Orsino made his preparations for returning to Sicily with a heavy heart. His situation was desperate at present, for he had exhausted his ingenuity in trying to discover some means of seeing Vittoria a last time. To leave San Giacinto to do what he could with Camaldoli and refuse to go back at all, for the present, which seemed to be his only chance of a meeting with Vittoria, was a course against which his manliness revolted. Even if there had been no danger connected with the administration of the new estate, he would not have abandoned his cousin at such a time, after promising to help him, and indeed to undertake all work connected with the place. San Giacinto was a busy man, to whom any sacrifice of time might suddenly mean a corresponding loss of money, for which Orsino would hold himself responsible if he brought about the delay. But as it was, since the position he had promised to fill was a dangerous one, nothing could have induced him to withdraw from the undertaking. It would have seemed like running away from a fight.
It was a consolation to have his brother's company, as far as anything could console him, though he could not make up his mind for some time to confide in Ippolito, who had always laughed at him for not marrying, and who could probably not understand why he had now allowed himself to fall in love with one of the very few young women in the world whom he might be prevented from marrying. He was grave and silent as he put together a few books in his own room, vaguely wondering whether he should ever read them.
Ippolito was collecting a number of loose sheets of music that lay on the piano, on a chair beside it, on the table among Orsino's things, and even on the floor under the instrument. He had taken off his cassock, because it was warm, and he wore a grey silk jacket which contrasted oddly with his black silk stockings and clerical stock. From time to time, without taking his cigar from his lips, he hummed a few notes of a melody in the thin but tuneful voice which seems to belong to so many musicians and composers, interrupting himself presently and blowing a cloud of smoke into the air. Now and then he looked at Orsino as though expecting him to speak.
At last, having got his manuscript music into some sort of order, he sat down at the piano to rest himself by expressing an idea he had in his head.
'How glad you will be not to hear a piano at Camaldoli,' he said, stopping as suddenly as he had begun.
'It is a horrible instrument,' Orsino said, 'but it never disturbs me, and it seems to amuse you.'
Ippolito laughed.
'That is what you always say, but I know you will be glad to be rid of it, and it will do me good to play the organ at Santa Vittoria for a change. As that is three-quarters of a mile away, it will not disturb you.'
'Nothing disturbs me,' replied Orsino, rather sadly.
Ippolito made up his mind to speak at last.
'Orsino,' be began quietly, 'I know all about you and Donna Vittoria. As we are going to be so much together, it is better that I should tell you so. I hate secrets, and I would rather not make a secret of knowing yours—if it is one.'
Orsino had looked round sharply when the priest had first spoken, but had then gone back to what he was doing.
'I am glad you know,' he said, 'though I would not have told you. I have spoken to our father and mother about it. The one calls me a fool, and the other thinks me one. They are not very encouraging. As for her family, her mother curses me for having killed her favourite son, and her brothers pretend that she is mad and then intrench themselves behind her to say that it is impossible. I do not blame them much—Heaven knows, I do not blame her at all. All the same, Vittoria and I love each other. It is an impossible situation. I cannot even see her to say goodbye. I wish I could find a way out of it!' He laughed bitterly.
'I wish I could,' echoed his brother. 'But I am only a priest, and you call me a dilettante churchman, at that. Let us see. Let us argue the case as though we were in the theological school. No—I am serious—you need not frown. How many things can happen? Three, I think. There are three conceivable terminations. Either you part for ever and forget each other—'
'You may eliminate that,' observed Orsino.
'Very well. Or else you continue to love each other, in which event you must either succeed in getting married, or not, and those are the other two cases.'
'One does not need to be a theologian to see that. Similarly a man must either live or die, and a door must be either open or shut, on pain of not being a door at all.'
'I have not finished,' objected Ippolito. 'In fact, I have only begun. For the sake of argument, we will assume first that you continue to love each other, but cannot get married.'
'That is the present position.'
'It is not a position which usually lasts long. At the end of a certain time you will naturally cease to love each other, and we obtain a second time the case which you at first eliminated.'
'Eliminate it again,' said Orsino gravely.
'Very well. There remains only one possible issue, after your eliminations. You must be married. On any other assumption you will forget each other. Now in such cases as yours, how do people act? You are a layman, and it is your business to know.'
'When both are of age they "respectfully require" their respective parents to give their consent. If it is refused, they marry and the law protects them.'
'So does the church,' said the priest. 'But it does not provide them with an income afterwards, nor in any way guarantee them against the consequences of family quarrels. Those are subdivisions of the case which you can neither modify nor eliminate.'
'Well,' said Orsino wearily, 'what do you conclude for all this?'
Ippolito's gentle face grew suddenly grave, and seemed squarer and more like his brother's.
'From what I know of the world,' he answered, 'I conclude that men who mean to do things, do them, and let the consequences take care of themselves. If you mean to marry Vittoria d'Oriani, you will marry her, without any help and without anyone's advice. If you do not mean to marry her, you will not, because, under the circumstances, she can assuredly not marry you, as women have been known to marry husbands almost against their will.'
'You have a singularly direct way of putting things,' observed Orsino, thoughtfully.
'That is simply the result of your eliminations,' answered the priest. 'If you do not love her enough to take her in spite of everything and everybody, you must restore into the list of possibilities the certainty that before long you will not love her at all. For I conceive that half a love is no better as a basis of warfare than half a faith. I do not mean to breed war with our father and mother. That is a serious matter. I am only pursuing the matter to its logical conclusion and end, in words, as you will have to do in your acts, sooner or later.'
'Meanwhile I am doing nothing,' said Orsino. 'And I am horribly conscious that I am doing nothing.'
'You are going away,' remarked Ippolito. 'That is not inaction.'
'It is worse than inaction—it is far worse than doing nothing at all.'
'I am not so sure of that. It is sometimes a good thing to force an interval between events. In the first place, I often hear it said that a separation strengthens a great passion, but destroys a small one. All passions seem great when the object is present, but distance brings out the truth. By the time you have been a month at Camaldoli you will know whether it is essential to your happiness to marry Vittoria d'Oriani, or not.'
'And suppose that it is? We come back to the same situation again.'
'Yes—we come back to the eternal situation of force against force.'
'And you mean that I should use force? That is—that I should marry her and take all the consequences, no matter what they may be?'
