquired one of the
priests. The other continued to stare at Giovanna, who had begun to
regain her self-control.
"He has murdered no one at all," said Aunt Bachissia haughtily.
"Murderer yourself, black crows that you are!"
"Crows, are we? Well, you are a witch!" retorted the priest. Upon which
the bystanders began to laugh.
Giovanna, meanwhile, at the solicitation of Paolo, had become quite
calm, and she now promised not to make a scene if they would let her
return to the courtroom. They all, accordingly, went in together, and
found that the jury, after a brief deliberation, were already taking
their seats. A profound silence fell upon the dim, hot room. Giovanna
heard an insect humming and buzzing against one of the windows; her
limbs grew heavy; she felt as though her body, her arms, her legs, were
strung on rods of ice-cold iron. Then the judge pronounced the sentence
in a low, careless voice, while the prisoner looked at him fixedly and
held his breath. Giovanna kept hearing the buzzing of the fly, and was
conscious of a feeling of intense dislike for that rosy, white-bearded
man, not so much on account of what he was saying, but because he said
it with such an air of indifference. And this was what it was:
A sentence of twenty-seven years' imprisonment "for the homicide who,
after long premeditation, had at last committed the crime upon the
person of his guardian and own uncle by blood!"
Giovanna had so entirely prepared her mind to expect thirty years, that
for the first moment twenty-seven seemed a respite, but it was only for
a moment; then, swiftly realising that in thirty years three count for
nothing, she had to bite her lips violently to keep back the shriek that
rose to them. Everything grew dim before her; by a desperate effort of
the will she forced herself to look at Costantino, and saw, or thought
she saw, his face old and grey, his eyes, dim and vacant, wandering
aimlessly about him. Ah! he was not looking at her, he was not even
looking at her any more! Already he was parted from her forever. He was
dead, though still among the living; they had killed him! Those fat,
self-satisfied men, who sat there in perfect indifference, awaiting
their next victim. She felt her reason forsaking her, and suddenly a
succession of piercing shrieks rent the air; some one seized her, and
she was dragged out again into the sunlit square.
"Daughter! daughter! Do you know what you are doing? You must be mad!
You are howling like a wild beast!" cried Aunt Bachissia, grasping her
by the arm. "And what good will it do? There is the appeal still,--the
Court of Cassation,--do be quiet, my soul!"
All this had happened in a few moments. The witnesses, the lawyer, Paolo
Porru, and the others now came crowding around the women, trying to
think of something to say to comfort them. Giovanna, dry-eyed and
staring, was sobbing in a heartbroken way, disjointed sentences falling
from her lips, expressions of passionate tenderness for Costantino, and
wild threats and imprecations addressed to the jury. She begged so hard
to be allowed to remain until the condemned man should be brought out,
that they agreed. At last he appeared; bent, livid, sunken-eyed; grown
prematurely old.
Giovanna rushed forward, and, as the carbineers made no motion to stop,
she went ahead of them, walking backwards, smiling into her husband's
face, telling him that it would all be set right in the Court of
Cassation, and that she would sell everything, to the very clothes on
her back, in order to save him. But he only stared back at her,
wide-eyed, unseeing; and when the carbineers pushed her gently aside,
one of them saying: "Go away, my good woman, go off now, and try to be
patient," he too said: "Yes, go away, Giovanna, try to get permission to
see me before I am taken away, and--bring the child, and take courage."
So Giovanna and her mother went back to the house, where Aunt Porredda
embraced and wept over them; then, however, appearing to repent of such
weakness, she set about to remedy it.
"Well," said she. "Twenty-seven years, what is that after all? Suppose
he had been sentenced to thirty, would not that have been worse? What!
You are going away? In this heat! Why, you must be crazy, both of you;
upon my word, I shan't let you go."
"Yes," said Aunt Bachissia; "we must get off; the others are all going
back now, and will be company for us. But if it won't be putting you out
too much, Giovanna will return in a few days and bring the boy."
"Why, bless you! is not this house the same as your own?"
They sat down to dinner, but Giovanna, though now perfectly calm, would
touch nothing. Two or three times Aunt Porredda attempted to talk on
indifferent subjects: she asked if the boy had cut his first teeth;
remarked that travelling in such heat might make them ill; and enquired
about the barley-crop in their neighbourhood.
Profound peace brooded over the courtyard. The sun poured down on the
grape-vines overhead, and traced delicate lacework patterns on the
paving where it filtered through the leaves. The swallows flew hither
and thither, singing joyously. Paolo sat reading the newspaper as he ate
his dinner. Grazia and Minnia,--the boy had gone off with his
grandfather,--in their sparse, tumbled little black dresses, kept
falling asleep over theirs, overpowered by the noontide somnolence. Aunt
Porredda's words floated dreamily out into all this sunlight and peace,
into which Aunt Bachissia's tragic mien, and Giovanna's mute air of woe,
seemed to strike a note of discord.
The moment the meal was ended, the visitors packed their wallet, saddled
their horse, and said farewell. Paolo promised to see their lawyer about
the appeal to the Court of Cassation, and as soon as they were well out
of sight, began to play with Minnia, forcing her to shake off her
drowsiness, and pretending that he was crazy. He would first laugh
uproariously, shaking in every limb; then, suddenly become perfectly
silent, staring ahead of him with wild fixed gaze; then break forth
once more into peals of laughter.
The girls were highly diverted; they too fell to laughing immoderately;
and the sun-bathed courtyard and tranquil house, freed at last from the
gloomy presence of the guests, was filled with sunshine, and merriment,
and peace.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] An enclosed pasture, but of vast extent.
CHAPTER III
Meanwhile, the Eras pursued their journey under the burning July sun.
The road at first led downwards to the bottom of the valley; then
crossed it and ascended the violet-coloured mountains that, shutting in
the horizon beyond, lost themselves in the haze that rose from the
heated earth. It was a melancholy progress. The two women rode one
horse, a dejected-looking beast, tractable and mild. Their travelling
companions had gradually drifted away; some riding on ahead; others
falling behind, but all alike were silent and depressed, overpowered by
the suffocating heat, the stillness, and the sad outcome of their
journey. They felt Costantino's misfortune almost as keenly as the women
themselves, and out of respect for Giovanna's dumb agony, either
remained silent, or, if they spoke, did so in undertones that awoke no
echoes, and failed even to break the intense silence.
Thus they travelled on, and on; descending steadily towards the bed of a
torrent, whose course ran through the bottom of the valley. The path,
though not very steep, was rugged and at times difficult to follow as it
wound its way between rocks, stretches of barren, dusty ground, and
yellow stubble. At long intervals a scraggy tree would raise its
solitary head; lifeless, immovable in the breathless atmosphere, like
some lonely hermit of the wilderness; its shadow falling athwart the
sun-baked earth, like that of a little wandering cloud, lost and
frightened in the great expanse of light its presence alone seems to
mar. Occasionally the shrill note of a wild bird would issue from one of
these oases of shade, only to die away instantly, choked and overpowered
by the weight of the all-embracing silence. Big purple thistles,
pink-belled convolvuluses, and lilac mallows, rearing themselves here
and there in defiance of the sun, seemed only to enhance the general air
of desolation; while below and above stretched endless lines of ancient
grey stone-walls, covered with dry yellow moss. Fields of uncut grain,
with spears like yellow pine-cones, closed in the distance.
On, and on, they went. Giovanna's head was burning beneath her woollen
kerchief upon which the sun's rays beat mercilessly; and big tears
coursed silently down her cheeks. She tried to hide them from her
mother, who was riding on the saddle, while she was seated on the
crupper, but Aunt Bachissia heard, Aunt Bachissia saw, even out of the
back of her head; and presently she could contain herself no longer.
"Look here, my soul," said she suddenly, as they traversed the bottom of
the valley, between great thickets of flowering oleanders; "will you
have the goodness to stop? What are you crying for, anyhow? Haven't you
known it for months and months?"
Instead of stopping, however, Giovanna only burst forth into loud sobs.
Aunt Bachissia glanced around; the others had all gone on ahead, and
they were quite alone.
"Haven't you known all along how it would be?" she repeated, in low,
even tones that seemed to Giovanna to come from an immeasurable distance
and, sweeping by them, to be swallowed up in the surrounding void. "Are
you such a fool, my soul, as not to have known it from the first? Did he
or did he not kill that infamous Vulture? If he killed him----"
"But he never said he had done it!" interrupted Giovanna.
"Well! that was all that was needed, for him to be crazy enough to say
so. My soul! just think for a moment, nothing more was wanting! For my
own part, I always expected that some time or other he would crush that
Vulture as one crushes a wasp that has stung him. You say Costantino is
a good Christian! My soul! one would have thought that by this time you
would begin to have some idea of what it means to hate! Would you, yes
or no, if you had the chance, murder those men back there who condemned
him? Very well, then. He murdered the Vulture, and to a certain extent I
sympathise with him, because I know the human heart. But I have not
forgiven him, and I never will forgive him, for taking the risks he did.
No, that I will not, not for the love of God! He had a wife and a child,
and if he were going to do it he should have gone about it more
carefully. And now, that's enough of it. Let the whole matter drop. You
are still young, Giovanna; you must think of him as of one who is dead."
"But he is not dead!" wailed Giovanna desperately.
"Very well, then," said Aunt Bachissia angrily. "Go and hang yourself.
There, do you see that tree over yonder? Well, go and hang yourself from
it; but don't torment me any more. You have always been a torment. If
you had married Brontu Dejas everything would have been right; but no,
you must have that beggar; very well, the best thing for you to do now
is to hang yourself!"
Giovanna made no reply. In the bottom of her heart she too believed
Costantino to be guilty, but she had long ceased to care. In her present
misery all she took note of was the central fact of his condemnation,
and she could not understand why ordinary mortals should have the power
so to dispose of a fellow-creature. Ah, how she hated that mysterious,
invincible power! She felt towards it as she did towards those horrible
spirits, unseen, but _felt_, which fly abroad on stormy nights!
On, and on, they went. Now they had crossed the valley and were slowly
ascending the mountain on its further side. The sun began to sink
towards the west, the horizon to open; the sky grew soft, and the
landscape lost its look of utter desolation. The shadows of the
mountain-peaks stretched down now, clear into the dim depths of the
valley, where a few late dog roses still bloomed; a little breeze
sprang up and filled the air with the odour of wild growing things.
Insensibly every one's spirits revived under the influence of this
unlooked-for shade and coolness. One of their companions, joining the
two women, began to recount an adventure a friend of his had had close
to that very spot; at one point the story became so entertaining that
even Giovanna smiled faintly.
On, and on. Now the sun was setting, and from the height they had
attained they could make out the sea, a bluish circle, bounded by the
horizon. Finally, beyond a thick-growing mass of trees and bushes so
sturdy as to withstand alike the wild winter blasts and the scorching
heats of summer, lying in the midst of the melancholy uplands like an
island in a sea of light and solitude, they descried their own village,
the eyrie of a strong, handsome, and primitive people; shepherds for the
most part, or peasants occupied in raising grain and honey.
Green, rocky pastures, gay in the springtime with daffodils, and
fragrant with mint and thyme, and fields of grain, hemmed in the little
group of slate-stone cottages that gleamed in the sun like burnished
silver. Here and there a good-sized tree cast its shadow athwart this
quail's nest, hidden away, as it were, amid the billows of ripening
grain. Lines of green tamarisks, and a wilderness of thyme and arbute,
lay beyond. Further still were the limitless stretches of the uplands,
and above all spread a sky of indescribable softness and beauty. On the
right, against this sky, the lonely mountain-peaks reared themselves
like a company of sphinxes, blue in the morning, lilac at noonday, and
purple or bronze-coloured at evening; their rugged sides covered with
forests, the home of eagles and vultures.
It was nearly dark when the Eras at last reached the village. Mount
Bellu, the colossus of that company of sphinxes, had enveloped itself in
a cloak of purple mist, and stood out against the pale, grey sky. The
street was already silent and deserted, and the clatter of the horse's
hoofs on the rough stone paving resounded like the blows of a hammer.
One after another their companions turned off, so that when they reached
their own home, the two women were quite alone.
The Era cottage stood on a little flat clearing, above the level of the
street. Higher up on the hillside, overlooking it, was another house, a
white one. A large almond-tree, growing beside a piece of crumbling wall
that extended from one corner of the cottage, overhung the street,
which, beyond this point, merged into the open country.
Scattered about on the level stretch of ground between the two
houses,--the grey cottage of the Eras and the white dwelling of the
Dejases,--beneath the shadow of the almond-tree, lay a quantity of great
boulders, convenient and comfortable resting-places; hence the spot had
come to be used by the villagers as a sort of common or place of public
resort. Hardly had the horse stopped before the cottage, when Giovanna
slid down and, with lagging steps and hanging head, advanced towards a
woman,--a relative left in charge during their absence,--who came
forward to meet them with the baby in her arms. Taking the child from
her, Giovanna clasped it closely to her breast, and began to weep,
burying her head on the chubby little shoulder. Her tears were now
flowing quietly enough, a feeling of numbness and of utter despair crept
over her, and the unhappiness of the preceding months seemed as nothing
in comparison with the misery and desolation of the present moment. The
baby, hardly yet five months old, had clear, violet eyes, and little,
unformed features set in a stiff, red cap with fringe hanging down over
the forehead. He recognised his mother, and began pulling with all his
strength on the end of her kerchief, kicking both little feet, and
crying: "Ah--ah--aah----"
"Malthinu, my little Malthineddu, my sole comfort in all the earth; your
daddy is dead," sobbed Giovanna.
The woman, understanding that Costantino had been found guilty, began to
cry as well. Suddenly Aunt Bachissia descended swiftly upon them.
Pushing Giovanna into the cottage, she asked the woman to help her
unload the horse.
"Are you stark mad, both of you?" she demanded in a low voice. "What
need is there to carry on like that, right out here in sight of the
white house? I can see the beak of that old Godmother Malthina now. Ah!
she will be delighted when she hears of our bad luck."
"No," said the woman, "she has come several times to ask for news of
Costantino, and she always seemed to feel very sorry. She told me she
had dreamed that he was condemned to penal servitude."
"Oh, yes! that is the kind of sorrow that an ill-tempered cur feels! I
know her! She's a venomous snake, and she can't forgive us. After all,"
she added a few minutes later, walking towards the cottage with the
wallet on her back, "she's right; we can't forgive ourselves."
Aunt Martina Dejas was the owner of the white house on the hill, and the
mother of that Brontu Dejas whom Giovanna had refused to marry. She was
very well off, but a miser, and Aunt Bachissia was quite mistaken in
supposing that she hated them. As a fact, the refusal had affected her
very little, either one way or the other.
"See here," said Aunt Bachissia, when they had finished unloading the
horse. "Will you do me one favour more, Maria Chicca? Will you take back
the horse and tell her that Costantino is to get twenty-seven years in
prison? Then watch her face."
The woman took hold of the bridle, the animal having been hired from the
Dejases, and led it towards the white house.
This house, formerly the property of a merchant who had failed, had been
bought at public sale a few years before. It was large and commodious,
with a portico in front that gave it an almost seignorial air, but which
was used as a promenade by Aunt Martina's chickens and pigs. It was an
inappropriate dwelling for rough shepherds like the Dejases, as was
shown by its rude furnishings, composed mainly of high clumsy wooden
bedsteads, roughly fashioned chests, and heavy chairs and stools. Aunt
Martina was seated on the portico, spinning--she could spin even in the
dark--when Maria Chicca approached, leading the horse. The house was
entirely unlighted, Brontu and the men being off at the sheepfolds,
while Aunt Martina never kept a servant. She had other sons and
daughters, all married, with whom she lived in a constant state of
warfare on account of her miserly habits. Whenever there was any
especial stress of work, she got in some of the neighbours to help.
Often Giovanna and her mother were hired in this way, being paid in
stale or injured farm produce. The Eras, however, were too poor to
refuse anything they could get.
"Well, what was the result?" asked the old woman, laying the spindle and
a little ball of flax on the bench beside her. She had a thin, nasal
voice; round, light eyes, placed close together; a delicate, aquiline
nose, and lips that were still full and red. "You are crying, Maria
Chicca. I saw those two poor women arrive, but I was afraid to go and
ask, because I dreamed last night that he had been sentenced to penal
servitude."
"Ah, no! they have given him twenty-seven years' imprisonment."
Aunt Martina appeared to be disappointed; not, indeed, that she bore
Costantino any ill-will, but because she had a firm belief in the
infallibility of her dreams.
She took the horse by the bridle, saying:
"I will go to the Eras' this evening, if I possibly can, but I'm not
sure. There's a man coming, he who worked for Basile Ledda; he is going
to hire out to us. He was one of the witnesses; but I believe he's back,
isn't he?"
"Yes, I think he is," said the other. And, returning to the cottage, she
began at once to relate how Aunt Martina felt very sorry; and how she
had dreamed that Costantino had got penal servitude; and that Giacobbe
Dejas--he was a poor relation of the other Dejases--was going to work
for them. Giovanna, who was nursing the child, and gazing down at it
sorrowfully, did not so much as raise her eyes. Aunt Bachissia, on the
contrary, asked innumerable questions: Had she found the old Dejas
alone? Was she spinning,--spinning there in the dark?--etc., etc.
