Chapter VIII: Part II: I (3)

As he sang, he had again the feeling of being light as the sparrow on the twig. Later he went to the garden where he could hand the maid the letter for Margherita.

The garden, still wet after the nocturnal rain, exhaled a strong odour of vegetation and wet earth. The beans had been reduced by caterpillars to masses of strange grey lace. The prickly pears were losing their little gold cupped yellow flowers; the tall passion flower with its stemless violet flowers cut the azure of the sky with their strange outline. The mountains rose vaporous in the pearly distance, their highest peaks lost in golden clouds. Efès, a heap of rags, lay in a corner. Anania kicked him lightly; he raised his face, opened a glassy eye, and murmured--

"When Amelia so pure and so pale--"

Then fell back without recognising the young man. Further on Uncle Pera, now quite blind, was indefatigably weeding, recognising the weeds by smell and touch.

"How are you?" cried Anania.

"Dead, my son. I can't see; I can't hear."

"Don't lose heart. You'll get cured----"

"In the next world where all are cured. Where all see and hear. Never mind, my son. When I saw with the eyes of my body, my soul was blind. Now I see. I see with the eyes of the soul. But tell me, when you were in Rome, did you see the Pope?"

When he had left the garden Anania roamed about in the vicinity. Yes, this little corner of the world was always the same. The madman still sat on the stone with his back against the tumbling wall, and waited for the coming of Jesus; the beggar-woman still jealously watched Rebecca, while the miserable girl still shook with fever and bandaged her sores. Maestro Pane among his cobwebs still planed tables and talked to himself; in the tavern the handsome Agata flirted with young and old; and Antonino and Bustianeddu drank and swore, and now and then vanished for a month or two, reappearing with faces grown rather pale in "the service of the King."[20] Aunt Tatàna still baked sweetmeats for her "dear little boy" and dreamed of his future laurels; Big Anania, on days of leisure, sat in the street embroidering a leather belt and dreaming of treasures hidden in the _nuraghes_.

No, nothing was changed; but the young student saw men and things as never he had seen them before. Everything seemed beautiful to him with a wild and melancholy beauty. He passed by and gazed as if he were a stranger; in the picture of those dark and falling cabins, of those primitive beings who inhabited them, he seemed to see himself vaguely as a giant--yes, as a giant, or as a bird--a giant by his superiority, a bird by his joy!

At the end of August, after various meetings, Margherita agreed to the confession of their love.

"Your father's manner to me has changed," said Anania. "I am uneasy and remorseful He looks at me with cold, critical eyes, and I can't bear it."

"Well--do your duty, if you have the courage," said Margherita, with a touch of malice.

"How shall I put it?" asked the lad, growing nervous.

"As you like. It will be a very interesting occasion. The more agitated you are the more effect you will make. My father is so kind!"

"Then you think I may have some hope?" cried Anania as eagerly as if till that moment he had been in utter despair.

"Why, yes--s--s," she said, stroking his hair in almost motherly fashion.

He folded her close, shut his eyes, and tried to the immensity of his good fortune. Could it be possible? Margherita would be his own? Really? In reality, as she had always been his in dream? He thought of the time when he had scarce dared confess his love to himself. And now----

"How many things come to pass in the world!" he thought. "But there! what is the world? What is reality? Where does dream end and reality begin? May not all this be dream? Who is Margherita? Who am I? Are we alive? And what is life? What is this mysterious joy which lifts me as the moon lifts the wave? And the sea, what is that? Does the sea feel? Is it alive? And what is the moon, and is she also real?"

He smiled at his questions. The moon illuminated the courtyard. In the silence of the diaphanous night, the tremulous song of the crickets suggested a population of minute sprites, sitting on the dewy moonlit leaves and sawing on a single string of invisible fiddles. All was dream and all was reality. Anania fancied he saw the goblin fiddlers, and at the same time he saw distinctly Margherita's pink blouse, and rings, and gold chain. He pressed her wrist, touched the pearl of the ring which she wore on her little finger, looked at her nails with their little half moons of white. Yes, it was all real, visible, tangible. The reality and the dream had no dividing-line. All could be seen, handled, attained, from the maddest dream to the object of the barest visibility.