'I do not mean that you should. I distinguish. I mean that you will, that is all. I am not considering the moral ground of the action, but the human source of it. Your marriage may be the cause of great difficulties and complications, but if you are persuaded that it is quite necessary to your life to marry that young lady, you will marry her. It is by no means an impossible thing to accomplish, nor even a very difficult one.'
'You do not tell me how far it is a matter of conscience to consider the consequences.'
'It is of no use to tell courageous men that sort of thing,' said the priest. 'They take the consequences, that is all. No man who ever wanted a thing with his whole heart ever stopped to consider how his getting it would affect other people, unless the point of honour was involved.'
'And there is no point of honour here, is there?' asked Orsino, as a man asks a question to which he knows the answer.
'You know what you have said to Donna Vittoria,' answered Ippolito. 'I do not.'
'I have asked her to marry me, and she has consented.' Orsino laughed a little drily. 'That is the way one puts it, I believe,' he added.
'Then I should say that unless she, of her own accord, releases you from your word, the point of honour lies in not withdrawing it,' replied the priest. 'If you did, it would mean that you were not willing to take the risks involved in keeping it, would it not?'
'Of course it would. I wish you could make our father see that.'
'People of the previous generation never see what happens in ours. They only infer what ought to happen if all their own prejudices had been canonical law for fifty years.'
'That is sedition,' laughed Orsino, whose spirits had risen suddenly.
'No, it is criticism, and criticism is only called sedition under despotic governments. There is no reason why grown men, like you and me, should not criticise their fathers and mothers up to a certain point, within limits of respect. We honour them, but they are not gods, that we should worship them. When we were little boys we supposed that our father knew everything about everything. We are aware, now, that we understand many things which have grown up in our day much better than he does. To go on supposing that he knew everything, in spite of evidence, would be a gross form of superstition. Superstition, I suppose, means a survival, to wit, the survival of some obsolete belief. That is exactly what it would be in us to artificially maintain the belief of our childhood in our parents' omniscience. Has your love for Donna Vittoria anything to do with the actual amount of her knowledge at any moment? No. But love appears to be made up of passion and affection. Therefore affection is independent of any such knowledge in its object. Therefore we love our parents quite independently of what they know or do not know about life, or mathematics, and we may, consequently, criticise such knowledge in them on its own merits, without in the least detracting from our affection for themselves.'
'You are a very satisfactory brother,' said Orsino, smiling at his brother's speech. 'But I am not sure that you are a strictly orthodox priest on the question of family relations.'
'I give you a theory of such relations,' answered Ippolito. 'In actual practice I believe that our mother is one of the wisest women living, without being in the smallest degree intellectual. It is true that my experience of women is limited, but I hear a great deal of talk about them. She is fond of Donna Vittoria, I am sure.'
'Yes—very. But she sees fifty reasons why I had better not marry her.'
'So do I,' said Ippolito, calmly.
'You? Why, you have been urging me to marry her in spite of everything!'
'Oh no. I have only proved to you that if you love her enough, you will marry her in spite of everything. That is a very different thing.'
'Priest!' laughed Orsino. 'Sophist!'
'Anything you like,' answered Ippolito, swinging round on the piano-stool and striking a chord. 'All the same, I hope you may marry her, and have no bad consequences to deal with, and I will help you if I can.'
'Thank you,' said Orsino; but his voice was drowned by a burst of loud and intricate music, as Ippolito's white fingers flew over the piano while he stared at the ceiling, his head thrown back, his cigar sticking up from between his teeth, he himself apparently unaware of what his hands were doing, and merely listening to the music.
Orsino was momentarily cheered and encouraged by all his brother had said, but the situation was not materially improved thereby. It was, indeed, almost as bad as it could be, and an older and wiser man than Orsino would have expected that something must occur before long, either to improve it, or to cut it short at once and for ever, for the simple reason that it could neither last, as it stood, nor be made more difficult by anything which could happen.
When Orsino and Ippolito reached Camaldoli everything seemed to be quiet, and San Giacinto himself was greatly encouraged by the turn matters had taken. During the first day or two after Orsino's departure there had still been considerable curiosity among the people of Santa Vittoria, and more than once San Giacinto had made little speeches, in his direct manner, to the peasants and villagers who hung about in the neighbourhood of the big old house. But after that he had not been disturbed, and everything appeared to be progressing favourably. The year was one of abundance, the orange crop, which in Sicily is all gathered before May, had turned out well, the grapes promised an abundant vintage, and even the olives had blossomed plentifully, though it was still too early to make accurate predictions about the oil. On the whole the prospects for the year were unusually satisfactory, and San Giacinto congratulated himself on having chanced to buy the place in a good year. In an agricultural country like that part of Sicily, the temper of the people is profoundly affected by the harvest.
The outlaws had not been heard of in the neighbourhood since Ferdinando Pagliuca's death. They were said to be in the region about Noto, at some distance from Camaldoli, towards the south-west. San Giacinto was surprised at not having even received an anonymous letter from one of Ferdinando's friends. He did not suppose that the present pacific state of things could last for ever, but he had been prepared to meet with a great deal more opposition in what he did.
On the other hand, he was hindered at every step by small difficulties which always seemed to be perfectly natural. If he wished to build a bit of wall, he found it impossible to obtain stone or quicklime, though there were plenty of masons professing themselves ready to work. He pointed to a quantity of slaked lime drying in a deep tank near the gate of Santa Vittoria.
'Eh,' said the head mason, shaking his head, 'that belongs to the mayor, and he will not sell it.'
And, in fact, the mayor flatly refused to part with a single hodful of the lime, saying that he himself was going to repair his house.
The masons said that by and by it could be got from the lime-burners, who had sold their last burning to a man in Randazzo. Stone was to be had for the quarrying, in the black lands above Camaldoli, but there were no quarrymen in Santa Vittoria, and the gang of them that lived higher up Etna had taken a large contract.
'Patience,' said the head mason, gravely. 'In time you will have all you want.'
As the bit of wall was not a very important matter, San Giacinto did not care to go to the expense of bringing material from a great distance, and decided to wait. Meanwhile he hired certain men from Bronte to come and clear out all the bush and scrub from among the trees. They came without tools. He gave them tools that belonged to the tenants of Camaldoli, the same which the latter had lent him on the first day to make a clearing close to the house. The Bronte men worked for two hours and then came out of the brush and sat down quietly in the sun.
