Il Manente.The Husbandman.
At Camogli, where the stone-pines adorn the cliff’s edge, and burthen even the fresh sea-breeze with their strange and heavy sweetness—at Camogli, that is built beside the waves, and that has the quaint harbour where fishers dwell, there are many new houses for gentlefolk to live in, and one or two old ones for old families to whom they belong; and these well-worn palaces stand on their own lands, beside their own fig-trees, and beneath pines of their own planting. Such things are at Camogli, and even at Recco, though Recco is a little town with church and streets, not so picturesque by half as the thriving fishing village—such city memories are at both these places because they lie beside the sea, and because from homes and lodgings in their midst people can easily spend the half of their summer days in the water.
But at Ruta there are not many fine houses for city folk, and not even many old palaces, for Ruta is up on the hill with the land-breezes behind it, that come through clefts and valleys, and the sea-scent in front ofit that must travel across vineyards and up corn-covered terraces to get there. Yet there is a broad, smooth, carriage-road from Recco to the village on the hill—that same old road along which many a traveller of many a nation has come in the days when the railroad was yet unmade, of which many another has heard tell because of its beauty; for Ruta stands on the way that used to be the highway from Genoa to La Spezia. And besides this wide and dusty one, there is another path by which you may reach the village that I mean—a path that strikes off from Camogli’s gayest front, to wind steeply up the hill when once it has left Camogli’s church behind; a rough foot-path, whose sides are hemmed with low stone walls, and upon which other loose stones roll perilously. It is the way that themanentitake when they come in the sunrise hours to Camogli with their market goods, and carry fish up again that has been bought on the shore with their morning’s earnings, for Ruta lies crowning the valley that is called in Genoa and on the Riviera the valley of fruit; and, though nobles of old did not build their palaces so far from the sea, any more than town-folk of to-day, all of them are glad enough of the fruit that grows better where the shade is, and where dry sea-breezes are not so prone to wither.
Giovanni’s villa lies on the western side of the hill, and looks to the sunrise. He is an old man, his hair iswhitening fast and his hands are wrinkled and horny, his face is seamed; though so tall and strong a frame scarce will have need to stoop yet a while. But for all he has been on the ground, pruning the vines and the fruit-trees, and tilling the soil these many years, Giovanni has rarely yet had occasion to grumble much at his land’s produce, though neighbours do tell him oftentimes the place lies with an unprofitable aspect. The terraced fields and little plantations where he grows the maize and peas and fine asparagus in season, lie one above another in patches, on the steep, with the rising ground behind to shield them from untoward winds, and the sun full to their front; and beyond, where the hill curves round to westward, his cherry trees and pear and plum trees grow, with peach and almond trees between for a good sprinkling, and aloes faintly grey and stiff on the rocky wall above; silver-lined olive-leaves wave from knotted boughs where wheat grows, with gladiolas blooming in its midst; fig trees spread widely, and vines twine around wildly wherever there is room amongst all the cultivation: truly, Giovanni has no need to complain.
The oldmanentelives lonely; he has few friends so close as the crops and the fruit-gathering that he labours so fondly for. The tender-leaved lettuce and early asparagus are more to him than neighbours, and the ripening of the red tomatoes is of keener interest thananything that happens in the village, for the weather-worn man has none at home to care for him: his wife is dead, and, of his children, the sons are about the world, fishing at sea, and sellingpastain Genoa; the daughters are well married in distant towns and villages. It is better so; and to heave the pickaxe in the upturned field, to train the vines while thinking on Marrina’s last-born babe or on Pietro’s success a-board the merchant vessel, is dearer to the husbandman’s heart than the sound even of loved voices around his hearth.
The day is a July day; the wheat is waving yellow and near to the harvesting; the melons have ripened well, and it is a good year for all the fruit; the peaches have even been so many thatmanentihave given them away in baskets-full. Fine and tender spring crops have had their day, and it is over. This is the full time when nature is the most lavish—not a time of sharpest interest, perhaps, but the husbandman joys in his reward. It will be a good vintage, and the green autumn figs crowd thick on their trees’ branches; they are swelling fast, and will streak their soft green skins ere long with pink, as they come to full maturity. People say there will be a falling-off in the chestnut-harvest on the other hand, but that matters less to thismanenteof whom I write, because his riches are greater in olive-woods.
Giovanni has been to Camogli this early morning already, and he is an old man, but he means to go to Rappallo in the forenoon yet. ‘Fair Madonna, and it is the old ones must work whether they will or no,’ says he to neighbours who greet him on the steep and stony way, with some comment on his toil; ‘the young have all gone to the devil, and to the city trades; what would the soil do if it weren’t for us, whose bones are oiled to the labour?’ But though he fret and fume a bit now and then, if truth were told, Giovanni would ill brook even a day’s idleness! What if the path be bad, and the burthen on an old man’s shoulder makes the sweat to steal down his brow? Do not the fig-leaves cast broad shadows where one sits awhile on the flints by the roadside to rest, and is it not consolation enough to note how the fruit waxes full, and how the olives are rich in berries? Besides even at three hours after dawn, when Giovanni was climbing the hill again from market, dews were still moist and breezes fresh off the sea from behind; it is of a hot sultry night, or with a fierce midday sun overhead, that one fears the mount a bit, and wearies of the secret stillness amid trees, or of the silver dazzle on that blue sheet, of Mediterranean that one leaves behind and below. No one can say that in Ruta there is a hardier labourer than themanentewho rents the larger portion of his villa fromthose silk-mercers of Genoa—owners of the white house on the ridge. It is sale-time and profit-time now; and though Giovanni may silently love the season best that is for tilling and sowing and reaping, it is not he who will shrink from any day’s work. Just an hour to eat the breakfast that a little neighbour’s wench will have prepared him, who comes in from hard-by to do such jobs at a modest price, just another little half-hour to go the dearly-loved round of his property and pluck more fruit and herbs for the new market, just a grim jest or two with the children of thesignorifrom the house, who frolic around and get many a handful of garden spoil—then Giovanni is away again, for Rappallo is a bit of way off, and one must be there not too late at thestabilimento, or others will have gotten the custom.