A few words pronounced by Margherita brought him back to the boundary of reality.

"What will you say to my father?" she asked, scoffing a little. "Will you say, 'Sir, Godfather--I--I and--and your daughter--Margherita--are--are doing what you----'"

"I couldn't!" he exclaimed, "I'll write to him!"

"Oh no!" said Margherita seriously, "you had far better speak! He'll be far more yielding if you speak. If you're afraid to do it yourself, send someone."

"Whom could I send?"

Margherita pondered, then said tentatively, "_Your mother_."

He knew she meant Aunt Tatàna, but his thoughts flew to the other, and he fancied Margherita also must be thinking of that woman. A dense shadow, a whirlwind of doubt overwhelmed his soul; ah yes! the dream and the reality were well divided by terrible confines; insuperable emptiness, like the void between the earth and the sun, separated them.

"If I could tell her at this moment!" he thought again; "this is the moment! If I let it escape I may never find it again. Perhaps the void can be crossed; but now--now!"

He opened his lips and his heart beat fast. He could not speak. The moment passed.

Next evening Aunt Tatàna--greatly surprised, but proud and confident in the assistance of Heaven, for she had prayed and "made the ascension," namely, dragged herself on her knees from the door to the altar of the church of the Rosario--performed her embassage.

Anania remained at home, waiting anxiously for the dear woman's return. First, he lay on his bed, reading a book of which he remembered not so much as the title.

"Yet I am calm," he thought, "why should I be alarmed? the thing is perfectly certain----"

Thought, like an all-seeing eye, followed the ambassador and saw Aunt Tatàna walking along very slowly impressed with the solemnity of her task. She was a little shy--the sweet elderly dove, so soft and pure; but patience! with the help of the Lord and of the blessed Saint Catherine and the most holy Mary of the Rosary, she would effect something! For this great occasion she had donned her best clothes; the "tunic" trimmed with three ribbons, green, white, and green, the corset of green brocade, the silver belt, the embroidered apron, the floating saffron-coloured veil. Nor had she forgotten her rings, certainly not, her great prehistoric rings, cameos cut on green and yellow stones, and incised cornelians. Thus adorned and very serious, like an aged Madonna, she advanced slowly, saluting with unwonted dignity the persons whom she passed. It was evening, the hour sacred to these grave embassies of love. At the fall of evening the matchmaker finds at home the head of the family to which she bears the arcane message.

Aunt Tatàna goes on and on; always sedate and slow. She seems almost afraid of arriving. Having reached the fatal limit, the great shut door, silent and dark like the gate of Destiny, she hesitates, arranges her rings, her ribbons, her belt, her apron; wraps her chin in the end of her veil, at last makes resolution to knock.

That knock seemed to strike Anania on his chest. He jumped to his feet, seized the candle, and looked at himself in the glass.

"I do believe I am white! What an idiot! I will think no more about it."

He went to the window. Daylight was dying in the closed court, the motionless elder tree was a dark mass. Perfect silence! the hens slept, the little pig slept. Stars came out, sparks of gold in the ashy blue of the warm twilight. Beyond the courtyard in the silence of the little street a little shepherd on horseback, passed singing--

_Inoche mi fachet die And the night it seems to me day Cantende a parma dorada._ As I sing on my golden way.

Anania thought of his childhood, of the widow, of Zuanne. What was the young monk doing in his convent? the monk who had meant to be a brigand.

"I should like to see him!" thought Anania. "In the course of this month I will certainly visit Fonni."

Ah! His thought returned violently thither where his fate was being decided. The old dove has arrived; she is there in Signor Carboni's simple and orderly study. There is the desk where one evening a young lad had rummaged among the papers--good Lord! is it possible he ever behaved so shamefully? Yes, when one is a boy one has no conscience, anything seems easy and allowable, a positive crime can be committed in perfect innocence. Well! Aunt Tatàna is there. And Signor Carboni is there--stout, composed, and bland, with the shining gold chain across his ample chest.