'The tools are not good for anything,' they said gravely. 'We cannot work with them.'
'What is the matter with them?' asked San Giacinto.
'They are dull. They would not cut strings.'
'Take them away and have them ground,' said San Giacinto.
'Are there knife-grinders in this country?' asked the men. 'Where are they? No. They come, they stay a day, perhaps two days, and they go away.'
San Giacinto looked at the men thoughtfully a moment, then turned on his heel and left them to their own devices. He began to understand. The men neither wished to refuse to work for him, nor dared to do the work they undertook, when its execution would in any way improve the defensive conditions of Camaldoli. San Giacinto came back when the men were gone, with two or three of the soldiers, took a hatchet himself, and leading the way proceeded to cut away the thorns and brambles, systematically clearing the ground so as to leave no cover under which an armed man could approach the house unnoticed. He regularly devoted a part of each day to the work, until it was finished.
As soon as Ferdinando's body had been removed, there had been no difficulty in getting men to work indoors, and by the time Orsino arrived, considerable improvements had been effected. But the men would not have begun work in a house where an unburied dead person was still lying.
The three Saracinesca strolled up to Santa Vittoria late in the afternoon, San Giacinto and Orsino carrying their rifles, while Ippolito walked along with his hands behind him, just catching up his little silk mantle, staring hard at all the new sights of the road, and mentally wondering what sort of instrument he should find in the little church.
The place was a mere village without any mediæval wall, though there was a sort of archway at the principal entrance which was generally called the gate. Just beyond the shoulder of the mountain, away from Camaldoli, and about fifty yards from this gateway of the village, was a little white church with a tiled roof. It had a modern look, as though it had been lately restored. Then the village straggled down the rough descent towards the shallow valley beyond, having its own church in the little market-place. It was distinctly clean, having decently-paved streets and solid stone houses with massive mullions, and iron balconies painted red. There were a few small shops of the kind always seen in Italian villages. The apothecary's was in the market-place, the general shop was in the main street, opposite a wine-seller's, the telegraph office—a very recent innovation—was over against the chemist's and was worked by the postmaster, and in what had once been a small convent, further on, at the outskirts of the town, the carabineers were lodged. At San Giacinto's request, fifty men of the line infantry had been quartered in the village within the last few days, the order having been telegraphed from Rome on Orsino's representations to the Minister of the Interior. The people treated the men and their two young officers civilly, but secretly resented their presence.
Nowadays, every Italian village has a walled cemetery at some distance from it. The burial-ground of Santa Vittoria overlooked Camaldoli; being situated a quarter of a mile from the little white church and on the other side of the hill, so that it was out of sight of the village. It was a grimly bare place. Four walls, six feet high, of rough tufo and unplastered, enclosed four or five acres of land. A painted iron gate opened upon the road, and against the opposite wall, inside, was built a small mortuary chapel. The cemetery had not been long in use, and there were not more than a score of black crosses sticking in the earth to mark as many graves. There was no pretence at cultivation. The clods were heaped up symmetrically at each grave, and a little rough grass grew on some of them. There was not a tree, nor a flower, nor a creeper to relieve the dusty dreariness of it, and the road itself was not more dry and arid. The little grass that grew had pushed itself up just in the gateway, where few feet ever passed, and everyone knows what a desolate look a grass-grown entrance gives to any place, even to a churchyard. There were low, round curbstones on each side of the gate.
The three gentlemen strolled slowly up the hill in the warm afternoon sunshine, talking as they came. Ippolito was a little ahead of the others, for he was light on his feet, and walked easily.
'That is the cemetery,' observed San Giacinto to Orsino, pointing at the hill. 'That is where they buried your friend Ferdinando Corleone on the day you left. I suppose they will put up a monument to him.'
'His brothers will not,' answered Orsino. 'They disown all connexion with him.'
'Amiable race!' laughed San Giacinto. 'There is a figure like a monument sitting outside the gate,' he added. 'Do you see it?'
'It is a woman in black,' said Orsino. 'She is sitting on something by the roadside.'
They were still a long way off, but both had good eyes.
'She is probably resting and sitting on her bundle,' observed San Giacinto.
'She is sitting on a stone,—on one of the curbstones,' said Ippolito. 'She has her head bent down.'
'He sees better than either of us,' said Orsino, with a laugh. 'I wonder why nobody ever expects a priest to do anything particularly well except pray? Ippolito can walk as well as we can, he sees better, he could probably beat either of us with a pistol or a rifle if he tried, and I am sure he is far more clever in fifty ways than I am. Yet everyone in the family takes it for granted that he is no better than a girl at anything that men do. He was quite right about the woman. She is bending over—her face must be almost touching her knees. It is a strange attitude.'
'Probably some woman who has a relation buried in the cemetery—her child perhaps,' suggested Ippolito. 'She stops at the gate to say a prayer when she goes by.'
'Then she would kneel, I should think,' answered Orsino.
Almost unconsciously they all three quickened their pace a little, though the hill grew steeper just there. As they drew near, the outline of the woman in black became distinct against the dark tufo wall behind her, for the sunlight fell full upon her where she sat. It was a beautiful outline, too, full of expression and simple tragedy. She sat very low, on the round curbstone, one small foot thrust forward and leading the folds of the loose black skirt, both white hands clasped about the higher knee, towards which the covered head bent low, so that the face could not be seen at all. Not a line nor fold stirred as the three men came up to her.
Orsino recognised Concetta, though he could not see her features. Her exceptional grace betrayed itself unmistakably, and he should have known anywhere the white hands that had been lifted up to him when he had stood at the window in the grey dawn. But he said nothing about it to San Giacinto, for he understood her grief, and he could not have spoken of her without being heard by her just then.
But Ippolito went up to her, before his brother could hinder him. She was a lonely and unhappy creature, and he was one of those really charitable people who cannot pass by any suffering without trying to help it. He stood still beside her.
'What is your trouble?' he asked gently. 'Can anyone help you?'
She did not move at first, but a voice of pain came with slow accents from under the black shawl that fell over her face, almost to her knee.
'God alone can help the dead,' it answered.
'But you are alive, my child,' said Ippolito, bending down a little.
The covered head moved slowly from side to side, denying.
'Who are you, that speak of life?' asked the sorrowful young voice. 'Are you the Angel of the Resurrection? Go in peace, with Our Lady, for I am dead.'