"Listen," she said to Giovanna. "She may be here this evening."
Giovanna neither moved nor looked up.
"My soul! do you hear me?" cried the mother angrily. "She may come down
this evening."
"Who?" asked Giovanna, in the tone of a person just awake.
"Malthina Dejas!"
"Well, let her go to the devil!"
"Who is to go to the devil?" asked a sonorous voice from the doorway. It
was Isidoro Pane, an old leech-fisher related to the Eras. He had come
on a visit of condolence. Tall, with blue eyes and a yellow beard, a
bone rosary about his waist, and clasping a long staff with a bundle
fastened to the top, Uncle Isidoro looked like a pilgrim. He was the
poorest and the gentlest and the most peaceable inhabitant of
Orlei. When he wanted to swear, all he said was: "May you become a
leech-fisher!" He and Costantino were great friends. Often and often had
the two sung the holy lauds in church together, and the Eras had named
him as a witness for the defence, because no one could testify better
than he to the blameless character of the accused man. His name had,
however, been rejected. What, indeed, would the testimony of a poor
leech-fisher amount to when confronted with the majesty of the law!
The moment she saw him, Giovanna gave way and began to sob.
"The will of God be done!" said Isidoro, leaning his staff against the
wall. "Be patient, Giovanna Era, you must not lose your trust in God."
"You know?" asked Giovanna.
"Yes, I have heard. Well, he is innocent. And I tell you that even
though he has been condemned to-day, to-morrow his innocence may be
proved."
"Ah! Uncle Isidoro," said Giovanna, shaking her head. "Your confidence
doesn't impress me any longer. Up to yesterday I believed in you, but
now I have lost faith."
"You are not a good Christian; this is Bachissia Era's doing."
Aunt Bachissia, who regarded the fisherman with scant favour, and was
always afraid of his bringing vermin into the house, turned on him
angrily, and was about to launch forth into abuse, when another visitor
arrived. He was presently followed by others, and still others, until at
last the little cottage was filled with condoling neighbours; while
Giovanna, who was really tired by this time even of weeping, felt it
incumbent upon her to continue to sob and lament desperately.
All the time, Aunt Bachissia kept watching for the rich neighbour, but
she did not appear. Instead, there came Giacobbe Dejas, the man who was
about to enter her service. He was a cheerful soul, about fifty years
old; ordinary-looking, short, thin, smooth-shaven, and bald; with no
eyebrows, and a decided squint; the eyes, small and cunning, were of a
nondescript colour, something between yellow and green. He had worked
for Basile Ledda for twenty years, and had been called as a witness for
the defence. In his testimony he had alluded to the ill-treatment
Costantino had received from his uncle, but told also how the old miser
had maltreated every one, his women and servants as well. Why, the very
day before his death he had struck and kicked him--Giacobbe Dejas!
"Malthina Dejas is expecting you," said Aunt Bachissia. "You had better
go on up there."
"The devil cut off her nose!" replied Giacobbe. "I'll go presently. What
I'm afraid of is of falling out of the frying-pan into the fire! She's a
worse miser than even _he_ was."
"If she pays you what you earn, you've no right to judge her," said the
ringing voice of Uncle Isidoro.
"Ah! you are there, are you?" said Giacobbe mockingly. "How are the
legs? Pretty well punctured?"
Isidoro regarded his legs, which were wrapped about with bits of rag. It
was his habit to stand in stagnant water until the leeches attached
themselves to him.
"That need not concern you," he answered quietly. "But it is not well to
curse the woman whose bread you are going to eat."
"I shall eat my own bread, not hers, and that is our affair. Come now,
Giovanna, take heart! What the devil! Do you remember that story I was
telling you on the road from Nuoro? Be sensible now, for this little
chap's sake. Costantino is not going to die in prison, I can tell you
that myself. Give me the baby," he added, stooping down to take it, but
finding the little fellow asleep, he straightened himself, and, placing
a finger on his lips, "Aunt Bachissia," he said (he always used the
"Aunt" and "Uncle" even with people younger than himself), "do me a
favour; send your daughter to bed; she has come to the end of her
forces. And you, good people," he continued, turning to the company,
"let us do something as well, let us take ourselves off."
One by one, accordingly, they all departed. Aunt Bachissia, seizing the
stool upon which Isidoro Pane had been seated, took it outside and wiped
it vigorously. When she came in she found Giovanna fallen into a sort of
a doze, and had to shake her in order to arouse her.
The young woman opened her eyes, which were red and glassy; then she got
up with the child in her arms.
"Go to bed," commanded the mother.
She looked at the door, murmuring: "Never again! He will never, never
come back again! For a moment I thought I was waiting for him."
"Go to bed, go to bed," said the mother, her voice harsher than ever.
She gave Giovanna a push, and then, taking up the old brass candlestick,
opened the door.
The cottage consisted of a kitchen, with the usual stone fireplace in
the centre and the oven in one corner, and two bedrooms, furnished in
the most meagre way. Giovanna's bedstead was of wood, very high, and
provided with an extremely hard mattress and a red cotton counterpane.
Aunt Bachissia took the little Martino, who was whimpering in his sleep,
and laid him down, cradling him between her two hands, while Giovanna
got ready for bed. When she was undressed and her head bare, the
beautiful hair wound around it somewhat in the fashion of the ancient
Romans, the mother covered her carefully and went out.
No sooner was she left to herself, however, than she threw off the
covers and began to moan and lament. She was completely worn out with
sorrow and fatigue, and her eyes were heavy with sleep, yet she could
not rest. Confused pictures kept crowding through her brain, and, as
though her mental anguish were not already suffering enough, sharp pains
shot through her teeth and temples. Every time she had one of these
twinges it was as though some one had poured a jug of boiling water down
her spine, and she shook with nervous terror. Altogether, the night was
one long horror.
From the adjoining room, the door of which stood open, Aunt Bachissia
could hear Giovanna muttering and raving; now addressing Costantino in
terms of extravagant endearment; then the jury with threats and
imprecations. She herself, meanwhile, lay wide awake, her brain clear
and active, going over every detail of what had taken place, and laying
plans for the future. The sound of Giovanna's grief only aroused a dumb
sense of resentment in her breast, and yet, after a while, she too
found herself weeping.
CHAPTER IV
On the evening of the following day, a Saturday, Brontu Dejas, returning
from the sheepfolds, was hardly off his horse before he began to
grumble. Among themselves, the Dejases were notorious grumblers, though
with outsiders they were always extremely suave. Apart from this trait
he was a good-natured devil; young and handsome, very dark and thin, of
medium height, with a short curling red beard. He had beautiful teeth,
and, when talking to women, smiled continually in order to show them.
Coming home on this particular evening, he began to grumble because he
found neither light nor supper awaiting him. It must be admitted that
there was some justification; for, after all, he was a working-man, and
week after week he would return from six days of toil to find a house as
dark and squalid as a beggar's hovel.
"Eh! eh!" he said, as he began to unharness his horse. "This might as
well be Isidoro Pane's shanty! Let us have some light, at any rate, so
we can see to swear. What is there for supper?"
"Bacon and eggs; there now, be patient," said Aunt Martina. "Did you
know that Costantino Ledda had been sentenced to thirty years?"
"Twenty-seven. Well, are those the eggs? My dear mamma, that bacon is
rancid. Why don't you give it to the chickens? the chickens, do you
hear?" and he snapped his handsome teeth angrily.
"They won't eat it," answered Aunt Martina tranquilly. "Yes,
twenty-seven. Ah! twenty-seven years, that is a long time. I dreamed he
had got penal servitude."
"Have you been to see the women yet? How pleased they must be now with
their fine marriage! Miserable beggars!"
He had asked the question with evident curiosity, yet the moment his
mother told him that she had been, and that Giovanna was tearing her
hair and quite beside herself, while it was plain to see that Aunt
Bachissia wished now that she had strangled her daughter before allowing
her to make such a match, he turned on her furiously.
"What business had you to go near the den of those wretched beggars?"
"Ah! my son. Christian charity! You don't seem to have any idea of what
that is!" Aunt Martina liked, indeed, to pretend that she was a
charitable person. "Priest Elias was there too this morning; yes, he
went to comfort them. Giovanna wants to take the baby to Nuoro for
Costantino to see before they carry him off. I told her she was crazy to
think of such a thing in this heat; but Priest Elias told her to go, and
he nearly cried!"
"What does he know about children! He is barren, like all the rest of
them," snarled Brontu, who hated the priests because his uncle, who had
been rector in the village before Priest Elias Portolu came from Nuoro,
had left all his property to a hospital. Aunt Martina had not forgiven
this outrage either, but the old she-wolf knew how to disguise her
feelings, and when Brontu railed against the priests she always made the
sign of the cross.
"What makes you talk that way, you fool?" said she, hastily crossing
herself. "You don't know where your feet may carry you! Priest Elias is
a saint. If he were to hear such evil talk as that--beware! He has the
Holy Books, and if he chooses to, he can curse our fields, and bring the
locusts, and make the bees die!"
"A fine saint!" exclaimed Brontu. Then he insisted upon hearing all the
particulars about the Eras,--how Giovanna had cried out, what that old
kite, Aunt Bachissia, had said----
"Well, Giovanna's sobs were enough to melt the very stones; and Aunt
Bachissia was in despair because now, in addition to all the rest, the
lawyer's fees and other expenses of the trial have stripped them of
everything they possessed, even to the house."
The young man listened intently, his face beaming with satisfaction, and
his white teeth gleaming. In his undisguised pleasure he was simply and
purely savage.
"Listen," said Aunt Martina, when she had finished. "Giacobbe Dejas will
be here presently to see you too. He wanted to begin his term of service
to-morrow, but I told him to wait till Monday. To-morrow is a holiday,
and there is no sense in our having him eat at our expense."
"Beautiful St. Costantino! You _are_ close, mamma."
"Oh, you; you are just like a child! What use is there in wasting
things? Life is long and it takes a great deal to live."
"And how are those two women going to live?" asked Brontu after a short
silence, seating himself before the eggs and bread.
"They will catch snails, I suppose," said Aunt Martina scornfully. She
had taken up her spindle again, and was spinning close to the open door.
"You take a great interest in them, Brontu Dejas."
Silence. Within the room the only sounds were the rattle of the spindle
and the noise of Brontu's strong teeth, as he munched the hunks of hard
bread; outside, though, beyond the portico, the crickets were chirping
incessantly; and from the far-away, deserted woods, through the warm,
dim atmosphere of the falling night, came the melancholy cry of an owl.
Brontu poured out some wine, raised the glass, and opened his mouth, but
not to drink. There was something he wanted to say to his mother, but
the words would not come. He drank the wine, brushed some drops off his
beard with the back of his hand, and again opened his mouth, but still
the words died away.
A sound of heavy boots was heard, tramping across the open space before
the house. Aunt Martina, still spinning, arose, told her son that
Giacobbe Dejas was coming, and, taking the food and wine, put them away
in the cupboard.
Giacobbe saw the action as he entered, and at once understood that she
was hiding something in order not to have to offer it to him; but, as he
himself would have put it, he was too much a "man of the world" to allow
any expression of resentment to escape him.
He advanced, therefore, smiling and cheerful.
"I will wager," said he, laying one finger on his nose, "that you were
talking about me."
"No, we were speaking of poor Costantino Ledda."
"Ah, yes, poor fellow!" returned Giacobbe, becoming serious at once.
"And when you think that he is innocent! As innocent as the sun! No one
can be more sure of it than I."
Brontu threw himself back in an easy attitude, crossed his legs, and,
turning slightly around, showed his teeth as he did when talking to
women. "As to that, opinions may differ," he said sharply. "There, for
instance, is my mother; she dreamed that he had got the death sentence."
"Oh, no, Brontu! What are you talking about? Penal servitude!"
"Well, it amounts to the same thing. Now, we will talk business."
"Very well, let us talk business, by all means," assented Giacobbe,
crossing his legs as well.
A little later the two men, having settled the matter in hand, went off
together, Brontu leading the way to the tavern. He himself was not in
the least close, and if he never offered a visitor a glass in his own
house, it was only not to irritate Aunt Martina. At the tavern, though,
he was superb, and on this particular evening he made Giacobbe drink so
much, and drank so much himself, that they both became tipsy.
Coming out at last into the silent, deserted street, filled with the
odour of the dry fields, they began talking again of Costantino, and
Brontu said, with brutal frankness, that he was glad of the sentence.
"Go to the devil!" shouted Giacobbe. "You have no heart!"
"All right, that's it; I have no heart."
"Just because Giovanna wouldn't have you, you are glad to hear of the
death, or worse than death, of a brother."
"He's not dead, and he's not a brother; and it was I who would not have
Giovanna Era. If I had wanted her to, she would have licked the soles of
my shoes."
"Bum--bum--look out, or you'll have a tumble, my little spring bird. You
lie like a servant-maid."
"I--I--am--not--a--a--servant-maid," stammered Brontu, furious. "If you
say anything like that again, I'll take you by the crown of your head
and choke you."
"Bum--I tell you, you'll fall down, little spring bird," repeated
Giacobbe at the top of his lungs. Their voices rang out through the
quiet street; then they suddenly ceased talking, and stillness reigned
once more. In the distance, under the light of the stars which overhung
the mountain crests like garlands of golden flowers, the owl still
sounded his melancholy note.
All at once Brontu began to cry in a strange, drunken fashion, with
neither sobs nor tears.
"Well, what is the matter now?" demanded Giacobbe in a low tone. "Are
you drunk?"
"Yes, I am. Drunk with poison, you galley refuse. I only hope you will
be strangled yet!"
At this the other felt very indignant. Not only had he never been to
prison, but he had never so much as been accused of any offence against
the law. Yet, mingled with his resentment, there was a vague feeling of
terror.
"You are going crazy!" said he in a still lower tone. "What's the matter
with you? Why should you talk to me like that? Have I ever done anything
to you?"
Whereupon the other became confidential, and, groaning as though he were
in physical pain, he declared that he was, in truth, madly in love with
Giovanna, and that he had hoped, and prayed the devil, from the
beginning, that Costantino would be found guilty.
"Even if the devil were to get my soul it wouldn't matter, because, you
see, I don't believe in him!" said he, breaking into a foolish,
cackling laugh, more disagreeable to listen to even than his previous
maudlin distress. "I intend to marry Giovanna," he presently added.
Giacobbe was greatly astonished at this, but he pretended to be still
more so. "What!" said he. "You take my breath away! How--why--what on
earth do you mean? How can you marry her?"
"She will get a divorce, that's all. Well, what of that? There's a law
that gives a woman the right to marry again if her husband has been sent
to prison for a long sentence."
Giacobbe had heard some talk of this, but no case of legal divorce,
still less of remarriage, had as yet been heard of in Orlei.
Nevertheless, not to appear ignorant, he said: "Oh, yes, I know;
but it is a mortal sin. Giovanna Era will never do it!"
"That's just what I am worrying about, Giacobbe Dejas. Will you talk to
her on the subject to-morrow?"
"Oh, yes, of course! To-morrow! You're an ass, Brontu Dejas! You may be
rich, but you are as stupid as a lizard, stupider than one! Here, when
you might marry a maid,--some rich young girl, as fresh as a rose with
the dew still on it,--you want instead to have that woman! Upon my word,
it will give me something to laugh at for the next seven months!"
"All right, you can laugh till you split in two, like a ripe
pomegranate! But I'm going to marry her!" said Brontu angrily. "There's
no other woman like her, and I shall marry her; you will see!"
"Well, do marry her, my little spring bird!" cried the other, bursting
into a loud laugh. Brontu joined in, and they continued on their way
uproariously till they saw a tall figure with a staff silently
approaching them.
"Uncle Isidoro Pane, did you have good sport?" shouted Giacobbe. "And
your legs, have they plenty of punctures?"
"You had better turn leech-fisher yourself," said the other, coming up
to them. "Whew! what a smell of brandy! Some one must have broken a cask
near here!"
"Do you mean that you think we are drunk?" demanded Brontu in a bullying
tone. "The only reason you don't get drunk yourself is because you
haven't anything to do it with! Get away! get away, I tell you, or I'll
crush you like a frog!"
The old man laughed softly, and walked on.
"Idiot!" said Giacobbe in an undertone. "Don't you know that he could
have helped you with Giovanna? He's a friend of hers."
"Here! here!" shouted Brontu, turning around, and gesticulating with
both arms. "Come back! come back, I tell you! 'Sidore Pane, _che ti
morsichi il cane_!"[4] he laughed, delighted with his rhyme. But Isidoro
did not stop.
"Do you hear me?" yelled the tipsy Brontu, stammering somewhat. "I
tell you to come here! Ah! you won't do it, you little toad? I
tell--you----"
But Isidoro silently pursued his way.
"Don't talk to him like that; what sort of way is this to carry on?"
remonstrated Giacobbe. Brontu thereupon adopted a new method.
