[156]
[157]

CHAPTER IX

Nineteen Hundred and Ten. In the "strangers' room" of the Porru house, Giovanna was looking over some purchases made that day in Nuoro. She was stouter than ever, and had lost something of her girlish look, but, nevertheless, she was both fresh and handsome still. She examined the pieces of linen and woollen stuff attentively, turning them over and over and feeling them with a preoccupied air, as though not altogether satisfied with the selection; then, folding them carefully, she wrapped them in newspaper and laid them away in her bag.

These things were the materials for her wedding outfit, for, having at last obtained her divorce, she was shortly to marry Dejas. She and her mother had come to Nuoro for the express purpose of making the purchases. The money had been borrowed with the utmost secrecy from Aunt Anna-Rosa Dejas, Giacobbe's sister, who had always taken a particular interest in Giovanna because of having been for a short time her foster-mother. It was the dead of winter, but the two women had courageously defied the fatigues and discomforts of the journey in order to lay in a supply of linen, cotton, kerchiefs, and woollen stuffs. The ceremony, a purely civil one, was to be conducted in the strictest privacy, more so, even, than on the occasion of a widow's marriage. But this made no difference to Aunt Bachissia, who was determined that her daughter should enter her new home fitted out in every respect like a youthful bride of good family.

The country-side was still wondering and gossipping over the scandalous affair, and it was rumoured that another couple contemplated applying for a divorce—by mutual consent. A great many people already looked askance at the Eras, and some said that Brontu had evil designs upon Giovanna. Giacobbe Dejas, Isidoro Pane, and a number of other friends had stopped going to the house after making final scenes that were almost violent. Giacobbe had snarled like a dog, and had used prayers and even threats in a last, vain effort to dissuade Giovanna from the step, until Aunt Bachissia had, at length, driven him out. Even Aunt Porredda at Nuoro, although it was her son who had obtained the divorce for Giovanna, had received her friends with marked coolness. The "Doctor," as she called her son, was, on the contrary, most cordial and attentive in his manner towards their guests.

So Giovanna was folding up her possessions in a thoughtful mood, her preoccupation having, however, to do solely with those bits of stuff. The linen, it appeared, was somewhat tumbled; the fringe of the black Thibet kerchief, with its big crimson roses, was too short; one piece of ribbon had a spot on it,—worrying matters, all of them.

Night was falling—like that other time—but the surroundings, and the weather, and—her heart, were all, quite, quite different. The "strangers' room" now had a fine window, through whose panes shone the clear, cold light of a winter evening. The furniture, all entirely new, exhaled a powerful smell of varnished wood, while its surface glistened like hoarfrost. The door opened on the same covered gallery, but new granite steps now led down to the courtyard. The "Doctor's" practice was growing, and the entire house had been done over. He now had an office in the busiest part of the town, and was much in demand both for civil and penal processes. The most desperate cases, the worst offenders, all that class of clients who have the least to hope from the law, entrusted their affairs to him.

Giovanna folded, wrapped, and packed her possessions, and then, the bag being somewhat over-full, she shook it vigorously to make the contents settle down; this accomplished, she turned with knitted brows, and slowly descended the outer stair, both hands thrust deep in the pockets always to be found just below the waist in the skirt of a Sardinian costume.

It was an evening in January, clear but extremely cold. Some silver stars, set in the cloudless blue of the sky, seemed to tremble in the frosty atmosphere. Crossing the courtyard Giovanna could see, through the window of the lighted dining-room, Grazia's pale face and great, eager eyes as she sat turning over the leaves of a fashion paper. The child had developed into a tall and pretty girl; she was dressed in the latest fashion, with great lace wings extending from the shoulders behind the arms; they obliged their wearers to walk sideways through any narrow aperture, but made them look, by way of compensation, like so many angels before the fall.

Grazia, seeing the guest, smiled at her without getting up, and the latter entered the kitchen.

Here, too, everything was new; the white walls, the stove of glistening bricks, the petroleum lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was all so gorgeous that Aunt Bachissia could not refrain from gazing about her the whole time, her shining, little, green beads of eyes, snapping and sparkling in the sallow, hawklike face, set in the folds of a black scarf. She at least, was unchanged—the old witch! She was seated beside the servant-maid, a dirty, dishevelled young person, whose loud and frequent laugh displayed a set of protruding teeth. Aunt Porredda was cooking, and scolding the maid for this annoying habit of hers. Only fancy! Here was the mistress doing the cooking, while the servant sat by the stove and—laughed! What kind of way to do was that? And, moreover, the good woman could never have one single moment's peace, and she the mother of a famous lawyer!

Giovanna seated herself at some little distance from the stove, stooping over with her hands still buried in the pockets of her skirt.

"Just look!" exclaimed Aunt Bachissia in a tone of envy. "This kitchen might be a parlour! You must do your kitchen up like this, Giovanna."

"Yes," said the young woman absent-mindedly.

"Yes? Well, upon my soul, I should say so! Godmother Malthina is close, but you have got to make her understand that money is meant to spend. A kitchen like this—why, it is heaven—upon my soul! This is living."

"What do you always say 'upon my soul' for?" asked the giggling servant-maid.

"If she doesn't choose to spend her money, how am I to make her?" said Giovanna with a sigh.

The servant was still laughing, but Aunt Porredda, who wanted to keep out of her guests' conversation, turned on her, and sharply ordered her to grate some cheese for the macaroni. The girl obeyed.

"What is the matter with you?" asked Aunt Bachissia as Giovanna sighed again.

"She remembers!" said Aunt Porredda to herself. "After all, she is a Christian, not an animal, and she can't help herself!"

But Giovanna spoke up crossly:

"Well, it's just this; they've cheated us. That is not good linen, and the ribbon is spotted. Oh! it is too much."

"Upon my soul!" said the maid, mimicking Aunt Bachissia's voice and accent, and grating away vigorously on the cheese.

Aunt Porredda thereupon let out upon her all the vials of wrath she would fain have emptied upon her guests, calling her by all the names which, in her secret heart, she was applying to Giovanna—"shameless," "vile," "ungrateful," "despicable," and so on, and threatening to strike her over the head with the ladle. In her terror, the girl grated the skin off one finger, and she was in the act of displaying it with the blood streaming down when the lawyer-son limped briskly into the room. He was enveloped in a long, black overcoat, so full that it looked like a cloak with sleeves. His smooth, fresh-coloured little face beamed with the self-satisfied expression of a nursing child. Asking immediately what there was to eat, he dropped into a seat beside Aunt Bachissia, and sat there chatting until supper was ready. After him the little Minnia came running in, rosy, breathless, and dishevelled, and threw herself down by the servant-maid. The boy had died three years earlier. The little girl's dress, of black and red flannel, was pretty enough, but her shoes were torn and her hands dirty. She had spent the entire day tearing around in a neighbouring truck-garden, and began to pour out confidences to the servant in an eager undertone.

"Upon my soul!" repeated the servant, in the same tone as before.

Next Uncle Efes Maria's big face, with its thick, wide-open lips, appeared in the door, wanting to know why they could not have supper right away.

The dining-room was now furnished with two tall, shining cupboards of varnished wood, and the whole apartment had quite an air of elegance—strips of carpet on the stone floor, a stove, and so on. Poor Aunt Porredda, with her big feet and hobnailed shoes, never felt really at home there; while Uncle Efes Maria had not yet cured himself of the habit of staring proudly around him. Grazia, tall and elegant, always withdrew into herself when her relations came into this room, where she passed most of her time eagerly devouring the Unique Mode, the Petite Parisienne, and the fashion articles of a family journal,—sufficiently immoral in its tone, since it fomented such unhealthy dreams in her foolish head. Ah, those low-cut gowns, covered with embroidery; those scarfs worked in gold; those bodices with their great wings of silver lace, the rainbow hues, the spangles glittering like frost! Ah, those hats covered with artificial fruits, and the long flower boas, and petticoats trimmed with lace at thirty lire a yard, and the painted gloves, and fans made of human skin! How beautiful it all was,—horribly, terrifyingly beautiful! Merely to read about these things gave her a sort of spasm, they were so beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful. And afterwards, how ugly and common and flat everything seemed,—the simple old grandmother, with her fat, wrinkled face; and the dull grandfather, gazing about him with such ignorant satisfaction and pride! It was all simply stultifying.

Just as on that other, far-away evening, Aunt Porredda came in, bearing triumphantly the steaming dish of macaroni, and all the members of the party seated themselves around the table. Aunt Bachissia, finding herself in the shadow, so to speak, of Grazia's wings, forthwith broke anew into loud exclamations of wonder and admiration, this time À propos of those glorious objects:

"No, we have never seen anything like that in our neighbourhood, but then, we have no ladies there. Here they all look like angels, the ladies."

"Or bats," said Uncle Efes Maria. "Eh, it's the fashion, my dears. Why, I remember when I was a child the ladies were all big and round; they looked like cupolas. There hardly were any ladies in those days,—the Superintendent's wife, the family——"

"And then that thing behind," interrupted Aunt Porredda. "Oh! I remember that, it looked like a saddle. Well, if you'll believe me, upon my word and honour, I remember one time some one sat down on one of them."

"The last time we were here," said Aunt Bachissia, "those wings were little things; now they are growing, growing."

Grazia sat eating her supper as though she did not hear a word of what the others were saying. The "Doctor" eat his too—like a gristmill—staring at his niece all the while with the look of a pleased child. "Growing, growing," said he. "The next thing we know they'll all take flight."

Grazia shrugged her shoulders, or rather her wings, and neither spoke nor looked up. She frequently found her uncle,—that hero of her first, young dream,—very trying, and worse than trying—foolish! It was the common talk of the town that the uncle and niece were going to marry, and he, when interrogated on the subject, would answer neither yes nor no.

The conversation continued for some time on impersonal topics. Every now and then Aunt Porredda would get up and pass in and out of the room, and occasionally the talk would die away, and long pauses ensue that were almost embarrassing. Like that other time every one instinctively avoided the subject uppermost in the minds of the guests; who, on the whole, were just as well pleased to have it so. But, just as before, it was Aunt Bachissia, this time without intending to, who introduced the unwelcome topic. She asked if the report that the "Doctor" was to marry his niece were true or no.

The Porrus looked at one another, and Grazia, bending her head still lower over her plate, laughed softly to herself.

Paolo glanced at the girl, and, with an irony that seemed a little forced, replied:

"Eh, no! She is going to marry the Very Right Honourable Sub-Prefect!"

Grazia raised her head with a sudden movement and opened her lips, then as quickly lowered it, the blood meanwhile rushing up to her forehead.

"Oh! he's old," said Minnia. "I know him; he's always walking about the station. Ugh! he has a long, red beard, and a high hat."

"A high hat too?"

"Yes, a high hat—a widower."

"The high hat is a widower?"

"You shut up!" said the child sharply, turning on her sister.

"No, I'm not going to shut up. He's a Freemason; he won't have his children baptised, or be married in church. That's the way of it; he'll not marry in church."

"The young lady is well informed," said Uncle Efes Maria, polished as usual.

Thereupon Aunt Porredda, who had almost shrieked aloud at the word "Freemason," waved both arms in the air, and burst out:

"Yes, a Freemason! One of those people who pray to the devil. Upon my word, I believe my granddaughter there would just as leave have him! We are all on the road to perdition here, and why not? There's Grazia, forever reading bad books, and those infernal papers, till now she doesn't want to go to confession any more! Ah, those prohibited books! I lie awake all night thinking of them. But now, this is what I want to say: Grazia reads bad books; Paolo,—you see him, that one over there, Doctor Pededdu,—well, he studied on the Continent where they don't believe in God any more; now that's all right, at least, it isn't, it's all wrong, but you can understand a little why those two poor creatures have stopped believing in God. But the rest of us, who don't know anything about books and who have never in our lives ridden on a rail-road,—that devil's horse,—why should we cease to believe in God, in our kind Saviour, who died for us on the cross? Why? why? tell me why. You there, Giovanna Era, tell me why you should be willing to marry a man by civil ceremony when you already have a husband living?"

The final clause of Aunt Porredda's oration fell with startling effect upon her audience. Grazia, who, with a smile upon her lips, had been busily engaged in rolling pieces of bread into little pellets, raised her head quickly, and the smile died away; Paolo, who, likewise smiling, had been fitting the blade of a knife in and out of the prongs of his fork, straightened himself with a brusque movement; and Uncle Efes Maria turned his dull, round face towards Giovanna, and fixed her with an impassive stare.

Giovanna herself, the object of this wholly unlooked-for attack, though she flushed crimson, replied with cynical indifference:

"I haven't any husband, my dear Aunt Porredda. Ask your son over there."

"My son!" exclaimed the other angrily. "I have no son. He's a child of the devil!"

It almost seemed as though Giovanna had succeeded in throwing the responsibility of her act upon Paolo, because he had won her case for her!

Every one laughed at Aunt Porredda's outbreak, even Minnia, and the servant who entered the room at that moment, carrying the cheese. Notwithstanding her wrath, Aunt Porredda took the dish and handed it politely to her guests.

"Upon my soul," said Aunt Bachissia, carefully cutting herself a slice, and speaking in a tone of gentle melancholy, "you are as good as gold, there is no doubt about that, but—you live at your ease, you have a house like a church, and a husband like a strong tower [Uncle Efes Maria coughed], and you have a circle of stars about you—motioning towards them—so it is easy enough to talk like that. Ah! if you knew once what it meant to be in want, and to look forward to having to beg your bread in your old age! Do you understand? In your old age!"

"Bravo!" cried Paolo. "But I would like to have a clean knife."

"What difference does that make, Bachissia Era?" answered Aunt Porredda. "You are afraid to trust in Divine Providence, and that means that you have lost your faith in God! How do you know whether you will be poor or rich when you are old? Is not Costantino Ledda coming back some day?"

"Yes, to be a beggar too," said Aunt Bachissia coldly.

"And God alone knows whether he ever will come back," observed the young lawyer brutally, taking the knife which the servant held out to him, blade foremost.

They had all heard that Costantino was ill, and there was a report that his lungs were affected.

In order to appear agitated,—and possibly she really was so to some extent,—Giovanna now hid her face in her hands and said brokenly:

"Besides—if it is only to be a civil ceremony—it is—it is because——" Then she stopped.

"Well, why don't you go on?" cried Paolo. "You are to be married by civil ceremony because the priests won't give you any other! They don't understand, and they never will understand; just as you will never understand, Mamma Porredda. What is marriage, after all? It is a contract made between men, and binding only in the sight of men. The religious ceremony really means nothing at all——"

"It is a sacrament!" cried Aunt Porredda, beside herself.

"Means nothing at all," continued Paolo. "Just as some day the civil ceremony will mean nothing at all. Men and women should be at liberty to enter spontaneously into unions with one another and to dissolve them when they cease to be in harmony. The man——"

"Ah, you are no better than a beast!" exclaimed Aunt Porredda, though it was, in fact, not the first time that she had heard her son express these views. "It is the end of the world. God has grown weary; and who can wonder? He is punishing us; this is the deluge. I have heard that there have been terrible earthquakes already!"

"There have always been earthquakes," observed Uncle Efes Maria, who did not know whether to side with his wife or his son. Probably, in the bottom of his heart his sympathies were with the former, but he did not want to say so openly for fear of being looked down upon by the gifted Paolo.

The latter made no reply. Already he regretted having said so much, being too truly attached to his mother to wish to give her needless pain. Giovanna now took her hands from her face, and spoke in a tone of gentle humility:

"Listen," said she. "When I was married before—to that unfortunate—I had only the civil ceremony, and if he had not been arrested, who knows when we ever would have had the religious marriage! And yet, were we not just as much man and wife? No one ever said a word, and God, who knows all, was not offended——"

"But he punished you," said Aunt Porredda quickly.

"That remains to be seen!" shouted Aunt Bachissia, whose bile was beginning to rise. "Was the punishment for that, or for Basile Ledda's murder?"

"If it had been for the murder, only Costantino would have been punished."

"Well," said the old witch, her green eyes glittering with triumph, "is not that just what I am saying? My Giovanna here is not to be punished any longer for his fault, since God has given her the opportunity to marry a young man who is fond of her, and who will make her forget all her sufferings!"

"And who is also rich," remarked Uncle Efes Maria, and no one could tell whether he spoke ingenuously or no.

Giovanna, who had quite lost the thread of her discourse, was, nevertheless, determined to continue her rÔle of patient martyr. "Ah, my dear Aunt Porredda," said she, "you don't know all, but God, who alone can see into our hearts, he will forgive me even if I live in mortal sin, because he will know that the fault is not with me. I would gladly have the religious ceremony, but it cannot be."

"Yes, because you are married already to some one else, you child of the devil!"

"But that other one is as good as dead! Just tell me now, can he help me to earn a living? And if the lawyers, who are educated and learned, and who know what life really is, can dissolve civil marriages, why can't the priests dissolve religious ones? Perhaps they don't understand about it. There is that priest whom we have—Elias Portolu—the one who is so good, you know him? he talks like a saint, and never gets angry with any one. Well, even he can't say anything but 'No, no, no; marriage can only be dissolved by death—and go and be blessed, if you don't know what is right!' Does a body have to live? Yes, or no? And when you can't live, when you are as poor as Job, and can't get work, and have nothing, nothing, nothing! And just tell me, you, Aunt Porredda, suppose I had been some other woman, and suppose there had been no divorce, what would have happened? Why, mortal sin, that is what would have happened, mortal sin!"

"And in your old age—want," said Aunt Bachissia.

The servant brought in the fruit: bunches of black, shining, dried grapes, and wrinkled pears, as yellow as autumn leaves.

The old hostess handed the dish to her old guest, with an indescribable look of compassion. Her anger, and disdain, and indignation had suddenly melted away as she realised the sordid natures of the mother and daughter. "Good San Francisco, forgive them," she prayed inwardly. "Because they are so ignorant, and blind, and hard!" Then she said mildly: "You and I, Bachissia Era, are old women, and you, Giovanna, will be old some day. Now tell me one thing: what is it that comes after old age?"

"Why, death."

"Death; yes, death comes after. And after death what is there?"

"Eternity?" said Paolo, laughing softly to himself as he devoured his grapes like a greedy child, holding the bunch close to his mouth, and detaching the seeds with his sharp little teeth.

"Eternity, precisely; eternity comes after—where are you going, Minnia? Stay where you are." But the child, tired of the conversation, slipped out of the room. "What do you say, Giovanna Era, does eternity follow? yes, or no? Bachissia Era—yes, or no?"

"Yes," said the guests.

"Yes? and yet you never think of it?"

"Oh! what is the use of thinking of it?" said Paolo, getting up, and wiping his mouth with his napkin; he felt that it was high time for him to be off; he had already wasted too much time on these women, who, after all, were interesting solely from the fact that they had not yet paid him. "There are some people waiting to see me at the office—several people, in fact," he said. "I will see you again; you are not leaving yet awhile?"

"To-morrow morning at daybreak."

"Not really? Oh! you had better stay longer," he said indifferently, as he struggled into his huge overcoat. When it was on, Aunt Bachissia—watching him out of her sharp green eyes—thought that the little Doctor looked like a magia, that is, one of those grotesque and frightening figures whom wizards evoke by their arts.

He departed, and immediately afterwards Miss Grazia, who had hardly spoken throughout the entire meal, arose and left the room as well. Uncle Efes Maria settled himself back in his chair, and began to read the New Sardinia. Bursts of laughter came from the two girls in the kitchen, and the women sat, each eating a pear, in perfect silence. A weight hung over them; upon Aunt Porredda as well as upon the others, for she was realising in her simple untutored mind that the disease that had attacked the souls of her ignorant guests was one and the same as that from which her sophisticated son and granddaughter were suffering.

CHAPTER X

The next morning, just as on that day so long before, Giovanna was the first to stir, while Aunt Bachissia, who like most elderly people usually lay awake until late into the night, still slept, though lightly and with laboured breath.

The light of the early winter morning, cold but clear, shone through the curtained window-panes. Giovanna had fallen asleep the night before feeling sad,—though Aunt Porredda's outbreak had annoyed rather than distressed her,—but now, as she looked out and saw the promise of a bright day for the journey, she felt a sensation of joyous anticipation.