"Whatever will the dear old thing say!" thought Anania smiling nervously. "I wish I could be there unseen. If I had the ring which gives invisibility! I'd slip it on my finger and in a moment I'd be there. If the big door was shut--I'd knock, Mariedda would open and rage against the children who knock and run away. But I----Pshaw! such childish nonsense. I'll think no more about it." He left the window, went down to the kitchen and sat by the fire, suddenly remembered it was summer and laughed. For a long time he looked at the red kitten which sat watching by the oven, motionless, his whiskers stiff, his tail stiff, expecting the appearance of a mouse.

"You shan't be allowed to catch it!" said Anania, "I'm so happy that not even a mouse shall suffer in this house to-night. Shoo!" he cried, jumping up and running at the kitten, who shook all over and leaped on top of the stove. The young man's restlessness now made him march up and down the kitchen. Once or twice he stood still, fingering the sacks of barley.

"My father's not so very poor," he thought, "he's Signor Carboni's _mezzadro_ (tenant) though he will call him Master. No, he's not poor. But, of course, he couldn't pay back what's--been spent--on me, if the thing doesn't come off. Whatever would happen? What is happening at this moment? Aunt Tatàna has spoken. What can she have said? What sort of answer can the benefactor have given? He's the most loyal man in the world--what will he say when he hears that his protégé has dared to betray--I can imagine him walking up and down the room very thoughtful; and Aunt Tatàna looking at him, pale herself and oppressed. Oh, my God! what will happen?" groaned the boy squeezing his head in his hands. He felt suffocated, rushed into the court, sprang on the low surrounding wall, waited and listened. Nothing! nothing!

He returned to the kitchen, saw the kitten again in ambush, again drove it away. He thought of the cats prowling round the Pantheon. He thought of Aunt Varvara and the wax candle he was to carry for her to the Basilica of the Holy Martyrs; he thought of his father busy in the padrone's _tancas_; he remembered the sonorous pine-tree, which murmured like an angry giant, the king of a solitary region of stubble and thicket. He thought of the _nuraghe_ and Aunt Varvara's vision reproduced by fever in himself. He remembered a gold bracelet seen in the museum at the Baths of Diocletian. Behind all these fleeting memories, two thoughts met and rolled themselves into one like two clouds, one dark, one bright, rolling together in space--the thought of _that woman_ and the thought of what was going on in Signor Carboni's study. "I've said I won't think of it," he muttered, vexed with himself.

And again he chased the cat, as if he wished to chase away the idea which, cat-like, continually returned against his will. He went back to the courtyard, looked and listened. Nothing. About a quarter of an hour later two voices sounded behind the low wall, then a third, a fourth. They belonged to the neighbours who nightly assembled for a gossip before Maestro Pane's shop.

"By our Lady," cried Rebecca's piercing tones, "I have seen five falling stars! That means something. There's going to be a catastrophe."

"Perhaps Antichrist's coming. They say he'll be born of an animal," said a man's voice; "an animal like you."

"Like your wife, you beast!" screamed Rebecca.

"Take this, my carnation!" said the handsome Agata, who was eating something as she talked.

The man began rude talk, but the old carpenter interposed.

"Hold your tongue, or I'll have you on the millstones, you skinned weasel."

The peasant was not to be silenced, so the women went away and sat under the low wall of the courtyard. Aunt Sorchedda, a little old woman who forty years before had been servant in the Intendant's house, began to tell for the thousandth time the story of her mistress.

"She was a _marchesa_. Her father was an intimate friend of the King of Spain, and had given her 1000 gold crowns for her dowry. How much are 1000 crowns?

"What are 1000 crowns?" said Agata contemptuously. "Margherita Carboni has 4000."

"4000?" echoed Rebecca, "you mean 40,000."

"You don't know what you're talking about," cried Aunt Sorchedda, "these were gold crowns. Not even Don Franceschino has so much."

"Go along with you! You're doting," cried Agata, getting heated. "How much do 1000 crowns come to? Franziscu Carchide has them in shoe soles!"

It was getting serious. The women began to abuse each other.