"Little flower, come here, come here! Come listen to what I have to say.
You may tell _her_--that friend of yours--well, yes, Giovanna, that is
who I mean. You may tell her that if she gets a divorce I'll marry her!"
This had the desired effect. The old man stopped short, and turning
around, called in a distinct voice:
"Giacobbe Dejas!"
"What is it, my dear?" answered the herdsman mockingly.
"Make--him--keep--quiet!" returned Isidoro in the tone of a person who
means to be obeyed.
For some unexplained reason, Giacobbe felt a sudden sense of chill as he
heard the tone and those four emphatic words. Taking his new master by
the arm he drew him quickly away, murmuring:
"You are a dunce! You behave as though you had no sense at all! What a
way to talk!"
"Didn't you tell me to yourself?"
"I? You are dreaming! Am I crazy?"
They continued on their way, staggering along together, arm in arm. On
the portico they found Aunt Martina, still spinning. She saw at once
that her son was tipsy, but said nothing, knowing by experience that to
irritate him when he was in that condition was only to arouse him to a
state of fury. When he asked for wine, though, she said there was none.
"Ah! there is none? No wine in the Dejas' house! The richest people in
the neighbourhood! What a miserly mother you are." Then he began to
bluster: "I'm not going to make a scandal, but I can tell you I am going
to marry Giovanna Era!"
"Yes, yes, you are going to marry her," said Aunt Martina to quiet him.
"But in the meantime, go to bed, and don't make such a noise; if she
hears you, she won't have you."
He quieted down, but made Giacobbe unroll a couple of rush mats and
spread them on the floor; then, throwing himself down, nothing would do
but the herdsman must lie down as well, and sleep beside him; and rather
than have any trouble, Aunt Martina was obliged to agree.
Thus it fell out that instead of beginning his term of service on the
Monday, Giacobbe entered his new place on Saturday evening.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] _Che ti morsichi il cane_,--"May the dog bite you."
CHAPTER V
Sunday morning, a fortnight later, found all the personages of our
story assembled at Mass, with Priest Elias officiating. The country
people said that when he celebrated he seemed to have wings.
Giovanna alone was absent; and this for two reasons. First, her late
misfortune required the observance of a sort of mourning; she was
expected not to show herself outside the house except when her work made
it necessary. Apart from this, however, she had fallen into a state of
lethargy, and appeared to be quite unable to move about, to go anywhere,
to work, or even to pray. She had, indeed, never been much of a
Christian at any time, though before the trial she had made a vow to
walk barefoot to a certain church in the mountains, and, if Costantino
were acquitted, to drag herself on her hands and knees from the point
where the church first came into view to its doors; that is, a distance
of about two kilometres.
Now, she had ceased praying, or talking, or eating, and even seemed to
have lost all interest in her child. Aunt Bachissia had to feed him with
bread crumbled up in milk in order to keep the poor little fellow alive.
Some of the neighbours said that Giovanna was losing her mind; and
indeed it did look so. She would remain for hours at a time in a sort of
stupor, crouched in a corner with her glassy eyes fixed on vacancy, and
when she aroused it was only to fly into violent paroxysms, tearing her
hair, and crying out wildly.
After the final interview with Costantino, when she had had the child
with her, she could think of nothing else, and described the scene in
the prison over and over again, with the monotonous insistence of a
monomaniac:
"He was there, and he was laughing. He was livid, and yet he laughed,
standing there behind the bars. Malthineddu seized hold of the bars, and
he touched his little hands and then he laughed! My heart! my heart!
don't laugh like that; it hurts me, because I know that that is how dead
people laugh! And the guards, standing there like harpies! At first they
were good to us, those guards who watch over human flesh; but
afterwards, when Costantino had been condemned, they were cruel, as
cruel as dogs! Malthinu was frightened when he saw them, and cried; and
his father laughed! Do you understand? The baby, the little, innocent
thing, cried; he understood that his father had been condemned, and he
cried! Oh, my heart! my heart!"
Then Aunt Bachissia, beside herself with impatience, and unable to hold
in any longer, would exclaim:
"Honestly, Giovanna, any one would take you to be two years old! That
child there has more sense than you. Simpleton!" And sometimes she would
threaten to beat her; but prayers, sympathy, and threats were equally
unavailing.
Meanwhile, word came from Nuoro that, while waiting to hear from the
appeal, Costantino had been removed to the jurisdiction of Cagliari.
Then came a short, sad, little letter from the prisoner himself. The
journey had gone well, but there, at Cagliari, the heat was suffocating,
and certain red insects, and others of different colours, tormented him
night and day. He sent a kiss to the child, and urged Giovanna to bring
him up in the fear of God. He also asked to be remembered to his friend
Isidoro. On this Sunday, therefore, at the close of the Mass, Aunt
Bachissia waited till the fisherman should have finished singing the
sacred lauds in his ringing voice, in order to deliver Costantino's
message.
Priest Elias remained kneeling on the steps of the high altar, with
white ecstatic face, and Isidoro still sang on, but the people began to
leave, filing past Aunt Bachissia, as she stood waiting.
Aunt Martina passed, with the fiery bearing of a blooded steed, old but
indomitable still; Brontu passed, dressed in a new suit of clothes, his
hair shining with oil; he railed at the priests, but on Sunday he went
to Mass; and Giacobbe passed, in a pair of new linen trousers, smelling
strong of the shop. Still Isidoro sang on.
The church, at last, became almost empty; the fisherman's sonorous voice
resounded among the dusty, white rafters; the boards and beams of the
roof; the side altars, covered with coarse cloths, adorned with paper
flowers, and presided over by melancholy saints of painted wood.
When Uncle Isidoro stopped at length, there were only the priest, a boy
who was extinguishing the candles, Aunt Bachissia, and an old blind man
left.
Isidoro had to repeat the final response to the lauds himself; then he
got up, put away the little bell used to mark the Stations of the
Rosary, and moved towards Aunt Bachissia, who stood waiting for him near
the door. They went out together, and she gave him Costantino's message;
then she begged him to do her a favour; it was to ask Priest Elias to go
to see Giovanna and try to reason her out of the condition she had
allowed herself to fall into. He promised to do so, and they separated.
On the way home Aunt Bachissia was joined by Giacobbe Dejas, who had
been standing on the open square before the church, looking down at the
village and the yellow fields, all bathed in sunlight.
"How are you?" asked the herdsman.
"Ah, good Lord! bad enough, without being actually ill. And you, how do
you like your new place?"
"Oh! I told you how it would be. I'm out of the frying-pan into the
fire! The old woman is as close as the devil; she expects me to work
till I fall to pieces, and will hardly let me come in to Mass once a
fortnight."
"And the master?"
"Oh! the master? Well, he's just a little beast, that's all."
"What do you mean by saying such a thing as that, Giacobbe?"
"Well, it's the simple truth, little spring bird. He growls and snarls
over every trifle, and gets drunk, and lies like time. I suppose Isidoro
Pane told you----" He paused, and Aunt Bachissia, fixing her small green
eyes upon him, reflected that, if he talked like that about his master,
he must have some object.
"Well," he resumed, "Isidoro Pane must have told you--of course he told
you, about Brontu being drunk that evening; it was just here, where we
are now, Brontu yelled out: 'Tell Giovanna Era that if she gets a
divorce I'll marry her!' The beast, that's just what he is, a beast! He
drinks brandy by the cask."
Of the last clause of this speech, however, Aunt Bachissia took in not
one word. The fact that Brontu had said he would marry Giovanna if she
got a divorce was all she comprehended. Her green eyes flashed as she
asked haughtily: "And you wish him not to, Giacobbe?"
"I? What difference would it make to me, little spring bird? But you
ought to be ashamed of yourself to think of such a thing, Aunt Kite,
hardly two weeks after----"
"I'm not a kite," snapped the old woman angrily; and though the other
laughed, she could see that he too was furious.
"You might, at least, wait to hear from the appeal," said he. "And then
you can devour Costantino as you would a lamb without spot. Yes, devour
him if you want to, but I can tell you that Giovanna will get a
brandy-bottle for a husband, and just as long as Martina Dejas is alive
you will starve worse than ever."
"Ah! you bald-pate----" began Aunt Bachissia. But Giacobbe walked
rapidly away, and she had only the satisfaction of hurling abuse at his
retreating back. Not that she proposed to have Giovanna apply for a
divorce. Heaven forbid! With poor Costantino still under appeal, and
waiting there in that fiery furnace, devoured by horrible insects! No,
indeed, but,--what right had that vile servant to talk of his master so?
What business was it of his to meddle in his master's concerns? And Aunt
Bachissia decided then and there that that "bald raven" had himself
taken a fancy to Giovanna; and, filled with this new idea, she reached
the cottage.
Her immediate thought was to repeat the whole story to Giovanna, but
finding her, for the first time in two weeks, bathed, and tranquilly
engaged in combing out her long hair, which fell down in heavy, tumbled
masses, she was afraid to say a word.
CHAPTER VI
Time passed by; the autumn came, and then the winter. Costantino's
appeal had, of course, been rejected, as appeals always are. One night
he was fastened by a chain to another convict, whom he had never seen,
and the two took their places in a long file of others, all dressed in
linen, all silent; like a drove of wild beasts controlled by some
invisible power. They were going--where? They did not know. They were
silent--why? They could not say. Presently they were all marched down to
the water's edge, put on board a long, black steamer, and shut into a
cage--still like wild beasts. All about them lay the crystal sea, across
whose dark, green waters the ruby and emerald reflections from the
ship's lights danced and sparkled like strings of glittering jewels;
while above, engirdling the great ring of water, hung the deep blue sky,
like an immense, silent vale dotted over with yellow, starry flowers. At
first Costantino's sensations were not altogether unhappy. True, he was
going into the unknown to fulfil a cruel destiny, but down in the bottom
of his heart he firmly believed that before very long he would be
liberated, and he never lost hope.
The bustle on deck, the rattle of the chains, and the first motion of
the ship as it got under way, filled him with childish curiosity. He had
never been to sea, but, as a boy, he had often stood scanning the
horizon, and gazing at the grey stretch of the Mediterranean, sometimes
dotted over with the white wings of sailing vessels. At such times, as
he stood among the wild shrubs and undergrowth of his native mountains,
he would dream of some day crossing that far-away sea to distant,
unknown lands, and to the golden cities of the Continent. He could read
and write, and had a book in which St. Peter's at Rome was depicted; and
in the chapter on sacred history there was an engraving of ancient
Jerusalem. Ah! Jerusalem. According to his ideas, Jerusalem must be
the finest and largest city in the world; and, as he stood there
dreaming among the bushes on Mount Bellu, and gazing off at the grey
Mediterranean, it was to Jerusalem that he longed to go. And now, here
he was crossing the sea; but how different from his dreams! Yet, so
splendid was his conception of Jerusalem that if it had been thither
that he was bound, even a chained and condemned prisoner on his way to
expiate a crime, he would, nevertheless, have been content to go.
The pitching and rolling of the ship was accompanied by the ceaseless
rush of the water from the bows. Some of the convicts chattered among
themselves, laughing and cracking jokes. Costantino fell asleep and
dreamed, as he always did, that he was at home again. He had been set
free almost immediately,--he dreamed,--and had gone home without letting
Giovanna know a word about it so as to give her the unutterable joy of
the surprise. She kept saying: "But this is a dream, this is a
dream----" The expenses of the trial had stripped the little house bare
of everything, even the bed was gone; but nothing made any difference.
All the riches in the world could not compare with the bliss of being
free and of living with Giovanna and Malthineddu. But he was terribly
tired, so he curled himself up in the baby's cradle; the cradle rocked,
harder and harder all the time. Giovanna laughed and called out: "Be
careful not to fall out, Costantino, my dear, my lamb!" And the cradle
rocked more than ever. At first he laughed as well, but all at once he
found he was suffering, then he fell head foremost on the ground, and
woke up.
There was a heavy sea on, and Costantino was sick. The ship struggled up
to mountain-heights and then plunged swiftly into bottomless gulfs of
water, the waves breaking even over the third deck.
All the convicts were ill; some still attempted to joke, while others
swore, and one, with a yellow, cunning face,--he was Costantino's
companion--moaned and lamented like a child.
"Oh!" he groaned, cowering down, gasping and frightened. "I was dreaming
that I was at home, and now--now--oh! dear St. Francis, have pity on
me!"
Notwithstanding his own misery, both physical and mental, Costantino
felt sorry for him. "Patience, my brother, I was dreaming too about
being at home."
"I feel," cried another, "as though my soul were melting away. What the
devil is the matter with this ship! It seems to be trying to dance the
Sardian dance!" Whereat some of the others still had sufficient spirit
left to laugh.
The storm was increasing. At times Costantino thought he was dying, and
was frightened; yet, on the other hand, he felt an unutterable weariness
of life. His soul seemed to be steeped in the same bitter fluid that his
stomach was casting up. Never, not even at the moment when the sentence
of condemnation had been passed upon him, had he experienced anything
like his present condition of hopeless misery. He too began to swear and
groan, doubling his fists, and twisting his chilled toes. "May you die
just as I am dying now, you murderous dogs, who brought all this on me!"
he muttered, while tears as bitter as gall welled up into his eyes.
Towards dawn the wind subsided, but even when the sickness had passed,
Costantino found no relief; he felt as though he had been beaten to the
point of death, and he was shaking with cold, and exhaustion, and dread.
The steamer relentlessly pursued its way. Oh, if it would only stop for
just one moment! A single moment of quiet, it seemed to Costantino,
would suffice to restore his strength; but this continuous forging
ahead, the constant rolling, the never-ceasing roar of the waves as they
lashed the sides of the vessel, kept him in a state of nervous tremor.
On, and on, and on; the long hours of agony dragged slowly by; night
came again; and all the time his subtle-faced, yellow-visaged companion
hardly ceased to sigh and lament, driving Costantino into a perfect
frenzy of irritation. Sleep came at length, and then, strange to relate,
he had the same dream as on the previous night, only this time it was
Giovanna who was in the cradle, and the cradle was rocking quite gently.
When Costantino awoke, the boat seemed hardly to move; in the silence
that precedes the dawn, he heard a voice say: "That is Procida."
He was shaking with cold, and wondered if they were to land there,
where, he thought he remembered to have heard, the galleys were.
Presently his companion awoke, shivering and yawning prodigiously.
"Are we there?" asked Costantino. "How do you feel?"
"Pretty well. Are we there?"
"I don't know; we are near Procida; is that where the galleys are?"
"No; they're at Nisida," said the other. "But we are not galley-birds!"
he added, with a touch of pride, and then fell to yawning again. "Oh,
how I was dreaming!" he said, and then stopped, overcome by the memory
of his dream.
The prisoners were landed at Naples and immediately placed in a
black-and-yellow van, something like a movable sepulchre. Costantino
caught a brief glimpse of a wide expanse of smooth green water, a
quantity of huge steamers, and innumerable small craft filled with gaily
dressed men who shouted out all manner of incomprehensible things. All
around the boats, on the surface of the green water, floated weeds,
scraps of paper, refuse of all kinds. Enormous buildings were
outlined against a sky of deepest blue. At Naples, the convicts were
separated; Costantino was taken off to the prison at X---- and saw his
yellow-visaged companion no more.
On reaching his destination, Costantino was at once consigned to a cell
where he was to pass the first six months of his term in solitary
confinement. This cell measured hardly two metres in length by six palms
in breadth: it was furnished with a rude folding bed, which, during the
day, was closed and fastened against the wall. From the tiny window
nothing could be seen but a strip of sky.
Of the entire term of his imprisonment this was the dreariest period. He
would sit immovable for hours with his legs crossed and his hands
clasped about his knee--thinking; but strangely enough he never either
lost hope or rebelled against his fate. He was persuaded that what he
was enduring was in expiation of that mortal sin, as he regarded it, of
having lived with a woman to whom he had not been married by religious
ceremony, and he felt an absolute certainty that, this sin atoned for,
his innocence would some day be established and he would be set free. At
the same time, although he did not despair, he suffered acutely, and
passed the days, hours, minutes in a state of nervous expectation of
some change that never came, and a prey to a devouring homesickness.
Thus day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, he lived in his
thoughts close to Giovanna and the child, recalling with minute
precision every little unimportant detail of the cottage life, his past
existence, and the happiness that had once been his. In addition,
moreover, to his own misery, he suffered at the thought of what Giovanna
was enduring: now and again an access of passionate tenderness, having
her far more than the child for its object, would seize him and arouse
him from his usual state of pensive melancholy; then, leaping to his
feet, he would stride back and forth,--two, or at most three, steps
bringing him to the opposite wall, where he would presently stop, and,
throwing himself against it, would beat his head as though trying to
dash out his brains. These were his moments of utmost desperation.
Hope always returned, however, and then he would begin to weave
fantastic dreams of an immediate and romantic restoration to freedom,
and the guard never entered his cell that his heart did not begin to
beat violently, fancying that he was the bearer of some joyful tidings.