Ippolito thought that she must be mad, and that it might be better to leave her alone. His brother and cousin had gone on, up the road, and were waiting for him at a little distance.
'May you find peace and comfort,' said the young priest, quietly, and he moved away.
But he turned to look back at her, for she seemed the saddest woman he had ever seen, and her voice was the saddest he had ever heard. Something in his own speech had stirred her a little, for when he looked again she had raised her head, and was lifting the black shawl so that she could see him. She was about to speak, and he stopped where he was, two paces from her, surprised by her extraordinary beauty and unnatural pallor.
'Who are you?' she asked slowly. 'You are a stranger.'
'I am Ippolito Saracinesca, a priest,' answered the young man.
At the name, she started, and her sad eyes opened wide. Then she saw the other two men standing in the road a little way off. Slowly, and with perfect grace, she rose from her low seat.
'And those two—there—who are they?' she asked.
'They are also Saracinesca,' said Ippolito. 'The one is my brother, the other is my cousin. We are three of the same name.'
He answered her question quite naturally, but he felt sure that she was mad. By this time San Giacinto was growing impatient, and he began to move a few steps nearer to call Ippolito. But the latter found it hard to turn away from the deep eyes and the pale face before him.
'Then there were three of you,' said Concetta, in a tone in which scorn sharpened grief. 'It is no wonder that you killed him between you.'
'Whom?' asked Ippolito, very much surprised at the new turn of her speech.
'Whom?' All at once there was something wild in her rising inflexion. 'You ask of me who it was whom you killed down there in the woods? Of me, Concetta? Of me, his betrothed? Of me, who prayed to your brother, there, that I might be let in, to wash my love's face with my tears? But if I had known to whom I was praying, there would have been two dead men lying there in the Chapel of Camaldoli—there would have been two black crosses in there, behind the gate—do you see? There it is! The last on the left. No one has died since, but if God were just, the next should be one of you, and the next another, and then another—ah, God! If I had something in these hands—'
She had pointed at Ferdinando's grave, throwing her arms backwards, while she kept her eyes on Ippolito. Now, with a gesture of the people, as she longed for a weapon, she thrust out her small white fists, tightly clenched, towards the priest's heart, then opened them suddenly, in a despairing way, and let her arms fall to her sides.
'Saracinesca, Saracinesca,' she repeated slowly, her voice sinking; 'three Saracinesca have made one widow! But one widow may yet make many widows, and many mourning mothers, and the justice of Heaven is not the justice of man.'
San Giacinto and Orsino had gradually approached Ippolito, and now stood beside him, facing the beautiful, wild girl, in her desolation. Grave and thoughtful, the three kinsmen stood side by side.
There was nothing theatrical or unreal in the situation. One of themselves had killed the girl's betrothed husband, whom she had loved with all her soul. That was the plain fact, and Orsino had never ceased to realise it. Unhesitatingly, and in honourable self-defence, he had done a deed by which many were suffering greatly, and he was brought face to face with them in their grief. Somehow, it seemed unjust to him that the girl should accuse his brother and his cousin of Ferdinando's death.
As she paused, facing them, breathless with the wave of returning pain, rather than from speaking, Orsino moved forward a little in front of Ippolito.
'I killed Ferdinando Corleone,' he said, gravely. 'Do not accuse us all three, nor curse us all three.'
She turned her great eyes to his face, but her expression did not change. Possibly she did not believe him.
'The dead see,' she answered slowly. 'They know—they know—they see both you and me. And the dead do not forget.'
A flying cloud passed over the sun, and the desolate land was suddenly all black and grey and stony, with the solemn vastness of the mountain behind. Concetta drew her shawl up over her head, as though she were cold, and turned from the three men with a simple dignity, and knelt down on the rough, broken stones, where the blades of coarse grass shot up between, close to the gate, and she clasped her hands together round one of the dusty, painted iron rails.
'Let us go,' said San Giacinto's deep voice. 'It is better to leave her, poor girl.'
She did not look back at them as they walked quietly up the road. Her eyes were fixed on one point and her lips moved quickly, forming whispered words.
'Maria Santissima, let there be three black crosses! Mother of God, three black crosses! Mother of Sorrows, three black crosses!'
And over and over again, she repeated the terrible little prayer.
The three men entered the village and walked through the main street. The low afternoon sun was shining brightly again, and only the people who lived on the shady side of the street had opened their windows. Many of them had little iron balconies in which quantities of magnificent dark carnations were blooming, planted in long, earthenware, trough-like pots, and hanging down by their long stalks that thrust themselves between the railings. Outside the windows of the poorer houses, too, great bunches of herbs were hung up to dry in the sun, and strings of scarlet peppers had already begun to appear, though it was early for them yet. Later, towards the autumn, the people hang up the canteloup melons of the south, in their rough green and grey rinds, by neatly-made slings of twisted grass, but it was not time for them yet. In some of the houses the people were packing the last of the oranges to be sent down to Piedimonte and thence to Messina for England and America, passing each orange through a wooden ring to measure it, and rejecting those that were much too small or much too large, then wrapping each one separately in tissue paper, while other women packed them neatly in thin deal boxes. The air smelt of them and of the carnations in the balconies, for Santa Vittoria was a clean and sweet village. The cleanliness of the thoroughbred Oriental, a very different being from the filthy Levantine, begins in Sicily, and distinguishes the Sicilians of the hills from the Calabrians and from the Sicilians of such seaport towns as Messina. Moreover there are no beggars in the hill towns.
San Giacinto had his pocket full of letters for the post office, and wished to see the lieutenant in command of the soldiers; but Orsino had nothing to do, and Ippolito had made up his mind not to return to Camaldoli without having seen the organ in the church. The two brothers went off in search of the sacristan, for the church was closed.
They found him, after some enquiry, helping to pack oranges in a great vaulted room that opened upon the street. He was a fat man, cross-eyed, with a sort of clerical expression.
'You wish to see the organ,' he said, coming out into the street. 'Truly you will see a fine thing! If you only do not hear it! It makes boom, boom, and wee, wee—and that is all it makes. I wager that not even ten cats could make a noise like our organ. Do you know that it is very aged? Surely, it remembers the ark of Noah, and Saint Paul must have brought it with him. But then, you shall see; and if you wish to hear it, I take no responsibility.'
Ippolito was not greatly encouraged by such a prospect.