"It's easy to see why she brings in Franziscu Carchide, that scum of a girl!"

"Scum yourself, old sinner!"

"Ah."

"_Foglia di gelso Leaf of the mulberry tree! Chi la fa la pensa._ The thing you do, you everywhere see!"

Anania was listening. In spite of his private anxiety he laughed.

"Oh, ho!" cried Agata, peeping over the wall, "good evening to your Excellence! What are you hiding for? Come out and let us see your pretty face."

He pinched Agata's arm, and Rebecca who had hidden herself on hearing the young man's laugh, contributed a pinch on the leg.

"Oh! oh! oh!" cried Agata, "go to the devil with you! This is too much. Let me alone or I'll tell----"

The pinches were redoubled.

"Oh! oh! oh! The devil! Rebecca, there's no good in being jealous! Oh! oh! Aunt Tatàna has gone this evening, has gone to ask----Well, shall I tell or not?"

Anania withdrew, asking himself how that minx Agata knew.

"My sweetheart, next time have some respect for Aunt Agata!" she said laughing; while Rebecca who had understood became stonily silent, and Aunt Sorchedda enquired--

"Kindly tell me, Nania Atonzu, is there a single person in Nuoro who has 1000 gold crowns?"

The foul-mouthed _contadino_ came over and asked, "Young man from Rome, Nania Atonzu--is it true that the pope----"

Anania was not listening. He saw a figure moving slowly at the bottom of the street. His heart came into his mouth. It was she! The old messenger dove, it was she, carrying on her pure lips, like a flower of life or of death, the fateful word.

Anania went in to the house shutting the back door; Aunt Tatàna entered at the front and he shut that door also. She sighed; was still pale and oppressed just as Anania had seen her in fancy. Her rude jewels, her belt, her embroideries, sparkled brightly in the firelight.

Anania ran to meet her. He looked at her anxiously. As she kept silence he burst out impatiently--

"Well? Well? What did he say?"

"Have patience, child of the Lord! I am going to tell you."

"Tell me now--this moment. Will he have me?"

"Yes--s--s--He'll have you! He'll have you!" announced the old lady opening her arms.

Quite overcome, Anania sat down, his head in his hands. Aunt Tatàna looked at him compassionately, shaking her head, while with trembling finger she unclasped her silver belt.

"Is it possible! Is it really possible?" Anania was saying to himself.

Before the oven the kitten was still watching for the exit of a mouse. Perhaps he heard some faint noise for his tail trembled. After a minute Anania heard a squeak and a minute death cry. But his happiness was now so complete that it did not allow him to remember that in the world could exist such a thing as suffering.

Aunt Tatàna's detailed narrative threw a little cold water on this great conflagration of joy.

Margherita's parents did not oppose the love of the two young people, but neither did they give full and irrevocable consent. The godfather had smiled, had rubbed his hand, and shaken his head as if to say, "They've caught me, those two." Aloud he said! "They're in a hurry for their wings, the two children."

Then he had become very thoughtful and grave.

"But what did he say in the end?" cried Anania, also very serious.

"Holy Saint Catherine, what does the boy expect? Don't you understand, my dear? The padrona said, 'We must speak to Margherita.' 'Eh, I don't think it's necessary!' said your godfather, rubbing his hands. I smiled." Anania smiled also.

"So we concluded----Go away, puss!" cried Aunt Tatàna in parenthesis drawing away the hem of her "_tunic_" upon which the kitten had established himself licking his lips with horrible satisfaction, "we concluded that you must wait. The _padrone_ said, 'Let the boy attend to his studies and do us credit. When he has got some good appointment, then we'll give him our daughter. Meanwhile let them love each other and God bless 'em.' There! now I hope you'll eat your supper."

"But does it mean I can go to their house as her betrothed?"

"No, not just at present. Not for this year. You run too fast, _galanu meu_. People would think Signor Carboni in his second childhood if he allowed that. You must take your degree first."