Sometimes he played _morra_ with himself, and he cared so much whether
he lost or won that he would laugh aloud like a child. At other times he
would sit for hours looking at his outstretched palm, imagining that it
was a plain divided into _tancas_, with walls, rivers, trees, herds of
cattle, and shepherds; and weaving stories about them all, full of
exciting adventures. And sometimes he prayed, counting on his fingers,
and repeating the lauds aloud, trying even to improvise new verses. In
this way it came about that he actually did compose a laud of four
strophes, dedicated to St. Costantino, in which the saint's aid was
particularly invoked in behalf of all prisoners wrongfully condemned.
The refrain ran:
"Saint Costantino, we implore thee
For thy condemned innocent!"
The composing of this laud completely occupied him for many days, and
made him, for the time being, almost happy. When it was finished he was
wild with joy, but instantly an overpowering desire to tell some one
about it seized him; whom was there, though, to tell? The guard was a
little Neapolitan; bald, clean-shaven, with a flat, snub nose like that
of a skeleton; he talked to him sometimes, but he was not sufficiently
intelligent to understand the laud; then there were the other prisoners
whom he saw during the exercise hour, but to them he was not allowed to
speak; finally he bethought him of the chaplain, and asked to confess in
order that he might have the opportunity to repeat the laud to him.
The chaplain was a Northerner, a young man, tall and lean, with
quick, nervous movements, and great flashing black eyes filled with
intelligence. He listened patiently while Costantino repeated his laud,
and then enquired if he did not think that, in asking to confess for the
purpose of reciting it, he had been guilty of the sin of vanity.
Costantino reddened and said "No," whereupon the confessor smiled
indulgently, reassured him, praised his verses, and sent him off in a
state of beatification.
A few days later the prisoner again asked to confess. "Well, have you
written another laud?" asked the chaplain.
"No," said the other, looking down, "but I want to ask a favour."
"What is it? Let us hear."
Costantino held his breath a moment, frightened at his own temerity;
then he said quickly: "Well, this is it: I want to send the laud home!"
"Ah!" said the chaplain, "I can't do that; how could you write it,
anyhow?"
"Oh, I know how to write!" exclaimed the prisoner, raising his clear
eyes to the other's face.
"Yes; but the trouble is, my brother, that you are not allowed to
write."
"Oh, I can manage that!"
"Well, well, but I can't; I can't do it."
Costantino looked extremely dejected and all but wept; then he
confessed; asked whether it might not be better to dedicate the laud to
SS. Peter and Paul, since they too had been in prison, and begged to be
forgiven if he had presumed too much in making such a request. The young
chaplain gave the absolution and prayed for some moments aloud, the
prisoner, meanwhile, praying to himself; then, laying one hand on the
other's head, the priest said in a low voice: "Listen; write out your
laud if you can manage it, and--keep a brave heart."
A wave of joy swept over Costantino, and from that moment he had no
other thought than of how he might contrive to transcribe his verses. "I
have been a student," he said one day to the guard. "But I know how to
make shoes as well. Would you like to have me make you a pair? Oh, I can
fit you!"
"You want something," said the man in Neapolitan. "But it's no use, I
will do nothing."
"Now, Uncle Serafino, be kind! Remember your immortal soul!"
"I remember my immortal soul well enough, and I've told you before that
I'm not your uncle; you killed your uncle."
"All right; it does not signify; only in our part of the country we
always call all the important people 'uncle.'"
Don Serafino, however, wanted his own title, which Costantino, for his
part, could not bring himself to employ, since in Sardinia it is used
only in addressing people of noble birth; so for that day nothing was
accomplished.
On the following morning the prisoner returned to the charge: he
recounted how he was of good family, had received an education, and
fallen heir to a fortune; this, his uncle, he whom he had been accused
of murdering, had spent, and had then shut him up in a dark little
room, and forced him to make shoes; and once he had torn almost the
entire skin off one of his feet. He even offered to show the foot, but
Don Serafino declined with an expression of horror, and cursed the dead
man's cruelty under his breath.
The result was that Costantino presently found himself in possession of
a sheet of paper, and by means of blood and a small stick, he succeeded
in writing out the laud for condemned prisoners. Thus the winter wore
away.
One March day a visit of inspection was made to Costantino's cell; it
was under the direction of a big man, with two round, staring, pale-blue
eyes, and so little chin that what he had was completely hidden by a
heavy light moustache.
"Hello! you there," he cried to the prisoner. "What can you do?" Don
Serafino was with the party, and as his eye fell upon him, Costantino
suddenly recalled the fancy sketch he had once given him. "I can make
shoes," he replied.
"Hello!" said the big man with the staring blue eyes. "You can? Well,
you murdered your uncle."
As the remark seemed to call for no reply, Costantino merely moved his
lips, as though to say: "Certainly, I murdered my uncle; may it please
your mightiness!"
The party moved on, but before long Don Serafino returned and informed
the prisoner that his term of solitary confinement had been shortened by
more than a third, and that he would soon be released from his cell.
Costantino supposed that he owed this favour to his good behaviour, but
Don Serafino explained that it was because he had interceded for him
with the authorities, telling them that the prisoner was of good family,
that one of his feet had been flayed, and that he could make shoes.
A few days after this Costantino was taken from the cell and set to
work, in company with a number of others, at making shoes; he had,
moreover, the privilege of writing once every three months to Giovanna.
All of these concessions made him quite happy. Then the spring came, and
the convicts, who had suffered intensely from cold, became gay and
cheerful, keeping up a continual flow of chaff during working hours. Two
brothers from the Abruzzi, however, who had asked as a special favour to
be allowed to work together, quarrelled so incessantly over the division
of a piece of property that was to be settled on their release--that is
to say, in ten years' time--that, after falling upon one another one
day, they had to be separated and confined for two weeks in cells. Even
then, the very first time they encountered each other during the
exercise hour, they began fighting again.
It was during this hour of comparative freedom, when the prisoners took
their exercise in the courtyard, that Costantino made the acquaintance
of a compatriot, another Sardinian. This man, who had received the
nickname of the _King of Spades_, on account of his triangular-shaped
face, his big body, and spindle legs, was white and puffy, and so
closely shaven as to look quite bald; he was an ex-marshal of
carbineers, convicted of peculation, and, according to his own account,
was related to a Cardinal who was secretly in friendly relations with
the King and Queen. This personage, he declared, might shortly be
expected to procure his pardon, and not alone his but that of any among
his friends whom he should recommend; those, for instance, who supplied
him with cigars, money, or stamps. He had been assigned for duty in the
clerk's office, and thus had many opportunities to communicate with
persons outside, to arrange clandestine correspondences between the
prisoners and their families, and to smuggle in money, tobacco, stamps,
and liquor; all greatly to his own profit and advantage. It was not long
before he asked Costantino if he did not wish to send a letter home.
"Yes," replied the young man, "but I am poor; I have nothing to give
you."
"Never mind," said the other generously; "that makes no difference, we
are compatriots!" and forthwith he launched into an account of his
exploits as a marshal. He had, it appeared, killed ten or more bandits
in the course of his career, and had received ten medals; once when he
happened to be in Rome the King had invited him to his box at the
theatre! He was, in short, a hero; but of his crowning exploit he never
spoke, merely observing that he had been sent to prison through the
machinations of powerful enemies.
At first, in spite of his equivocal appearance, Costantino believed it
all, and felt deeply sympathetic; but gradually, as day by day the
accounts of the marshal's adventures grew more varied and marvellous, he
became sceptical, and ended by placing as little faith in what he said
as did the others, though they all pretended to be greatly impressed in
order to obtain favours.
Every member, indeed, of the little community, not excepting the guards,
was both a liar and a hypocrite. The prisoners all tried to make out
that they were something quite different from what they appeared to be,
and each one had some remarkable explanation of how he happened to be
there; while the very fact of their being compelled, quite against their
will, to associate closely and intimately together, destroyed every
spark of mutual regard that might, under different circumstances, have
sprung up among them.
Costantino noted with surprise that those who were held for the more
serious charges, while they were the greatest braggarts and boasters,
seemed in other respects to be better than the rest. The minor
delinquents were, almost without exception, cowardly, surly, and
treacherous; fawning upon any one who could do them a service, and
betraying their friends without hesitation, when the occasion arose.
"There is hardly a man in this place," remarked the _King of Spades_ one
day to Costantino, "but what is utterly corrupt; most of them are
hardened criminals, versed in every form of vice. Why, the very air we
breathe is contaminated, and a man, suddenly deprived of his liberty and
cut off from society, quickly goes to decay in such a place; he loses
all moral sense, becomes deceitful, cowardly, and violent, and soon
grows so depraved that he cannot even realise his own depravity." And he
gave some startling instances in illustration of his point. "It is my
belief," he continued, "that among all who are here now, we two, the
_Duck-neck_ and the _Delegate_, are the only honest ones; all the
others are criminals. Be very wary with them, Costantino, my dear
fellow-countryman; this place is nothing but a den of bandits, of a
worse class even than those whom I put an end to!"
Sometimes Costantino felt quite depressed, reflecting that if his own
honesty made no better impression than that of the _King of Spades_
there was little to be proud of.
The _Duck-neck_ was a Sicilian student, a consumptive with white hair,
a long neck, and the body of a child. Though he spent most of his
time reading, was timid and shrinking, and rarely spoke, he would
occasionally fly into such violent rages that he was obliged to
submit to the embraces of _Ermelinda_, as the prisoners called the
strait-jacket. In one such paroxysm he had once killed a professor.
The _Delegate_, who looked like a gentleman, was likewise a Southerner;
he, it appeared, had been sent to prison out of pure envy! He
had a swelling chest and a noble head; his nose was large and
Grecian, and there was a cleft in the middle of his lower lip; his
expression was haughty and repellent, but as soon as he was approached
he became extremely affable, even servile. Notwithstanding the
"powerful influence" that was being exerted in his favour, certain
lofty personages, a minister in particular, were persecuting him
unrelentingly. The student had lent him some scientific books, and he
was now bent upon writing a great scientific work himself. Being also
assigned to the clerk's office, he was able secretly to devote a good
deal of time to this splendid undertaking, of which the _King of
Spades_ gave glowing accounts.
"See here," said he one day to Costantino; "that man will make all our
fortunes. We work every day on the book and have a set of phrases of
our own, referring to it; but the utmost caution is necessary,
otherwise--beware!--everything may be ruined, and it is a real
scientific discovery. I will run over the main heads for you. How
the atmosphere was formed--that is, the air. How the ocean was
formed--that is, all bodies of water. Origin of the organic world. A
rational demonstration of the existence of a primordial continent in
the central tract of the Pacific Ocean. Upon this continent human life
first made its appearance, passing the period of infancy in those
tropical regions. Immigration into Africa and Asia. The continent
disappears by reason of a great cataclysm. Identification of this
cataclysm with the flood of the Bible. The other continents emerge.
Then--End of atmosphere--End of oceans--End of the heavenly
bodies--End of the earth!"
"And end of imprisonment?" enquired Costantino with a smile. He had
understood very little of the other's discourse, only taking it for
granted that, as usual, he was relating fiction. The _King of Spades_
had to have a listener, however, so he continued tranquilly: "Just wait
a moment, the other chapters are: Amplification of the accepted doctrine
of evolution. Evolution of our species from the anthropomorphic apes.
Causes of the inclination of the axis of the planets,--but not Saturn.
Reasons for this anomaly. Sun spots, etc.----"
"Oh, go to the devil!" said Costantino to himself, yawning prodigiously.
He was staring across the bare courtyard, with its fountain playing in
the middle. "And how about the magpie?" he presently asked, pointing to
one that had domesticated itself in the establishment. The convicts
gorged him with food, and he had become fat and somnolent. If by any
chance he felt hungry, he called certain of them by name in a queer,
shrill voice.
"Oh, let him burst!" said the _King of Spades_ fretfully. "You are
nothing but a child, Costantino; more interested in that silly bird than
in a scientific work of the very first importance. Indirectly I can lay
claim to the _magnum_ part of the discovery, as it was I who brought the
_Delegate_ and the _Duck-neck_ together. We have already succeeded in
despatching an abstract of the work, together with a letter addressed to
the King, to the Prime Minister. But remember--not a word of this to any
one! One eminent scientist, on reading the abstract, exclaimed: 'This is
the loftiest manifestation we have yet had of Italian genius!' Take my
word for it, Costantino, my dear compatriot, the _Delegate_ has reached
a dizzy height. He has some powerful friends who are now in Rome for the
express purpose of working for his pardon; but then, he has powerful
enemies as well! However, he will be liberated before long on account of
this book."
Costantino found all this extremely tiresome, but he pretended to listen
as he was hoping soon to get an answer to his letter to Giovanna, and
wanted to keep in the other's good graces. The answer did arrive, sure
enough, in May, and gave him the most intense happiness. Giovanna wrote
that the boy had been unwell, possibly because the anguish she had
endured had affected her milk; now, however, he was entirely well again.
Isidoro Pane had received the lauds to San Costantino written in blood,
and had wept when he read them, and now he sang them in church, the
whole congregation accompanying him. No one knew who had written the
verses, but Isidoro said an old man with a long, snowy beard, all
dressed in white, had appeared one day on the river-bank, and had handed
them to him. People said it was San Costantino, or perhaps Jesus Christ
himself! And Giacobbe Dejas had hired himself out to his rich relatives.
And the Nuoro lawyer had taken possession of the title to their house,
allowing the two women to live there for a small rent. The rich Dejases
often had work for Aunt Bachissia, and for her, Giovanna, as well; so
they managed to get along. Pietro Punia had been ill with carbuncles,
and had died. Annicca "with the silver shoulders" was married. An old
shepherd had been arrested for stealing beehives. Thus the letter went
on, entirely filled with such simple chronicles, which, to Costantino,
however, were fraught with the most intense interest. As he read he
seemed to breathe again his native air; each item set before him a
picture of the rocks and bushes, the people and objects, to which he was
bound by the closest ties of habit and affection. Only, it disturbed him
a little to learn that Giovanna sometimes worked at the Dejases'. He
knew of Brontu's passion for her, and that she had refused him, and as
he read this part of the letter he experienced a first, vague sensation
of alarm. Three francs were enclosed, and when he reflected that this
money might probably have come from the Dejases, he hated to touch it.
Two francs he offered to the _King of Spades_, rather expecting that his
dear compatriot would refuse to take them. His dear compatriot, on the
contrary, accepted them with alacrity, remarking that they would
serve as part payment for the person who conducted the clandestine
correspondence.
Under other circumstances this would have angered Costantino, but just
then he was so anxious to write again to Giovanna, to maintain some sort
of intercourse with his little, far-off world, that he would have
sacrificed the half of his life to secure the good offices of the _King
of Spades_.
He read and re-read his letter till he knew every word by heart. During
the day he hid it in the sole of his shoe, ripping this open again each
night. And always, as he sat silently bending over his work, his mind
dwelt continuously on the people and events in that little, distant
village, and he identified himself so completely at times with the
subjects of his thoughts that he lost sight of his real surroundings. He
saw the old shepherd steal cautiously up to the hives, his face and
hands wrapped in cloths. The spot is sunny, deserted; all about lie
green fields dotted over with flowers, dog-roses, honeysuckle,
sweet-peas, undulating lines of colour stretching away in all directions
as far as the eye can reach. The warm air is heavy with the odour of
pennyroyal and other aromatic herbs, and the brooding silence is broken
only by the low hum of the bees.
Anxiously Costantino follows every movement of the old thief as he first
detaches the little cork hives from the flat stones on which they
stand; then, tying them all together with a stout cord, places them in a
bag, and makes off. Just at this point Costantino could not quite make
up his mind as to the next act in the drama, and as he was considering,
a shrill voice broke in on his reflections: "Cos-tan-ti! Cos-tan-ti!"
and arousing himself with an effort he saw the magpie, fat and sleek,
hopping lazily about in the courtyard, and stretching its blue wings in
the sun.
At night, with the precious letter safely deposited beneath his pillow,
he would resume the thread of his thoughts. Now it was the sonorous
voice of his friend the fisherman that he would hear, singing the lauds,
and sometimes he almost wondered if Isidoro had not in truth seen--on
the river-bank, among the oleander bushes bending over with their weight
of fragrant pink blossoms--the figure of an old man dressed in white,
with a long beard as snowy as the wool of a little newborn lamb! Ah,
surely it was the Saint himself, good San Costantino, come to tell
Isidoro that he had not forgotten the prisoners unjustly condemned!
Costantino readily accepted this picture of the Saint, although the
statue of him in the village church represented a robust and swarthy
warrior.
"Good old Saint! Good San Costantino! Soon, soon thou wilt free us all,
blessed forever be thy name!"
Then the scene changes. Now it is the portico of the rich Dejas's house;
every one is busy with the spun wool, dividing it into long skeins
preparatory to weaving it. Giovanna comes and goes, carrying huge
bunches in her hands. Brontu is there too, seated on the threshold of
the kitchen door, with his legs well apart, and between them, laughing
and unsteady, stands the little Malthineddu. Ah, intolerable thought!