'But when you have a festival, what do you do?' he enquired.
'We help it, of course. How should one do? Don Atanasio, the apothecary, plays the clarinet. He is a professor! Him, indeed, you should hear when he plays at the elevation. You would think you heard the little angels whistling in Paradise! I, to serve you, play the double bass a little, and Don Ciccio, the carpenter, plays the drum. Being used to the hammer, he does it not badly. And all the time the organ makes boom, boom, and wee, wee. It is a fine concert, but there is much sentiment of devotion, and the women sing. It seems that thus it pleases the saints.'
'Do not the men sing too?' asked Orsino, idly.
'Men? How could men sing in church? A man can sing a 'cantilena' in the fields, but in church it is the women who sing. They know all the words. God has made them so. There is that girl of the notary in Randazzo, for instance—you should hear her sing!'
'I have heard her in Rome,' said Orsino. But she sings in a theatre.'
'A theatre? Who knows how a theatre is made? See how many things men have invented!'
They reached the door of the church.
'Signori, do you really wish to see this organ?' asked the sacristan. 'There is a much better one in the little church outside the gate. But the day is hot, and if you only wish to see an organ, this one is nearer.'
'Let me see the good one, by all means,' said Ippolito. 'I wish to play on it—not to see it! I have seen hundreds of organs.'
'Hundreds of organs!' exclaimed the man to himself. 'Capers! This stranger has travelled much! But if it is indeed not too hot for you,' he said, addressing Ippolito, 'we will go to Santa Vittoria.'
'It is not hot at this hour,' laughed Orsino. 'We have walked up from Camaldoli.'
'On foot!' The fat sacristan either was, or pretended to be, amazed. 'Great signori like you to come all that distance on foot!'
'What is there surprising in that?' enquired Ippolito. 'We have legs.'
'Birds also have legs,' observed the man. 'But they fly. It is only the chickens that walk, like poor people. I say that money is wings. If I were a great signore, like you, I would not even walk upstairs. I would be carried. Why should I walk? In order to be tired? It would be a folly, if I were rich. I, if you ask me, I like to eat well, to drink well, and then to sleep well. A man who could do these three things should be always happy. But the poor are always in thought.'
'So are the rich,' observed Ippolito.
'Yes, signore, for their souls, for we are all sinners; but not for their bodies, because they have always something to eat. What do I say? They eat meat every day, and so they are strong and have no thought for their bodies. But one of us, what does he eat? A little bread, a little salad, an onion, and with this in our bodies we have to move the earth. The world is thus made. Patience!'
Thus philosophising, the fat man rolled unwieldily along beside the two gentlemen, swinging his keys in his hand.
'If I had made the world, it should be another thing,' he continued, for he was a loquacious man. 'In the first place, I would have made wine clear, like water, and I would have made water black, like wine. Thus if the wine-seller put water into his wine, we should all see it. Another thing I would have done. I would have made corn grow on trees, like olives. In that way, we should have planted it once in two hundred years, as we do the olive trees, and there would have been less fatigue. Is not that a good thought?'
'Very original,' said Orsino. 'It had never struck me.'
'I would also have made men so that their hair should stand on end when they are telling lies, as the donkey lifts his tail when he brays. That would also have been good. But the Creator did not think of it in time. Patience! They say it will be different in Paradise. Hope costs little, but you cannot cook it.'
'You are a philosopher,' observed Ippolito.
'No, signore,' answered the sacristan. 'You have been misinformed. I am a grocer, or, to say it better, I am the brother of the grocer. When it is the season, after Santa Teresa's day, I kill the pigs and salt the hams and make the sausages. I am also the sacristan, but that yields me little; for although there is much devotion in our town at festivals, there is little of it among private persons. Sometimes an old woman brings a candle to the Madonna, and she gives a soldo to have it lighted. What is that? Can one live with a soldo now and then? But my brother, thanks be to Heaven, is well-to-do, and a widower. He makes me live with him. He had a son once, but, health to you, Christ and the sea took the boy when he was not yet twenty. Therefore I live with him, to divert him a little, and I kill the pigs, speaking with respect of your face.'
'And what do you do during the rest of the year?' enquired Orsino, as they neared the gate.
'Eh, I live so. According to the season, I pack oranges, I trim vines, I make the wine for my brother, and the oil, I take the honey and the wax from the bees, I graft good fruit upon the wild pear trees—what should I do? A little of everything, in order of eat.'
'But your brother seems to be rich. Have you nothing?'
'Signore, to me money comes like a freshet in spring and runs away, and immediately I am dry. But to my brother it comes like water into a well, and it stays there. Men are thus made. The one gives, the other takes; the one shuts his hand, the other opens his. My mother, blessed soul, used to say to me, "Take care, my son, for when you are old, you will go in rags!" But thanks be to Heaven, I have my brother, and I am as you see me.'
They came to the little church with its freshly whitewashed walls and tiled roof.
'This is the chapel of Santa Vittoria,' said the fat sacristan. 'The church in the town is dedicated to Our Lady of Victories, but this is the chapel of the saint, and there is more devotion here, though it is small, and at the great feast of Santa Vittoria the procession starts from here and goes to the church, and returns here.'
'It looks new,' observed Ippolito.
'Eh, if all things were what they seem!' The man chuckled as he turned the key in the lock. 'You shall see inside whether it is new. It is older than Saint Peter's in Rome.'
And so it was, by two or three centuries. It was a dark little building, of the Norman period, with low arches and solid little pillars terminating in curiously-carved capitals. It had a little nave with intercommunicating side chapels, like aisles. Over the door was a small loft containing the organ, the object of Ippolito's visit. In the uneven floor there were slabs with deep-cut but much-worn figures of knights and prelates in stiff armour or long and equally stiff-looking robes, their heads surrounded by almost illegible inscriptions. Over the principal altar there was a bad painting of Saint Vittoria, half covered with ex-voto offerings of silver hearts, while on each side of the picture were hung up scores of hollow wax models of arms, legs, and other parts of the human body, realistically coloured, all remembrances of recoveries from illness, accident, and disease, attributed to the beneficent intervention of the saint. But above, in the little vault of the apse, there were some very ancient and well-preserved mosaics, magnificently rich in tone. There was, of course, no dome, and the dim light came in through low windows high up in the nave, above the lower side chapels. The church was clean and well kept, and on each side there were half a dozen benches painted with a vivid sky-blue colour.