"Oh!" cried Anania, "then I suppose he thinks it better for us----" He was going to say, "for us to meet secretly at night lest we should offend false susceptibilities," but it struck him that meeting thus secretly at night and by themselves, was far more comfortable than in the presence of parents and in the glare of day. This calmed him. It was not their own fault and need occasion no remorse.

Accordingly he recommenced his visits that very night. The maid, the moment she had opened the door, wished him good luck as if the wedding were already announced. Anania gave her a tip and waited in trepidation for his sweetheart. She came, cautious and silent. She smelt of iris, she wore a light dress, white in the transparent night. Half seeing her, conscious of her fragrance, the youth experienced a dissolving, a violent sensation as if for the first time he had divined the mystery of love. They embraced long, silently, vibrating together, intoxicated with joy. The world was theirs.

Margherita, now sure she might abandon herself without fear or remorse to her love for this handsome youth who adored her, for the first time showed herself passionate and ardent as Anania had scarce dared to dream her. He went away from the tryst, trembling, blind, out of himself.

Next evening, the meeting was even longer, more delirious. The third night, the maid got tired of watching and gave the prearranged signal in case of surprise. The lovers separated in alarm. Next day Margherita wrote thus--

"I'm afraid Daddy guessed something last night. We must take care not to do ourselves harm, especially now when we are so happy. We had best not meet for a few days. Have patience and courage as I have, for it takes courage to make the big sacrifice of renouncing for some time the immense happiness of seeing you. It kills me; for I love you so dearly I feel as if I really couldn't live without your kisses," and so on and so on.

He replied: "My adored one, I believe you are right. You are a saint for wisdom and goodness, and I am only a poor fool, a fool for love of you. I don't know, I can't even see, what I am doing. Last night I could have compromised our whole future and not have perceived what I was doing. Forgive me! when I am with you I lose my reason. A destroying fire seems to rage within me; I am fevered, consumed. So it is with spasms of pain that I renounce the supreme felicity of seeing you for a few evenings, and I shall require movement, distraction, distance, to quiet this devouring fire which makes me senseless and sick. I think I'll make that little excursion to the Gennargentu of which I spoke the other night. You wouldn't mind, would you? Answer me at once, my adored one, my joy, my darling. I will carry you with me in my heart. I will send you a greeting from the highest summit in Sardinia. I will cry your name to heaven, and my love, as I would wish to cry them from the topmost peak of the world, for the astounding of the whole earth. I embrace you, my dearest; I carry you with me, we are united, fused together for all eternity."

Margherita graciously gave permission for the journey.

Then Anania wrote: "I am starting to-morrow morning by the coach for Mamojada--Fonni. At nine o'clock I shall pass your window. I long to see you to-night--but I will be good! Ah! come with me, Margherita, my own darling! why do you leave me for a single instant? Come here to my heart! I will bum you up in the fire of my love, and die myself of passion!"

[Footnote 19: _She_, the 3rd person feminine singular, is the ceremonious form of address.]

[Footnote 20: In prison.]

VII

The coach crossed the wild _tancas_, yellowed by the burning sun, shadowed here and there by thickets of wild olive and stunted oak.

The interior of the vehicle was suffocatingly hot and Anania sat beside the driver. He was overwhelmed by memories which almost made him forget the fever of the last few days. He was living again in a distant day, seeing once more the driver with the yellow moustache and the swollen cheeks, who had cracked his whip just as the small thin driver sitting at his side now cracked his.

As the coach neared Mamojada, the vividness of his recollections became almost painful. In the arch made by the coach's hood was depicted the same landscape which Anania had seen _that day_, his little head drooping on _her_ knee; the same melancholy sky of unvaried blue was stretched above. A sudden breeze swept over the green country with its strong undulating lines and rows of wild bushes. Here and there the violet gleam of water was just visible. The whistle of marsh birds was heard. A shepherd, bronze against a luminous background, watched the horizon.