The sun glitters on the pale sea that is down and away a mile or more, beyond the sloping fields and gardens, and the dipping valley. Giovanni’s villa is above that part of Ruta’s village lying along the roadside, above the church too, and close upon the bend of a path that turns away from the sea into turf and chestnut woods; nevertheless, he keeps a hold on the great white water still, and can look over the valley that is rich of careful cultivation, can see churches standing cypress-guarded, and palaces where the land drops shore-ward—cansee as much, and even more, of the sea-view than they can from the top windows of the old tavern in the village, where carriage-folk used to stop when carriages were many along the highway, and Ruta was a place for the horses to bait at andvetturinito feed at, while theirsignorigot dinner on the terrace beneath the vines. For all he never remembers thinking of it, Giovanni would not like to have his back to the sea, not though it dazzle old eyes, even from far, as it dazzles them to-day, for no clouds have come up to make walking lighter beneath a burthen by the time Giovanni shoulders his fruit-baskets anew and comes down the steps upon the high road. The church bells ring a chime as he passes, and Maria, thepedonawho sells eggs, comes down the paved way behind to go to Rappallo as well. She is a woman of years, and fit to join company with Giovanni, to whom her tongue can wag none the less fast for his economy of response. The oldmanenteis a heavy-jawed and tough-hided specimen ofcontadino; one can see at a glance his words will be few, but Maria’s chatter flows not the less merrily because his deep-set eyes show no sign, and the wrinkles that strew his ancient face do not let themselves be displaced into smiles. Maria is an old woman in whose yellow cheeks the lines seem to have no rhythm, so purposeless is she; but every seam on the old husbandman’s countenanceis as though set there by careful length of living. Striking into the tunnel that, just outside of Ruta’s village, covers the roadway, Maria turns to hurl a neighbourly jest after the girl whom they have met driving a donkey from some distant market. A sapphire-coloured morsel of sea lies behind a frail-foliaged aspen tree—lies framed in the green of shrubs that grow around the grotto’s mouth; a long, broken water-line hems the land that fondly goes out in crags and points to meet it, and puts forward her fairest vegetation to fringe the border; in the farthest distance the sea seems to creep into wider bays, and the cliffs to grow less, and the water margin straighter, till a mist gathers into shape, and holds dim white roofs and tall spires and domes within its folds where Genoa lies away to westward. Giovanni, standing with head bent beneath a burthen, Maria, with shrunken face and forehead bound about with crimson kerchief, have this and more before them as they linger a space out of the sunlight, but neither notes skies and seas so familiar, for Rappallo is yet a long way off. ‘Theparrocoof San Martino has got to manage now without that serving-woman of his that he thought so much of,’ says Maria, as they step out into the cooler shadow on the grotto’s other side. ‘Did you know it? The foolish thing is going to marry! No husband will be whatthatold master was to her. Yes—yes, poor holy man!—the feasts coming on, too, and he who scarcely knows where to lay hand on his own canonicals unless she’s by. And as for the sacred wafers, who, indeed, will see to them?’ Giovanni’s comment is but a suppressed murmur as he turns to look towards the priest of San Martino’s Church, whose spire lies up against a chestnut-mantled hill to left. The green is the brighter green of inland foliage here, for even olives are scarcer to mingle their silver-grey tones; hills lie behind and beside one another, and turf is fresh beneath these shadier woods, rills trickle and flowers grow; the Mediterranean’s memory is forgotten for a while, and the hot, grey aloe plants and Indian figs give place to gorse bushes and mountain ash. Giovanni tramps forward steadily, and both man and woman have soon left the few tall houses ofnegoziantibehind, that have been built on this side the archway by those who prefer land to sea breezes for change from town. And Maria beguiles the way with many a tale about these samenegozianti, till, rounding a point in the smooth high road, Giovanni pauses to rest his burthen upon the wall just where the way turns to right again and, with mountains and chestnut-clad hills behind it still, looks forward once more upon the blue, sunny sheet of the sea. Figs, and aloes, and olives grow again by the roadside with vines between, and herethe chestnut-woods flourish beside them as well, and dark cypress trees crown the long crests of hills to the front. So now, as the old people walk, the sea draws ever nearer again if a bend in the road hide it sometimes from view; but the mountains are not left behind all the same, nor the chestnuts shorn for other culture, and, when they reach Rappallo, a river winds about it, and mountains guard it, in whose cleft the town lies; greenest woods girdle it round, though its front be spread beside the waves, and thestabilimentobe aptly enough placed for the bathing. Maria sells her new-laid eggs for the summer visitors, Giovanni has disposed of green herbs and melons enough; but the one lingers to return with the sunset cool, and the other hastens back betimes to the village that is his home, and to thevillathat reaps all his labours and his fondest affections.
The Husbandman.And Maria beguiles the way with many a tale, till, rounding a point in the smooth high road, Giovanni pauses to rest his burden upon a wall.
The Husbandman.
And Maria beguiles the way with many a tale, till, rounding a point in the smooth high road, Giovanni pauses to rest his burden upon a wall.