The two brothers looked about, with some curiosity, while the fat sacristan slowly jingled his bunch of keys against his leg.
'Here the dead walk at night,' he observed, cheerfully, as the two young men came up to him.
'What do you mean?' asked Orsino, who had been much amused by the man's conversation.
'The old Pagliuca walk. I have seen their souls running about the floor in the dark, like little candle flames. A little more, and I should have seen their bodies too, but I ran away. Soul of my mother! I was frightened. It was on the eve of Santa Vittoria, five years ago. The candles for the festival had not come, though we had waited all day for the carrier from Piedimonte. Then he came at dark, for he had met a friend in Linguaglossa, and he was a drunkard, and the wine was new, so he slept on his cart all the way, and it was by the grace of the Madonna that he did not roll off into the ditch. But I considered that it was late, and that the office began early in the morning, and that many strangers came from Bronte and the hill village to our festa, and that it would be a scandal if they found us still dressing the church in the morning. So I took the box of candles on my back and came here, not thinking to bring a lantern, because there is always the lamp before the altar where the saint's bones are. Do you understand?'
'Perfectly. But what about the Pagliuca?'
'My brother said, "You will see the Pagliuca"—for everyone says it. But I had a laugh at him, for I thought that a dead man in his grave must be as quiet as a handkerchief in a drawer. So I came, and I unlocked the door, thinking about the festival, and I came in, meaning to take a candle from the box and light it at the altar lamp, so that I might see well to stick the others into the candlesticks. But there was the flame of a candle burning on the floor. It ran away from me as I came in, and others ran after it, and round and round it. Then I knew that I saw the souls of the old Pagliuca, and I said to myself that presently I should see also their bodies—an evil thing, for they have been long dead. Then I made a movement—who knows how I did? I dropped the box and I heard it break, and all the candles rolled out upon the floor as though the dead Pagliuca were rattling their bones. But I counted neither one nor two, but jumped out into the road with one jump. Santa Vittoria helped me; and it was a bright moonlight night, but as I shut the door, I could see the souls of the Pagliuca jumping up and down on the pavement. I said within me, when the dead dance, the living go home. And my face was white. When I came home, my brother said, "You have seen the Pagliuca." And I said, "I have seen them." Then he gave me some rum, and I lay in a cold sweat till morning. From that time I will not come here at night. But in the daytime it is different.'
Orsino and Ippolito knew well enough that in old Italian churches, where many dead are buried under the pavement, it is not an uncommon thing to see a will-o'-the-wisp at night. But in the dim little church, with the dead Pagliuca lying under their feet, there was something gruesome about the man's graphic story, and they did not laugh.
'Let us hope that we may not see any ghosts,' said Orsino.
'Amen,' answered the sacristan, devoutly. 'That is the organ,' he said, pointing to the loft.
He led the way. On one side of the entrance a small arched door gave access to a narrow winding staircase in the thickness of the wall, lighted by narrow slits opening to the air. Though the loft had not appeared to be very high above the pavement, the staircase seemed very long. At last the three emerged upon the boarded floor, at the back of the instrument, where four greasy, knotted ropes hung out of worn holes in the cracked wood. The rose window over the door of the church threw a bright light into the little forest of dusty wooden and metal pipes above. The ropes were for working the old-fashioned bellows.
Ippolito went round and took the thin deal cover from the keyboard. He was surprised to find a double bank of keys, and an octave and a half of pedals, which is very uncommon in country organs. He was further unprepared to see the name of a once famous maker in Naples just above the keys, but when he looked up he understood, for on a gilded scroll, supported by two rickety cherubs above his head, he read the name of the donor.
'Ferdinandus Paliuca Princeps Corleonis
Comes Sanctae Victoriae Siculus donavit
a.d. mdcccxxi.'
The instrument was, therefore, the gift of a Ferdinando Pagliuca, Prince of Corleone, Count of Santa Vittoria, probably of one of those Pagliuca whose souls the fat sacristan believed he had seen 'jumping up and down the pavement.'
The sacristan tugged at the ropes that moved the bellows. Ippolito dusted the bench over which he had leaned to uncover the keys, slipped in, swinging his feet over the pedals, pulled out two or three stops, and struck a chord.
The tone was not bad, and had in it some of that richness which only old organs are supposed to possess, like old violins. He began to prelude softly, and then, one by one, he tried the other stops. Some were fair, but some were badly out of tune. The cornopean brayed hideously, and the hautboy made curious buzzing sounds. Ippolito promised himself that he would set the whole instrument in order in the course of a fortnight, and was delighted with his discovery. When he had finished, the fat sacristan came out from behind, mopping his forehead with a blue cotton handkerchief.
'Capers!' he exclaimed. 'You are a professor. If Don Giacomo hears you, he will die of envy.'
'Who is Don Giacomo?'
'Eh, Don Giacomo? He is the postmaster and the telegrapher, and he plays the old organ in the big church on Sundays. But when there is a festival here, a professor comes to play this one, from Catania. But he cannot play as you do.'
Orsino had gone down again into the church while Ippolito had been playing. They found him bending very low over an inscription on a slab near the altar steps.
'There is a curious inscription here,' he said, without looking up. 'I cannot quite read it, but it seems to me that I see our name in it. It would be strange if one of our family had chanced to die and be buried here, ages ago.'
Ippolito bent down, too, till his head touched his brother's.
'It is not Latin,' he said presently. 'It looks like Italian.'
The fat sacristan jingled his keys rather impatiently, for it was growing late.
'Without troubling yourselves to read it, you may know what it is,' he said. 'It is the old prophecy about the Pagliuca. When the dead walk here at night they read it. It says, 'Esca Pagliuca pesca Saracen.' But it goes round a circle like a disc, so that you can read it, 'Saracen esca Pagliuca pesca'—either, Let Pagliuca go out, the Saracen is fishing, or, Let the Saracen go out, Pagliuca is fishing.'
'"Or Saracinesca Pagliuca pesca"—Saracinesca fishes for Pagliuca,' said Ippolito to Orsino, with a laugh at his own ingenuity.
'Who knows what it means!' exclaimed the sacristan. 'But they say that when it comes true, the last Corleone shall die and the Pagliuca d'Oriani shall end. But whether they end or not, they will walk here till the Last Judgment. Signori, the twilight descends. If you do not wish to see the Pagliuca, let us go. But if you wish to see them, here are the keys. You are the masters, but I go home. This is an evil place at night.'