Yes, she had felt quite melancholy on the previous evening before falling asleep, thinking of Costantino, and eternity, and her dead child, and all sorts of depressing things. "I have not a bad heart," she had reflected. "And God looks into our hearts and judges more by our intentions than by our actions. I have considered everything, everything. I was very fond of Costantino, and I cried just as long as I had any tears to shed. Now I have no more; I don't believe he will ever come back, and if he does it will not be until we are both old; I can't go on crying forever. Why should it be my fault if I can't cry now when I think of him? And then, after all, I am just a creature of flesh and blood, like every one else; I am poor and exposed to sin and temptation, and in order to save myself from these I am taking the position which God has provided for me. Yes, my dear Aunt Porredda, I do remember eternity, and it is to save my soul that I am doing what I am doing—no, I am not bad; I have not a bad heart." And so she very nearly persuaded herself that her heart not only was not bad, but that it was quite good and noble; at least, if this was not the conviction of that innermost depth of conscience, that depth which refused to lie, and from whence had issued the disturbing veil of sadness that hung over her, it was of her outer and more practical mind, and at last, quite comforted, she fell asleep.

And now the frosty daybreak was striking with its diaphanous wings—cold and pure as hoarfrost—against the window-panes of the "strangers' room," and Giovanna thought of the sun and her spirits rose. The older woman presently awoke as well, and she too turned at once to the window.

"Ah!" she exclaimed in a tone of satisfaction. "It is going to be fine." They dressed and went down. Aunt Porredda, polite and attentive as usual, was already in the kitchen. She served her guests with coffee, and helped them to saddle the horse. To all appearances she had quite forgotten the discussion of the previous evening, but no sooner had the two women passed out the door than she made the sign of the cross, as though to exorcise the mortal sin as well. "Very good," she said to herself, closing the door after them. "A pleasant journey to you, and may the Lord have mercy on your souls!"

Through the crystalline stillness of the morning came the sound of shrill cock-crowing—close at hand, further away, and further still; but the little town still slept beneath its canopy of china-blue.

This time the Eras were to make the journey alone. They had to descend into the valley, cross it, and then climb the mountain-range which they could see beyond, showing grey in the early light, its snowcapped peaks standing out boldly against the horizon.

It was very cold; there was no wind, but the air cut keenly. As they descended into the wild valley the intense stillness seemed only to be intensified by the monotonous murmur of a mountain stream. The short winter grass, bright green in colour, and shining with hoarfrost, showed here and there in vivid patches along the edges of the winding path. From the rocks came a smell of damp moss, and the green copses sparkled with a glittering layer of frost. The whole valley was radiantly fresh and sweet and wild, but here and there gnarled outlines of solitary trees stood out like hermits penitentially exposing their bent and naked forms to the cold brilliance of the winter's morning.

In the fields the earth showed black and damp; and long lines of dilapidated wall, climbing the hillsides and descending into the hollows, looked, with their coating of green moss, like huge green worms. On, and on, and on, journeyed the two women, their hands and feet and faces numb and stiff with cold. They crossed the stream at a ford where the water ran broad and shallow and quiet, then they reascended the valley and began to climb the mountain at its further end. The sun, now well above the horizon, was shining with a cold, clear radiance, and the mountains of the distant coast-range showed blue against the gold of the sky. The wind had risen as well, and, laden with the odour of damp rocks and earth, was stirring among the shrubs and bushes. The two women proceeded silently on their way, each buried in her own thoughts. In the middle of a small defile, overhung by rocks, and shadowed by the lofty snowcapped summits of the mountains, they met a man of Bitti journeying on foot: the travellers exchanged greetings, although unknown to one another, and passed on their respective ways. As the women mounted higher and higher, the sun enveloped and warmed them more and more; and they thought of the half of the journey already accomplished, of the purchases they were carrying back in the wallet, of what they would do when they got home; and Aunt Bachissia thought of Aunt Martina's amazement when she should see Giovanna's outfit, while Giovanna thought of Brontu and of the queer things he would sometimes say when he was drunk. Preoccupied as they were, however, when they caught sight of the white walls of the church of San Francisco glistening among the green bushes half-way up the mountain side, each thought of Costantino, and said an Ave Maria for him.

Shortly after midday they reached home. Orlei, set in its circle of damp fields, and blown upon by the frozen breath of the mighty sphinxes whose heads were now wreathed in bands of snow, was far colder than Nuoro, and the sun could barely warm life into the scanty herbage in its narrow, melancholy streets. The roofs were covered with rust and mildew, some of them overgrown with dog-grass; the walls were black with damp; the trees, nude and brown. Here and there a thin line of smoke could be seen curling upwards into the limitless space above; but, as usual, the village appeared to be utterly silent and deserted. In the crevices of the walls the little purple and green cups of the Venus's looking-glass bloomed chillily; speckled lizards crawled into the sun, and snails and shining beetles mounted patiently from stone to stone.

Aunt Martina, seated on her portico, spinning in the sun, saw the arrival of the travellers, and was instantly devoured by curiosity to know what they had in their wallet; she controlled herself, however, and returned their greeting with courteous composure.

Towards evening Brontu arrived; he visited his betrothed every three days, and this evening his mother decided to accompany him, in order to see the purchases made by her neighbours in Nuoro.

A sparse little fire of juniper-wood was burning on Aunt Bachissia's hearth, throwing out fitful gleams of light across the paved flooring, and lighting up the earthen walls of the kitchen with a faint, rosy glow. Giovanna wanted to bring a candle, but the visitors prevented her, Aunt Martina from an instinct of economy, and Brontu because in the dim firelight he felt freer to gaze at his betrothed.

The attitude of the latter towards her future mother-in-law and towards Brontu himself was quite perfect. She had a gentle, subdued manner, and spoke in childlike tones, albeit expressing sentiments of profound wisdom. She gave shy glances from beneath her long, thick lashes, and might have been a girl of fifteen so guileless and innocent was her bearing. She was not, in truth, consciously acting a part; what she did was purely instinctive.

Brontu was madly in love with her, and now, when he had been drinking, he would run to her, and, throwing himself on his knees, repeat certain puerile prayers learned in infancy. Then he would begin to cry because he realised that he was tipsy, and would swear that never, never again would he touch a drop.

This evening, however, he was entirely himself, and sat talking quietly, enfolding Giovanna all the while in a passionate gaze, and smiling and displaying his teeth, which gleamed in the firelight.

Aunt Bachissia began to tell about their trip; she spoke of the greatcoat worn by the young lawyer, and of the "wings" in fashion among the Nuorese ladies; then she described the Porrus' kitchen, and told of their meeting a man on the road; but of the discussion started by Aunt Porredda at the supper-table, and of the purchases she and Giovanna had made, she said never a word. She knew, however, very well that Aunt Martina could hardly wait to see the new possessions, and was herself no less anxious to display them.

"And what have you to say about it all, Giovanna?" said Brontu, stirring the fire with the end of his stick. "You are very quiet to-night. What is the matter?"

"I am tired," she replied, and then suddenly asked about Giacobbe Dejas.

"That crazy man? He torments the life out of me; I shall end some day by kicking him out. He does not need to work now for a living, anyhow."

"I don't know how it is," said Aunt Bachissia. "He used to be such a cheerful soul, and now, when he has a house and cattle, and they even say he is going to be married, his temper is something——! You knew, didn't you, that he threatened to beat us?"

"Did he ever come back?"

"No; never since that time."

"Nor Isidoro Pane either," said Giovanna in a dull voice.

"I thought I saw him go by here yesterday evening," said Aunt Martina.

Giovanna raised her head quickly, but she did not speak, and Brontu laughingly remarked that he supposed she did not stand in any particular need of leeches just at present.

"Well," said Aunt Martina at length, "didn't you bring me anything from Nuoro? You keep one a long time in suspense!" They had, in fact, brought her an apron, but Aunt Bachissia feigned surprise and mortification. "Of course," said she, "we had forgotten for the moment——" And she gave a shrill laugh, but sobered down instantly on observing that Giovanna took no part in these pleasantries, and seemed unable to shake off her melancholy.

"No, no; we never thought about it, but Giovanna will show you a few trifles that we bought——"

Giovanna got up, lighted a candle, and went into the adjoining room, Brontu's ardent gaze following her. Aunt Martina sat waiting for her present. Several moments passed and Giovanna did not return.

"What is she doing in there?" asked Brontu.

"Who knows?"

Another minute elapsed.

"I am going to see," he said, jumping up and walking towards the door.

"No, no; what are you thinking of?" said Aunt Bachissia, but so faint-heartedly that Aunt Martina—scandalised—called to her son to come back with energetic: "Zss—zss——"

Brontu, however, paying no attention, tiptoed to the door. Giovanna was standing before an open drawer, re-reading a letter which she had found slipped underneath the door when they got home that day. It was a heartbroken appeal from Costantino. In his round, unformed characters he implored her for the last time not to do this thing that she was about to do. He reminded her of the far-away time of their early love; he promised to come back; he assured her solemnly of his innocence. "If you have no pity for me," the letter concluded, "at least have some for yourself, for your own soul. Remember the mortal sin: remember eternity!"

Ah, the same words that Aunt Porredda had used; the very same, the very same! Uncle Isidoro must have slipped the letter in while they were away. How long it had been since they had had any direct news of the prisoner! The tears rushed to her eyes, but what moved her were probably more the memories of the past than any thoughts of that eternal future.

Suddenly she heard the door being pushed softly open, and some one stealing in behind her. Leaning quickly over, she began to rummage in the drawer, with trembling hands and misty eyes.

Brontu stood directly behind her with outstretched arms, he clasped her around the shoulders, and she, pretending to be frightened, began to tremble.

"What is it? What are you doing?" he asked in a low, broken voice.

"Oh! I am looking—looking—the apron we got for your mother—I don't know what I have done with it. Let me go, let me go," she said, trying to free herself from his embrace. Close to her face she saw his white teeth gleaming between the full, smiling lips, as red and lustrous as two ripe cherries; then, suddenly, she felt his hand behind her head, and those two burning lips were pressed close to her own in a kiss that was like the blast from a fiery furnace.

"Ah!" she panted. "We have forgotten eternity!"

A little later she was seated once more in her place by the fire, laughing with all the abandonment of a happy child; while Brontu regarded her with the same look in his eyes that he had when he had been drinking.

The winter passed by. Costantino's friends never abandoned their efforts to break off the accursed match, but in vain. The Dejases and Eras were like people bewitched, and remained deaf alike to prayers, threats, and innuendoes. The syndic, even the syndic, a pale and haughty personage who resembled Napoleon I., was against this "devil's marriage," and when Brontu and Giovanna came to him in great secrecy to have it published, he treated them with the utmost contempt, spitting on the ground all the time they were there.

When the question of the divorce had first been mooted, people talked and wondered, but nothing more; then, when it was said that Brontu and Giovanna were in love with each other, there was general disapproval, yet at bottom the community was not ill-pleased to have such a fruitful theme to gossip about; but when there was talk of a marriage!—then every one said it was simply and purely an impossibility. The neighbours laughed, and rather hoped that Brontu was amusing himself at the expense of the Eras. After that, had the young people merely lived together in "mortal sin" probably nothing more would have been said, and people would have ceased to laugh and thought no more about it. It would not have been the first time that such a thing had occurred, nor was it likely to be the last; and Giovanna could cite her youth and poverty by way of excuse. But—marry a woman who already had a husband! marry her! That was a thing not to be stood! What would you have? People are made that way. And then the disgrace and scandal of it! Why, it was a sin, a horrible sin, and it was feared that God might punish the entire community for the fault of these two. There were even threats of making a demonstration on the marriage day—whistling, stone-throwing, and beating the bride and bridegroom. When rumours of these things reached their ears Brontu became very angry. Aunt Bachissia said: "Leave them to me!" and Aunt Martina threw up her head with the movement of a war-horse when it scents the smell of the first volley.

Ah! she would rather like to fight and—win. She was beginning to feel old, she was tired of work, and well pleased at the prospect of having a strong servant in the house without wages. Moreover, she liked Giovanna, and Brontu wanted her, and so people might burst with envy if they chose.

On the evening of the day when the marriage was published, Uncle Isidoro Pane was working hard in his miserable hut by the brilliant, ruddy light of a large fire. This was the one luxury which Uncle Isidoro was able to allow himself—a good fire—since he collected his wood from the fields, the river-banks, and the forests. During the winter his chief occupation was weaving cord out of horsehair; he knew, in fact, how to do a little of almost everything,—spin, sew, cook (when there was anything to cook), patch shoes,—and yet he had never been able to escape from dire poverty.

Suddenly the door was thrown open; there was a momentary glimpse of the March sky—not stormy, but overcast—and Giacobbe Dejas silently seated himself beside the fire.

The fisherman's kitchen looked like one of those pictures of Flemish interiors, where the figures are thrown out in a ruddy glow against a dark background. By the uncertain light, a grey spider-web could be dimly discerned, with the spider in the middle; in the corner near the hearth, a glass jug filled to the brim with water in which black leeches swam about; a yellow basket against the wall; and finally the figures of the two men and the black hair cord, its loose ends held between the bony, red fingers of the old fisherman.

"And how goes it now?" asked Giacobbe.

"How goes it now? How does it go now?" repeated the old man. "I don't know."

"Well, it's been published," said Giacobbe more as though he were talking to himself. "The thing is actually done! The drunkard never even came near the pastures to-day, so I just took myself off as well. They may steal his sheep if they want to; I don't care; here I am, and something has got to be done, Isidoro Pane! Hi! Isidoro Pane! leave that cord alone and listen to me. Some—thing—has—got—to—be—done——Do you hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you; but what is there to do? We have done all we can—implored, expostulated, threatened——The syndic has interfered, the clerk. Priest Elias——"

"Oh, Priest Elias! What did he do? Talked to them with sugar in his mouth! He should have threatened them; he should have said: 'I'll take the Holy Books and I'll curse you! I'll excommunicate you; you shall never be able to satisfy your hunger, nor to quench your thirst, nor to have any peace; you shall live in a hell upon earth!' Ah, then you would have seen some result! But no, he is a dunce—a warm-milk priest; and he has not done his duty. Don't speak of him to me, it makes me angry."

Isidoro laid down the cord: "It's of no use to get angry," said he. "Priest Elias has no business with threats, and he has not used them; but never fear, excommunication will fall on that house all the same!"

"Well, I am going to leave them; yes, I am going away. I'll eat no more of their accursed bread!" said Giacobbe with a look expressive of his loathing and disgust. "But before going, I should like to have the pleasure of administering a sound thrashing to those favourites of the devil."

"You are crazy, little spring bird," said Isidoro with a melancholy smile, imitating Giacobbe.

"Yes, I am, I'm crazy; but even so, what do you care? You haven't done anything either to stop this sacrilege. Oh, it's disgraceful! I've lost all my good spirits——"

"It has made me ten years older."

"All my good spirits, and I keep thinking all the time of what Costantino will say to us for not being able to put a stop to it. Is it true that he is ill?"

"Not now; he was ill, but now he is only desperate," said Uncle Isidoro, shaking his head. Then he picked up the cord and began plaiting it again, murmuring below his breath: "Excommunicate—excommunicate——"

"I get so furious that I foam at the mouth—the way a dog does," said Giacobbe, raising his voice. "Just exactly like a dog. No, after all, I don't think I'll quit that house; I'll stay there if I burst, and see them when the blast of excommunication strikes them. Yes, if there is one thing that is sure, it is that God punishes both in this life and the other too, and I want to be on hand when it comes. What is that that you are making, Uncle 'Sidoro?"

"A horsehair cord."

There was a short silence; Giacobbe sat staring at the cord, his eyes dim with grief and anger.

"What are you going to do with it when it is done?"

"Sell it, over in Nuoro; I sell them here too sometimes; the peasants use them to tie their cows. What makes you look at it like that? You are not thinking of hanging yourself, are you?"

"No, little spring bird, you can do that for yourself, if it is God's will. Yes," he continued, again raising his voice. "They have actually published the notice."

Another silence; then Isidoro said: "Who knows? I can't help hoping yet that that marriage may never come off. I have faith in God, and I believe that San Costantino may still perform some miracle to stop it."

"Why, certainly; why not? A miracle by all means!" said Giacobbe scornfully.

"Yes; why not?" replied Isidoro calmly. "The real murderer of Basilio Ledda might die now, for instance, and confess. In that case the divorce could not hold good."

"Of course, die just at this precise time!" said the other in the same tone as before. "You are as innocent as a three-year-old child, Isidoro, with your Christian faith!"

"Well, who knows? Or he might be found out."

"Why, to be sure, he might be found out! Just in the nick of time! Only what has any one ever known about it? And who is to find him out?"

"Who? Why, you—I—any one."

"There you go again! Just like a three-year-old child! Or, rather, a snail before it's out of the shell. And how, pray, are we to find him out? Are we even certain that Costantino did not do it himself?"

"Yes, we are certain, entirely so," said Isidoro. "It might have been any one of us, but never him. I might have done it, or you——"

Giacobbe got up. "Well, what can you suggest to do? If there is anything to be done, tell me."

"Any one but him," repeated Uncle Isidoro, without raising his head. "Yes, there is one thing to do,—commit ourselves into the hands of God."

"Oh, you make me so angry!" cried the other, stamping about the forlorn little room like an imprisoned bull. "I ask if there are any steps to be taken, and you answer like a fool. I'll go and choke Bachissia Era; that will really be something to do!" And he marched off as he had come, without greeting or salutation of any kind, angry this time in earnest.

Uncle Isidoro, likewise, did not so much as raise his head, but, noticing presently that his visitor had left the door open, he got up to close it, and stood for some moments looking out.

It was a mild March night, moonlit but overcast. Already one got faint, damp whiffs, suggestive of the first stirrings of vegetation. All about the old man's hovel the hedges and wild shrubs seemed to lie sleeping in the faint, mysterious light of the veiled moon.

Far away, just above the horizon, a streak of clear sky wound and zigzagged its way among the vapourous clouds like a deep blue river, on whose banks a fire burned.

Isidoro shut the door, and with a heavy sigh resumed his work.

CHAPTER XI

It was the vigil of the Assumption, a hot, cloudy Wednesday. Aunt Martina sat on the portico spinning, while Giovanna, who was pregnant, sifted grain near by. Usually two women perform this task, but Giovanna was doing it alone. First she stirred the grain around in the sieve and extracted all bits of stone, then she sifted it carefully into a piece of cloth placed in a large basket that stood before her. She was seated on the ground, and beside her was another basket heaped with grain that looked as though it were piled with gold dust.

Instead of growing fat the "wife with two husbands," as she was called in the neighbourhood, had become much thinner; her nose was red and somewhat puffed; there were dark circles around her eyes, and her lower lip was drawn down with an expression of discontent.

Some dishevelled-looking roosters, which now and again fell to fighting and strewed the floor with feathers, were laying siege to the basket; from time to time one of them would succeed in thrusting his bill inside; then Giovanna, with loud cries and threats, would drive him off, but only to stand watchful and alert, ready to return to the charge the moment her attention wandered.

Her attention wandered frequently. Her expression was sad, or rather, indifferent—that of a self-centred person dwelling continually on her individual woes. The skies might fall, but she would consider only how the event might be expected to affect her personally. She was barefoot and quite dirty, as Aunt Martina hated to have her soap used.

The two women worked on in silence, but the older one watched her companion out of the corner of her eye, and whenever she was slack about driving off the chickens, she screamed at them herself.

At length one, bolder than the rest, jumped on the edge of the basket and began greedily pecking within.

"Ah—h—ah, a—a—ah!" shrieked Aunt Martina. Giovanna turned with a sudden movement, and the rooster, spreading its wings, flew off, leaving a trail of yellow grains behind it, which, in dread lest her mother-in-law should scold her (she was always in dread of that), she hastily began to gather up.

"What a nuisance they are!" she exclaimed peevishly.