Presently, however, remembering that Brontu is never at home except on
holidays, he is somewhat comforted, and then he falls asleep, his heart
steeped in a mingled sensation of joy and pain.
CHAPTER VII
Summer had come again.
"How quickly the time passes," said Aunt Martina, as she sat spinning on
the portico. "It seems only yesterday, Giacobbe, that you took service
with us, and yet, here you are back again to renew the contract! Ah, the
time does indeed pass quickly for us poor employers! You have saved
thirty silver scudi at the very least, and have begun to build a house
of your own, but what have we to show for it?"
"That's all very well, but how about the sweat of my brow, little spring
bird? The sweat of my brow, doesn't that count for anything?" replied
the herdsman, who was busily greasing a leather cord with tallow.
"But there's your keep," rejoined the old woman. "Ah, you have forgotten
to allow for that!"
May the crows pick your bones! thought Giacobbe, who would have liked to
say it aloud, but was afraid to. He thoroughly detested both his
employers, the miserly old woman and the weak, hot-headed son, who
tormented him continually with his project of marrying Giovanna if she
would get a divorce. It was important, though, for him to renew the
contract, so he held his tongue. He greased the thong thoroughly, rolled
it up, and took it into the house; then he asked permission to go off to
attend to a piece of business of his own, and having received a grudging
assent, departed.
Walking in the direction of the Era cottage, the herdsman presently
descried little Malthineddu bestriding, with very unsteady seat, a
spirited stick horse, the sun gilding his dirty little white frock, his
stout legs and bare arms.
Stooping down with outstretched arms, Giacobbe barred the way. "Where
are we off to?" he asked caressingly. "There's the sun, don't you see
it? Ahi! ahi! Maria Pettina[5] will come with her fire-comb and snatch
you up, and carry you off to the hobgoblins! Run back quickly to the
house."
"No-o-o, no-o-o-o," shouted the child, jumping up and down on his steed.
"Well, then," said Giacobbe, lowering his voice and closing one eye as
he pointed to the white house, "Aunt Martina is up there, and to save
bread she eats little children; don't you see her?"
The boy seemed to be impressed, and allowed himself to be led back to
the cottage, still insisting, however, upon riding his stick.
Giovanna was sewing at the door, as round and fresh and rosy as though
no misfortune had ever befallen her. Above her pretty face the mass of
wavy hair lay in thick, glossy coils. Seeing Giacobbe approach with the
child, she raised her head and smiled. "Here he is," said the herdsman.
"I am bringing him safely back to you; but I found him playing in the
sun, and travelling straight towards Aunt Martina, who eats children so
as to save bread."
"Oh, go away!" said Giovanna. "You ought not to tell children such
things!"
"I tell them to grown people as well, for Aunt Martina eats them too.
Look out, Giovanna Era, the first thing you know she will eat you, and
all the more because you are like a ripe quince--no, not that either,
quinces are yellow, aren't they? You are more like a--a----"
"An Indian fig!" she suggested, laughing.
"And how is Aunt Bachissia? Is it long since you heard from Costantino?"
At this Giovanna became suddenly grave, replying with an air of mystery
that they had had news of the prisoner only a short time before.
"Ah!" said the man, without pressing the matter further. "Can you tell
me if Isidoro Pane is anywhere about? I want to see him."
"Yes," she replied sadly, taking up her work again. "He is at home."
Giacobbe said good-bye, and walked thoughtfully away in the direction of
Isidoro's house,--if house it could be called,--which stood at the other
end of the village.
The fisherman, in justice to whom it should be said that he fished for
trout and eels as well as leeches whenever he had the opportunity, was
seated in the shadow of his hut, mending a net. This hut, which stood in
the fields, a little apart from the rest of the village, was a
prehistoric structure composed of rough pieces of slate dating possibly
from the time when men, not yet having mastered the art of cutting
stones for themselves, used such pieces as had already been detached by
nature. It was roofed over with sticks and bits of tile, above which
flourished a vigorous growth of vegetation.
The sun was sinking after a day of intense heat. Not a leaf stirred in
the row of dusty trees along the scorched, deserted village street. Far
off, the yellow uplands, furrowed by long, slanting shadows, were
immersed in floods of crimson light; and beyond them rose the rugged
line of purplish mountains--a row of huge red sphinxes covered with a
veil of violet gauze. The all-pervading stillness was pierced by the
distant note of a blackbird. Wild figs with coarse, dark foliage, and a
hedge of wild robinia, among whose branches hairy nettles and the
whitish-leaved henbane had wound and interlaced themselves, surrounded
the hut; and from the doorway could be seen a wide expanse of country,
lonely and vapourous as the sea. The atmosphere was filled with the
acrid odour of stubble and dried asphodel, and the ground was so thickly
covered with dead leaves, and twigs, and bits of straw that Giacobbe had
got quite close to the old fisherman before the latter perceived him.
"What are we about now?" cried the herdsman gaily.
The other raised his eyes without lifting his head, and, regarding his
visitor curiously for a moment, made no reply.
Dropping cross-legged on the ground, Giacobbe watched him as he mended
the net with waxed twine threaded in a huge, rusty needle.
"Well, really!" said the herdsman presently, with a laugh. "I should
think the little fishes would find no difficulty in coming and going at
their pleasure!"
"Then let them come and go at their pleasure, little spring bird," said
the fisherman, mimicking Giacobbe's favourite mode of address. "What are
you doing here? Have you left your place?"
"No; on the contrary, I have just made a new contract with those
black-beetles of rich relations. But I want to speak to you about
something serious, Uncle 'Sidore. First, though, tell me how your
legs are? And is it long since you last saw San Costantino on the
river-bank?"
The old man frowned; he disliked to hear sacred things alluded to with
irreverence. "If that is what you came for," said he, "you can take
yourself off at once."
"Oh, well, there is no need to get angry! Here, I'll tell you what I
came for; it really is important. But, as for irreverence--if you find
me turning into a heathen you must blame the little master, he is always
pitching into the saints. He gets terribly frightened, though, whenever
he thinks he is going to die. Just listen to this: the other night we
saw a shooting star; it fell plumb down from the sky, like a streak of
melted gold, and looked as though it had struck the earth. Brontu threw
himself down full-length on the ground, yelling: 'If this is the last
day, have mercy on us, good Lord!' And there he stayed until, I swear, I
wanted to kick him!"
"And you were not frightened?"
"I? No, indeed, little spring bird; I saw the star disappear right
away."
"But the very first moment that you saw it, tell the truth now, you were
scared then, weren't you?"
"Oh, well, go to the devil! Perhaps I was. But see here, what I came for
was to talk to you about him--the master. If he is not crazy, then no
one is in the whole world. He wants you to go to Giovanna Era and to
suggest to her to get a divorce and marry him!"
Isidoro dropped his work, a mist rose before his calm, honest eyes: he
clasped his hands, resting his chin on them, and began shaking his head.
"And how about you?" he asked in a stern voice. "Are you not just as
crazy to dare to come to me with such a proposition? Oh, yes! I
understand, you are afraid of losing your place! What a poor creature
you are!"
"Ho, ho!" cried the other banteringly. "So that's your idea, is it? You
and your leeches!"
"Oh! you mean to be funny, do you? Well, it is time this was put a stop
to! Tell your master that he has got to bring this business to an end.
The whole neighbourhood has heard about it, and people are talking."
"My dear friend, we have only just begun! And here are you talking of
ending it! I have had enough of it, I assure you, for morn, noon, and
night, that brandy-bottle does nothing but talk to me about it! I had to
promise him at last that I would see you, so here I am! But I can tell
you not to talk on his side! There is only one person, Uncle Isidoro,
who can really put a stop to this scandalous business, and that is
Giovanna herself. You must go to her, and tell her to make that beast
shut up. I can do nothing more."
Isidoro gazed at him with wide, unseeing eyes; he appeared not to be
listening. Presently he resumed his work, murmuring: "Poor Costantino!
poor lamb! What have they done to you?"
"Yes, indeed, he is innocent," said Giacobbe. "And any day at all he may
come back! This craze of Brontu's has got to be stopped. Then there is
Aunt Bachissia as well, hovering over her like a vulture over its prey!"
"Poor Costantino! poor lamb! What have they done to you?" repeated
Isidoro, paying not the smallest heed to anything that Giacobbe said.
The latter became annoyed. Raising his voice until it echoed through the
surrounding silence and solitude, he shouted: "What _have_ they done to
him? What are they _going_ to do to him? Why don't you listen to what I
am telling you, you old rag-heap? You must go and talk to her, right
away! There she is, cheerful and rosy, and ready to fall at the first
touch, like a ripe apple! At heart, though, she is not bad, and if you
will predispose her against it--make her see what she ought to do--the
whole thing may be prevented. Get up! get along! move! do something!
Here is your chance to perform miracles, if you really are a saint, as
the sinners seem to think!"
"Ah! ah! ah!" sighed the old man, rising to his feet. His tall figure,
majestic even in its rags, stood out in the crimson light, against the
background of dark hedge and distant, misty horizon, like that of some
venerable hermit. "I will go," he said, sighing heavily. And at the
words Giacobbe felt as though a great weight had been rolled from his
breast.
From then on, the two men worked, steadily together in the interest of
the far-away prisoner, finding themselves opposed, however, by three
active and united forces, as well as by the passive resistance of
Giovanna. The three forces against which they had to contend were: the
brute passion of Brontu, the grasping greed of Aunt Bachissia, and Aunt
Martina's self-interest, she being now wholly in favour of Brontu's
scheme. Giovanna, she argued, was, though poor, both healthy and frugal,
and she knew how to work like a beast of burden. A woman in good
standing coming into the house as a bride, might entail all manner of
extravagance and outlay, and the wedding alone would be sure to mean a
heavy expense. Whereas, in the case of Giovanna, the marriage would be
conducted almost in secret, and she would steal into the house like a
slave! Shrewd Aunt Martina!
Thus the months rolled over the little slate-stone village, the desolate
mountains, the yellow stretch of uplands. Autumn came--soft, melancholy
days, when the sea lay beneath a veil of mist on the horizon, and dark
clouds, like huge crabs, travelled slowly across the pale sky, trailing
long lines of vapour behind them. Sometimes, though, it would turn cold,
and the atmosphere would be like a spring of limpid water, fresh, clear,
and sparkling.
On such an evening as this, when a long, violet-coloured cloud hung in
the eastern heavens like an island in a crystal sea, and the scent of
burning thyme came from the fields which the peasants were making ready
for sowing, Brontu would swallow great gulps of brandy to take off the
evening chill, and then, throwing himself down in the back of the hut,
would lie dreaming, as warm and happy as a cat, his eyes fixed on the
violet-coloured cloud on the distant horizon. All about the cabin, in
every direction, as far as the eye could reach, stretched the broad
_tancas_ of the Dejases, billowy undulations, losing themselves in the
fading daylight. Here and there amid the golden-brown stubble were dark
squares of newly-turned earth, swollen by the rain, and patches of fresh
grass and purple, autumnal flowers sending out a damp perfume. Clouds of
wild birds, and large crows as black and shining as polished metal,
poured out of the clumps of _assenzio_, which, half-hidden among the
wild roses and the clustering arbute with its shining leaves and yellow
berries, looked like _tumuli_ of ashes.
In one of the _tancas_ two peasants, farm hands of the Dejases, were
burning brush preparatory to ploughing for the wheat and barley crops.
The flames crackled as the wind blew them hither and thither, pale yet,
in the evening light, and transparent as yellow glass, the smoke hanging
over them in low, light clouds, like fragrant incense, then melting
away. Along the tops of the hedges enclosing the sheepfolds, each bare,
thorny twig seemed to stand out separately in the crystal atmosphere,
like a tracery of amethyst-coloured lace. The animals had all been
herded for the night, except a few horses which could be seen here and
there, with noses to the ground, cropping the short grass.
From without the hut came the sound of Giacobbe's voice, then the faint
tinkle of a cowbell; the prolonged, far-away howl of a dog; the harsh
screaming of a crow.
Within, extended like a Bedouin on a pile of skins and warm coverings,
Brontu dreamed his one, unvarying dream, while the fiery liquor,
coursing through his veins, filled him with a delicious sense of warmth
and comfort.
Ah, how the young proprietor did love brandy! Not so much for its
penetrating odour and sharp, biting taste, as for that glowing sensation
of happiness that stole over his heart after drinking it. But woe
betide any one who meddled with him at such times! Instantly his mood
would change, and the sweetness turn to gall. It seemed to him that dogs
must feel just as he did then, when some one tramples on their tails as
they lie asleep. He would arouse in a state of fury, and lose the thread
of his dream.
Yes, he loved brandy; wine was good too, but not so good as brandy. His
father before him had liked ardent spirits; so much so, in fact, that
one day, after drinking heavily, he fell into the fire and was so badly
burned that--Heaven preserve us!--he died of the effects! But there!
enough of such melancholy thoughts! Nowadays people are more careful,
they don't allow themselves to tumble into the fire! Moreover, to
balance the passion for brandy, Brontu had his other passion, for
Giovanna. Ah, brandy and Giovanna! The two most beautiful, ardent,
intoxicating things in the whole world! But where Giovanna was concerned
Brontu was as timid and fearful as he was reckless in the matter of
brandy. He trembled merely at the thought of approaching her--of
speaking to her. On those days when he knew that she was working for his
mother he fairly yearned to go home, to gaze at her, to see her working
there in his own house, and yet he dared not stir from the _tanca_! Now,
though, as time went on, he was growing weary of waiting; a devouring
anxiety, moreover, had seized upon him. What if, by hesitating so long,
he were to meet with another refusal! Tormented by this thought, he
longed to tell her of his solicitude for her; how, in order to console
her for all that had occurred, he would gladly have married her at once,
immediately after Costantino's sentence! His ideas differed from those
of most people, but he was made that way and could not change. At
bottom, like most drunkards, he had not a bad heart, nor was he immoral:
his one passion, apart from drink, had always been for Giovanna, ever
since when, as a boy, he had come with his family to live in the house
on the hill. She was only fifteen then, and very fresh and beautiful.
Every time he looked at her, even in those days, he had flushed even to
his hands, and though she had noticed it, she had not seemed to mind. He
never said anything, though, and so at last, when one day he screwed up
his courage to the point of persuading his mother to go to Aunt
Bachissia with an offer of marriage, it was too late, the position had
been filled! Giovanna, at that time, had been as spirited and passionate
as a young colt, and as utterly indifferent to worldly considerations.
She might have married Brontu Dejas at first for his beautiful teeth,
but having once fallen in love with Costantino, she would not have
thrown him over for the Viceroy himself, had Sardinia still possessed
one.
The twilight deepened; the sky grew more and more crystalline, like a
vast mirror; the little, violet cloud grew leaden and opaque, then long
and scaly, like some monster fish; the sounds from without, rising
clearer than ever in the intense stillness of the hour and place, it
seemed to Brontu that he must be dreaming when the voice of Aunt
Bachissia suddenly broke in upon his revery.
"_Santu Juanne Battista meu!_" exclaimed the harsh, melancholy voice.
"If I am not mistaken, that is Giacobbe Dejas?"
"At your service," replied the herdsman, in a tone of amazement. "But
what wind blows you to these parts, little spring bird?"
"Ah, I am here at last! Where is Brontu Dejas?"
Brontu rushed out of the hut, his knees shaking and his brain in such a
whirl that he could hardly discern Aunt Bachissia's black-robed figure
as she stood holding her shoes in one hand, and balancing a bundle on
her head.
"Aunt Bachissia!" he cried, in great agitation. "Here I am!
Good-evening! Come here, come right in here!"
The woman flew towards him, closely followed by the herdsman. "Ah,
Brontu, my dear boy! If I am not dead to-night, it must mean that I
never shall be! Three hours I have been walking! I lost my way. I must
see you about something, but be patient for a moment."
Patient! With his whole being in such a state of turmoil that he could
hardly keep back the tears! Taking her by the hand he led her inside
the hut, while Giacobbe, seeing that he was to have no part in the
interview, went around to the back and listened with all his ears,
raging meanwhile, inwardly, like a wild bull. Not a word, however,
reached him. The conference was extremely short, Aunt Bachissia refusing
even to sit down. She said that she had lost her way looking for
Brontu's sheepfolds, and that Giovanna would be getting very anxious, as
she thought she had merely gone into the fields to look for greens. Yes,
it was quite true, they had to depend largely upon greens for their
food, so bitter was their poverty: and what had brought her now was
nothing less than to ask Brontu for some money. Oh, a loan! yes, thank
Heaven, only a loan! If they should not be able to repay it, then she
and Giovanna would work it off. For months they had not paid any
rent--rent--! for their own house--! Now, the lawyer was threatening to
evict them. "And where would we go, Brontu Dejas?" concluded Aunt
Bachissia, clasping her gnarled and yellow hands. "Tell me where we
would go, Brontu, my soul!"
His breast heaved; he wanted to seize the old woman in his arms, and
shout: "Why, to my house; that is where you would go!" But he did not
dare.