The man was growing nervous, and moved away towards the door. The two brothers followed him.
'The place is consecrated,' said Ippolito, as they reached the entrance. 'What should you be afraid of?'
'Santa Vittoria is all alone here,' answered the man, 'and the Pagliuca are more than fifty, when they come out and walk. What should a poor Christian do? He is better at home with a pipe of tobacco.'
The sun had set when they all came out upon the road, and the afterglow was purple on the snow of Etna.
Vittoria d'Oriani had very few companions. Corona Saracinesca really liked her, for her own sake, and was sorry for her because she belonged to the family which was so often described as the worst blood in Italy. Corona and San Giacinto's wife had together presented the Corleone tribe in Roman society, but they were both women of middle age, without daughters who might have been friends for Vittoria. On the other hand, though the Romans had accepted the family on the endorsement, as it were, of the whole Saracinesca family, there was a certain general disinclination to become intimate with them, due to the posthumous influence of their dead uncle, Corleone of evil fame. The Campodonico people were unwilling to have anything to do with them, even to the gentle and charitable Donna Francesca, who had been a Braccio, and might therefore, perhaps, have been expected to condone a great many shortcomings in other families. Pietro Ghisleri, who generally spent the winter in Rome, refused to know the d'Oriani, for poor dead Bianca Corleone's sake; and his English wife, who knew the old story, thought he was right. The great majority of the Romans received them, however, very much as they would have received foreigners who had what is called a right to be in society, with civility, but not with enthusiasm.
Vittoria had, therefore, met many Roman girls of her own age during the spring, but had not become intimate with any of them. It was natural that when her brother made the acquaintance of Mrs. and Miss Slayback, and when the young American took what is usually described in appalling English as a violent fancy to Vittoria, the latter should feel that sort of gratitude which sometimes expands into friendship.
They saw much of each other. It is needless to say that they had not an idea in common, and it would have been very surprising if they had. But on the other hand they had that sort of community of feeling which is a better foundation for intimacy than a similarity of ideas.
Miss Lizzie Slayback was not profound, but she was genuine. She had no inherited tendency to feel profound emotions nor to get into tragic situations, but she was full of innocent sentiment. Like many persons who do not lead romantic lives, she was in love with romance, and she believed that romance had a sort of perpetual existence somewhere, so that by taking some pains one could really find it and live in it. Her fortune would be useful in the search, although it was unromantic to be rich. She had not read 'Montecristo,' because she was told that Dumas was old-fashioned. She was not very gifted, but she was very clever in detail. She did not understand Tebaldo in the least, for she was no judge of human nature, but she knew perfectly well how to keep him at arm's length until she had decided to marry him. She was absolutely innocent, yet she had also the most absolute assurance, and bore herself in society with the independence of a married woman of thirty.
'It is our custom in my country,' she said to Vittoria, who was sometimes startled by her friend's indifference to the smaller conventionalities.
The two young girls spoke French together, and understood each other, though a third person might not at first have known that they were speaking the same language. Vittoria spoke the French of an Italian convent, old-fashioned, stilted, pronounced with the rolling southern accent which only her beautiful voice could make bearable, and more or less wild as to gender. Lizzie Slayback, as has been said, spoke fluently and often said the same things because she had a small choice of language. Occasionally she used phrases that would have made a Frenchman's hair feel uneasy on his head, and her innocent use of which inspired disquieting doubts as to the previous existence of the person who had taught her.
'We think,' she said, 'that it is better to enjoy yourself while you are young, and be good when you grow old, but in Europe it seems to be the other way.'
'No one can be good all the time,' answered Vittoria. 'One is good a little and one is bad a little, by turns, just as one can.'
'That makes a variety,' said Miss Slayback. 'That is why you Italians are so romantic.'
'I never can understand what you mean by romantic,' observed Vittoria.
'Oh—everything you do is romantic, my dear. Your brother is the most romantic man I ever saw. That is why I think I shall marry him,' she added, as though contemplating a new hat with a view to buying it, and almost sure that it would suit her.
'I do not think you will be happy with him,' said Vittoria, rather timidly.
'Because he is romantic, and I am not? Well, I am not sure.'
'There! You use the word again! What in the world do you mean by it?'
Miss Slayback was at a loss to furnish the required definition, especially in French.
'Your brother is romantic,' she said, repeating herself. 'I am sure he looks like Cæsar Borgia.'
'I hope not!' exclaimed Vittoria. 'Surely you would not marry—' she stopped.
'Cæsar Borgia?' enquired Lizzie Slayback, calmly. 'Of all people, I should have liked to marry him! He was nice and wicked. He would never have been dull, even nowadays, when everybody is so proper, you know.'
'No,' laughed the Italian girl, 'I do not think anybody would have called him dull. He generally murdered his friends before they were bored by his company.'
Miss Lizzie laughed, for Vittoria seemed witty to her.
'If I had said that at a party,' she answered, 'everybody would have told me that I was so clever! I wish I had thought of it. May I say it, as if it were mine? Shall you not mind?'
'Why should I? I should certainly not say it myself, before people.'
'Why not?'
'It would not be thought exactly—oh—what shall I say? We young girls are never expected to say anything like that. We look down, and hold our tongues.'
'And think of all the sharp things you will say when you are married! That is just the difference. Now, in the West, where I come from, if a girl has anything clever to say, she says it, even if she is only ten years old. I must say, it seems to me much more sensible.'
'Yes—but there are other things, besides being sensible,' objected Vittoria.
'Then they must be senseless,' retorted Miss Lizzie. 'It follows.'
'There are all sorts of customs and traditions in society that have not very much sense perhaps, but we are all used to them, and should feel uncomfortable without them. When the nuns taught me to do this, or that, to say certain things, and not to say certain other things, it was because all the other young girls I should meet would be sure to act in just the same way, and if I did not act as they do, I should make myself conspicuous.'
'I never could see the harm in being conspicuous,' said Miss Slayback. 'Provided one is not vulgar,' she added, by way of limitation.
'Do you not feel uncomfortable, when you feel that everyone is looking at you?'
'No, of course not, unless I am doing something ridiculous. I rather like to have people look at me. That makes me feel satisfied with myself.'