"Ah, I should say they were, a downright nuisance," said the other mildly. "No, don't lean over like that, my daughter, you'll hurt yourself; let me do it," and leaving her spindle she stooped down and began to pick up the grains one at a time, while a hen seized the opportunity to pull at the bunch of flax on her distaff.

"Ah! ah, you! I'll wring your neck for you!" shrieked Aunt Martina, suddenly turning and espying it, and as she drove it off, the others all instantly fell to gobbling up the grain.

The younger woman went on with her task, bending over the sieve, silent and abstracted.

From the portico could be seen the deserted common, Aunt Bachissia's bare little cottage in the sultry noontide glare, a burning stretch of road, yellow, deserted fields, and a horizon like metal.

The clouds, banked high one upon another, seemed to rain heat, and the stillness was almost oppressive. A tall, barefooted boy passed by, leading a couple of small black cows; then came a young woman, likewise barefoot, who stared at Giovanna with two round eyes, then a fat white dog with its nose to the ground; but that was all; no other incident broke the monotony of the sultry noontide.

Giovanna sifted and stirred ever more and more languidly. She was weary; she was hungry, but not for food; she was thirsty, but not for drink; through her whole physical nature she was conscious of a need of something hopelessly lost.

Her task finished, she leaned over and began pouring the grain back from one basket to another.

"Let it be, let it be," said Aunt Martina solicitously. "You will do yourself some harm."

Giovanna, starting presently to carry the grain to the "mill" (a grind-stone turned by a small donkey, which grinds a hundred litres of grain in four days), her mother-in-law prevented her and took it herself. Left alone, Giovanna went into the kitchen, looked cautiously around, and then began to search through the cupboards. Nothing anywhere; not a piece of fruit, no wine, not so much as a drop of liquor wherewith to quench the intolerable thirst that tormented her. She did, at last, find a little coffee, which she heated, and sweetened with a bit of sugar from her pocket, carefully re-covering the fire when she had done.

The mouthful of warm liquid seemed, however, the rather to augment her thirst. Giovanna felt that what she wanted was some soft, delicious drink, something that she had never tasted in all her life and—never would. A dull anger took possession of her, and her eyes grew bitter. Walking over to the door of the storeroom, she shook it, although knowing perfectly well that it was locked; her lips grew white, and she murmured a curse below her breath. Then, barefoot as she was, she went out, noiselessly crossed the common, and called her mother.

"Come in," answered the latter from the kitchen.

"I can't; there's no one in the house."

Aunt Bachissia came and stood in the doorway; glancing up at the sky, she remarked that it looked threatening, and that there would probably be a storm that night.

"Well, I don't care," said Giovanna sullenly. "It may rain every bolt out of heaven!" Then she added more gently: "But may that which I bear be saved from harm."

"Upon my soul, you are in a bad humour. What has become of the old witch? I saw you sifting grain."

"She has taken it to the 'mill.' She was afraid to let me go for fear I might steal some."

"Patience, my daughter; it will not always be like this."

"But it is like this, and like this, and I can't stand it any longer. What sort of a life is it? She has honey on her lips and a goad in her hand. 'Work, work, work.' She drives me like a beast of burden, and gives me barley-bread, and water, and no light at night, and bare feet. Oh, as much of all that as ever I want!"

Aunt Bachissia listened, unable to offer any consolation. She was, indeed, accustomed to hear these plaints poured into her ears daily. Oh, Aunt Bachissia had been fooled as well! and had to work harder than ever before, though for that she cared little; it was Giovanna's really wretched condition that gave her the most concern.

"Patience, patience; better times are coming; no one can rob you of the future."

"Bah, what does that amount to? I shall be an old woman by that time,—if I haven't died already of rage! What good will it do to be well off when you're old? You can't enjoy anything then."

"Eh! yes, you can, upon my soul," said the other, her green eyes gleaming like a couple of fireflies. "I could enjoy a great many things well enough! Eh, eh! To have nothing to do all day long, and roast meat to eat, and soft bread, and trout, and eels, and to drink white wine, and rosolis, and chocolate——"

"Stop!" cried Giovanna, with a groan; and she told how she had been unable to find anything wherewith to quench her burning thirst.

"You must have patience," repeated the mother. "That comes from your condition. If you had the most delicious things in the world to choose from—liquors from the King's own table—you would still be thirsty."

Giovanna kept gazing up at the house with the portico, her eyes weary and hopeless, and her mouth drawn down sullenly.

"Yes, we will have rain to-night," said the other again.

"It can rain as much as it wants to."

"Is Brontu coming home?"

"Yes, he is, and I am going to tell him about everything to-night; yes, I shall speak to him about it this very night."

"My soul, you are? And what is it that you are going to speak to him about?"

"Why, I am going to tell him that I can't stand it any longer, and if he only wanted me so as to have a servant and nothing else, he will find that he has made a mistake, and—and——"

"You will tell him nothing of the sort!" said the old woman energetically. "Let him alone; doesn't he have to work and live like a servant himself? What is the use of bothering him? He might send you packing, and marry some one else—in church."

Giovanna began to tremble violently, her expression softened, and her eyes filled.

"He's not bad," she said. "But he gets tipsy all the time, and smells as strong of brandy as a still; it makes me sick sometimes. Then he gets so angry about nothing at all. Ugh, he's unbearable! It was better—it was far, far better——"

"Well," demanded Aunt Bachissia coldly, "what was better?"

"Nothing."

This was the kind of thing that went on all the time. Giovanna did nothing but brood over memories of Costantino; how good he had been, how handsome, and clean, and gentle. A deep melancholy possessed her, far more bitter than any sorrow one feels for the dead; while her approaching maternity, instead of bringing consolation, the rather increased her despair.

The afternoon wore on, grey and leaden; not a breath of air relieved the suffocating stillness. Giovanna established herself on the tumble-down wall, beneath the almond-tree, and her mother came and sat beside her. For a while neither of them spoke; then Giovanna said, as though continuing a conversation that had been interrupted:

"Yes, it is just the way it used to be at first, after the sentence; I dream every night that he has come back, and it is curious, but do you know, I am never frightened,—though Giacobbe Dejas declares that if Costantino ever did come back he would kill me. I don't know, but I somehow feel in my heart that he is coming back; I never used to think so, but I do now. Oh! there is no use in looking at me like that. Am I reproaching you for anything? I should say not. You would have a better right to reproach me. What good has it all done you? None at all; you can't even come to see me any more—up there——" She thrust out her lip in the direction of the white house. "My mother-in-law is afraid you might carry some dust off on your feet! And I can't give you anything, not a thing; do you understand? Not even my work. Everything is kept locked up, and I am treated exactly like a servant."

"But I don't want anything, my heart. Don't make yourself miserable over such trifles. I am not in need of anything," said Aunt Bachissia very gently. "You must not worry about me; all I care about is that money I borrowed from Anna Dejas. I don't see how I am ever to pay her, but she will wait."

Giovanna reddened angrily, and wrung her hands, exclaiming in a high-pitched voice: "Well, anyhow, I shall certainly speak to him about that to-night, the nasty beast; I am going to tell him that at least he might pay for the rags I have on my back. Pay for them! Pay for them! May you be shot!"

"Don't speak so loud; don't get so excited, my soul. There is no use, I tell you, in losing your temper. What good will getting angry do you? Suppose he were to turn you out."

"Well, he may if he wants to; it would be better if he did. At least, I could work for myself then, instead of slaving for those accursed people. Ah, there she is, coming back," she added in a lower tone as the black-robed figure of Aunt Martina appeared in the open glare of the common. "Now, I'll get a scolding for leaving the house empty; she's afraid some one will steal her money. She has heaps of it, and she doesn't even know about it; she can't tell one note from another, nor the coins either. She has ten thousand lire,—yes, a thousand scudi——"

"No, my soul, two thousand."

"Well, two thousand, hidden away. And I am not allowed a drop of anything to refresh me, or to slake this burning thirst inside me!"

"It will all be yours," said Aunt Bachissia, "if you will only be patient and bide your time. When the angels come some day and carry her off to Paradise, it will all belong to you."

Giovanna cleared her throat, and rubbed it with one hand; then she resumed hotly: "They may drive me out if they want to, it makes no difference to me. Listen: the communal clerk says I am Brontu's wife, but it seems to me as though I were just living with him in mortal sin. Do you remember what sort of a marriage it was? Done secretly, in the dark almost; without as much as a dog present; no confections—nothing. And then Giacobbe Dejas—choke him!—laughing and yelling out: 'Here he comes, the beauty!' and then the 'beauty' came."

"Now you listen to me," said Aunt Bachissia in a low penetrating voice. "You are simply a fool. Upon my word, you always were, and you always will be. Why do you give up so? and for such trifles too? I tell you every poor daughter-in-law has got to live just as you are living. Your harvest-time will come; only be patient and obedient, and you will see it will all come out right. Moreover, just as soon as the baby is born I believe you will find that things are very different."

"No, nothing will be different. And then—if there were no children—they will only chain me faster to that stone that is dragging me down and trampling on me. Would you like to know something? Well, my real husband is Costantino Ledda, and——"

"And I'll stop your mouth! You are beside yourself, my soul; be quiet!"

"—and if he comes back," Giovanna went on, "I'll not be able to return to him on account of having children."

"I will stop your mouth," repeated Aunt Bachissia, trembling and rising to her feet with a movement as though she were about to put her threat into execution. There was no need, however, for Giovanna saw her mother-in-law coming across the common and broke off.

Aunt Martina, spinning as she walked, slowly approached the two women. "Taking the air?" she enquired, without raising her eyes from the whirling spindle.

"Fine air! The heat is suffocating. Ah, to-night we may get some rain," replied Aunt Bachissia.

"It undoubtedly is going to rain; let us hope there will be no thunder, I am so afraid of thunder. The devil empties out his bag of nuts then. I hope and trust Brontu will be in before evening. What shall we have for supper, Giovanna?"

"Whatever you like."

"Are you going to stay out here? Don't run any risks; it might be bad for you."

"What will be bad for me?"

"Why, the evening air; it is always a little damp. It is safer to stay inside; and you might be getting supper ready. There are some eggs, my daughter; eggs and tomatoes; prepare them for yourself and your husband; I am not hungry. Really, do you know," she continued, turning to Aunt Bachissia: "I have no appetite at all these days. Perhaps it is the weather."

"Perhaps it is the devil perched on your croup, and your own stinginess!" thought the other. Giovanna neither spoke nor moved; she seemed completely immersed in her own dismal thoughts.

"The 'panegyric' is to be at eleven to-morrow, such an inconvenient hour! Shall you go, Giovanna? It has always been at ten o'clock in other years."

"No; I shall not go," replied Giovanna in a dull tone. She was ashamed now to be seen in church.

"Yes, at that time it is apt to be warm; it is just as well that you should not go. But it seems to be raining," she added, holding out her hand. A big drop fell and spread among the hairs on its back. Tic, tic, tic,—other great drops came splashing down, on the motionless almond-tree, and on the ground, boring little holes in the sand of the common. At the same time the sky appeared to be lightening; there was a vivid gleam, and a great, yellow cloud, with markings of a darker shade, sailed slowly across the bronze background of the sky.

The women took refuge in their houses, and immediately afterwards the rain began to fall in earnest; a heavy, steady downpour, with neither wind nor thunder, but almost frightening in its violence. In ten minutes it was all over, but enough had fallen to soak the ground.

"God! Oh, God! Oh, San Costantino! Oh, Holy Assumption!" moaned Aunt Martina. "If Brontu is out in this he'll be like a drowned chicken," and she studied the heavens anxiously, though never for a moment ceasing to spin, while Giovanna began to prepare the supper. Listening to the clatter of the rain, she, too, felt a vague uneasiness; not, indeed, on her husband's account, but in dread of some unknown, indefinable evil.

All at once the yellow light that had accompanied the downpour melted in the west into a clear, pale blue sky; the rain stopped suddenly, the clouds opened and parted, skurrying off,—under one another, on top of one another—like a great crowd of people dispersing after a reunion. The light was sea-green; the air was fresh and reviving, filled with the odour of damp earth and of dried grass that has had a thorough soaking, and with the sound of shrill, foolish crowings of roosters mistaking this pale, clear twilight for the dawn. Then,—silence. Aunt Martina's black figure, eternally spinning on the portico, made a dark splotch against the green sky. Giovanna was lighting the fire, bending over the hearth, when a long, tremulous neigh broke on her ears; the tremor in the sound seemed to communicate itself to her, and she straightened herself up, trembling as well, and looked out. Brontu was arriving, and she was frightened—what about——? About everything and nothing at all.

A tiny gleam flashed out from Aunt Bachissia's cottage; by its light the old woman was endeavouring, with the aid of a rough broom, to sweep out the water that had poured over her threshold. The sky, beyond the yellow fields, looked like a stretch of still, green water; and in the foreground the almond-tree, glossy and dripping, dominated everything around it. Beneath the almond-tree, in the last gleam of daylight, Brontu appeared on horse-back; horse and rider alike black and steaming, and lagging along as though sodden and weighted by the deluge that had poured over them.

The two women came running out to meet him, uttering many expressions of horror, possibly a trifle exaggerated in tone, but he paid no attention to them.

"The devil! the devil! the devil!" he muttered, drawing his feet heavily out of the stirrups, and lifting first one and then the other. "Go to the devil who sent you!—My shoes are water-logged! Why don't you get to work?" he added crossly, marching off to the kitchen.

The two women began at once to unload the horse, and when Giovanna followed him a little later, he at once demanded something to drink, "to dry him." "Change your clothes," she told him.

But no, he did not want to change his clothes; he only wanted something to drink,—"to dry him"—he repeated, and grew angry when Giovanna would not get it for him. He ended, however, by doing precisely as she said,—changed his clothes, took nothing to drink, and, while waiting for supper, sat carefully rubbing his wet hair on a towel, and combing it out.

"What a deluge! what a deluge!" he said. "A regular sea pouring straight out of heaven. Ah, I got my crust well softened this time!" He gave a little laugh. "How are you, Giovanna? All right, eh? Giacobbe Dejas sent all kinds of messages. You act like smoke in his eyes."

"You ought to stop his tongue," said Aunt Martina. "He's only a dirty serving-man; if you didn't let him take such liberties he would respect you more."

"I stopped more than his tongue; he wanted me to let him come in to-night. 'No,' I said; 'you'll stay where you are, and split.' He's coming in to-morrow, though."

"To-morrow? and why to-morrow? Ah, my son, you let yourself be robbed quite openly; you don't amount to anything!"

"Well, after all, to-morrow is the Assumption," said he, raising his voice, and putting the finishing touches to his hairdressing. "And Giacobbe is a relation, so let it rest. There, Giovanna, see how handsome I am!" He smiled at her, showing his splendid teeth.

He did, in truth, look so handsome, and clean, and radiant, with his shining locks and fresh colour, that Giovanna felt a momentary softening. Presently he began to hum a foolish little song that children sing when it rains:

"'Rain! rain! rain
Ripe grapes, and figs——'"

And so, they all sat down to the evening meal in high good humour and contentment. Aunt Martina, excusing herself on the plea of having no appetite, ate nothing but bread, onions, and cheese; articles of diet, however, of which she happened to be particularly fond,—but this in no wise interfered with the general harmony of the supper. After they had finished Brontu asked Giovanna to go out with him for a little walk; just to ramble about with no particular object, among the paths and deserted lanes of the village.

The sky had completely cleared, a few flickering stars glimmered faintly from out its pellucid depths; and the air was full of the odour of dead grass and wet stones. Quantities of sand and mud had been washed over the paths, but Giovanna wore her skirts very short, and such heavily nailed shoes that they struck against the stones with a sound like metal. Brontu took hold of her arm and began to invent wonderful pieces of news, as his custom was when he wanted to interest her.

"Zanchine," said he, naming one of the men, "has found something. What do you suppose it is? A baby."

"When?"

"Why, to-day, I think. Zanchine was digging up a lentisk when he heard a 'wow, wow'; he looked, and there was a baby, only a few days old. Well, that wasn't so wonderful; but now comes the queer part. A little cloud suddenly came flying through the air, and swooped down on Zanchine and seized the baby. It was an eagle who had evidently stolen the baby somewhere and hidden it among the bushes, and when he saw Zanchine looking at it, he shot down and——"

"Get out!" said Giovanna. "I don't believe a single word you say."

"Make me rich, if it's not true."

"Get out, get out!" said Giovanna again impatiently, and Brontu, seeing that instead of being amused, she was out of humour, asked her if she had had a bad dream. She remembered the one she had told her mother of, and made no reply.

In this way they came to the other side of the village; that is, to the part where Isidoro Pane lived. A spectacle of indescribable loveliness lay spread before them. The moon, like a great golden face, gazed down from the silver-blue west; and the black earth, the wet trees, the slate-stone houses, the clumps of bushes, and the wild stretch of upland—everything, as far as the eye could reach, to the very utmost confines of the horizon, seemed bathed in a tender, half-tearful smile. The two young people passed close by the fisherman's hut; they could hear him singing. Brontu stopped.

"Come on," said Giovanna, dragging him by the arm.

"Wait a moment; I want to knock on the thing he calls his door."

"No," she said, trembling. "Come away, come on, I tell you; if you don't come, I'll leave you by yourself."

"Oh! yes, that's true; you and he have had a quarrel; I haven't, though; I'm going to knock on his door."

"I'm going on, then."

"He was singing the lauds of San Costantino," said Brontu, as he rejoined her a few moments later. "The one the saint gave him on the river-bank that time. That old man is stark mad."

CHAPTER XII

On the following morning at about eleven o'clock, the religious services began in the church. They were set for this late hour so as to allow for the arrival of a young priest from Nuoro, a friend of Priest Elias's, who was to give a "panegyric" gratis to the people of Orlei. This panegyric was a great event, and in consequence, by ten o'clock the church overflowed with a gaily dressed throng of persons.

The building itself was painted in the most vivid colours—pink walls relieved by stripes of bright blue; a yellow wooden pulpit; and rows of lusty saints with red cheeks and blond hair, simpering from their pink niches like so many Teutonic worthies. San Costantino, however, the Patron Saint, was clad in armour, and his face looked dark and stern. This ancient statue was believed to perform miracles, and, according to local tradition, had been carved by San Nicodemus himself.

Through the wide-open door came a flood of sunshine, which, pouring over the congregation, enveloped them in a cloud of golden dust. At the other end of the church, where the altar stood, it seemed quite dark, notwithstanding the large M of lighted tapers, looking, with their motionless flames, like so many arrowheads stuck on shafts of white wood.

Priest Elias was celebrating Mass; and close by stood his friend, wearing a lace alb, and with a small, dark face like that of a shrewd child; he was singing away at the top of his voice, and all wondered to hear the little priest sing so loud, knowing that he was to preach as well. Most of the people had, indeed, come expressly to hear this sermon, and were paying scant attention to the Mass, being taken up with whispering and staring about them. True, the heat was suffocating, and clouds of insects made devotion difficult, even for the most pious. At last Priest Elias, having finished chanting the gospel, turned his pale, ascetic face towards the people, and his lips were seen to move. Just then the figure of Giacobbe Dejas appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the vivid, blue background of the sky. His usual mocking expression was changed to one of self-satisfaction. Aware that the priest was speaking, he paused on the threshold to listen, holding his long black cap in his hand; then, finding that he could distinguish nothing, he stepped inside and whispered to an old man with a long yellow beard, who stood near the door, to know what had been said.

"I don't know; I couldn't hear him; they make as much racket as if they were out in the square," said the old man querulously.

A tall, fresh-complexioned youth, with black hair and an aquiline nose, turned and stared at Giacobbe. Noting his unusual cleanliness, his new clothes, and general air of complacency, he grinned ill-naturedly.

"I think," said he, "that Priest Elias said the other priest was going to begin the panegyric now."

"Did you hear him say it?" asked the old man crossly.

"I didn't hear him say anything at all," replied the youth.