As there was no money at the hut Brontu decided to go home for it at
once; he wished, anyhow, to return with Aunt Bachissia. Going outside,
he called to Giacobbe to saddle the horse immediately. "What has
happened?" asked the man. "Is your mother dead? God rest her soul!"
"No," replied Brontu cheerfully. "Nothing has happened that in any way
concerns you."
Giacobbe began saddling the horse, but he was consumed with curiosity to
know why Aunt Bachissia had come, and why Brontu was going back with
her. She has come to borrow some money, he reflected, and he has none;
he is going home to get it for her. "Listen, Brontu!" he called, and
when the other had come quite close, he said: "If she wants money, and
you haven't got any here, I can let you have some."
"Yes, she does; she wants to borrow some money," said Brontu in a low
tone, quivering with delight and excitement. "But I am going back with
her to get it, whether you have it here or not; that makes no
difference; I am going to see Giovanna this very evening, at her own
house; I am going to talk to her and do for myself what not one of all
you donkeys has had sense enough to do for me!"
"Man!" cried Giacobbe angrily, "you must be going mad!"
"All right; let me go mad. See here, draw the girth tighter. Ah!
swelling out your sides, are you?" he added, addressing the horse. "You
don't fancy night excursions? What will you say when the old woman is
mounted on the crupper?"
"She too?" exclaimed Giacobbe.
"She too, yes; what business is it of yours? Isn't she my
mother-in-law?"
"You go too fast, upon my word! Look out, or you will have a fall and
break your neck, little spring bird. Ah! you are really in earnest? You
really mean to marry that beggar, that married woman, when you might
have a flower for your wife? Well, I can tell you one thing, Costantino
Ledda is innocent; some day he will come back, remember that; some day
he will come back!"
"Let me alone, Giacobbe Dejas, and attend to your own affairs. There,
put a bag on the crupper. Aunt Bachissia!" he called to the old woman.
Giacobbe ran quickly into the hut, and fell over Aunt Bachissia, who was
just coming out.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said, trembling. "You are
worse than any beggar! Oh, I'm going to talk to Giovanna! I am going to
talk to her myself!"
"You are a fool," said the woman; then, lowering her voice, she called
him by an outrageous name, and passed out.
A few moments later the two set forth.
Giacobbe watched them as they slowly moved away in the fading light,
across the solitary _tanca_: further and further, along the winding
path, beyond the thickets, beyond the clumps of bushes, beyond the smoke
of the brushwood fires; until, at last, they were lost to sight. Then an
access of blind fury seized him; clutching the cap from his head, he
flung it from him as far as he could; then picked it up again, and fell
to beating the dog. The poor beast set up a prolonged howl that filled
the silent waste, and was echoed back again with a sound like the
despairing cry of some wandering phantom.
Night fell. Giacobbe, throwing himself down on the paillasse which
Brontu had quitted shortly before, smelled an odour of brandy; he got
up, found his master's flask, and drank. Then he lay down again, and
presently he too felt something bubble up in his breast, bathe his
heart, scorch his eyelids, mount gurgling to his brain. His anger melted
suddenly away and was replaced by a feeling of melancholy. Through the
open door he could see the bright red glow of the brush fires gradually
overpowering the fading twilight; as the two merged they formed a single
hue of violet, indescribably melancholy in tone. Now and again the dog
gave another long howl. Oh! what misery, what misery! Why had he,
Giacobbe, beaten that poor dog? What had it done to him? Nothing. He was
filled with remorse, the foolish, emotional remorse of the drunkard;
yet, so irritating were the sounds that he had a strong impulse to rush
out and beat the unfortunate beast again.
All at once his mind recurred to Brontu and Aunt Bachissia, whom he had
forgotten for the moment, and he began to tremble violently. What had
happened? Had Giovanna given in? Ah! what made that dog bark like that?
It was like the shriek of a dead person,--the voice of Basile Ledda,
who was murdered! "Pooh, pooh, the dead cannot cry out. That is nothing
but the howling of a dog." He laughed softly, drowsily, to himself; his
heavy eyelids closed, shutting out the opaque, violet-coloured mist that
hung like a curtain before the open door; he felt as though a sack
filled with some soft but heavy substance were pressing down upon him,
so that he could not move; yet the sensation was agreeable. A thousand
confused images chased one another through his brain. Among other things
he dreamed that he was dead, and that his soul had entered into the body
of a dog, a gaunt, little yellow cur, who was running around and around
Aunt Bachissia's kitchen searching for bones. Costantino was sitting by
the fire; he was dressed in red, and there was a great chain lying at
his feet; all at once he saw the dog, and flung the chain at it. The
creature's head was caught fast, encircled in one of the iron rings, and
Giacobbe, stricken with terror, forced himself to cry out, in order to
make them understand it was he. He awoke, perspiring and shouting:
"Little spring bird!"
Night had fallen; the deserted _tanca_, stretching away beneath a clear
sky sparkling with big, yellow stars, glowed with the red light of the
brush fires.
Giacobbe could not get to sleep again; he turned and twisted from one
side to the other, but the intoxicating effects of the brandy had
passed, leaving his mouth dry and feverish. He got up and drank; then
he remembered that he had taken nothing to eat that evening. For a long
time he stood leaning against the door of the hut, his face lighted up
by the glow of the fires. "Shall I get something to eat or not?" he
asked himself, hardly conscious that he did so. Then he looked
up at the stars. Almost midnight. What had that little beast--his
master--accomplished? he wondered, and his anger rose again, but chiefly
against Aunt Bachissia. What impudence to come all the way to this
distant spot just to further the little proprietor's outrageous plans!
For he knew perfectly well that the loan was merely an excuse of that
old harpy to draw Brontu on, to bring him to a decision, to make him
commit himself. Ah, what a low creature that woman was! Had she no
conscience at all? Did she not believe in God? At this point Giacobbe
grew thoughtful, and presently he threw himself down again, still
debating whether or no he were hungry, and whether it were worth while
to get something to eat. No, he decided; he was not hungry, nor
thirsty, nor sleepy; nor could he rest; lying down, or sitting up,
or standing. He yawned noisily and began talking aloud, mumbling
foolish, disconnected things, in a vain effort to distract his
thoughts, which, however, continued to dwell persistently upon _that
thing_. It was horrible, horrible! Marry a woman who had another
husband already! And suppose Costantino should come back? Who knows?
Everything is possible in this world. And even if he were never to
return, there was the boy, how about him? What would he think when he
grew up and found that his mother had two husbands? What a law that
was! "Ha! the men who make the laws are pretty queer!" And Giacobbe
laughed mirthlessly, for, down in the bottom of his heart, his
inclination was to do anything else but laugh.
Getting up, he seized the brandy-flask, saying to himself that if Brontu
should display any curiosity as to who had drunk his brandy, why so much
the worse for him. "I'll tell him it was the spirits! Ha, ha!" He
laughed again, took a deep draught, and, throwing himself down, quickly
fell into a heavy sleep, and dreamed that he was telling a sister of his
all about his other dream of Costantino, and the yellow dog, and the
chain.
When he awoke the sun was already above the horizon, pushing through a
bank of bluish cloud. The morning was cold, with light, drifting clouds,
and the thickets, bushes, stubble, every spear of grass, sparkled with
dew in the slanting rays of the sun. Once more the birds bustled in and
out among the bushes, burst into song, rushed together in little groups,
or poised gracefully in the misty air. Now and then the chorus of chirps
and twitters would swell into something so acute and piercing that it
was almost like the patter of metal raindrops: sometimes a shrill
whistle, or the strident note of a crow, would break into this silvery
harmony; then all would die away, swallowed up in the vast silence of
the uplands.
Giacobbe came out of the hut yawning and stretching. He yawned so
violently that his jaws cracked, and his smooth-shaven face folded into
innumerable tiny wrinkles about the round, open mouth; and his little,
oblique eyes, yellow in the sunlight, watered like those of a dog.
"Well," he thought, pressing both hands to his stomach, "I have cramps
here. What did I do last evening?"
He threw open the folds; a ram with curved horns came out, snuffing the
ground, closely followed by a yellowish bunch of sheep, all trying to
tread in his tracks, and all likewise snuffing the ground; others came,
and still others; the folds were empty; still Giacobbe stood close to
the enclosure--motionless--buried in thought.
"Yes, last evening I had nothing to eat. I drank the little master's
brandy, and then I had dreams. Yes, yes, that was it--Costantino--and
the dog--and my sister Anna-Rosa. Well, damn him! Why didn't he come
back, the little toad? I got drunk, just like a beast. Yes,"--he
moralised, walking towards the hut,--"a drunken man is like a beast; he
does not know what he is doing, and brays out everything in his mind. A
dangerous thing that, Giacobbe Dejas, you bald-pate! Get that well into
your head; it's dangerous. No, no, I'll never get drunk again; may the
Lord punish me if I do."
A little later the young master returned. Giacobbe, intent and smiling,
watched him closely. "Ah!" said he, stepping forward solicitously, "you
look like a man who has had a whipping; what has happened?"
"Nothing. Get away."
But nothing was further from the other's intention. He began to circle
around his master, fawning upon him and making little bounds towards him
like a dog, teasing persistently to be told what had occurred. At last
Brontu, who really longed to unburden himself, yielded.
Well then, yes; Giovanna had, in fact, driven him away like an
importunate beggar. She had asked him if he had forgotten that she had a
son who would one day spit at her, and demand to know how it was that
she had two husbands.
"My soul, I knew it!" cried Giacobbe, leaping in the air for joy.
"What did you know?"
"Why, that she had a son."
"Well, I knew that myself. She chased me out of the house; that's the
whole of it. I could hear the two--the mother and daughter--from the
road, quarrelling furiously together." And then Brontu went to look for
his brandy-flask.
Giacobbe was so overjoyed that he could have laughed aloud for glee.
"Look here!" he called. "The spirits came last night and drank your
brandy. Ha! ha! ha! but there must be some left; I am sure there is
still some left."
Brontu drank eagerly without making any reply. Then he flung the flask
angrily at the herdsman, who caught it in the air; and Brontu, having
drunk for sorrow, Giacobbe proceeded to drink for joy.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] A summer goblin, invoked in Sardinia to frighten children out of the
sun.
CHAPTER VIII
One morning, about three years after his conviction, Costantino awoke in
a bad humour. The heat was oppressive, and the air of the cell was heavy
and sickening. One of the prisoners was snoring and puffing like a
kettle letting off steam.
Costantino had slept with Giovanna's last letter beneath his head, and
a sad little letter it was; short, and depressing in the extreme. She
told of her and her mother's dire poverty, and of the boy's serious
illness. It never occurred to Costantino to reflect how cruel it was to
write to him in this strain; he wanted to know the truth about them,
however bad it might be, and he felt that to share all Giovanna's
sorrows and to agonise over his inability to help her was a part of his
duty. A barren duty,--alas!--merely an increase of his misery.
He had become quite deft at his trade of shoemaking, and worked rapidly,
but he could make very little money; all that was left, however, after
the _King of Spades_ had been paid for his supposed good offices he sent
to Giovanna.
"Upon my word," said the ex-marshal, "you are a goose. Spend it on
yourself. They ought to be sending you money."
"But they are so poor."
"Poor! Not they; haven't they got the sun? What more do they want?" said
the other. "If you would only eat and drink more it would be a real
charity. You are nothing but a stick, my dear fellow. Look at me! I'm
getting fat. My bacon may be all rind, but, all the same, I'm getting
fat."
He was, in fact, as round as a ball, but his flesh hung down in yellow,
flabby rolls. Costantino, on the other hand, had fallen away, his eyes
were big and cavernous, and his hands transparent.
The sun! he thought to himself bitterly. Yes, they have indeed got that;
but what good is the sun even, when one has nothing to eat, and is
suffering every kind of privation? He was, no doubt, a great simpleton,
but as he thought of these things, he sometimes cried like a child. Yet
all the time he never gave up hope. The years passed by; day followed
day slowly, regularly, uneventfully, like drops of water in a grotto,
dripping from stone to stone. Almost every convict in the prison,
especially those whose terms were not very long, hoped for a remission,
and kept close count of the days already elapsed and of those yet to
come. Their accuracy was amazing; they never made a mistake of so much
as a single day. Some even carried their calculations so far as to count
the hours. Costantino thought it all very foolish; one might die in the
mean time, or regain his liberty! It was all in the hands of God. Yet,
all the same, he too counted on being freed before the appointed hour;
only in his case the appointed hour was so desperately, so hopelessly
far away!
This realisation was heavy upon him on that morning when he awoke and
fingered the warm paper of Giovanna's last letter.
Getting up, he sighed heavily, and began to dress himself. The man on
his right stopped snoring, opened one sleepy eye, regarded Costantino
dully, then closed it again. "Feeling badly?" he asked, as Costantino
sighed again. "Oh, yes! Your child is ill. Why don't you tell the
Director?"
"Why should I tell the Director? He would clap me into a cell for
receiving the letter, and that would be the whole of it."
"Except _pane e pollastra_" (bread and water), said an ironical voice.
There was a general laugh, and Costantino, realising bitterly the utter
indifference of all those men among whom he was destined to pass his
days, felt as though he were wandering alone in a burning desert,
gasping for air and water.
He went to his work longing impatiently for the exercise hour, when he
would be able to talk over his troubles with the _King of Spades_. The
great, fat, yellow man whom he despised so in his heart, was,
nevertheless, indispensable to him; his sole comfort, in fact. He alone
in that place understood him, was sorry for him, and listened to him. He
was paid for it all, to be sure, but what did that signify? He was
necessary in the same way to a great many of the convicts, but to none,
probably, as much as to Costantino, who already, with a somewhat selfish
regret, was dreading the time when, his term expired, the _King of
Spades_ would finally depart.
On this particular day a new inmate made his appearance in the workroom.
He was a Northerner; long and sinuous, with a grey, wrinkled face, and
small, pale eyes. It was not easy to tell his age, but the men laughed
when he announced himself as twenty-two. He began at once to complain of
the heat and of the sickening smell of fish that filled the room. Ah,
he was no cobbler; no, indeed! He was the only son of a wealthy
wholesale shoe-dealer,--a gentleman, in fact. And thereupon he recounted
his unfortunate history. He had, it appeared, been so unlucky as to kill
a rival in love; there had been provocation and he had ripped him open
in the back,--simply that! The woman who was the real cause of the crime
had consumption, and now she was dying from grief,--dying, simply that!
Moreover, there was a child in the question, a son of the prisoner's by
the sick woman. If she died, the boy would be left orphaned and
abandoned. Costantino trembled at this; not, indeed, that the man's
story affected him particularly, but because the picture of the woman
and the child reminded him of Giovanna and the sick Malthineddu.
The newcomer, who was cutting a pair of soles with considerable skill,
now became silent, and bent over, intent upon his work, his under lip
trembling like that of a child about to cry. Costantino, watching him,
reflected that though he knew that this man must be suffering intensely
he felt as indifferent as did any of the others: he too, then, had lost
the power of sympathising with the sorrows of others! The thought filled
him with dismay and made him more insanely anxious to get out than ever.
That day, as soon as he saw the _King of Spades_, he drew him over to a
corner where the sun-baked wall cast a little spot of shade; but when he
had got him there he could not bring himself to begin on his own
troubles. Instead he repeated the story told by the new arrival. The
other shrugged his shoulders and spat against the wall.
"If he wants to, even he can write," he said. "But I should advise
prudence, some one is nosing about."
"How are we ever going to manage after you have gone?" said Costantino
thoughtfully.
"You would like to keep me here forever, you rascal?" demanded the other
in a rallying tone.
"Heaven forbid! No, indeed; I only wish you might get out to-morrow!"
The _King of Spades_ sighed. His enemies, he declared, were forever
devising new and diabolical schemes for keeping him out of the way; he
had abandoned all hope now of a pardon. In any case, however, his term
would expire before long; then he would go at once to the King, and lay
a plain statement of the facts before him. The King would order an
instant reversal of the verdict, and he himself, his innocence finally
established, would be restored to his post. Who could tell, there might
even be another medal conferred, to keep the rest company! But his first
care would be to obtain pardons for all his friends, especially for
Costantino. "That would be a noble work," he observed, self-approvingly.
Indeed, by virtue of making such assurances frequently, he had come
actually to believe in them himself.
"To-morrow? Yes, indeed; a pardon might very possibly come to-morrow,
and a good thing that would be for every one."
"Good, or bad," said Costantino despondently.
"After all," continued the other, "when I am gone it may be that you
will no longer have any use for my services."
The moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted having spoken,
but seeing that Costantino merely shook his head, evidently supposing
that he alluded to a possible pardon, he regarded him compassionately.
"Are you really and truly innocent?" he asked. "By this time I should
think you would be willing to talk to me quite openly. Do you remember
that first time when I asked you? You said: 'May I never see my child
again, if I am guilty.'"
"Yes, so I did; and now, you mean to say, I am perhaps not going to see
him again? Well, God's will be done; but I am innocent, all the same."