'It always makes me feel dreadfully uncomfortable,' said Vittoria.
'It should not, for you are beautiful, my dear. You really are. I only think I am, when I have good clothes and am not sunburnt or anything like that—I never really believe it, you know. But when people admire me, it helps the illusion. I wish I were beautiful, like you, Vittoria.'
'I am not beautiful,' said the Sicilian girl, colouring a little shyly. 'But I wish I had your calmness. I am always blushing—it is so uncomfortable—or else I am very pale, and then I feel cold, as though my heart were going to stop beating. I think I should faint if I were to do the things you sometimes do.'
'What, for instance?' laughed the American girl.
'Oh—I have seen you cross a ballroom alone, and drive alone in an open carriage—'
'What could happen to me in a carriage?'
'It is not that—it is—I hardly know! It is like a married woman.'
'I shall be married some day, so I may as well get into the habit of it,' observed Miss Lizzie, smiling and showing her beautiful teeth.
In spite of such inconclusive conversations, the two girls were really fond of each other. When Mrs. Slayback looked at Tebaldo's sharp features, her heart hardened; but when she looked at Vittoria, it softened again. She was a very intelligent woman, in her way, and, having originally married for his money a man whom she considered beneath her in social standing and cultivation, she wished to improve his family in her own and her friends' eyes by making a brilliant foreign marriage for his niece. 'Princess of Corleone' sounded a good deal better than 'Miss Lizzie Slayback,' and there was no denying the antiquity and validity of the title. There were few to be had as good as that, for the girl's religion was a terrible obstacle to her marrying the heir of any great house in Europe in which money was not a paramount necessity. But Tebaldo assured her that he attached no importance whatever to such matters. Lizzie was in love with him, and he took pains to seem to be in love with her.
Mrs. Slayback did not give more weight to her niece's inclinations and fancies than Tebaldo gave to his religious scruples. The girl was highly impressionable to a very small depth, skin deep, in fact, and below the shallow gauge of her impressions she suddenly became hard and obstinate like her uncle. She had an unfortunate way of liking people very much at first sight if she chanced to meet them when she was in a good humour, and quite regardless of what they might really be. She had said to herself that Tebaldo was 'romantic,' and as his life hitherto might certainly have been well described by some such word, he had no difficulty in keeping up the illusion for her.
He saw that she listened with wonder and delight to his tales of wild doings in Sicily, and he had not the slightest difficulty in finding as many of them to tell her as suited his purpose. He had been more intimately connected with one or two of his stories than he chose to tell her; but he was ready at turning a difficulty of that sort, and when he introduced himself he treated his own personality and actions with that artistic modesty which leaves vague beauties to the imagination. Never having had any actual experience of the rude deeds of unbridled humanity, Miss Lizzie liked revengeful people because they were 'romantic.' She liked to think of a man who could carry off his enemy's bride in the grey dawn of her wedding day, escape with her on board a ship, and be out of sight of land before night—because such deeds were 'romantic.' She liked to know that a band of thirty desperate men could bid defiance to the government and the army for months, and she loved to hear of Leone, the outlaw chief, who had killed a dozen soldiers with his own hand in twenty minutes, before he fell with twenty-seven bullets in him—that was indeed 'romantic.' And Tebaldo had seen Leone himself, many years ago, and remembered him and described him; and he had seen most of the people whose extraordinary adventures he detailed to the girl, and had known them and spoken with them, had shot with them for wagers, had drunk old wine of Etna at their weddings, and had followed some of them to their graves when they had been killed. A good many of his acquaintances had been killed in various 'romantic' affairs.
Everything he told her appealed strongly to Lizzie Slayback's imagination, and he had the advantage, if it were one, of being really a great deal like the people he described, daring, unscrupulous, physically brave and revengeful, very much the type which is so often spoken of in Calabria with bated breath, as 'a desperate man of Sicily.' For the Italian of the mainland is apt both to dread and respect the stronger man of the islands.
In addition to his accomplishments as a story-teller, Tebaldo possessed the power of seeming to be very much in love, without ever saying much about it. He flattered the girl, telling her that she was beautiful and witty and charming, and everything else which she wished to be; and when his eyelids were not drooping at the corners as they did when he was angry, he had a way of gazing with intense and meaning directness into Lizzie Slayback's dark blue eyes, so that Vittoria would no longer have envied her, for she blushed and looked away, half pleased and half disturbed.
Aliandra Basili thought Francesco much more ready and apt to anticipate her small wishes and to understand her thoughts than his brother. But when he chose to take the trouble, with cool calculation, Tebaldo knew well enough how to make a woman believe that he was taking care of her, which is what many women most wish to feel. With Aliandra, whom he loved as much as he was capable of loving anyone, Tebaldo felt himself almost too much at his ease to disguise his own selfishness. But he gave himself endless trouble for Miss Slayback, and she was sometimes touched by little acts of his which showed how constantly she was in his mind—as indeed she was, much more than she knew.
In her moments of solitude, which were few, for she hated to be alone, she reflected more than once that her money must seem a great inducement to a poor Italian nobleman; but she was too much in love with the 'romantic' to believe that Tebaldo wished to marry her solely for her fortune. It was too hard to believe, when she looked at her own face in the mirror and saw how young, and pretty, and smiling she really was. Her dark lashes gave her blue eyes so much expression that she could not think herself not loved, a mere encumbrance to be taken with a fortune, but not without, in exchange for a title. She was fond of her refined but not very remarkable self, and it would have been hard to convince her that Tebaldo's silent looks and ever-ready service meant nothing but greed of money. Very possibly, she admitted, he could not have thought of marrying her if she had been poor, but she believed it equally certain that if she had been an ugly, rich, middle-aged old maid, he would never have thought of it either.
Besides, Tebaldo had watched with great satisfaction the growing intimacy between her and his sister, and he took care to play his comedy before Vittoria as carefully as before Miss Slayback herself. Vittoria, as he knew, was very truthful, and if her friend asked questions about him, she would repeat accurately what he had said in her presence, if she gave any information at all. To his face, Vittoria accused him of wishing to marry for money, but so long as he affirmed that he loved Miss Slayback, Vittoria would never accuse him behind his back, nor tell tales about his character which might injure his prospects. Though he knew that she rarely believed him and never trusted him, he knew that he could trust her. That fact alone might have sufficiently defined their respective characters.