Giacobbe worked his way towards the front of the church, pushing in and out among the men, who turned to look at him as he pressed against them. Suddenly a silence fell on the crowd. The men all drew back against the walls, and the women sat down on the floor. In the centre of the church, where a stream of sunshine fell, was a sort of wooden bedstead, painted blue, and watched over by four little pink-cheeked cherubs, whose green, outstretched wings gave them the appearance of four emerald butterflies. On the bed, reposing with closed eyes upon brocade cushions, was a tiny Madonna. She was dressed entirely in white, with rings, necklaces, and earrings of gold—it was the Assumption. The dark, shrewd face of the little priest now appeared above the edge of the pulpit. Giacobbe regarded him fixedly for a moment, and then turned his right ear towards him so as to hear better.

"People of Orlei, brothers, sisters——" said the priest in a clear, childish treble—"asked to preach you a little sermon on this solemn day——" Giacobbe liked the opening, but finding that he could hear very well without paying strict attention, he turned and began to observe the people, talking all the while to himself, though without losing any of the discourse.

"There's Isidoro Pane, the devil take him! if he hasn't got on new clothes too; I wonder if he is also thinking of getting married. Eh, eh! That fresh-looking fellow down there by the door was laughing at me; he saw how happy and prosperous I looked, and thought of course that I must be going to get married. Well, and what if I am? Is it any business of yours, you puppy? Can't I get married if I want to? I have a house of my own, and cattle too.[6]

"Eh, eh! my sister will die without heirs—God bless her!—there she is, looking like a pink, shiny, little wax doll. Who would ever suppose that she is older than I? She wants me to get a wife. Well, I am perfectly willing, but whom shall I get? I am not so easy to please, and then I'm afraid—I'm afraid—I'm afraid. With this new law—the devil roast all the lawyers—who in the world is one ever to trust? There's that precious young master of mine; there he is at this very minute, with the stamp of mortal sin on him. What is he doing here? Why don't they horsewhip him? Why don't they drive him out like a dog? And his old bird-of-prey mother too? The old jade, there she is! Why don't they drive both of them out?" "Ah," he thought presently, "that is true, though; if they turned every one out who did wrong, the church would soon be empty. But those two people, I hate them; I'd like to flog them till the blood came. I'm not bad, though; didn't I stay up at the folds only to-day, working to repair the damage made by yesterday's storm? Then, when I came down, there was Giovanna getting dinner all by herself. She was dirty, and ill, and unhappy. No holiday for her! The mother and son go off together, and she, the maid-servant, stays at home and does the work. Well, it serves her right—a bad woman! And yet, I do feel sorry for her sometimes. There, God help me, I do feel sorry for her. When I said something ugly to her just now, she never answered a word. After all, when you come to think of it, she's the mistress, and I'm the servant. But is it my fault if I can't help pitching into you sometimes, little spring bird? I can't bear the sight of you, and all the same I'm sorry for you, and that's the way it is. Now, we must listen to what the priest has to tell us. He's just like a sparrow; that's it, a sparrow singing in its nest."

"Brothers, sisters, beloved——" cried the little preacher in the soft Loguedorese dialect, which sounds almost like Spanish, and waving his small white hands in the air—"the faith of Our Lady is the most ideal, the most sublime of all faiths. She, the gentle woman, daughter, wife, and Mother of Our Lord, mounted to heaven all radiant and fragrant as a chaplet of roses, and took her seat in glory amongst the angels and seraphim——"

"There's Priest Elias," thought Giacobbe, turning his little squint-eyes, which shone like metal in the bright light, towards the altar. "Yes, with his hands folded together, a boiled-milk priest, who can't preach anything except goodness and forgiveness, and all the time he has the Holy Books, and could strike right and left among the people if he chose to. Ah, if he had only threatened Giovanna Era——! He always looks as if he were in a dream, anyhow."

"No one," continued the little preacher, standing erect in the yellow pulpit, "no one has ever been able to say that he failed to get anything he asked in true faith from Our Most Holy Lady. She, the Lily of the Valley, the Mystical Rose of Jericho——"

But the audience was growing weary. The women, seated on the floor like beds of ranunculuses and poppies, were beginning to stir uneasily, and had ceased to listen. The young priest understood, and brought his discourse to a close, with a general benediction, which included the entire gathering of persons who, while ostensibly listening to the word of God, were, for the most part, wholly taken up with their own and their neighbours' affairs.

Priest Elias, arousing from his dream, resumed the celebration of the Mass. He alone, with possibly Isidoro Pane, had listened to the sermon, and the latter, so soon as the Mass was concluded, began to sing the lauds, his clear, sweet voice flowing out like a stream of limpid water rippling among rocks and flowering moss.

The young stranger listened with ecstasy to those liquid tones; the old fisherman's venerable figure, his long, flowing beard, and gentle eyes, and the bone rosary clasped between his knotted fingers, recalling certain pilgrims he had seen in Rome.

He wanted to meet the old man, and Priest Elias, accordingly, stopped him at the church door. Giacobbe, who was watching, was almost consumed with envy at the sight of the fisherman standing in friendly conversation with the two priests.

"What the thunder were they saying to you?" he demanded as the other came up.

"They wanted me to dine with them," said Isidoro, with some show of importance.

"Oh! they wanted you to dine with them, did they? So, my little spring bird, you are getting to be somebody, it seems. Well, you come along with me."

"To the Dejases'? Not I!" exclaimed Isidoro in a tone of horror.

"No, no; I'm not going to eat with those children of the devil to-day. I'm going home, so come along."

It was past midday as the two men set off for Aunt Anna-Rosa's house. The sun, pouring down on the narrow streets, had dried the mud, and the moisture on the trees. In all directions people could be seen dispersing to their homes, and the heavy tread of the shepherds resounded on the stone pavements. Children, dressed in their Sunday-best, peeped from over tumble-down walls, and through open doors glimpses could be caught of dark interiors, with here and there a copper saucepan shining from a wall like some huge medal suspended there. Thin curls of smoke floated up through the clear atmosphere, and the music of a mouth-organ, issuing from a usually deserted courtyard, sounded as though it were coming from the bowels of the earth, where some melancholy old Fate was solacing herself.

The entire village wore an unaccustomed air of gaiety, and yet this very festal look, the wide-open doors, the wreaths of smoke, the children, so ill at ease at their holiday attire, the sound of the mouth-organ, the bare, unshaded houses exposed to the full glare of the noontide sun—all combined to produce an effect of profound melancholy. Giacobbe led the way to his sister's house, and they all three dined together. The little woman, herself widowed and childless, adored her brother, and still referred to him as "my little brother." But then she loved all her kind, without distinction, and her eyes, slightly crossed, of no colour in particular, and as pure and liquid as two tiny lakes illuminated by the moon, were as innocent as the eyes of a nursing child. She knew that evil existed, but was frightened merely at the thought of men committing sin. One of the great sorrows of her life had been Giovanna's divorce and re-marriage—her own foster-child, as it were! And to think that she had actually lent them the money for the wedding outfit——!

Giacobbe dearly loved to tease her.

"Here's our friend Isidoro," he cried, as the party seated themselves at table. "He is thinking of getting married, and has come to consult you."

"Bless me, Isidoro Pane, and are you really going to be married?"

"Oh! go along, go along," said the fisherman good-humouredly.

"So you don't care about marrying?" cried Giacobbe, holding a piece of roast meat in both hands, and tearing it apart with teeth that were still sound and strong. "Well, you are a dirty beast. Do you know, sister, he has lovers, all the same."

"I don't believe that."

"It's true, though; take me to heaven if it's not. Yes, he has lovers who suck his blood."

The others laughed like two children at this humourous allusion to Isidoro's leeches. Giacobbe began to cut his meat with a sharp knife, holding it between his teeth and left hand, and muttering that it was as tough as the devil's ear, while his sister and the guest, having once begun, were ready to laugh at everything. Giacobbe's mood, however, suddenly changed, and for some reason which he himself was at a loss to explain, his good spirits of a few hours before deserted him.

"When we have finished, I'll take you to see my 'palace,'" he said. "It will be done in a few days now, and if I wanted to I could rent it right away, but I don't want to; I intend to live in it myself."

"Then you are not going to hire out any more?"

"No, not after a little while; I have worked enough. I have been working for forty years; do you take that in? Yes, it's forty years. No one can say I stole the money I have laid away for my old age."

"And you are going to marry?"

"Poh! Who is there to marry me? I should despise any young woman who was willing to, and I won't have an old one, not I. Take something more to drink, Isidoro Pane."

"You must want to make me tipsy!—well, as it's a holiday—here's to the bride and groom!"

"What bride and groom?"

"Giacobbe Dejas and Bachissia Era!" said the fisherman, who was waxing merry.

Giacobbe made a quick movement as though to throw himself upon him.

"I'll knock out your brains!" he cried, his eyes flashing with anger.

"Ah, you murderer!" laughed the other.

"Hush, hush! One should not say such things," said Aunt Anna-Rosa.

Giacobbe drank off a couple of glasses of wine, and then laughed in rather a forced way, looking sideways at his sister and the fisherman. "See here," he said suddenly; "why don't you two get married? Isidoro Pane, my sister is rich, and you see how fresh she is, just like the hip of a wild rose. You'd think she had found some magic herb and made an ointment to preserve her skin."

"God bless you! How queer you are sometimes!" exclaimed the little woman.

"Yes; you two had better marry; I wish it. My sister is rich; all my property will go to her, because I am going to die first. Somehow, I don't quite know why, but I feel as though I were going to die soon; I feel as though I were going to be killed——"

"Oh, nonsense! If it happens to-day, it will come from drinking too much."

"Dear little brother, what on earth are you talking about? In the name of the wretched souls in purgatory, don't say such things," said his sister, greatly distressed.

"You have no enemies," said Isidoro. "And besides, only those perish by the sword who have used the sword."

"Well, I have slaughtered many and many an innocent, unoffending fellow-creature," replied Giacobbe seriously, burying his mouth in a slice of watermelon. "You don't believe me? Sheep and lambs without number!" and he lifted his face, streaming with the pink juice, and laughed.

Dinner over, the two men went off to look at the new house.

Its two stories—the ground-floor and one above it—were divided into four large bedrooms, a kitchen, and a stable; these accommodations being deemed sufficient to earn for it the title of "palace," not alone from Giacobbe, but from the entire neighbourhood as well.

"Do you see this? Have you noticed that?" Giacobbe kept calling out, drawing attention to every detail and corner of his property; his clean-shaven face, devoid even of eyebrows, growing, meanwhile, almost youthful in its enthusiasm.

"You had better marry my sister," he said presently. "This house will be hers some day."

"You are making fun of me," replied the other. "Because I am poor, you think you can laugh at me as much as you like."

The wooden floors filled the simple soul with awe, and he hardly dared to walk on them. Giacobbe, on the contrary, seemed to enjoy stamping about in his great hobnailed boots, and making as much noise as he could in the big, empty rooms, all redolent of fresh plaster.

The two men paused for a moment at an open window, whose stone sill, baked by the sun, felt hot to the touch. The house stood high, and below them, in black shadow, lay the village, looking like a heap of charcoal beneath the green veil of trees. All about stretched the yellow plain, and, beyond, the great violet-grey sphinxes reared themselves against a cloudless sky. The bell of the little church, clamouring insistently, broke in on the noontide heat and stillness, and the sound was like metal striking against stone, as though far off, in the rocky heart of those huge sphinxes, a drowsy giant were wielding his pick. "Why don't you want to marry my sister?" said Giacobbe again. "This house will belong to her, and this will be her bedroom; here at this very window you could smoke your pipe——"

"I never smoke; do let me be," said the fisherman impatiently. The other's talk began to annoy him.

"I'm not joking, you old lizard," retorted Giacobbe. "Only you are such a dull beggar that you can't even tell that I'm not."

"Listen," said Isidoro. "You have given me my dinner to-day, and so you think you have a right to make game of me. Now, I tell you this, if you want me to be grateful for it, you had better leave me alone."

Giacobbe stared at him for a moment; then he burst into a loud laugh.

"Come on," he cried; "let's have something to drink."

They went out, and Giacobbe led the way to the tavern, but the other refused to enter, saying that it was time for him to be getting back to the church.

In the tavern Giacobbe found Brontu and a number of others playing morra, their arms flung out in tense attitudes, and all shouting the numbers at the tops of their lungs.

Before five o'clock, the hour set for the procession, they were all quite tipsy, Giacobbe more so than any one: notwithstanding which fact he insisted upon grasping his master by the arm, being firmly under the impression that without his aid, the other would not be able to walk. He then invited the whole company to adjourn to his "palace" to view the procession. A little later, accordingly, the big, empty rooms echoed to the sound of hoarse voices, bursts of aimless laughter, and uncertain footsteps. The windows were all thrown wide open, and quickly filled with wild, bearded faces.

Giacobbe and Brontu were standing at the same window where the old fisherman had been shortly before. By this time the sun had left it, but the sill was still warm, while below them and beyond, the village, and the plain, and the mountains were striped with long bars of ever lengthening shadows.

"Cu, cu!" shouted Brontu, staring out with round eyes. This was so intensely humourous that the others all began imitating him, each one making as much noise as possible. The house resounded with the uproar; a crowd gathered in the street below, and presently the drunkards within and those without began to exchange abusive epithets, followed by spitting and stone-throwing.

On a sudden, however, complete silence fell; a sound of low, mournful chanting was heard approaching, and immediately after a double line of white, phantom-like figures appeared at the end of the street, preceded by a silver cross held aloft against the blue background of the sky. The men in the street fell back against the walls, the heads at the windows were lowered, and every one uncovered.

One of the white-robed brotherhood, boys for the most part who, when the ceremonies were over, would receive three soldi each and a slice of watermelon, knocked at the door of the new house as he passed, and the others followed his example.

"Curse you!" yelled Giacobbe furiously, leaning far out of the window. "Boors! walking in the procession, are you?" and he was about to spit on them, but Brontu prevented him, telling him it would not do.

Now came the green brocade standard, with its hundred variegated ribbons and gilded staff; and next the Madonna of the Assumption, extended with closed eyes on her portable couch, covered with necklaces and rings that looked like relics of the bronze age, and watched over by the four green cherubs.

On each of the four sides, walking beside the bearers, was a man wearing a white tunic and carrying in his arms a child dressed as an angel. They were charming little creatures, two blond and two brunette, and they chattered gaily with one another, shouting to make themselves heard. One of them, tickled under the knee by the man who carried him, squirmed and wriggled, one wing hanging limply down.

The sight of these children touched some finer emotion in Brontu, Giacobbe, and the others, and bending their knees, they crossed themselves devoutly. The children, for their part, gazed up at the windows, and one of them, recognising an uncle in the group, flung a red confetto at him, which, missing fire, fell back into the road.

Priest Elias and the little stranger from Nuoro came next, wearing brocade and lace robes, pale and handsome in their bravery. They walked with clasped hands and rapt faces, chanting in Latin.

"The devil!" exclaimed Giacobbe suddenly. "If there isn't that dirty old Isidoro Pane! You'd suppose he was running the whole procession; I'm going to spit on him."

"No, you're not," commanded Brontu.

Giacobbe coughed to attract the fisherman's attention, but the other did not so much as raise his eyes, continuing to intone the prayers to which the people responded as with a single voice.

The surging, vari-coloured crowd had flowed together behind the procession, and above the sea of heads could still be seen the swaying silver cross. The men had all uncovered,—bald heads, shining with perspiration, mops of thick black hair, rough, curly pates,—and then the gay head-kerchiefs of the women, some with black grounds and yellow squares, others striped with red, or covered with green spots,—all surmounting flushed faces, flashing eyes, white bodices crossed on the breast, red, gesticulating hands. Gradually the crowd thinned; an old cripple came limping along, then a woman with two children hanging to her skirts, then three old women—a child with a yellow flower in its mouth—the street grew empty and silent; the noise, and movement, and colour receding in waves, and growing ever fainter as the low, melancholy cadence of the chanted invocations died away in the distance.

As the last sounds ceased, two cat's paws appeared on the wall opposite Giacobbe's house, followed by a little, white face, with wide startled eyes, then the animal leaped on the wall, and sat staring intently down into the street.

"Too late!" cried Brontu, waving a salute.

The others shouted with laughter, and when Giacobbe presently told them it was time to be off, they refused to go. The host, thereupon, seizing a lath covered with plaster, tried to drive them out, and the entire troop of rough, bearded men began to run from room to room, pushing one another by the shoulders, yelling, tumbling over each other, and shrieking with laughter like so many schoolboys. Driven forth at length, they continued their horseplay in the street, until Giacobbe, having locked the door and put the key in his pocket, led the way back to the tavern. At dusk Brontu and the herdsman, supporting one another, appeared at the white house.

Aunt Martina was sitting on the portico with her hands beneath her apron, reciting the rosary. When her eyes fell on the two men she remained perfectly still and silent, but her lips tightened, and she shook her head ever so slightly, as though to say: "Truly, a fine sight!"

"Where is Giovanna?" demanded Brontu.

"She went to her mother's."

"Oh! she went to her mother's, the old harpy's? Well, she's always going there, curse her."

"Don't shout so, my son."

"I will; I'll shout as much as I like; I'm in my own house," and turning towards the common, he began to call at the top of his voice:

"Giovanna! Giovanna!"

Giovanna appeared at the door of the cottage, and started to cross the common hastily with an alarmed air; as she drew near, however, her expression changed to one of annoyance and disgust. Pausing in front of the two men, she regarded them with a look of undisguised scorn. Giacobbe laughed, but Brontu reddened to the tips of his ears with anger.

"Well," she demanded; "what is the matter? Have you got the colic?"

"He would have got it pretty soon if you hadn't come," said Giacobbe.

Brontu opened his mouth and his lips moved, but no sounds came forth, and his anger presently died away as senselessly as it had come.

"Well——" he stammered. "I wanted you. We have hardly seen each other all day. What were you doing at your mother's? Who was there?"

"Who was there?" she repeated, in a tone of intense bitterness. "Why, no one. Who would you expect to find at our house?"

"Why, San Costantino might come—t—o—o—gi—i—i—ve you—u a po—em——" sang Giacobbe thickly. "Have you ever seen San Costantino? Well, there's Isidoro Pane—he's perfectly crazy—he doesn't like you; no, indeed, he doesn't, and—and——"

"Shut up; hold your tongue!" said Aunt Martina. "And the sheepfolds left all this time to take care of themselves! That's the way you attend to your master's business! You're all alike, accursed thieves!"

Giacobbe sprang forward, erect and livid; and Giovanna, fearing that he was really going to strike the old woman, stepped quickly between them. He turned, however, without saying a word, and sat down, but with so lowering an expression that Giovanna remained near her mother-in-law in an attitude of protection.

Brontu, on the contrary, was struck with the idea that his mother deserved a rebuke.

"What sort of manners are these?" he demanded in a tone that was intended to be severe. "Why, you treat people as though—as though—as though they were beasts—everybody! To-day—to-day—no, yesterday was a holiday. If he chose to get drunk, what business was that of yours?"

"I got drunk on poison," remarked Giacobbe.

"Yes, poison," agreed Brontu. "And I did too. And there's another thing. I'm tired of all this, mother and wife—and the whole business. So there! I'm going away. I'm going to spend the night with him in his palace. After all, we are relations, and—and——"

"Say it right out!" shouted Giacobbe. "You may be my heir; that's what you mean! Ha, ha, ha!"

He laughed boisterously, emitting sounds that were more like the howls of a wild beast than human laughter. Brontu, trying to imitate him, only succeeded in producing a noise like the cry of some happy animal in the springtime.

Giovanna felt herself grow sick with dread; she was afraid of the rapidly approaching darkness, of the solitude that enwrapped the common, of the presence of these two men whom wine had turned into quarrelsome beasts. "The excommunication," she thought, "has fallen on us all: on this servant, who dares to defy his master; on the son, who upbraids his mother; on me, Giovanna, who loathe and despise them one and all!"

Aunt Martina arose, went into the kitchen, and lit the candle. Giovanna followed her and set about preparing the supper. When it was ready they all sat down together, and for a little while everything went well. Presently Brontu began to tell of how they had watched the procession from the windows of Giacobbe's "palace," his account of their foolish doings bringing a smile to his mother's lips. Then he tried to put his arm around his wife, but Giovanna's heart was full of gall. For her the holiday had been, if anything, sadder than an ordinary day; she had worked hard, she had not been to church, she had not so much as changed her dress; and yet, the moment she had allowed herself to go for a little recreation to the cottage,—the scene alike of her greatest misery and of her most intense happiness,—she had been ordered back as peremptorily as a dog is told to return to its kennel. Consequently, she was in no mood for endearments, and repulsed Brontu's proffered caress, telling him he was drunk.

