"Saint Peter he walked down to the seaAnd into the water his keys dropped he.Then the Lord unto him did say:'My Peter, what is it ails thee to-day?''Of deadly bites I bear the smartIn my two feet, and my back, and my heart.''Peter, take of the sad thorn-tree[7]Pounded as fine as fine may be;Take it three days for thy wound.So shall Peter be made sound.'Tarantula, with the painted belly,You have a daughter straitly born,Straitly is your daughter born.One for the mountain I leave forlorn;One for the mountain, and one for the valley.You have killed me, and I will kill you."
"Saint Peter he walked down to the seaAnd into the water his keys dropped he.Then the Lord unto him did say:'My Peter, what is it ails thee to-day?''Of deadly bites I bear the smartIn my two feet, and my back, and my heart.''Peter, take of the sad thorn-tree[7]Pounded as fine as fine may be;Take it three days for thy wound.So shall Peter be made sound.'Tarantula, with the painted belly,You have a daughter straitly born,Straitly is your daughter born.One for the mountain I leave forlorn;One for the mountain, and one for the valley.You have killed me, and I will kill you."
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, likean 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 theirfeet 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 othermen 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 allowof 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 theordeal 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 theNuraghes.
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.
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 bePriest 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 boundedto 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, andthat 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.
"Iknew 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 dielong 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'tIdo?" 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 dimlylighted 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 littlebrother, 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 hissister. "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.
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 themountains 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 thissorrow 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 bethoselauds, who knows? Why, let's see!Iwrote 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 mostof 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 wasthere 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 joysof 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. TheKing 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. TheStar, 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 bytheir 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 melancholysaltisown 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 perfectlyhonest 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 youhad 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. "AndI 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 theKing of Spadesas 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'twant 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 bythere," 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.
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 easewith 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 thefacts. 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 apecus,[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 thatyousay you want to go away. Go-o-o——! Go, byall 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!" hecried. "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 facesince, 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. "Hewas 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 couldever 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 hebeather?" 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 longhe 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 oftheircottage. 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 uponher 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 thathersmingled 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 reallymean 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."