The _King of Spades_ turned, and again spat upon the wall. "Patience,
old fellow, patience, patience," he said; and there was a note of real
warmth and feeling in his tone. He felt, in fact, quite proud of himself
for recognising and esteeming honesty when he saw it in others, and it
was this taste that drew him to Costantino. He saw with wonder that his
fellow-countryman was so good, that his soul was so pure, and his whole
nature formed of so fine a material, that even the boundless corruption
of prison life could not sully him.
Now it happened that the ex-marshal allowed himself--as one of the
privileges of his position of go-between--to read the letters that
passed through his hands. Not long before, an anonymous letter had come
for Costantino, written in a villainous hand, with great sprawling
characters that looked like insects crawling over the page. Venomous
creatures they proved, indeed, to be, and capable of inflicting wounds
as deadly as those of any living reptile. In short, the letter announced
that Giovanna, wife of the prisoner, was permitting Brontu Dejas to pay
court to her, and that Aunt Bachissia was about to go to Nuoro to
consult a lawyer about applying for a divorce for her daughter.
On reading this precious communication the ex-marshal became furious;
his friend, the _Delegate_, immersed as he was in his great scientific
researches, heard him snorting, and puffing out his fat, yellow cheeks.
"Idiots! Fools! Sardinian asses!" he sputtered. "Why on earth tell him
about it at all! What can he do, except batter out his brains against
the wall?"
He did not deliver the letter, and every time he saw his friend he
regarded him compassionately, feeling at the same time pleased at his
own goodness of heart for caring so much.
Three days later the boy died. Costantino was notified immediately of
the event. He wept silently and by stealth, trying hard to bear up with
fortitude before his companions. When Arnolfo Bellini, the man whose
mistress was dying, heard of the Sardinian's misfortune, he fell into a
fit of nervous weeping, emitting curious noises like an angry hen, his
grey, old-young face doubling up in such grotesque contortions that one
of the quarrelsome brothers from the Abruzzi burst out laughing; one of
the others leaned across and punched him in the leg with an awl,
whereupon the Abruzzese started, ceased laughing, and continued his work
without protest.
Costantino, after staring a moment at Bellini in amazement, shook his
head and turned to his bench. Silence reigned, and presently the man
calmed down.
The low room was filled with the hot, reflected glare from the
courtyard, and the overpowering heat drew a sickening odour from the
leather and the perspiring hands and feet of the convicts. There were
thirteen of them under the surveillance of a tall, red-moustached guard,
who never opened his lips. The uniformity of dress, the close-cropped
heads and shaven faces, and the general vacuity of expression lent them
all a certain mutual resemblance; they might have been brothers, or at
least nearly related to one another, and yet, never more than on that
particular day, had Costantino felt himself so utterly apart, so wholly
out of sympathy with his companions in misery.
He stitched and stitched, bending over the shoe, which rested between
his knees in the hollow of his leather apron. From time to time he
would pause, examine his work attentively, then go on again drawing the
thread through with both hands with a jerk that seemed almost angry.
Yes, one must work, now that the boy was dead. Had he loved him very
dearly? Well, he could hardly say; perhaps not so very much. He had only
seen him once during that time at Nuoro, through the iron grating of the
reception-room, held fast in the arms of his weeping mother. The baby,
he remembered, had a little pink face, somewhat rough and scarred, like
certain kinds of apricots when they are ripe. His round, violet-coloured
eyes shone like a pair of grape seeds from beneath their long fringe of
lashes. He had cried the whole time, terrified at the sight of the
stern-faced, rigid guards; and grasping the iron bars convulsively with
his little red hands.
This was the only memory Costantino had preserved of his son. Years had
gone by since then; yet he always imagined him flushed, tearful, with
little violet eyes shining out from beneath the dark lashes. But he
often pictured the future, when Malthineddu, grown to be big and strong,
would drive the wagon, and ride the horse, and sow, and reap, and be the
comfort and support of his mother. The prisoner constantly hoped that
some day or other he would be cleared, and able to return to his home,
but when at times this hope seemed to be more than usually vain, then
his thoughts would instantly revert to the boy, and how he would be able
to take his place in a way; thus his feeling for him was more a part of
his love for Giovanna than that more selfish affection which is the
result, often, of habit and propinquity.
Now the boy was dead, and the dream shattered; the will of God be done.
And Costantino, dwelling upon Giovanna's grief, suffered himself,
acutely.
When the _King of Spades_, accordingly, met his friend that day in the
shadow of the sun-baked wall, he at once perceived that the other's
grief was far more for his wife than for the loss of the child;
nevertheless, his method of imparting comfort was to say banteringly:
"Why, my dear fellow, if, as you say, the Lord has taken the innocent
little soul back to himself, why do you take it so much to heart? It
must be for his own good!"
"Why must it?" said Costantino, his head drooping, and both arms hanging
down with limp, open palms. "Why must he be better off? Simply because
he was poor!"
The _King of Spades_ happened to be in a philosophising mood. He
explained, therefore, that poverty was not always a misfortune; nothing
of the sort; it might at times be looked upon as a blessing, even an
unqualified one!
"There are many worse things than poverty," said he. "Reflect for a
moment; your wife will become reconciled."
"Oh! of course; she has the sun," said Costantino, clenching his hands.
"This burning sun, and just how is it going to help her?"
"Pff! pff! pff!" puffed the other, inflating his big, yellow cheeks.
Then he grew thoughtful, and fell to examining the little finger of his
right hand with minute attention.
"Suppose," he said suddenly, "your wife were to marry again?"
Costantino did not quite take in what he meant, but his arms stiffened
instinctively.
"I hardly should have thought," said he in a hurt tone, "that you would
say such a thing as that."
"Pff! pff! pff!" The ex-marshal swelled and puffed meditatively. Then,
after a short pause, he began again:
"But listen, my dear fellow, you don't understand. I don't for a moment
mean to say that your wife is not a perfectly honest woman; what I do
mean is--suppose she were actually to marry some one else? And still you
don't understand? Upon my word, this Christian is extraordinarily slow
at taking an idea! One would suppose you were free, you are so innocent.
Perhaps, though," he added, "you don't know that people can get divorces
nowadays. Any woman whose husband has been sentenced for more than ten
years, can be divorced and marry some one else."
Costantino threw his head up for a moment, and his sunken eyes opened
round and wide; then the lids dropped again.
"Giovanna would never do it," he said simply.
There was another brief interval of silence.
"Giovanna would not do it," he repeated; yet, even as he pronounced the
words, he had a strange sensation, as though a frozen steel were
slashing his heart in twain; one part was convulsed with agony, while
the other shrieked again and again: "She would never do it! she would
never do it!" And neither part gave a single thought to the little, dead
child.
"She would not do it, she would not do it," reiterated one half of his
heart with loud insistence, until, at last, the other was convinced, and
they came together again, but only to find that both were now devoured
by that torturing pain.
"See here," said the _King of Spades_, "I don't believe she would
either. But tell me one thing; now that the child is dead, and now that
the mother has nothing more to hope for, from either him or you, would
it not, after all, be the very best thing she could do, supposing she
had the opportunity? For my own part, I think that if a chance came
along for her to marry again, she would be very foolish not to take it."
"Brontu Dejas!" said Costantino to himself. But he only repeated: "No,
she would not do it."
"But you are a Christian, my friend; if she were to do it, would she not
be in the right?"
"But I am going back some day."
"How is she to know that?"
"Why, I have told her so all along, and I shall never cease telling her
so."
The _King of Spades_ had a strong inclination to laugh, but he
restrained himself, feeling quite ashamed of the impulse. Presently he
murmured, as though in answer to some inward question: "It is all utter
foolishness."
"Yes, of course," said Costantino. But all the time, he was thinking of
Brontu Dejas, of his house with the portico, of his _tancas_ and his
flocks; and then of Giovanna's poverty. Alas! the knife was cutting deep
into his heart now.
That very night he wrote a long letter to Giovanna, comforting her, and
assuring her of his unshaken faith in the divine mercy. "It may be," he
wrote, in the simple goodness of his heart, "that God wishes to prove us
still further, and so has taken from us the offspring that we conceived
in sin; may his will be done! But now, a presentiment tells me that the
hour of my restoration to liberty is at hand." He considered long
whether or no to tell her of the _dreadful thing_ hinted at by the
ex-marshal, and thought himself quite shrewd and cunning when he decided
it would be better to let her think that he did not so much as know of
the existence of that infernal law.
His letter despatched, he felt more tranquil. But a little worm had
begun to gnaw and gnaw in his brain. The ex-marshal, moreover, from that
day on, with a pity that was heartless in its operations, never ceased
to instil the subtle poison into his veins. He must become accustomed
to the idea, thought this diplomatist to himself, else the poor, simple
soul will die of heartbreak. There were times, however, when he thought
that it might be better, after all, to let him die, and have done with
it. Then, remembering all his promises about obtaining a pardon, he
would pretend to himself that he was really going to do this, and
continue the torture so that his victim might survive the shock when
news of the divorce actually came. He had no doubt that his friend's
wife was seriously contemplating the step, and it made him angry to hear
Costantino speak affectionately of her.
"My dear fellow," said he one October day, puffing as usual, "you don't
know women. Empty jugs, that's what they are; nothing but empty jugs! I
was once engaged to be married myself. You can hardly believe it? Well,
I can hardly believe it either. What then? Nothing, except that she
betrayed me before I had even married her, and--that you irritate me
beyond measure. Here is your wife in an altogether different situation;
she is young and poor, and has blood in her veins--she has blood in her
veins, I suppose, hasn't she? Well, if this Dejas fellow wants her to
marry him, I say she would be a great goose not to do it."
"Dejas! Why--what--who told you?" stammered Costantino in amazement.
"Oh! didn't you tell me yourself?"
Costantino thought he most certainly had not, but then his mind had been
in such a confused state for some time back--but merciful God! Dear San
Costantino! How had he ever come to do such a thing? What had made him
utter that man's name?
"Well, then," he burst out; "yes, I am afraid of him! He courted her
before we were married; he wanted her himself. Ugh! he's a drunkard, and
as weak as mud. No, no; she could never do anything so horrible! For
pity's sake, let's talk of something else."
So they did talk of something else, still in the Sardinian dialect, so
as not to be understood by the other prisoners. They talked of the
consumptive student, who was drawing visibly nearer to the door of the
other world; of Arnolfo Bellini, who began to sob whenever his eye fell
on the dying man; of the _Delegate_, whom they could see pacing back and
forth by the fountain; of the magpie, who was growing feeble, and losing
all his feathers, from old age.
Gossip, envy, hatred, identical interests, cowardice, raillery,
fear--such were the bonds which united or kept apart the different
members of the little community--prisoners, guards, and officials alike.
To Costantino they were all equally objects of indifference; he, the
_Delegate_, and the student seeming to live apart in a little world of
their own, with the ex-marshal--the pivot about which every detail in
the prisoners' lives seemed to revolve; he, meanwhile, appearing to be
as superior as he was necessary to them all.
Many envied the friendly intercourse existing between Costantino and
him, and frequently the former would be implored to use his influence
with the _King of Spades_ to procure some favour. He merely shrugged his
shoulders on such occasions, though, when they offered him money, as
sometimes happened, he was sorely tempted to take it, so intense was his
longing to be able to support Giovanna; he had no other idea. The _King
of Spades_, with his eternal insinuations that cut like knives, was
becoming more and more hateful to him. One day they actually quarrelled,
and for some time did not speak to one another. But Costantino could not
stand it; he felt as though he should suffocate, as though he had been
shut up in a cell, and cut off from all communication with the outer
world. He soon apologised and begged for a reconciliation.
The autumn drew on; the air grew cool, and the sky became a delicate,
velvety blue, distant, unreal, dreamlike. Sometimes the breeze would
waft a perfume of ripening fruit into the prison enclosure.
Costantino was less acutely miserable, but he had sunk into a state of
settled melancholy; he grew thinner and thinner, and deprived himself
continually of things which he stood in need of in order to have more
money to send to Giovanna. The other prisoners all received presents of
some sort from their friends and relatives; he alone denied himself
even the little pittance he was able to earn.
"I don't understand it," said the ex-marshal to him one day. "Your
complexion is pink and you look younger than you did when you came, and
yet you are almost transparent."
Sometimes Costantino would flush violently, and the blood would rush to
his head; then he would be utterly prostrated, and in his weakness he
would suffer more from homesickness than he had done even in the first
year of his imprisonment. He would see before him the boundless sweep of
the uplands, sleeping in the autumnal haze, glowing and yellow beneath
the crystal sky; he would get the breath of the vineyards, the scent of
such late-maturing fruits as flourish in that land of flocks and
beehives; images would rise before him of the foxes and hares, the wild
birds and cattle, the hedges thick with blackberries, all the hundred
and one natural objects which had constituted the sole element of
enjoyment in his otherwise miserable and barren childhood. Then his
thoughts would turn to his uncle, the cruel old Vulture who, having
tormented him in his lifetime, seemed able to torment him still. An
impulse of bitter hatred would rise up in his heart, only to be
repressed, on remembering that he was dead, and succeeded by a prayer
for the murdered man's soul.
There was no one else whom he was even tempted to hate, no one at all;
not even the real murderer, or Brontu Dejas--who, in fact, had as yet
given him no cause for complaint--or the _King of Spades_, though he
subjected him to this continual martyrdom. Indeed, it hardly seemed as
though he had sufficient strength effectually to hate any one. A feeling
of gentle melancholy pervaded him, a sort of numbness like that of a
person about to fall asleep; his only sensation was one of tender,
pitiful, passionless love; as tranquil, as mild and all-embracing as an
autumnal sky, and having for its one object--Giovanna. She was a part of
the love itself, and waking or sleeping, he thought only of her, only of
her, only of her.
As time went on this love became more and more engrossing; she came to
represent the far-off home, family, liberty--life itself. All, all, was
comprehended in her: hope, faith, endurance, peace, the very love of
life! She became his soul.
When the inexorable _King of Spades_ threatened him with _that horrible
thing_, he did not know it, but it was the death of his soul that he was
holding over him. For the certainty of not losing Giovanna, Costantino
would gladly have agreed to pass forty years in prison; and, at the same
time, he panted for his freedom precisely in order that he might not
lose her.
During the winter that followed, he suffered intensely from cold; his
face and nails were livid, and during the exercise hour, even when he
stood in the sun, his teeth chattered like those of an old man. He
asked often to confess, and confided all his troubles to the young
chaplain.
"Who puts such ideas as these into your head, my son?" asked the
confessor, his dark eyes flashing.
"A fellow-countryman of mine, the ex-marshal--Burrai. The _King of
Spades_ they call him."
"May God bless and protect you!" said the other, becoming thoughtful; he
knew the _King of Spades_ well. Then he administered what comfort he
could, and asked what Giovanna had written herself, and when.
Alas! she wrote but seldom now and never more than a few lines at a
time. It seemed almost as if, after the child's death, she had nothing
to write about. In her last letter she had told him that the weather was
bitterly cold; there had been two snow-storms, in one of which a man,
while attempting to cross the mountains, had been frozen to death. And
then she had added that they were having a famine.
These accounts, of course, preyed upon Costantino's mind. He would dream
constantly that he had been taken to Nuoro and given his liberty; from
thence he would set forth on foot for home; it was cold, bitterly cold;
he could go no further--he was dying, dying--then he would wake up
shivering, and with a heavy weight on his heart.
"You are so weak, my brother," said the confessor. "It is bodily
weakness that makes you imagine all these things. Your wife is a good
Christian; she would never wrong you in the world. Come, put all such
ideas out of your head. You should try to get back your strength; you
must eat more, and drink something now and then. Are you earning
anything?"
"A little; but I send it all to my wife, she is so terribly poor. Oh! I
eat plenty, and I don't like to take anything to drink; it gives me
nausea."
"Well, take heart. I will talk to Burrai; he shall not bother you any
more."
He did, in fact, have an interview with the _King of Spades_, and took
him severely to task for putting such wicked ideas into Ledda's head.
"The poor fellow is far from strong as it is," said he. "If you don't
let him alone, he will be ill."
Burrai regarded the priest calmly out of his shrewd little pig-eyes,
then he gave a puff and shook his head.
"I only do it for his own good," he said confidently.
"But what good, what possible good? You----"
"I tell you, my dear fellow--I beg your pardon--but here it is, for the
present--as long as the cold weather lasts--there is very little to be
feared, so far as the young woman is concerned; that is, I fancy that
now it is only the old one, Costantino's mother-in-law, who is at work,
advising and tormenting her daughter not to let her chance slip by. But
when the spring comes--then you'll see; that's all."
The chaplain's face fell; he was disturbed and puzzled. The other,
watching him out of his sharp, little eyes, concluded that the present
would be a good time to explain himself more fully, and accordingly
began to enlarge upon the mother-in-law's grasping disposition, the
youth of her daughter, the dangers of the spring season, and so forth.
The chaplain now became really angry.