Giacobbe, thereupon, laughed delightedly, which irritated Giovanna as much as it angered Brontu.

"What are you laughing at, you mangy cur?" demanded the latter.

"I might say I am not as mangy as you are yourself. But then, I—I want to say that—that—well, I'm laughing because I choose to."

"Eh! I can laugh too."

"Fools!" said Giovanna scornfully. "You make me sick, both of you."

At this Brontu, quite beside himself, suddenly turned on her:

"What is the matter with you, anyhow?" he demanded in a hard voice. "One would really like to know. Here you are, living on me, and when I offer to kiss you you fly out at me. You ought to be thankful to kiss the very ground under my feet; do you hear me?"

Giovanna grew livid. "What!" she hissed. "Am I treated any better than a servant in this house?"

"Well, a servant; all right, you can just stay one. What else should you be, woman?"

Giacobbe's squint-eyes sparkled at this, but Giovanna, rising to her feet, proceeded to pour out all the concentrated bitterness of the past months. Addressing her husband and mother-in-law, she called them slave-drivers and tyrants; threatened to go away, to kill herself; cursed the hour she had entered that house, and, in the transport of her rage, even revealed the debt to Giacobbe's sister.

At this, the herdsman fell to laughing softly to himself, murmuring words of half-mocking reproach addressed to Aunt Anna-Rosa. On a sudden, however, his face grew black; the sombre figure of Aunt Bachissia appeared in the doorway; she had heard her daughter's angry voice resounding through the stillness of the evening, and had come at once.

"Here," said Aunt Martina, perfectly unmoved, "is your daughter, gone mad to all appearances."

Brontu, completely sobered, was signing urgently to his mother-in-law to come forward and try to calm the furious woman, and Aunt Bachissia was about to do so when Giacobbe suddenly leaped to his feet and threw himself in front of her with an ugly scowl.

"Get out of here!" he ordered, pointing to the door.

"And are you the master?" asked Aunt Bachissia ironically.

"Get out, I tell you," he repeated, and, as she continued to advance, he laid hold of her.

She shook him off, and he went out himself instead, and, sitting down on the portico, tried to laugh; but, odd to relate, instead of laughter, he presently found himself shaking all over with dry, convulsive sobs.

CHAPTER XIII

Time passed on. The sky and weather changed with the changing seasons, but among the inhabitants of the little village all remained much as usual. In the course of the winter Giovanna gave birth to a weak, puling girl-baby, which did nothing but cry. Doctor Porra, or Pededda, as he still continued to be called, came all the way from Nuoro expressly to stand for the poor little creature. He arrived in a carriage, bundled up like a bale of clothing, his rosy face beaming as usual. Quite a number of persons had assembled to see him, and he distributed smiles and greetings indiscriminately to all who would have them, assuring a group of Brontu's friends who had gone to meet him, that he remembered perfectly seeing all of them at Nuoro. This gratified them immensely, all but one, that is, who said he had never been to Nuoro. "It is of no consequence," said the lawyer cheerfully, "I am sure to see you there some day." This was a somewhat equivocal assurance, as it seldom happened that any of them went to Nuoro except on law business; however, the man was highly pleased.

Aunt Bachissia, watching the new arrival divest himself of his greatcoat, shawl, and various other wraps, thought that he looked more than ever like a magia.

"You seem to have grown stouter," she said, looking at the layers of clothing.

"Oh! this is a mere nothing," he replied. At which they all laughed delightedly.

The baptism was to be conducted with great pomp, and Aunt Martina, probably for the first time in her life, slackened the strings of her purse, and sent to Nuoro for wines and sweets of the best quality. She could not sleep the night before, however, and passed a wretched day, tormented by the fear that some of the delicacies might be spirited away. On the morning of the ceremony Giovanna got up early and helped her mother-in-law to prepare the macaroni for dinner; then she went back to bed, where she remained in a sitting posture, propped up by pillows, and with the bedclothes drawn up about her waist. Above that she wore her blouse and bodice, and she had on her wedding coif and bridal kerchief. She looked somewhat pale, but very handsome, her great eyes seeming larger even than usual.

The table was set in the bedchamber, and covered with a linen cloth, which Aunt Martina now took out from her chest for the first time since it had been bought.

The ceremony was to take place at about eleven o'clock of a very cold morning. From the pale sky a thick, white vapour fell, enveloping the village and all the surrounding country in a misty veil. The narrow streets were deserted, and here and there frozen puddles lay like pieces of broken, dirty glass. An absolute silence reigned in the open space before the Dejases' house, opposite which the almond tree stretched its bare, black limbs against the misty background.

All at once the common was invaded by a troop of urchins, bundled up in ragged garments and odds and ends of fur; with fringed, red caps on their heads, and wearing old boots, some of them almost as large as the little persons who wore them. Groups of people stood about, principally shivering women, coughing and sneezing and smelling of soot and smoke. Then the baptismal procession appeared. First came two children looking solemn and important, and carrying candles from which red ribbons fluttered; these were followed by the woman with the infant wrapped in shawls, and covered with a piece of greenish brocade, like the standard of San Costantino.

Then the godfather appeared, his round little face rosy and smiling as ever, emerging from the folds of his big coat and black-and-white shawl. With him walked the godmother, one of Aunt Martina's daughters, a lank young woman with a long, narrow face, who reminded one of a shadow seen at sunset. She had to lean down in order to reach her companion's ear. With the godparents came Brontu, freshly shaven and gay, and behind them followed a group of friends and relatives, marching along in step, with a noise like the tramp of horses' hoofs. Last of all came the godmother's servant-maid, a shivering creature blue with cold; she carried a small basin under one arm, and kept both hands buried in the pockets of her gown. From time to time she thrust out her tongue to catch the drops that kept running down from her nose. The boys trotted alongside, forming two wings to the procession, their eyes eagerly fixed upon the godfather, who returned their gaze with an amused stare and hailed them jocosely:

"Why, hello! you here? What are you looking for, little hedgehogs?"

"He's lame," said one.

"Hush, keep quiet, or he won't give us anything!"

The procession passed on; the faces of the urchins fell; some of them were angry, and others seemed on the verge of tears.

"Crippl——" one began to call, but stopped suddenly. The godfather had pitched a handful of copper coins into the air, and the whole troop flung themselves after them, yelling, tumbling over one another, pushing, fighting, struggling, rolling over and over, almost upsetting the maid-servant, who instantly began to deal out blows and curses in greater proportion even than the coins themselves. Fresh handfuls of money and renewed scuffling by an ever-increasing crowd of ragamuffins continued to the very doors of the church, where Priest Elias stood awaiting the party and listening to something the red-robed sacristan was urging upon him. The sacristan was, in fact, afraid that Priest Elias, with his usual kindly indulgence, might be persuaded to return to the house with the baptismal party, whereas it was the custom of the neighbourhood for the priest to do that only in cases where the parents had been united by religious ceremony: he was, therefore, exhorting the other to practise severity with Brontu, with the godparents, with the whole company in fact. "Your Honour," said he, "will surely not return to the house with this infant? Why, it is almost illegitimate! On no account should such respect be paid to it."

"Go and see if they are coming," said the priest.

"They are not in sight yet. No, your Honour will not go."

"And how about you? Shall you not go?" enquired the priest with a slight smile.

"Oh! with me it is an altogether different matter; I go on account of the sweetmeats, not to do honour to that rabble."

At this moment the company came in sight, and the ceremony presently began. No sooner had the baby's bald little red head been uncovered than it began to emit sounds like the bleating of a hoarse kid. The godfather stood by smiling, with a lighted taper in his hand, doing his best to remember the creed, Giovanna having implored him to recite it conscientiously, so that the baptism might be valid.

Almost the entire crowd of urchins had followed the party inside the church, and there was a pattering like rats running about, as the sacristan would chase them all out, only presently to come stealing back.

The woman who had carried the baby, and the maid-servant with the basin, seated themselves on the steps of a side altar, where they anxiously awaited the godfather's present. At last the service was over, the tips had been given, the baby wrapped up again, and Brontu and his friends stood waiting awkwardly for the priest, who had gone into the sacristy to remove his robes. Would he come back or not? Was he going to the house with the newly baptised infant or no? There was an uncomfortable pause, and then, as he did not appear, the procession set out somewhat mournfully on the return journey, followed by the triumphant sacristan, to whom Brontu would dearly have liked to administer blows in place of the expected sweets.

All along the route the people came out to see them go by, and many faces, especially those of the women, lighted up with ill-natured smiles as they perceived that the priest was not there. Poh! It was like the baptism of a bastard!

Giovanna, albeit not really expecting the priest, grew a shade paler when the company invaded her chamber without him. She kissed the little purple creature sadly, feeling as though the outlook for the poor child was very dark indeed.

"I remembered every word of the creed from beginning to end," announced the godfather. "Happy mother, your child will be a wonder, as tall as its godmother and as gay as its godfather!"

"If only it may be as prosperous as its godfather," murmured Giovanna.

"And now," cried the young man, joyously clapping his hands, "come to dinner. What a pleasant custom it is! Upon my honour, it is a charming custom!" And he clapped his hands again, as though calling a crowd of children.

They all took their places at table, where the macaroni, which had already been served, was to be followed by a beautiful roast pig exhaling an odour of rosemary.

It was only a few days after the baptism that a strange though not unprecedented event occurred in Orlei.

Near Isidoro Pane's hut was an ancient dungheap, abandoned for so long that it had become almost petrified. It was covered with a growth of sickly-looking vegetation, and emitted no odour, looking like some sort of artificial mound.

One evening at about dusk, while the fisherman was preparing his supper, he heard sounds in the direction of this mound, and went to the door to see what they were. The weather was cold, and in the clear, greenish twilight he saw a group of black figures, chiefly women, advancing, singing to the accompaniment of some instrument.

Isidoro understood what it was and went to meet them. The women, about twenty in all, old and young, were chanting in a melancholy monotone, with sudden breaks and changes, a weird song or exorcism against the bite of a tarantula; while a blind beggar, a pallid young man, miserably clad in soiled and ragged woman's clothing, accompanied them on a primitive instrument called a serraia—a sort of cithern, made out of a dried sow's bladder.

There were only three other men in the party, and in one of these, with a flushed, feverish face, and one hand bound up, the fisherman recognised Giacobbe Dejas.

Isidoro advanced, and joining the party laid one finger on the bandaged hand, Giacobbe, meanwhile, gazing at him wildly, his eyes transfixed with terror.

"Are you afraid you are going to die from a tarantula bite? No, no," said Isidoro, smiling.

The women continued their chant. There were seven widows, seven wives, and seven maids. One of the widows was Giacobbe's sister. She walked at his side, fresh and pink as ever, notwithstanding her wild state of alarm and anxiety; and her shrill little voice, like the note of a lively cricket, trilled and trembled high above all the others.

"He is suffering," said one of the men to Isidoro in a low tone.

"Ah?" said the fisherman gravely.

The words chanted by the women ran as follows:

Meanwhile the group had stopped in front of the mound. The two men, who were provided with spades, began to dig, and Isidoro stood waiting with Giacobbe, the chanting women, and the blind man still playing on his strange instrument. Giacobbe silently watched the operations of his two friends, and Isidoro watched him, puzzled by the transformation he had undergone; he seemed, indeed, like an altogether different person; his face was inflamed, and drawn with fright, and the little eyes, which usually twinkled so shrewdly from beneath their bald brows, were dim with a childish terror of death. When they had come to the end of the chant, the women began again at the first line, the instrument continuing the accompaniment on the same monotonous key as before. It sounded like the humming of a swarm of bees in flight. Puffs of icy wind blew from the west, cutting the faces of the group gathered about the mound, like knives. The purple-blue of the sky was fading into a greenish tint, like the face of a lake when the sun has left it; and over the entire scene there hung a pall of indescribable melancholy—the dull, cold twilight, the darkening uplands, the black village, the shadowy group of people, performing a superstitious rite with all the faith of heathen idolaters.[8] The two men dug with friendly zeal, throwing up spadefuls of black earth mixed with rags, egg-shells, and refuse of all kinds. As it covered their feet and legs, they would mount higher, bending to their task, panting and sweating, while the women continued their chant, and the blind man his monotonous accompaniment.

A hole of sufficient depth having at last been dug, Aunt Anna-Rosa, never ceasing for an instant to emit the same shrill, mournful sounds, helped Giacobbe to remove his coat, and then, taking him by the hand, they led him to the edge of the excavation. He jumped in at a bound, and the two men, pushing him down with their hands, hastily piled on the earth, until he was buried up to the neck.

The performance that then took place was even more extraordinary. The head, looking as though it had been severed from the body and stuck in the centre of this heap of refuse, was surrounded by sparse vegetation, which trembled in the breeze as though affrighted; while overhead hung the melancholy sky. Hardly had the two men completed their task, and stood,—the one wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve, and the other knocking off the dirt that was sticking to his hands,—when the women closed in a circle around the head, and began to dance to the sound of their own chanting voices and the instrument still played by the blind man, who stood with his sightless balls and pale, impassive face turned towards the distant horizon. This continued for some time; then the dancing ceased, the circle broke, but the chanting still went on. Isidoro and the other men threw themselves on the mound, and with spades and hands, had soon disinterred Giacobbe. He was perspiring profusely when he emerged, covered with dirt, and his face and neck were purple. He said he had felt as though he would suffocate; then he shook himself and thrust first one arm and then the other into the sleeves of the coat which his sister held ready.

"Well, so you are not going to die after all, little spring bird?" said Isidoro jokingly. The other, however, made no reply; the cold wind struck his perspiring body with an icy chill, his face grew pallid, and his teeth chattered.

They walked off in the direction of Aunt Anna-Rosa's house, Isidoro, who by this time had lost all interest in his supper, accompanying them.

"Did you kill it?" he enquired of the sick man, remembering to have heard that if one kills a tarantula with his ring finger he acquires the power to cure the bite with a simple touch of the same finger.

"No," said Giacobbe; and then, while the weird chanting still continued, he gave an account of his misfortune.

"I was asleep; suddenly I felt something like the sting of a wasp. I woke up all in a perspiration. Ah, it had stung me! It had stung me! The horrible tarantula! I saw it as plain as I see you, but it was some distance off, on the wall. Ah, the devil take you, accursed creature! So I came right home. Do you know, I am afraid to die; I've been afraid for ever so long."

"But we all have to die some time, whenever the hour comes," said Isidoro seriously.

"Yes, that is true; we all have to some time," agreed one of the men; "but that is poor consolation for Giacobbe Dejas."

"My legs feel as though they had been broken," he groaned. "And oh, my spine! it is just as though some one had struck it with an axe! I am going to die; I know I am going to die——"

As they passed along, the people came out of their houses to watch them go by, but it was like a funeral procession; no one spoke, nor did any one follow them. Giacobbe's eyes grew dim, and presently he stumbled and clutched hold of Isidoro for support.

The women were moving along on a trot, like a herd of colts; their voices rose, fell, rose again, and seemed to die away into the chill night air, overpowered at last by the even, strident notes of the cithern, like the gasps of some wounded animal left to die alone in the forest.

At last they reached the little widow's house. A fire was burning in the slate-stone fireplace in the centre of the kitchen, laid on a little heap of live coals which had just been taken out of the oven. This last, a huge, round affair having a hole in the top to allow the smoke to escape, occupied one corner, its square door being quite large enough to allow of the passage of a man's body. Into its still hot interior Giacobbe accordingly now crept, the soles of his heavy shoes appearing in the opening, their worn nails shining in the firelight.

Placing themselves around the oven and the fireplace, the women continued their exorcism with renewed vigour, the red and purple lights from the fire falling upon their white blouses and yellow bodices. Aunt Anna-Rosa's round, open mouth looked like a black hole in the middle of her pink, shining face. The blind man, conscious of the fire, felt his way towards it little by little, though without ceasing to play. Reaching the edge of the fireplace, he put one of his bare feet upon the hot stone. "Zs-s——" whispered Uncle Isidoro warningly. "Look out, boy, or you'll have a surprise."

The words were not out of his mouth when the youth gave a sudden bound backwards, shaking his burned foot in the air. For a moment he stopped playing, but the women never faltered. Standing there, erect and immovable around the huge oven, they might have been intoning a funeral dirge over some prehistoric sepulchre.

"He is coming out!" cried Aunt Anna-Rosa suddenly, and Giacobbe's great feet could be seen issuing from the oven. At the same instant the house-door was thrown violently open, and the black-robed figure of Priest Elias appeared. On hearing what had occurred he had at once hastened to the house, hoping to arrive in time at least to prevent the ordeal of the oven. He was flushed and breathless, and his eyes flashed. On catching sight of him one of the women gave a scream and others stopped chanting, while the rest motioned to them to continue. Giacobbe, meanwhile, had got out of the oven.

"Be quiet!" commanded the priest, panting. "Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? No?"

They all became silent.

"Go," he said, opening the door and holding it with one hand, while with the other he almost pushed the women out. When the last had gone he became aware for the first time of the presence of Isidoro, and his face fell. "You too?" he said reproachfully. "Extraordinary, most extraordinary! Don't you see what you have done among you to that poor man?" Then changing his tone, "Quick," he said, "go at once for the doctor as fast as you can. And as for you," turning to Giacobbe, "get to bed at once."

The sick man asked for nothing better; he was burning with fever, his head was shaking, and he could hardly see. Isidoro went off in search of the doctor, somewhat mortified and yet, in spite of his usually hard common sense, his intelligence, and his deeply religious nature, quite unable to see what harm there could be in trying to cure a tarantula sting with the rites, chants, and incantations employed by one's forebears from the days when giants inhabited the Nuraghes.

The women had scattered into groups along the street and were discussing the occurrence, some of them a little ashamed, while others were inclined to blame the priest. One irrepressible young girl was beating her hands in time and singing the lament which should have been chanted in chorus around Giacobbe's bed had not the priest's arrival prevented:

"'Oh, mother of the spider!
A stroke has fallen on me.'"

Some of the women would have stopped Isidoro, but he strode quickly on, buried in thought. At last they all dispersed, and the cold, still evening settled down on the little widow's house, while overhead the stars looked like golden eyes veiled in tears.

CHAPTER XIV

The room where Giacobbe lay was extremely lofty, and so large that the oil light did not penetrate the corners. The furniture appeared to have been built expressly with a view to its ample proportions; a huge, red, wooden wardrobe which stood against the end wall, reaching clear to the ceiling. The bed, the lower part of which was draped with yellow curtains, was as high and massive as a mountain. Seen thus, in the dim, flickering light, with its black corners and great lofty white ceiling like a cloudy sky, the room had a mysterious, uncanny look. Little Aunt Anna-Rosa seemed almost in danger of losing her way as she moved about among the bulky furniture, and her shoulders hardly reached above the counterpane when she came and stood beside the bed where her brother lay in the uneasy grip of the fever.

He seemed to himself still to be in the mound, only the two friends who had interred him, kept on piling the earth higher and higher about his head. He was suffocating, the torture was almost unendurable, and yet he dared not stop them, fearing the cure might not be efficacious unless his head were buried as well; and his head seemed to be Priest Elias, on whose breast the tail of a tarantula could be seen wriggling about.

In his dream Giacobbe was conscious of an almost insane fear of death. It had occurred to him when he was in the oven that hell, perhaps, was a huge heated oven where the damned would sprawl throughout eternity.

Now, in his dream, precisely the same feeling was reproduced. He was in the mound, the earth reached higher and higher about him; he shut his mouth tight to keep from swallowing it, and there, opposite him, he suddenly saw a lighted furnace. It was the infernal regions. Such a feeling of terror seized upon him that even in his dream, in his feverish semi-consciousness, he was aware of an overmastering desire to prove to himself that this horror was an illusion of the senses. In the effort he awoke, but even awake he had something of the same sensation that stones, were they endowed with feeling, would have in a burning building, growing all the while hotter and hotter, and yet unable to stir an inch. Giacobbe felt like a burning brick himself, or a piece of live coal, a part of the infernal fires; and waking, his terror was even more acute than in his dream. He emitted a groan and the noise gave him comfort; it had an earthly, human sound, breaking in on all those diabolical sensations.

Isidoro, who had stayed in case the little widow might have need of him, heard the groan from where he sat dozing in the adjoining kitchen, and bounded to his feet in terror; he thought that Giacobbe had died. Approaching the bed, he found the sick man lying flat on his back, his face drawn, his eyes, which looked almost black, wet with tears.

"Are you awake?" asked the fisherman in a low voice. "Do you want anything?" He felt his pulse, and even laid his ear against it as though trying to hear the throbs.

At the same instant Giacobbe observed the round little visage of his sister appear above the other edge of the bed, enveloped in the folds of a large white kerchief.

Then a curious thing happened: the face of the sick man contracted, his mouth opened, his eyes closed, and a deep sob broke the stillness of the room. Instantly memory carried the woman back to a far-distant day when her brother, a tiny lad, had sat weeping on this very bed; and opening her arms just as she had done then, she took him to her kind bosom, murmuring words of loving remonstrance.

"In the name of the holy souls in purgatory! What is it? What is the matter, little brother?"

Isidoro, quite at a loss, continued to feel his friend's pulse, trying now one vein, and now another, and muttering to himself: "How strange, how very strange!"

"Well, what is it? Won't you tell me what it is? You, Isidoro Pane, what happened?"

"Why, nothing happened. He called out, and that was all. May be he had a bad dream. We'll give him a drink of water. There now, here's a little fresh water. That's it, he wants it—see how he is drinking! You were thirsty, weren't you? It's the fever, you see; that's what ails him!"

Giacobbe sat up in bed, and after drinking the water calmed down. He had on an old white knitted cotton shirt, through which could be seen the outline of his small wiry body, the thick growth of black hair on his chest contrasting oddly with the perfectly smooth face and bald head above it. He remained in a sitting posture, leaning forward, and thoughtfully passing his well hand up and down the injured arm.

"Yes," he remarked suddenly in the panting, querulous tone of a person with fever. "Yes; I had a bad dream. Whew! but it was hot! Holy San Costantino, how hot it was! I was dreaming of hell."

"Dear me, dear me, what an idea!" said his sister reprovingly; and Uncle Isidoro said playfully: "And so it was hot, little spring bird?"

The sick man seemed to be annoyed.

"Don't joke, and don't say 'little spring bird.' I don't like it; I shall never say it again, and I shall never laugh at any one again.

"Listen to me," he said, bending forward and continuing to rub his arm. "Hell is a dreadful place. I've got to die, and I've got to tell you something first. Now listen, but don't get frightened, Anna-Rosa, because I am certainly going to die; and Uncle Isidoro, you know it already, so I can tell you. Well, this is it. It was I who killed Basile Ledda."

Aunt Anna-Rosa's eyes and mouth flew wide open; she leaned against the side of the bed, and began to shake convulsively.

"I knew it already?" exclaimed Isidoro. "Why, I knew nothing at all!"

Giacobbe raised a terrified face, and began to tremble as well.

"Don't have me arrested," he implored. "I'm going to die, anyhow; you can tell them then. I thought you knew. What is the matter, Anna-Ro? Don't be frightened; don't have me arrested."

"It's not that," she said, raising herself. Her first sensation of having received a blow on the head was passing away, but now, in its place, there came a singular feeling of some change that was taking place within her; her own spirit seemed to have fled in dismay, and in its place had come something that regarded the world, life, heaven, earth—God himself—from a totally different standpoint; and everything viewed in the light of this new spirit was full of horror, misery, chaos.

"I will not tell any one. No, no! But how could you ever suppose that I knew about it?" protested Isidoro. He felt no especial horror of Giacobbe, only profound pity; but at the same time he thought it would be better, now, for him to die.

Then, simultaneously, their thoughts all flew to Costantino, and hardly left him again.

"Lie down," said Isidoro, smoothing out the pillow. But the other only shook his head and began to talk again in the same querulous, laboured voice, now beseeching, now almost angry:

"I thought you must know about it; and so, you never did, after all? Well, that's so; how could you? But I was afraid of you all the same. I had an idea that I could read it in your eyes. Do you remember that night at your house, when you said: 'It might be you who killed him'? I was frightened that night. Then, there was that other time—Assumption Day—here in this very house, you called me 'murderer.' I knew it was a joke, but it frightened me because I was afraid of you, anyhow. So then, when I said that about you and my sister getting married, I meant it. I thought it might give me a sort of hold on you."

"Oh, Christ! Oh, holy little Jesus!" sobbed the widow.

Giacobbe looked at her for a moment.

"You are scared, eh? You wonder what made me do it? Well, I'll tell you. I hated that man; he had flogged me, and he owed me money. But I thought it would kill me when they condemned Costantino Ledda. Why didn't I confess then? Is that what you want to say? Ah, it sounds all very easy now, but you can't do it. Costantino is a strong young man, I thought to myself; I shall die long before he does, and then I'll confess the whole thing. And I can tell you that that thing that Giovanna Era did made me a hundred years older. What is Costantino going to say when he comes back? What is he going to say?" he repeated softly to himself.

"What ought we to do?" said Aunt Anna-Rosa, burying her face in the bedclothes and groaning. She felt as though it must all be some frightful dream; yet, not for a single instant did she contemplate concealing her brother's crime. And afterwards?—One of two equally horrible things must happen. Either Giacobbe would die, or he would be sent to prison. She could not tell which of the two she dreaded most.

"Now we must lie down and rest; to-morrow will be time enough to talk of what is the best thing to do," said Isidoro, again smoothing out the pillow. Giacobbe turned over and laid himself down; then, raising his left hand, he began to count off on his fingers: "Priest Elias, one; the magistrate, two; then—what's his name?—Brontu Dejas; yes, I want him particularly. They must all come here, and I will make a confession."

"Brontu Dejas!" repeated Isidoro with stupefaction.

"Yes; they will take his word sooner than any one's. But first, you've all got to swear on the crucifix that you'll let me die in peace. I'm frightened. You'll let me die in peace, won't you?"

"Why, of course; don't worry now. And you, little godmother, go back to bed; get as much rest and sleep as you can," said the fisherman, quietly drawing the clothes up about Giacobbe, who kept throwing them off, turning restlessly, and shaking his head.

"I'm hot," said he. "I tell you I'm hot. Let me alone. Why aren't you more surprised. Uncle 'Sidoro? I went on hiring out to keep people from suspecting anything; but you knew all along; oh, yes! you knew well enough!"

"I tell you I knew nothing at all, child of grace."

"Then why aren't you surprised?"

"Because," replied the old man in a grave voice, "such strange things are always happening; it is the way of the world. Now keep the covers over you, and try to go to sleep."

The widow, who appeared not to have been listening to what the two men were saying, now raised her face. Poor, little, fresh face! It had suddenly grown yellow and wrinkled; all the years that had passed over it without being able to leave any trace, had, in the last five minutes, taken their revenge!

"Giacobbe," said the little woman, "what need is there of calling in witnesses? Why should we have any one else? Won't I do?" She straightened herself and looked at Isidoro, who, in turn, looked at the sick man.

"Why, that's true!" they exclaimed together.

A sudden atmosphere of relief fell on the dimly lighted room. The patient, with a sigh, stretched himself quietly out, remained still for a few moments, and finally fell asleep. The little widow, likewise following Isidoro's advice, went back to bed. The ponderous front of the great red wardrobe seemed to be brooding over the scene; and the shadowy ceiling to overhang it like the sky above a deserted hamlet. All those inanimate objects seemed to repeat gravely to one another the old fisherman's words: "It is the way of the world!"

The Orlei physician, Dr. Puddu, was a coarse, fat beast of a man. Once upon a time he, too, had had his high ideals; but Fate having cast him into this out-of-the-way corner of the world where the people were rarely, if ever, ill, he had taken to drink; at first, because, being from the South, he felt the cold; and afterwards because he found that wine and liquor were very much to his taste. In these days, in addition to his intemperate habits, he had become a Free Thinker, so that even the villagers had lost all respect for him. Giacobbe had complained of a pain in his side, and Doctor Puddu, after cauterising the tarantula bite, had said roughly:

"You fool, people don't die of these things. If you do die, it will only be because you are an ass." And Aunt Anna-Rosa had looked at him angrily, and muttered something under her breath.

Poor little Aunt Anna-Rosa! It did not take much to anger her in these days; she quarrelled, indeed, with every one except the patient. And how old she looked! After that night her face had remained yellow and drawn; she looked like a different person, and her brother's revelation had worked a singular change in her both physically and morally. She was constantly tormented by the question as to how Giacobbe ever could have brought himself to kill any one. He, who was always as merry and gentle as a lamb! How in the name of the holy souls in purgatory had he ever done it? And our father, he was no thief, not he! He was a God-fearing man, and always so kind and gay that when any of the neighbours were in trouble they invariably came to him to be cheered up.

The little woman's heart swelled as she thought of her old father long since dead, but suddenly a mist seemed to rise in her brain, and her face contracted with the horror of a terrible thought.

"Perhaps he, too, the kindly, good old man had committed some crime! Why not? No one could be trusted any more, living or dead, old or young." And then she fell to crying, beating her breast with her tiny fists, and bitterly repenting of her wicked doubts.

When, approaching the bedside, she would find the patient's face drawn with suffering, his wide, terror-stricken eyes, meanwhile, seeming to implore death to spare him, an infinite tide of pity would well up within her, a rush of maternal tenderness, a sorrow beyond words. More than ever was he her little brother, her boy, curled up on the great bed; so frightened, so shrunken with suffering! And while everything else, every one else, even the sacred dead, even innocent children, aroused hateful suspicions, he alone, he of them all, called for pity, tenderness, a passionate and consuming love, that was like melting wax within her. Yet she must see him, and she was seeing him,—die. More than that, she must wish for his death. All the while that she was nursing him with tenderest care, she must hope that her watchfulness, the medicines, everything, would fail. Moreover, death, that awful thing which she must ardently desire for the "little brother" whom she loved, when it came would bring, not only the deep, natural sorrow of her loss, but that other horror, the announcement of his guilt.

Of all the burdens that pressed upon her, however, the hardest to bear was the fact that the sick man was perfectly conscious of her attitude towards him.

On the third day of his illness, Isidoro had brought, with great secrecy and mystery, a medicine obtained from the sacristan. It was a concoction made of olive-oil, into which had been plunged three scorpions, a centipede, a tarantula, a spider, and a poisonous fungus; it was considered a cure for any kind of sting. Aunt Anna-Rosa applied it at once to the patient's puffed and swollen hand, he allowing her to do it, and watching the operation intently. Then he said:

"Why do you take all this trouble for me, Anna-Ro? Don't you want me to die?"

Her heart sank, while he continued quietly, addressing Isidoro: "And you? You brought me this, but just suppose it were to cure me, what would you do then?"

"God will look after that; leave it to him," said the fisherman.

Giacobbe lay quiet for a few moments; then he said:

"Shall you two go together to the magistrate's?"

"Where?"

"To the magistrate's; it's cold, though, now, and it's a long way to go; you must not go on horse-back, Anna-Rosa, do you hear? You will have to have a carriage to drive to Nuoro."

"What for?" she faltered distressedly, pretending not to understand.

"Why, to see the magistrate, of course."

She scolded him, and then went into the kitchen and wept bitterly.

"Here is your oil," she said presently, as Isidoro came out and prepared to leave. "You could not do anything but bring it, of course. When is Priest Elias coming?"

"This evening."

"Yes, he ought to; Giacobbe must confess. Time is flying, and he is very ill; last night he didn't close an eye. Ah!" she added suddenly, "he seems to me just like some wounded bird."

"Have the Dejases been here?"

"Oh, yes! They've been here, both of them, mother and son. Brontu has been here twice. Oh, they all come!" she said desperately, "but what good does it do? They can't cure him; they can't give him either life or death."

"Either one would be equally a blessing or a curse to him," said Isidoro, carefully wrapping his red handkerchief around the vial of oil.

"As they are for most of us!" said the woman.

Soon after, the doctor arrived in a shrunken overcoat, with the collar turned up. He had been drinking already, and smelled strong of spirits; his lips were white, and he puffed, and spat about, sometimes over himself. He seemed somewhat startled, however, when he saw his patient's condition.

"What the devil's the matter with you?" he demanded roughly. "Your side? your side? You've got the devil in your side. Let's have a look." He threw back the covers, exposing Giacobbe's hairy chest; passing his hand up and down his side, he listened with his ear close to the patient's back. "It's all nonsense," he said. "You've worked yourself up like some old woman." Then he replaced the covers carelessly, and went out. At the door, however, he turned and fixed Aunt Anna-Rosa with his eye.

"Woman," he said, "let him see the priest at once; he has pneumonia."

At dusk Giacobbe confessed; then he called his sister. "Anna-Ro," he said, "Priest Elias is going to Nuoro with you too. You must be sure to have a carriage on account of the cold."

It was, in fact, snowing then, and the big room was filled with the white reflected light.

Priest Elias looked attentively at Aunt Anna-Rosa, for whom he had an especially tender feeling on account of a fancied resemblance to his mother. The poor little black-robed figure seemed to him to have shrunken in the past few days, and now she was hanging her head in a pitiful, shamefaced way; bowed with mortification at her "little brother's" disgrace.

Instinctively the priest understood the heroic part that quivering soul had been called upon to play in this tragedy, and he breathed an inward benediction upon her.

CHAPTER XV

It was the month of May, and the wild valley of the Isalle, usually so forbidding and rugged, lay smiling in the sun, adorned with tall grass and clumps of flowering shrubs and fields of barley, which rippled in the breeze like cloths of greenish gold. It was as though some old pagan, drunk with sunlight and sweet scents, had decked himself out in branches and garlands.

The clear, liquid note of a wild bird would occasionally pierce the silence of the valley, then die away, drowned in the fragrance of the narcissuses and flowering broom, which gleamed like nuggets of molten gold on the very edges of the loftiest cliffs, as though peeping over to see what lay in the ravine below.

A spendthrift fay had passed along, scattering flowers, colours, scents, with a reckless hand. Some meadows in the distance, pranked with ranunculuses, looked like stretches of green water reflecting a starry sky. Here and there a group of trees nodded and whispered together in the breeze. The sun had but just sunk and the west was still glowing like the cheek of a ripe peach; while in the east the mountains lay like a huge parure of precious stones set in a case of lilac satin.

Costantino Ledda, liberated only a few hours before at Nuoro, was returning to his native village on foot, descending leisurely into the valley, his small canvas pack slung on his back. Now and then he would stop and look around him curiously.

"Ha! the valley seems smaller, perhaps because I have seen the sea," he murmured.

He looked older; his face was clean-shaven and intensely white; but otherwise he had none of the tragic air which would have been appropriate under the circumstances. He was coming back in this manner,—alone and on foot,—because he had not been able to say precisely what day he would be freed; otherwise some one, relative or friend, would certainly have gone to meet him. Besides, his impatience to reach home would brook no delay. Down and down the mountain-side he went; he was almost gay, possibly because of some wine he had drunk at Nuoro, where he had also provided himself with more for the journey. As he continued to descend his legs would occasionally double up under him, but he cared little for so trifling an inconvenience as that.

"Why," he said to himself, "when I am tired I have only to lie down and go to sleep. I have plenty of bread and wine in my bag; what more could any one want? I'm as free as the birds of the air. Yes, that's true; I am free; I'm a bachelor now; that's a funny thing; once I was a married man with a wife, and now I'm a bachelor." He thought that he found this idea amusing.

Down and down, now watching the sandy path, winding between high grass on either side, now gazing at the birds to whom he had compared himself, as they flew hither and thither, at times almost skimming the ground, then darting into the bushes where they would find a roosting-place for the night. He thought of the prison magpie, and felt a sudden tightening at his heart. Yes; it was true he had been sorry, when the time came to leave that place of torment—the companions whom he disliked so heartily, the horrible, enclosing walls, the strip of sky that for all those years had seemed to overhang the prison courtyard like a metal lid.

After the death of the real culprit days and months had elapsed before Justice had completed its leisurely formalities and the innocent man could be liberated. During these months Costantino, informed of the event, had been wild with impatience, and the days had seemed like years; yet, when the moment of departure actually came, he nearly wept.

This emotion, however, which was apparently the outcome of pity and sympathy for the beings whom he was leaving behind, was, in reality, for the things he was leaving behind; for all those inanimate objects that had engulfed and swallowed up his life—both his past and his future. Now this sorrow was done with, everything was done with; even that horrible torture that followed Giovanna's act was all so much a thing of the past that he really fancied that he could laugh at it.

Down, and down; he reached the bottom of the valley and began to skirt the edge of the Isalle. The sunset sky was still bright, and here and there the water shone between the oleanders and rushes, or reflected the rose and yellow lights in the sky. The delicate lace umbrellas of the elder-flower, and the brilliant coral blossoms of the oleanders stood out in the clear atmosphere as though from a setting of silver. Costantino, by this time very tired, began to think that perhaps the valley was not, after all, so small as it had seemed at first.

"I can sleep out of doors perfectly well," he thought, "but it would have been so amusing to walk up to Isidoro's door—Bang, bang—'Who's there?' 'I'—'Who's I?' 'Why, Costantino Ledda!' How astonished old Isidoro would look! Perhaps he would be singing the lauds; may be those lauds, who knows? Why, let's see! I wrote a set of lauds once! How extraordinary that seems!"

He wondered over many incidents of the past as a boy will sometimes be astonished to think of things he did as a child. But the present held many surprises as well. The glory of the springtide amazed him, as did the length of time it took to cross a valley that appeared to be so small. But most of all he wondered to think that he was crossing it on his way back to his own village.

He was walking now between two fields of grain above which the slanting light threw a veil of golden haze, and its surface, rippled by the breeze, seemed stroked by an invisible hand.

He went on picturing his arrival, Isidoro having written to ask him to come straight to his house: "'Come in,' he will say, and then, 'Giacobbe Dejas is dead; it was he who did it!'—'I know that already. The devil! Is that all you have to tell me?' 'Well, then, your wife has married some one else.' 'I know that too.' 'Then why don't you cry?' 'Why on earth should I? I have cried enough; I don't want to any more now. I've crossed the sea; I've seen the world. I'm not a boy any longer; nothing makes much difference to me any more.'" But at the very moment when he was boasting to himself of his indifference and worldly cynicism, an icy grip closed about his heart.

Oh! to be going back to find the little house, Giovanna, his child, his past!

"There is nothing left," he said aloud. "The storm has swept over it and carried everything away, everything, everything——"

He threw himself down on the edge of the field of grain in an agony of grief. It was often this way; the great tempest of sorrow had broken over him long before and seemingly passed on; but instead of that it had only hidden itself for a time; it was there now, stealing along, keeping pace with him; for long distances he would not see its evil shape; then suddenly it would leap forth, bursting through the ground at his very feet and whirling around its victim, clutch him by the throat, beat him to the ground, suffocate him—then leave him spent, exhausted.

After a while Costantino sat up, unfastened his wallet, and drew out a dried gourd filled with wine, throwing his head back, he took a deep draught; then he put it away, and sat looking around him at the sea of grain on whose golden-green surface floated splotches of crimson poppies. Somewhat revived he presently resumed his journey, but all the eagerness and spring with which he had set out had died away. What did it matter whether he got home this day or the next, since there was no one to expect him? And so he plodded on till the first shadows of approaching night overtook him just as he reached the end of the valley. The crickets had turned out like a tribe of mowers with their tiny silver sickles, the scent of the shrubs and flowers hung heavy in the warm air; the breeze had died away, and the birds were silent; but the black triangles of the bats circled swiftly in the luminous grey dusk.

Oh, that divine melancholy of a spring evening! Felt even by happy souls, may it not be an inherited homesickness, transmitted through all the ages? A longing for the flowers, and perfumes, and joys of that eternal, albeit earthly, paradise which our first parents lost for us forever.