"This is too much!" he exclaimed, as he strode up and down, striking the
palms of his hands together, and his eyes flashing. "How dare you
imagine all this string of things that may possibly happen, and
then repeat them to that poor creature as though they were actual
occurrences? Because the young woman once had another suitor, you mean
to say----"
"My dear friend, there is no need to get so angry," said the other.
"Here, look at this," and he showed him the anonymous letter.
The chaplain saw at once that the matter was more serious than he had
supposed; he read the letter, and then asked if Ledda paid him money.
"Of course, a trifle now and then. Perhaps you think it wrong? Well,
don't I take the risk of being put in a cell in order to serve him?"
"And you consider that you are doing right when you act in this
manner?"
"What is doing right? If it is helping your neighbour, then I most
certainly think that I am."
The chaplain re-read the letter attentively.
"Yes," pursued the other. "I certainly am. And what is more, if, when I
get out of here, they don't reinstate me in my position, I intend to
arrange a system of correspondence for all the prisons in Italy. It will
be a sort of agency----"
"I see, my friend, that it will not be long before we have you back
again."
"Eh! eh! I shall know how to manage the thing; a secret agency, and----"
"Pardons too!" said the priest, folding the letter and returning it.
"How can you have the heart to fool those poor creatures so?"
"Yes, pardons too," replied Burrai calmly. "Well, and suppose they are
fooled; if it gives them any comfort to hope, is not that an act of
kindness in itself? What is there for any of us, but hope?"
"Well," said the other more mildly, "at least do me the favour to leave
that poor fellow alone. Allow _him_ to enjoy the pleasures of hope,
otherwise he will certainly fall ill."
The ex-marshal promised, though with bad grace. It seemed to him a poor
method.
"He will die of heartstroke, I verily believe," he said to himself.
"Wait till the spring; then we will see whether a man of the world knows
what he is about or no." And he laid one hand on his breast.
When they next met, Costantino asked with a smile if he had seen _Su
Preideru_, as they called the chaplain between themselves, and what he
had said to him.
The ex-marshal was leaning against the damp and dingy wall, softly
cursing some individual unknown, in the Sardinian dialect.
"_Balla chi trapasset sa busacca, brasciai!_" (I wish a ball would hit
him in the pouch, the he-wolf!) he murmured, as Costantino approached.
"What is it? Who?"
"Oh! nothing."
"You want to know if I have seen the priest? Yes, and he scolded me like
a child. What a child it is! A little pig, really and truly, a little
pig! But the lard is yellow and rancid. Do you know, I read somewhere
that in Russia they think very highly of rancid lard?"
"But tell me what he said."
"What he said? Let me see, what did he say? I don't remember; oh! yes,
he told me that I had imagined all that--what we have been talking
about. Yes, that was it, my dear fellow; I have, it seems, a vivid
imagination, and your wife will never wrong you in the world! Never, as
surely as we are standing here!"
Costantino looked at him eagerly. No, the man was not chaffing; he was
perfectly serious, and evidently meant what he said.
"Ah, ha! he scolded you, did he? Good enough!" he cried.
"This wall," said the _King of Spades_, straightening himself, and
regarding his hands, which were red and scarred from contact with the
rough stones, "this wall looks as though it were made of chocolate; it
is warm and damp. Ah! if it only were, there would be two advantages: we
could eat it, and then escape! Have you ever eaten any chocolate?"
"Why, of course, and Giovanna too; she is very fond of it, but it is
fearfully dear. Well, and what then?"
"What then?" exclaimed the other impatiently. "My dear fellow, you drive
me crazy. Oh! she will wait for you twenty-three years--never fear!"
"No, not that long; I shall be out of here long before that," replied
Costantino confidently. "Then too," he added with a gleam of humour,
"there is the pardon; you were to see the King, you know, about a pardon
for me."
"Precisely," said the other. "I was to see the King. You don't believe
me? I shall, however, go to him at once; he receives every official, and
what am I if not an official? He is fond of the army; he is young; I
hear he is getting fat. Ah! not as fat as I, though"--and he laughed.
From then on, whenever Costantino tried to bring the conversation around
to the old subject, the other contrived to head him off; but at all
events he was no longer tormented.
One day about this time, Costantino was informed that five francs had
been paid in to his account. "He did it!" he exclaimed. "I am sure it
was the priest. What a kind man he is! But I don't need it; no, indeed,
I don't need the money at all."
"You stupid," said the _King of Spades_. "Take it; if you don't he will
be offended. 'I don't want it!' A pretty way that to acknowledge a
present!"
"But I should be ashamed to take it. And what could I do with it,
anyhow?"
"Why, eat, drink--you have need to, I can assure you. You would like to
send it home, I suppose? The devil take you! If you do such an idiotic
thing as that I will spit in your face! Why, see here, she doesn't even
write to you any more; she----"
"What is there for her to write about?" said Costantino, trying vainly
to think of some excuse. "Besides," he added, "she will be working now,
the winter is nearly over."
"Yes, it is nearly over, and then the spring will come," said the other
in a tone that had almost a menace in it. "It will come."
"Why, of course, it will come!"
"When does the warm weather begin with you? We have it in March."
"Oh, with us, not till June. But then it is so beautiful. The grass
grows--oh! as tall as that, and they clip the sheep, and the bees are
making honey!"
"An idyl, truly! You don't know what an idyl is? Well, I'll tell you.
It is--sometimes it is--infidelity. Wait till June. How long is it since
you've been to confession?"
"Oh, I've not been for a fortnight."
"A long time, I declare! What a good Christian you are, my friend. For
my own part, I've never been at all. My conscience is as clear and
unsullied as a mirror. Now there," said he, pointing to the pasty-faced
student, whose hair was so white that it looked as though it had been
powdered, "there is one who had better confess without delay; he is
knocking now at the door of eternity."
Sure enough, only a few days later the student was removed to the
infirmary, and at the end of March he died.
Bellini, the man whose mistress was dying of the same disease, asked
after him anxiously every day, and when he died cried for hours in a
weak, childish fashion. It was not from any grief he felt at parting
from the sick man, but at the thought of what might happen to his
mistress. His grief subsided at length, and then, as he no longer had
the reminder of the student before his eyes, he gradually came to think
less and less about his own sorrow.
The death of the student had a totally different effect upon the _King
of Spades_; he became quite melancholy, took to philosophising about
life and death, and would engage in lengthy discussions with the
_Delegate_, who rolled his eyes about and expounded his views in a deep
bass voice.
When talking with Costantino, the ex-marshal was apt to drop into rather
homesick reminiscences about the distant land of their birth.
"Yes," said he one day, "I was once quite close to your home, or its
neighbourhood. I can't tell you precisely, but I know there was a wood,
all arbute, and cork-trees, and rock-roses; it looked as though there
had been a rain of blood all over them. And there was a smell--oh! the
queerest kind of smell, it was something like tobacco. Then there was a
cross on a stone, and you could see the water far away in the distance."
"Why, of course!" cried Costantino. "That was the forest of _Cherbomine_
(Stagman). I should say I did know it. Once a hunter saw a stag there
with golden horns. He fired, and shot it dead, but as the stag fell it
gave a cry like a human being, and said: 'The penance is completed!'
They say it was some human soul that had been forced to expiate a
terrible sin of some sort. The cross was erected afterwards."
"And how about the horns?"
"They say that as the hunter drew near the horns turned black."
"Pff! pff! how superstitious you all are, you peasants! Ah! here is the
spring coming at last," he continued, staring up at the sky. "For my own
part, the spring gets on my nerves. If I could but go hunting once.
There was one time when I was hunting in the marshes near Cagliari: ah!
those marshes, they look just like ever so many pieces of looking-glass
thrown down from somewhere above; and all around there were quantities
of purple lilies. A long line of flamingoes were flying in single file;
they stood out against the sky which was so bright you could hardly
raise your eyes to it. Pum! pum! one of the flamingoes fell, the others
flew on without making a sound. I rushed right into the middle of the
marsh to get the one I had shot. I was as quick and agile as a fish in
those days; I was only eighteen years old."
"What are flamingoes good for?"
"Nothing; they stuff them; they have great, long legs like velvet. Have
you ever been in that part of the country? Oh! yes, I remember, when you
worked in the mines, you passed through Cagliari. I shall go back there
some day, to die in blessed peace!"
"You are melancholy nowadays."
"What would you have, my friend? It is the spring; it is so depressing
to have to pass Easter in prison. I shall take the Easter Instruction
this year."
"I have taken it already."
"Ah! you have taken it already?" And the two prisoners fell into a
thoughtful silence.
Thus April passed by, and May, and June. The dreary prison walls turned
into ovens; unpleasant insects came to life, and once more preyed upon
the unfortunate inmates; again the air was filled with sickening odours,
and in the workroom, presided over by the same red-faced, taciturn
guard, perspiration, fish, and leather fought for pre-eminence in the
fetid atmosphere.
Costantino, weaker than ever, suffered tortures from the insects. In
former years he had slept so profoundly that nothing could disturb him,
but now it was different, and a sudden sting would arouse him with a
bound, and leave him trembling all over. Then insomnia set in, and
periods of semi-consciousness that were worse than actual sleeplessness,
haunted, as they sometimes were, with nightmare. Sharp twinges, not
always from insects, shot through his entire body, and he would toss
from side to side, gasping and sighing.
Sometimes the torture became almost unendurable, and often the orange
glow of sunrise would shine through the window before he had been able
to close an eye; then, overpowered by exhaustion, he would fall into a
heavy slumber just as it was time to get up!
Giovanna had now entirely ceased writing. Once only, towards the end of
May, a letter had come, begging him not to send her any more money, as
she now earned enough to live on, with care. After that there was
nothing more.
And yet he maintained his tranquil faith in her loyalty. Even this last
letter he took as a fresh proof of her affection for him.
Every day the _King of Spades_, waiting for his friend in the exercise
hour, would betray a certain anxiety.
"Well," he would say uneasily, his sharp little demon-eyes snapping from
out of the big, clean-shaven, yellow face. "Well, what news?" And when
Costantino would seem to be surprised at the question, he too would look
surprised, though he never would say at what.
"It is warm weather," he would observe.
"Yes, very warm."
"The spring is over."
"I should say that it was!"
"Have they finished harvesting where you come from?"
"Of course they have. My wife says there is no need to send her anything
more now."
"Ah! I knew that already, my dear fellow."
The ex-marshal hardly knew what to think; he was almost annoyed to find
that his forebodings were not being verified.
One day, however, Costantino failed to put in an appearance at the
"exercise," and when the ex-marshal was told that his friend had been
taken to the infirmary, he felt a strange tightening at the heart.
Presently the old magpie came fluttering about, and, settling down with
a shake of its half-bald, rumpled head, croaked out dismally:
"Cos-tan-ti, Cos-tan-ti."
"'Costanti' has had a stroke, my friend," said the _King of Spades_. The
other convicts began to crowd around him curiously. But he waved them
all off. "I know nothing about it," he said. "Let me alone." Up to nine
o'clock, Bellini told them, Costantino had been at work with the rest as
usual. Then a guard had said that he was wanted, no one knew what for;
he had gotten quickly up, and gone off with him, as white as a sheet,
and his eyes starting out of their sockets; he had not returned.
To the last day of his life Costantino never forgot that morning. It was
hot and overcast; the shadows of the clouds seemed to hang over the
workroom, throwing half of it into deep gloom. The convicts all looked
livid by this light, the leather aprons exhaled a strong and very
disagreeable odour, and every one was out of humour. A man who was
afraid of ghosts had been telling how in his part of the country, long,
white, flowing forms could be seen on dark nights, floating on the
surface of the river; he asked Bellini if he had ever seen them.
"I? No; I don't believe in such foolishness."
"Ah! you think it's foolishness, do you?" said the other in a dull,
monotonous tone, and staring into the shoe he was at work on.
"Calf!" murmured another, without looking up from his work.
The believer in ghosts thereupon raised his head with an angry
movement, and was about to reply in kind, when the first broke in,
protestingly: "Oh, really," said he, "can't I talk to myself? If I
choose to say--calf,--or ram,--or sheep,--or dog,--what business is it
of yours? Can't I say things to my shoe, I'd like to know?"
It was at this point that the guard had come, and called Costantino
away, and the latter, who had passed a sleepless night, had opened his
drowsy eyes, turned pale, and leaped to his feet. "Who wants me?" he had
asked, and then he had followed the guard.
He was taken to a dingy room, filled with shelves of dusty papers. The
dirty windows were closed; beyond them, through a red grating, could be
seen the sky--dull and grey, as though it too were dirty. A man was
seated writing, at a tall, dusty desk, piled so high with papers that
between the papers and the dust the man himself could hardly be seen. As
the prisoner entered he raised a flushed face, the small chin completely
hidden by a heavy, blond moustache. He fixed a pair of big, round,
dull-blue eyes upon Costantino, but apparently without seeing him, for
he dropped them again immediately, and went on writing.
Costantino, who had seen this man before, stood waiting, his heart
thumping in his breast. Mechanically his thoughts dwelt upon the
description of the water-phantoms he had just been listening to, and the
voice saying: "calf"; he wondered vaguely if one would be justified in
feeling angry at that. Not a sound broke the stillness of the room,
except the scratch, scratch, of the pen, as it travelled over the
coarse paper. Again the pale blue eyes were fixed upon the prisoner, and
again lowered to the sheet. Costantino, trembling and unnerved, gazed
desperately around the room. Still the man wrote on. The prisoner could
feel his heart beating furiously; a thousand dark fancies, hideous,
terrifying, rushed through his brain, like clouds driven before an angry
tempest. And still the man wrote on, and on. Suddenly, without warning,
all the dark fancies vanished,--dispersed and swallowed up, as it were,
in a single glorious flood of light. A thought, so dazzling and
beautiful as almost to be painful, shot into his mind. "They have
discovered that I am innocent!"
The idea did not remain for long, but it left behind it a vague,
tremulous light.
The man was still writing, and did not stop as he presently said in a
loud, hard voice: "You are named----?"
"Costantino Ledda."
"Where from?"
"Orlei, in Sardinia, Province of Sassari."
"Very good."
Silence. The man wrote a little while longer; then suddenly he dug his
pen into the paper, raised his red face, and fastened his round,
expressionless eyes upon the man standing before him. Costantino's own
eyes dropped.
"Very good. Have you a wife?"
"Yes."
"Any children?"
"We had one, but he died."
"Are you fond of your wife?"
"Yes," replied Costantino, and raised his terrified eyes as far as the
fat, red hand resting on the desk, with a ring on one finger having a
purple stone; and between the thumb and forefinger, the stiff, black
point of the pen. Not knowing where to fix his perplexed gaze,
Costantino followed the movements of this pen, conscious all the while
only of a feeling of supreme agony, as when one dreams that he is about
to be swallowed up in a cataclysm.
The hard voice was speaking again, in a low, measured tone.
"You know, of course, that your wife's whole life has been ruined by
your fault. Young, handsome, and blameless, the rest of her days must be
spent in struggle and privation. The world holds out no promise of
happiness for her, and yet she has never done any harm at all. As long
as your child lived she endured her lot patiently, her hopes were fixed
upon him. But now that he is dead what has she left? When you return to
her,--if, indeed, God should be so merciful as to allow you to do
so,--you will be old, broken-down, useless, and she will be the same.
She sees stretching before her a terrible future--nothing but sorrow,
shame, poverty, and a miserable old age. No resource but to beg; thus
her life is a worse punishment even than yours----"
Costantino, as white as death, panting, agonising, tried to protest, to
say that he would surely be liberated before long, but the words died
away on his lips; the other, meanwhile, gave him no chance, but pursued
his theme in smooth, even tones, his dull eyes never leaving the
prisoner's face.
"Her life is thus a worse punishment even than yours. You should think
of these things, and, abandoning all hope, repent doubly of your crime."
He cleared his throat, and then continued in a different tone: "Now,
however, the law has provided a means by which this great injustice can
be rectified. You of course know very well that an act of divorce has
gone into effect which enables a woman whose husband is guilty of a
certain class of crime, to marry again. Should your wife--sit down, keep
quiet--should your wife apply for such a divorce, it would be your duty
to grant it at once. I know that you are, or pretend to be, after all, a
good Christian----"
Costantino, who was leaning on the table, shaking in every limb, but
making a heroic effort to control himself, now broke in. "Has she
applied for it?" he demanded.
"Sit down, sit down there," said the other, motioning with his pen; he
wanted to continue his harangue, but Costantino again spoke, in a clear,
firm voice that contrasted strangely with the trembling of his limbs. "I
know my duty perfectly," he said, "and I shall never give my consent. I
shall undoubtedly be freed before very long, and then my wife would
bitterly repent of her mistake."
Two deep wrinkles furrowed the red cheeks of the lecturer, and an ugly
smile shone from his dull eyes.
"Indeed!" he said. "Well, the consent of the prisoner is asked merely as
a formality. It is, of course, his duty to give it, and his good-will
counts for something in his favour. But it all comes to the same thing,
whether he gives it or no--Eh, there! what--why--what is the matter?"
For Costantino had given a sudden lurch, and collapsed on the floor like
a bundle of limp rags.
PART II