Costantino tramped on and on: he had passed long years under a brutal oppression, between infected walls, amid corrupt companions in an environment whose very air was confined, and now—he was walking in the open, treading grass and stones under foot! As he ascended the mountain from the valley below, every step brought more of the horizon into view and a wider expanse of soft, overhanging sky as boundless as liberty itself. And yet,—and yet,—never in all those years of imprisonment had he experienced a sense of such utter hopelessness as that with which he now saw the shadows fall from those free skies. He was pressing on, but whither? and why? He had set forth eager, elated, as one hastening to a place where pleasant things await him. Now he wondered at himself. In the uncertain twilight he seemed to have lost his way; his journey had turned out to be vain, abortive. He was trudging on aimlessly; he had no country, nor home, nor family; he would never reach any destination; he had gone astray, and was wandering about in a boundless, desert tract, as grey and cheerless as the sky above him, where the stars were like camp-fires lighted by solitary travellers who, unknown to one another, wandered, lost like himself, in the unwished-for and oppressive liberty of the trackless wilderness.

And yet it was not the actual thought of Giovanna herself that weighed him down, nor yet his lost happiness, nor the misery that a wholly undeserved fate had forced upon him; all these things had long ago so eaten into his soul that they had come to form a part of his very nature, and he had grown almost to forget them, as one forgets the shirt he has on his back. Now his grief fastened upon memories of certain specific objects which had passed out of the setting of his life, and which he could never recover.

His mind dwelt, for instance, persistently on the little common in front of Giovanna's cottage, the stones in the old wall where they used to sit together on summer evenings, and above all on the great, wide bed, where he would lay himself down beside her after the hard day's work was over. He felt now as though he might be going home at the close of one of those long, toilsome days. But now—now—where was he to turn for rest and ease? Thus, up through the load of unhappiness that bore him down, all-pervading and indefinable as the fragrance of the wild growth about him, a sense of physical discomfort forced itself; he was conscious of hunger and weariness.

Reaching the top of a knoll, he sat down and opened his wallet. Night had fallen, but the atmosphere was clear and bright; the mountains which hid the sea on the east were bathed in moonlight, and the Milky Way spanned the heavens like a white, deserted causeway; in the west a pale, uncertain reflection hung over the distant sea; a magical aurora encircled the mountains. The path stood out distinctly, and the round, compact clumps of bushes might have been a scattered flock of black sheep. No sound broke the stillness but the mournful hoot of an owl.

Costantino ate and drank; then, stretching himself out on the ground, he allowed his gaze to wander for a moment along that vast white roadway that traversed the heavens; then he shut his eyes, and the sense of bodily comfort, the repose for his tired limbs, and the effect of the food and drink were such that he became almost cheerful again. Hardly, however, had his lids closed, when all his prison companions began to troop before his vision, and he seemed to be seated at work at his shoemaker's bench. The thought of all the wonderful things he would have to tell his friends at Orlei then came into his mind, and filled him with such childish pride that he had an impulse to get up at once and push on so as to get there without delay.

"Yes, I must get up and go on," he said, and then, "No, I won't; I shall stay here and go to sleep; I am very sleepy; no, I must get on,"—the words came confusedly this time. "Isidoro Pane expects me. I shall say, 'What a lot of people I have met! I have seen the sea; I know a man who is a marshal, Burrai is his name; he's going to get me a position of shoemaker in the king's household.' Now I am going to get up and start—start—star——" But he did not. Confused visions flitted across his brain. The King of Spades, astride of a donkey, came riding down that great white road that stretched across the sky; all at once he heard him cry out,—once,—twice,—three times. He was calling Costantino, who, opening his sleepy eyes, shut them again, and then opened them wide: "Idiot," he muttered; "it's the owl; yes, I'm going directly; I'm going——" And he fell fast asleep.

When he awoke, the great, shining face of the moon was still high in the heavens; with its flood of steely light there came a fall of dew. Enormous shadows, like vast black veils, hung over certain parts of the mountains, but every crag, every thicket and flower even, stood clearly out wherever the moonlight fell. The owl still gave his penetrating cry, sharp and metallic, cutting through the silence like a blade of steel. Costantino shivered; he was wet with dew, and getting up, he yawned loudly; the prolonged "Ah—ah-h-h" fairly resounded in the intense stillness. He scrutinised the heavens to find out the hour. The Star, that is to say, Diana, had not yet lifted her emerald-gold face above the sea; dawn therefore was still a long way off, and Costantino resumed his journey, hoping to reach the village before the people should be about. He did not want to meet the gaze of the curious, and above all else he dreaded being seen by Giovanna or her mother. He had made up his mind to avoid them, if possible not even to see them or pass by their cottage; what good would it do? Everything was over between them.

So he trudged on, and on; now up, now down; along the moonlit mountain-side. The heaps of slate-stone, the asphodels heavy with dew, the very rocks themselves, gave out a damp, penetrating odour, and here and there a rill of water stole in and out between fragrant beds of pennyroyal. As far away as the eye could reach, blue, vapoury skies overhung blue, misty mountains, until, in the extreme distance, they met and melted into one shimmering sea of silver. The man walked on, and on; his brain yet only half awake, but his body refreshed and active. Now and then he would take a short-cut, leaping from rock to rock, then pausing breathless, with straining heart and pulses. In the moon's rays his limpid eyes showed flecks of silver light.

The further he went the more familiar the way became; now he was inhaling the wild fragrance of his native soil; he recognised the melancholy salti sown with barley, the grain not yet turned; the beds of lentisks, the sparse trees whispering in some passing breath of wind, like old people murmuring in their sleep; and there, far off, the range of mighty sphinxes blue in the moonlight; and further still, the flash of the sea, that sea that he was so proud to have crossed in no matter what fashion. On reaching the little church of San Francisco he paused, and, cap in hand, said a prayer, a perfectly honest and sincere one, for at that moment his freedom gave him a sense of happiness such as he had not as yet experienced at any time since leaving the prison.

Day had hardly begun to break when Isidoro heard a tapping at his door. For fifteen—twenty days, for four months, in fact, he had been waiting for that sound, and he was on his feet before his old heart had started its mad beating against his breast.

He opened the door; in the dim light he saw, or half saw, a tall figure not dressed in the costume of the country, but wearing a fustian coat as hard and stiff as leather, out of which emerged a long, pallid face. He did not know who it was.

Costantino burst into a harsh laugh, and the fisherman, with a pang, recognised his friend. Yes, at last; it was Costantino come back, but in that very first moment he knew it was not the Costantino of other days. He threw his arms around him, but without kissing him, and his heart melted into tears.

"Well, you didn't know me, after all," said Costantino, unstrapping his wallet. "I knew you wouldn't."

Even his voice and accent were strange; and now, after his first sensations, first of chill and then of pity, Isidoro felt a sort of diffidence. "What are you dressed that way for?" he asked. "If you had let me know I would have brought you your clothes to Nuoro, and a horse too. Did you come all the way on foot?"

"No; San Francisco lent me a horse. What are you about, Uncle Isidoro? I don't want any coffee. Have you got any brandy?"

The fisherman, who had begun to uncover the fire, got up from his knees, embarrassed and mortified at having nothing better to offer his guest than a little coffee.

"I didn't know," he stammered, spreading out his hands, "but just wait a moment, I'll go right off—you see I expected you, and I didn't expect you——" And he started for the door.

"Stop; where are you going?" cried the other, seizing hold of him. "I don't want anything at all. I only said it for a joke. Sit down here."

Isidoro seated himself, and began to look furtively at Costantino; little by little he grew more at ease with him, and presently passing his hand over his trousers he asked if he intended to go on dressing that way. In the early morning light streaming through the open door, Costantino's face looked worn and grey.

"Yes," he said, with another of those disagreeable laughs, "I am going on dressing this way. I am going away soon."

"Going away soon! Where to?"

"Oh! I have met so many people," began Costantino, in the tone of one reciting a lesson. "And I have friends who will help me. What is there for me to do here, anyhow?"

"Why, shoemaking! Didn't you write to me that that was what you wanted to do?"

"I know a marshal named Burrai," continued Costantino, who always thought of the King of Spades as still holding office. "He lives in Rome now, and he's written me a letter; he's going to get me a position in the King's household to be shoemaker."

Isidoro looked at him pitifully. "Ah, the poor fellow, he was altogether different. What made him talk like that, and tell all those foolish little things when there were such heartrending topics to discuss." Thus Uncle Isidoro to his own heart.

Pretty soon, however, he began to suspect that Costantino was putting all this on, and that his apparent indifference was assumed. But why? If he could not be open and natural with him, with whom could he be? "Come," said he, "let us talk of other things now; we can discuss all that later. Really, though, won't you have a little coffee? It would do you good."

"What do you want to talk about?" asked Costantino drearily. "I knew you would think it strange that I don't cry, but I've cried until I haven't the wish to any more. And I am going away; one can't stay in this place after having crossed the sea—who is that going by?" he asked suddenly, as the sound of footsteps was heard outside. "I don't want any one to see me," and he jumped up and shut the door.

When he turned, his whole expression had changed and his features were working.

"I walked by there," he said, his voice sinking lower and lower, "on my way here. I didn't want to, but somehow I found myself there before I knew it. How can I—how can I stay here? Tell me—you——"

He clasped both hands to his forehead and shook his head violently; then, throwing himself at full length on the ground, he writhed and twisted in an agony of sobs, his whole body shaking with the vehemence of his grief. He was like a young bull caught and held fast in the leash, and made to submit to the red-hot iron.

The old fisherman turned deathly white, but made no attempt whatever to calm him. At last, at last, he recognised his friend.

CHAPTER XVI

No sooner had news of Costantino's return got abroad than visitors began to stream to Isidoro's hut. Throughout the entire day there was an incessant coming and going of friends and relatives, and even of persons who had never in their lives so much as interchanged a word with the late prisoner, but who now hastened with open arms to invite him to make his home with them. The women wept over him, called him "my son," and gazed at him compassionately; one neighbour sent him a present of bread and sausages. All these kindly demonstrations seemed, however, only to annoy their object.

"Why on earth should they be sorry for me?" he said to Isidoro. "For Heaven's sake, send them about their business, and let's get away into the country."

"Yes, yes, we will go, all in good time, child of the Lord, only have a little patience," said the other, bending over the fireplace, where he was cooking the sausage. "How naughty you are, I declare!"

Since witnessing that paroxysm of grief in the morning, Uncle Isidoro had felt much more at ease with his guest, and even took little liberties with him, scolding him as though he had been a child. During the short intervals when they found themselves alone, he told him the facts. Costantino listened eagerly, and was annoyed when the arrival of fresh visitors interrupted the narrative. Among these visitors came the syndic, he who was a herdsman, and looked like Napoleon I. His call was especially trying.

"We will give you sheep and cows," he began, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "Yes, every herdsman will give you a pecus,[9] and if there is anything you need, just say so; are we not all brothers and sisters in this world, and especially in a small community like this?"

Costantino, thinking of the treatment he had received at the hands of his "brothers and sisters" of this particular small community, shook his head.

"Yes," he said; "my brothers have treated me as Cain treated Abel; it would take a good deal more than sheep and cows to make it up to me."

"Oh, well! that has nothing to do with it," replied the syndic, absorbed in his idea. "You have travelled; tell me now, have you never stood on the top of some high mountain, and looked down on the villages scattered about in the plain below? Well, didn't they seem to you like so many houses, each with its little family living inside?" Costantino, who was tired of the conversation, merely replied that all he wanted was to leave this village and never come back to it again.

"Oh, no! You mustn't do that!" urged the other. "Where would you go? No, no; you must stay here, where we are all brothers."

The next to arrive was Doctor Puddu, carrying a large, dirty, grey umbrella. He at once peered into the earthenware saucepan to see what was cooking.

"You are all degenerates, every one of you," he announced in his harsh voice, rapping the saucepan with his umbrella. "And I'll tell you the reason: it's because you will eat pork."

"Don't break the saucepan, please," said Uncle Isidoro. "And I beg your pardon, but that is not pork; it's beans, and bacon, and sausage."

"Well, isn't bacon pork? You're all pigs. Well——," turning to Costantino. "And so, good sheep, you've come back? I saw him die—what's his name?—Giacobbe Dejas. He died a miserable death, as he deserved to. You had better take a purgative to-morrow; it's absolutely necessary after a sea voyage."

Costantino looked at him without speaking.

"You think I'm crazy?" shouted the doctor, going close to him, and shaking his umbrella. "A purgative! do you understand? A purgative!"

"I heard you," said Costantino.

"Oh, so much the better! Well, I've heard that you say you want to go away. Go-o-o——! Go, by all means. Go to the devil. But first of all, go to the cemetery, go to that dunghill you call a cem-e-te-ry; and dig and scratch like a dog, and tear up Giacobbe Dejas's bones, and gnaw them."

He ground his teeth as though he were crunching bones; it was both grotesque and horrible, and Costantino could do nothing but stare at him in utter amazement.

"What are you looking at me like that for? You've always been a fool, my dear fellow—my dear donkey! Just look at you now! calm and amiable as a pope! They've robbed you of everything you possessed, betrayed you, murdered you, knocked you about among them as though you had been a dried skeleton, and there you sit, bland and stupid as ever! Why don't you do something? Why don't you go to that vile woman, and take her, and her mother, and her mother-in-law by the hair of their heads, and tie them to the tails of the cows they offer to give you as a charity, and set fire to their petticoats, and turn them loose in the fields so that they may spread destruction in every direction? Do you understand? I say, do you understand, idiot?"

He flung the words in the other's face, his breath heavy with absinthe, his eyes bloodshot.

Costantino recoiled, trembling, but the doctor turned to go. On the threshold he paused again and shook his umbrella.

"You make me long to break your neck!" he cried. "Men such as you deserve precisely the treatment they get! Well, take a purgative, anyhow, stupid."

"Yes, I'll do that," said Costantino, with a laugh, but at the same time the doctor's words made a deep impression on him. There were times, indeed, when he felt utterly desperate. He said over and over again that he meant to go away, but, as a fact, he did not know where to go. Nor, on the other hand, could he see what was to become of him should he decide to remain on in the village. He said to himself: "I have no home, and there is no one belonging to me; for this one day every one rushes to see me out of curiosity, but by to-morrow they will all have forgotten my very existence. I am like a bird that has lost its nest. What is there for me to do?"

All the time, though, those words of the doctor's kept ringing in his head. Yes, truly, that would be something for him to do. Go there, fall suddenly upon them like a bolt out of heaven, and utterly destroy all those people who had destroyed his life!

"No, Costantino," resumed Uncle Isidoro, as they sat at table, eating the neighbour's white bread and sausage. "No; she is not happy. I have never looked her full in the face since, and it gives me a queer feeling to meet her, as though I were meeting the devil! And yet, do you know, I can't help feeling sorry for her. She has a little girl that they tell me is like a young bean, it is so thin and puny. How could a child born in mortal sin be pretty? It was baptised just like a bastard, the priest wouldn't go back to the house, and the people were sneering all along the street."

"Ah, do you remember my child?" asked Costantino, cutting off a slice of fat, yellow bacon. "He was not like a bean, not he! Ah, if he had only lived!"

"It may be better so," said the fisherman, beginning to moralise. "Life is full of suffering; better to die innocent, to go—to fly—up there, above the blue sky, to the paradise that lies beyond the clouds, beyond the storms, beyond all the miseries of human life. Drink something, Costantino; this wine is not very good, but there is still some left.—Well, I remember last year on Assumption Day, Giacobbe Dejas asked me to take dinner with him. He was afraid of me; he thought I knew, and he wanted his sister and me to get married. Oh! if you could just see that little woman you wouldn't laugh. She went with the priest and me to Nuoro. May the Lord desert me in the hour of death, if ever I saw a more courageous woman in all my life! She hardly seemed to touch the ground! Well, she's gone all shrunken and shrivelled now, don't you know—like a piece of fruit that dries up on the tree before it is ripe. I go all the time to see her, and just to amuse her I say: 'Well, little barley-grain! Shall we two get married? She smiles and I smile, but we feel more like crying! Who could ever have imagined such a thing?—I mean, here was Giacobbe Dejas, seemingly happy and contented; he was getting rich, and he talked of being married. And then—all of a sudden—pum!—down he comes, like a rotten pear! Such is life! Bachissia Era sold her daughter, thinking to improve her condition, and now she is hungrier than ever. Giovanna Era did what she did, imagining that she was going to have a heaven upon earth, and instead of that, she's like a frog with a stick run through it!"

"But does he beat her?" asked Costantino heavily.

"No, he doesn't do that; but there are worse things than beating. She's treated just like a servant, or, rather, like a slave. You know how they used to treat their slaves in the old times? Well, that's the way she's treated in that house."

"Well, let her burst! Here's to her damnation!" cried Costantino, raising his glass to his lips. It gave him a cruel pleasure to hear of Giovanna's misery, such pleasure as a child will sometimes feel at seeing an unpopular playmate receive a whipping.

Dinner over the two men went out and stretched themselves at full length beneath the wild fig-tree. It was a hot, breathless noontide; the air, smelling of poppies and filled with grey haze, was like that of a summer midday, and there were bees flying about, sounding their little trombones. Costantino, completely worn out by this time, fell asleep almost immediately. The fisherman, on the contrary, could not close an eye. A green grasshopper was skipping about among the blades of grass, giving its sharp "tic, tic." Isidoro, stretching out one hand, tried to catch it, his thoughts dwelling all the while on Costantino. "I know why he wants to go away," he ruminated. "He still cares for her, poor boy; and if he stays here he will just suffer the way San Lorenzo did on his gridiron. There he lies, poor fellow, like a sick child! Ah, what have they done to him? Torn him to pieces—Ah-ha! I have you now!" but just as he was about to pull the grasshopper apart, it occurred to him that possibly it too, like Costantino, had had its trials, and he let it go.

A shadow fell across the foot of the path; Uncle Isidoro, recognising Priest Elias, sprang to his feet, went to meet him, and drew him into the hut, so as not to awaken Costantino. The latter, however, was a light sleeper, and, aroused presently by the sound of their voices, he too got up. As he approached the hut he realised that he was being talked about.

"It is far better that he should go," the priest was saying in a serious tone. "Far, far better."

Costantino could not tell why, but at the sound of these words his heart sank within him like lead.

However, he did not go.

The days followed one another and people soon ceased to trouble the returned exile; before long he was able to go about the village as much as he chose without being stared at, even by the gossips and ragamuffins. With the savings laid up in prison he purchased a stock of leather, soles, and thread, but he never began to work. Every day he bought a supply of meat and fruit and wine, eating and drinking freely himself, and urging Isidoro to do the same. He was in great dread lest the villagers might think that he was living on the old man's charity, and wanted to let them see that he had money and was openhanded, not only with him, but with every one else; so he would conduct parties of his acquaintances to the tavern where he would make them all tipsy and get so himself at times, and then the tales he would relate of his prison experiences were marvellous indeed to hear.

In this way his little store of money melted rapidly away, and when Isidoro scolded him, all he would say was: "Well, I have no children nor any one else to consider, so let me alone." He was counting, moreover, on the inheritance left by his murdered uncle, which the other heirs had agreed to resign without forcing him to have recourse to the law. "Then," said he, "I shall take myself off. I am going to give you a hundred scudi. Uncle Isidoro."

But poor old Isidoro did not want his scudi nor anything else except to see him restored to the Costantino of other days—good, industrious, and frank. Frank he certainly was not at present, and when, occasionally, the fisherman surprised him with tears in his eyes, his sore, old heart leaped for joy.

"What is it, child of grace?" he would ask. But Costantino would merely laugh, even when the tears were actually running down his cheeks. It was heartrending.

Sometimes the two would go off together to fish for leeches; that is, Isidoro would stand patiently knee-deep in the yellow, stagnant water, while Costantino, stretched on his back among the rushes, would spin yarns about his former fellow-prisoners, gazing off, meanwhile, towards the horizon with an unaccountable feeling of homesickness.

Go away? go away? Did he not long to go away? Did he not, up there, beneath that fateful sky, in the deathly solitude of the uplands, under the eternal surveillance of those colossal sphinxes, feel as though an iron circle were pressing upon him? Every object, from the blades of grass along the roadside to the very mountain-peaks, reminded him of the past. Each night he prowled around Giovanna's house like some stealthy animal, and one evening he saw her tall figure issue forth, and move down in the direction of their cottage. This was the first time that he had seen her, and he recognised her instantly, notwithstanding that it was by the fading light of a damp, overcast evening. His heart beat violently, and each throb gave him an added pang, a fresh memory, a new impulse of despair. His instinct was to throw himself upon her then and there, clasp her in a close embrace,—kill her. Before long, however, he was no longer satisfied to catch only furtive glances, secretly and in the dark; he became possessed with the desire to see her and to be seen of her in broad daylight; but she never left the house, and he dared not go by there in the daytime. On another evening, a Saturday, he heard Brontu's laugh ring out from the portico, and he fancied that hers mingled with it. His eyes filled, and he had much the same sensation of nausea as on that first morning of the sea voyage when he woke up ill.

All this time he continued to feign the utmost indifference, without quite knowing why he did so. The Orlei people had, however, become almost hateful to him, even Uncle Isidoro. Sometimes he asked himself in wonder why he had ever come back.

"I am going away," he said one day to the fisherman, gazing across the interminable stretch of uplands to the blue and crimson sky beyond, against which the thickets of arbute seemed to float like green clouds. "I have written to a friend of mine—Burrai—he can do anything, you know; he could have gotten me a pardon, even if I had really been guilty."

"You have told me all that before; I am tired of hearing it," said Isidoro. "All the same, I notice that he has never even answered your letter."

"He is going to get me a position; yes, I really mean to go. But tell me why is it that the priest is so anxious for it? Is he afraid that I will kill Brontu Dejas?"

"Yes, he is. He's afraid of just that."

"No, he's not; that's not it. I said to him: 'Priest Elias, you must know perfectly well that if I had wanted to kill any one, I would have done it right off.' And all he said was: 'Go away, go away! It would be far better.' What do you think about it, Uncle Fisherman; shall I go or not?"

"I don't think anything about it," answered the other in a tone of strong disapproval. "What I do think is that you are an idle dog. Why aren't you at work, tell me that? It's because you do nothing but think all the time of your good-for-nothing Burrai, who, however, never gives you a thought."

"Oh! he doesn't give me a thought?" said Costantino, piqued. "Well, I'll just let you see whether he does or not. Look here!"

He drew a letter from the inside pocket of his coat, and proceeded to read it aloud. It was from Burrai, written at Rome, where the ex-marshal had opened a little shop for the sale of Sardinian wines. Naturally, being himself, he had improved upon the facts, and announced that he was the proprietor of a large and flourishing establishment; he invited Costantino to pay him a visit, and reproached him for not having come at once to Rome, where, he said, he could find him a position without difficulty.

The fisherman's blue eyes grew round with innocent wonder.

"To think, only to think!" he exclaimed. "And you never told me a word about it! What made you hide the letter? How much does it cost to go to Rome?"

"Oh! only about fifty lire."

"And have you got that much?"

"Why, of course I have!"

"Then go, go by all means!" exclaimed the old man, stretching his arms out towards the horizon.

They were both silent for a moment. The fisherman, bending his head, gazed at the pebbles lying at his feet, while Costantino stared absently ahead of him. Beyond the brook, the tall, yellow, meadow-grass was bowing in the wind, and the long stems of the golden oats rippled against the blue background of the sky.

Uncle Isidoro made up his mind that the moment had come to tell Costantino plainly why all his friends wanted him to leave the village.

"Giovanna," he began quietly, "does not love her husband; you and she might meet——"

"She and I might meet? Well, and if we did, what then?"

"Nothing; you might, that's all."

"Oh, nothing!" cried Costantino, and his voice rang out scornfully in the profound stillness; "nothing! I tell you that I despise that low woman. I don't want her."

"You don't want her, and yet you hang about her house all the time, like a fly about the honey-pot."

"Ah, you know about that?" said Costantino, somewhat crestfallen. "It's not true, though,—well—yes; perhaps it is. But suppose I do hang about her house, what business is it of yours?"

"Oh! none at all, but—you had better go away."

"I am going. I suppose the truth is you are getting tired of having me on your hands!"

"Costantino, Costantino!" exclaimed the old man in a hurt voice.

Costantino pulled up a tuft of rushes, threw it from him, and gazed again into the distance. His face was working as it had done on the morning of his return, after he had closed the door of Isidoro's hut; his brain swam, once or twice he gulped down the bitter saliva that rose in his throat; then he spoke:

"Well, after all, why does the priest insist so on my going? Am I not actually her husband? Suppose even that she were to come back to me? Wouldn't it be coming back to her own husband?"

"If she were to come back to you, my dear fellow, it would be Brontu Dejas either killing you or having you arrested."

"Well, you needn't be afraid; I don't want her. She's a fallen woman, as far as I am concerned. I shall go off somewhere, to a distance, and marry some one else."

"Oh, no! You would never do that," murmured Isidoro appealingly. "You are too good a Christian."

"No; I would never do that," repeated Costantino mechanically.

"Never in the world; you are far too good a Christian." The old man said it again, but without conviction. The experience of a long life was battling with the tenets of his simple faith.

"If he does not do it," he sighed to himself, "it will not be merely because he is a good Christian."

CHAPTER XVII

The July evening fell softly, tranquilly, like a bluish veil. Costantino, seated on the stone bench outside the fisherman's hut, was thoughtfully counting on his fingers.

Yes; it had been sixty-four days since his return. Six-ty-four days! It seemed like yesterday, and—it seemed like a century! The exile's fustian coat had grown worn and shabby; his face, dark and gloomy; and his heart—yes, his heart as well, had worn away from day to day, from hour to hour. Eaten into by misery, by rage and passion, it, too, had turned black, like a thing on the verge of decay.

A habit of dissembling, a result of prison life, had clung to him; so that now he found it impossible to be really open with any one, much as he sometimes longed to unburden his heart; while the constant effort to conceal his feelings harassed him and added to his general misery. A frozen void seemed to surround him, like a great sea, calm, but boundless, stretching away in all directions from a shipwrecked mariner. For two months now he had been swimming in this sea, and he was wearied out; his forces were spent. Scan the horizon as he would, his soul could espy no friendly shore across that bleak and desolate expanse; no prospect of an end to the unequal struggle; the icy water and the measureless void were slowly swallowing him up.

Every day he would talk of going away, but nothing more. It was a pretence, like all else that he did; in his heart he knew perfectly well that now he would never go. Why should he? On this side of the water, or on that, life would always be the same. He cared for no one; he hated no one, and he felt that he had become as base and self-centred as his late comrades in prison. Even Uncle Isidoro, who had meant so much to him at a distance, now, in the close companionship of daily intercourse, had become an object of indifference, at times almost of dislike.

When the old man went off on his fishing expeditions, or on the circuits which he made from time to time through the country to dispose of his wares, Costantino felt as though a weight had been lifted from him; the semi-paternal oversight which the other exercised over him having, in fact, come to both frighten and irritate him.

On this particular evening the fisherman was away, and Costantino was sensible of this feeling of freedom from an irksome restraint. Now he could do whatever came into his head, without any one to preach, or that disagreeable sensation of being watched, which, possibly as a result of the long years spent in prison, the mere presence of the old man was sufficient to excite. Moreover, he was expecting a visitor. Although he professed, now, to despise all women, and did, in fact, usually avoid them as much as possible, he had allowed himself to be drawn into relations with a strange creature—a half-witted girl—who lived near Giovanna. She had surprised him one night prowling about the Dejas house and had persuaded him to go home with her.

From this individual he got all the gossip of the white house, and he took refuge with her whenever he thought he had been seen crossing the common. He was waiting for her now at Isidoro's hut, in the owner's absence, but he looked down on her, and her foolish talk jarred on him. Presently she arrived, and Costantino told her to sit down out there on the stone bench beside him.

"It's hot inside, and there are fleas, and spiders, and—devils. Stay here in the fresh air," he said, without looking at her.

"But we'll be seen," she objected, in a deep, rough voice.

"All right; suppose we are! It makes no difference to me, why should it to you?"

"But, as it happens, it does make a difference to me."

"Why?" he said, raising his voice. "Men cannot matter, since they are all sinners as well; and as for God, he can see us just as well inside as out."

"Oh, go away!" she said, but without any show of anger. "You've been drinking." Then she turned away and went into the hut. Striking a light, she looked into the cupboard where the food was usually kept, and, as Costantino still did not come, she returned to the door and called to him: "If you don't come at once I shall go away; but you had better be careful; I have something to tell you."

He jumped up, and, going inside, took her in his arms. The girl broke into a wild laugh.

"Ah-ha! you come quick enough now. That brought my little shorn lamb, eh?"

She was tall and stout, with a small head and a dark, diminutive face, red lips, and greenish eyes—not ugly, exactly—but rather repellent. Though she never drank anything herself, she gave an impression of being always a little tipsy, and was very prone to think that other people were so, in fact. Still laughing, she went again to the cupboard.

"It's empty," she said. "Nothing there at all; and, do you know, I am hungry!"

"If you'll wait a moment I'll go and buy something; but first, you must tell me—"

She turned abruptly, laid one hand on his breast, and with the other began to rain blows that were anything but playful.

"Ah, you want to know—crocodile. You want to know, do you? That's what brought you in, is it? Go back—enjoy the air, poor, dear little lamb! You want me to tell you? You think it is something about Giovanna Era, eh? And you came in for that, and not to see me?"

"Let go," he said, seizing her hands. "You hit hard; the devil take you! Yes, that's what I came in for—well?"

"I shan't tell you a word, so there!"

"Now, Mattea," he said gently, "don't make me angry; you are not ill-natured. See now, I am going off to buy you whatever you want. What shall it be? What would you like to have?"

He was like a child promising to be good if only it can have what it wants. And, in fact, at that moment he did want something; he wanted it badly, and not a nice thing, either. What he wanted was to be told that Brontu had beaten his wife, or that she had met with an accident, or that overwhelming disaster of one sort or another had engulfed the house of Dejas, root and branch. It was, therefore, somewhat disappointing when Mattea, closing one eye, announced that some cattle had been stolen, and that Aunt Martina, on hearing the news, had rushed off like a crazy thing to ascertain the exact extent of the loss. "She will be up at the folds all night, and your wife is all alone—do you understand—alone?"

"Well, what difference does that make to me?"

"Stupid! You can go to see her.—You won't go? Why, that's what I came expressly to tell you! Of course you'll go; I want you to. I'm sorry for you. After all, you are her husband."

"I'm not. I'm not any one's husband," he said, with a shrug. "I thought you would have something very different to tell me. Now—what shall I get you? Beans—milk—bacon—cheese?"

"If you're not any one's husband, then marry me," she said, in a low, unsteady voice, like a person who has been drinking.

Costantino coughed, and spat on the ground.

Instantly a gleam of intelligence shot into her usually dull, expressionless eyes.

"Why do you do that?" she asked sharply. "You think, perhaps, that she is better than I?"

He flushed, and then a heartsick feeling came over him.

"Yes," he said; "you are worse, or—better than she."

"What do you say?"

"If you are not lying at this moment, and didn't come here to lay a trap for me, with this story of her being alone—well, then you are better than she."

"Why should I lay a trap for you? I'm sorry for you, that's all. I swear by the memory of my dead, that if you go there this evening you'll run no risk whatever."

"Who can believe you, woman, when you don't respect even the dead?"

Mattea, angry and offended, started to leave the hut; but he held her back.

"A low dog," she said scornfully. "I take pity on you, and you speak to me like that! What have you to reproach me with? What, I say?" She threw her head back with a certain pride, knitting her brows, and turning upon Costantino a look that was altogether new. He stared back at her for a moment, amazed that a woman of her class should speak in that tone, should hold up her head, and dare to look at him with such an expression. Then he began to laugh.

"I'm off now," he said, "but I'll be back in a moment. I'll get some wine too, even though you don't drink it. Wait for me here—wait, I say," he repeated roughly, as she followed him to the door. "Don't bother me." She stood still, and he went out, but before he had gone a dozen steps he heard her deep voice calling him back.

Returning, he saw the tip of her nose through the crack of the door, and one eye, regarding him with its habitual look of dull stolidity.

"What do you want, squint-eyed goat?"

"If you are going to her, there is no use in making me wait here."

"Go to the devil whom you came from!" exclaimed Costantino. "I would as soon think of going to her house as you would of going to church. I say you are to wait!" and he made as if to tweak her nose, but she quickly drew back and shut the door.

Ten minutes later Costantino returned, but his strange guest had disappeared. Thinking that she might be hiding somewhere outside, he looked for her, calling in a low voice and telling her that he had bread and meat and fruit, but in vain; she had taken herself off.

An intense stillness reigned all about the hut. Through the night, now completely fallen, came only the sound of the fig-leaves rustling mysteriously, as though an invisible hand were shaking a piece of stiff silk. Nothing else could be heard, and nothing could be seen, except the stars shining brilliantly in the warm sky.

Costantino felt much aggrieved by Mattea's defection. As lonely as an outcast dog, what on earth was there for him to do throughout that interminable evening? He was not sleepy, having, in fact, taken a long nap in the afternoon, and he had nowhere to go. He began to eat and drink, talking aloud from time to time in a querulous voice.

"If she imagines that I am coming to see her, she's green,"—silence—"as green as a rose in springtime. She's crazy." Another silence. Then—"Coming to see her! Not I; neither her nor the other one. Mattea is sickening; she seems to be a sort of animal, and that's all there is about it."

He swore, and then gave a light, purposeless laugh, such as people give when they are alone. All the while he kept swallowing great gulps of wine, and each time that he emptied his glass he would thrust out his lips and exclaim: "Ah—ah—ah!" rubbing his chest up and down to express the delicious sensation caused by the wine as it flowed down his throat. Soon he began to feel more cheerful.

"She may go to the devil—or to hell, if she wants to!" he exclaimed, thinking of Mattea and her sudden disappearance. But all the while he knew perfectly well that he was forcing himself to dwell despitefully upon her, in order to keep from thinking of the other. At last he went out, and, stretching himself upon the stone bench, allowed his thoughts to take their own course.

"She is alone," he reflected. "Well, what do I care? I loathe her and I wouldn't go there, not if she were to give me a chest full of gold! What should I do with gold, anyway?" He put the question to himself in profound dejection, but immediately began to hum a gay little song, having got into a way of trying to fool himself as well as other people:

For a time the sound of his own voice—low, monotonous,—arrested his attention; then his thoughts once more asserted themselves.

"If I were to go there—well, what would happen? Sin, perhaps. But am I not her husband? I have not the remotest idea of going there, though; I should think not! Uncle Isidoro makes me laugh—old idiot! 'Go away, go away,' [imitating Uncle Isidoro's voice], 'if you don't go away, something dreadful is sure to happen! Brontu Dejas will kill you, or have you arrested!' Well, if he does, what then?"

He began to sing again, the sharp rustle of the fig-leaves, almost like the clash of metal blades, accompanying the subdued murmur of his voice:

He shifted his position and his heavy eyelids closed, his head, supported on one hand, rolling from side to side.

"Well, what then?" he repeated, then opened his eyes, as though startled by the sound of his own voice. They closed again presently, and he went on talking to himself:

"No; I would never have her again for my wife. For me she is just an abandoned woman. She has been living with another man, and, as long as she has gone to live with him, she might come back and live with me, and then go and live with some one else! She's no better than Mattea, and I spit upon them both!"

He opened his eyes and spat on the ground. At the moment he had a genuine scorn of Giovanna, and yet, at the very same time, tender, distant memories surged up in his breast. He remembered a kiss he had once given her as she lay asleep, and how she had opened her eyes with a startled look, exclaiming: "Oh, I thought it was some one else!" Well, what manner of foolishness was this for him to be thinking of now? He was a simpleton, neither more nor less than a simpleton! Moreover, how could he know, supposing for a moment that he were to go, whether Giovanna would receive him or drive him away? The man's mind was neither trained nor developed, yet, at that moment, he was reasoning as a much more complex nature might have done. He hoped that she would not receive him; he knew that for himself there was nothing for it but to go on living and suffering; yet he felt that, should he go to her and be repulsed, at least a ray of light would penetrate the cold, dreary void that encircled him. But he wanted her, he longed for her still. From the day he had lost her his whole being had suffered like a crushed and twisted limb that still goes on living. Yet, mingled with this sense of longing there was a spiritual breath as well, the instinct of the immortal soul which never wholly dies out, even in the most degraded.

He dreamed of Giovanna an honest woman, lost forever in this world, but restored to him in eternity. Now, if she were to betray her second husband, even for the sake of her first, she would not—could not—be an honest woman! So thought Costantino, and yet——

It was, perhaps, ten o'clock, and he had been lying for half an hour or more on the stone bench, when a mournful strain broke in upon the stillness. It was the blind man, singing and accompanying himself upon his rude instrument. His voice, clear enough, but sad and monotonous, vibrated through the night air with a sobbing suggestion of homesickness that was hardly human, as though it were the wail of a lost soul, recalling the few hours of happiness spent upon earth.

The music seemed to be a cry for light, happiness, the joy of living, all those things whose existence the blind youth half understood, but could never hope to realise—which the dead have lost, and can never hope to repossess. Costantino shivered and got up; the voice and the accompaniment began to die away, growing gradually fainter and fainter, and ceasing at last altogether. He felt a great wave of agony and tenderness surge up in his breast. In the darkness, the silence, the unutterable loneliness that surrounded him, he, too, felt an overmastering longing, like the blind man's, for light; an agonising homesickness, like the dead recalling their brief experience of life. He turned and began to walk in the direction of the village.

At first he seemed to be in a dream, although he heard beneath his feet the rustle of the dead leaves and stubble blown by the wind about Isidoro's hut. He rubbed his eyelids and little violet-coloured electric circles seemed to flash and swim in the air. Soon though, his eyes becoming used to the darkness, he discerned clearly the light line of the road, the black cottages, the great, empty void above, where the stars hung like drops of gold, ready to fall. He walked steadily on, knowing perfectly whither he was bound, and never wavering for a single instant. Here and there, on the thresholds of cottages whose owners were too poor to indulge in the luxury of a light, little groups of people sat, enjoying the freshness of the night air.

Occasionally the high-pitched voice of a woman would float across the road, recounting some piece of gossip, or trifling incident of domestic life. In a lonely angle Costantino espied a pair of lovers; the man, hearing his footsteps approach, tried to hide his companion, who quickly turned her face to the wall. Costantino walked on, but presently he stopped and half turned, thinking he would give the two young people a fright by calling out: "I am going to tell your father right away!" But the fear of attracting attention, and being himself discovered, deterred him, and he went on.

When he discerned the black mass of the almond-tree, rearing itself from beside the path beyond Aunt Bachissia's cottage, his heart gave a sudden bound, and then stood still; it was so like a great head with rough, shaggy locks, thrusting itself out, intently watching for him to appear. He had fully determined to pass the tree, cross the common, enter the Dejas house, and speak to Giovanna; it all seemed perfectly simple and plain, and he was prepared to do it; yet he was frightened, more than frightened—terrified. A flexible, girlish voice floated out into the night: "No matter how often you may say it, it's not true!"

He looked all about him; no one was to be seen, and he went on, his nervousness increasing with every step. Crossing the common, he examined Aunt Bachissia's cottage; then the white house; then Mattea's hovel; from the last a faint light shone; the two others were in total darkness. Again the idea crossed his mind that Mattea might be playing him a trick; or, perhaps, Aunt Bachissia was with Giovanna, or the latter might already have gone to bed, and would decline to open the door! Nevertheless, he walked steadily on, and up on the portico.

Instantly the figure of Giovanna became apparent, seated on the doorstep. At the same moment she recognised him and leaped to her feet, rigid with terror. His voice, low, agitated, at once reassured her.

"Don't be frightened. Are you alone?"

"Yes."

A second later they were in each other's arms.