Here was the _Cantoniera_. The coach stopped for a few minutes. Sitting on the doorstep carding black wool with iron combs was a woman in the costume of Tonara--swathed in rough cloths like an Egyptian mummy. Three ragged and dirty children were playing or rather quarrelling at a little distance. At a window appeared the gaunt and wan face of a sick woman, who looked at the coach with two great hollow greenish eyes, heavy with fever. The desolate _Cantoniera_ seemed the habitation of hunger, of sickness, of dirt. Anania's heart tightened. He knew perfectly the sad drama which had been played twenty-two years ago in that lonely place, set in that wild fresh landscape which would have been so pure but for the unclean passage of man.

He sighed. And he looked at the shepherd with the dark sarcastic face, erect against the blinding background of sky, and thought that even that poetic figure was a barbarous conscienceless being--like his father, like his mother, like all the creatures scattered over that stretch of desolate earth, in whose minds bad thoughts developed by fatal necessity, like evil vapours in the atmosphere.

The coach resumed its journey. Here was Mamojada hidden in the green of walnuts and gardens; its _campanile_ drawn clear upon the tender blue, as in a conventional water colour. But as the coach moved further along the dusty road, the picture took a darker and a drearier tint. In front of the small black houses, built into the rock, was a group of characteristic figures, all ragged and dirty; pretty women with glossy hair, looped round their ears, sewing or suckling their infants; two _Carabinieri_; a bored student--from Rome like Anania; a peasant, an old noble who was _contadino_ as well--gossiping, grouped together before a carpenter's workshop, the door of which was hung with bright coloured sacred pictures.

The student knew Anania and went at once to meet him and introduce him to the rest of the company.

"You also are at your studies in Rome?" said the peasant noble, thrusting out his chest and speaking with dignity. "Yes? Then I suppose you know Don Pietro Bonigheddu, a nobleman and head of a department in the Court of Exchequer."

"No," replied Anania, "Rome is a big place and one can't know every one."

"Just so," said the other, with scornful gravity, "but every one knows Don Pietro. He's a rich man. We are relatives. Well, if you do meet him, give him greetings from Don Zua Bonigheddu."

"I will remember," said Anania with an ironical bow. He made the tour of the village with his friend; then set forth again in the coach which resumed its journey. After half an hour's amusement, he fell back again into his memories. Here was the little ruined church, here the garden, here the commencement of the rise to Fonni, here the potato plantation beside which Olì and her child had sat down to rest. Anania remembered the woman hoeing with her skirt kilted up between her legs, and the white cat which had darted at the green lizard gliding over the wall. The picture in the arch of the hood became brighter, the background more luminous. The grey pyramid of Monte Gonare, the cerulean and silver lines of the chain of the Gennargentu were cut into the metal of the sky. Every minute they were nearer and more majestic. Ah yes! Now Anania really breathed his native air--some strange, some atavic instinct seemed to possess him.

He wanted to leap from the vehicle, to run up the slopes where the grass was still green, among the rocks and the thickets, crying aloud with joy, like the colt which flees from the halter back to the freedom of the _tancas_. "And when I have worked off that intoxication I should like to stand like the wandering shepherd against a dazzling background of sunshine, or in the green shadow of the hazels, on the platform of a cliff, in the fork of a tree, losing myself in the contemplation of the immensity! Yes," he thought as the coach moved slowly up a steep incline, "I believe I was meant to be a shepherd. I should have been a ferocious robber, a criminal, but also a poet. Oh! to watch the clouds from the height of a mountain! To fancy oneself a shepherd of clouds--to see them roam over the silver heaven, chase each other, change, pass, sink, disappear! He laughed to himself, then thought--

"Am I not a shepherd of clouds? Are not my thoughts mere clouds? If I were forced to live in these solitudes I should dissolve into the winds and the mist and the sadness of the landscape. Am I alive? What after all is life?"

To these questions there was no reply.

The coach ascended slowly, more and more slowly with gentle cadenced movements; the coachman dozed, the horse seemed walking in his sleep. The sun at his zenith rained an equable and melancholy splendour; the thickets threw no shadow. Profound silence, burning somnolence pervaded the immense landscape. Anania felt himself really dissolving, becoming one with the drowsy panorama, with the sad and luminous sky. The fact was he was himself drowsy. _As that other time_, so now, he ended by closing his eyes and falling childishly asleep.

"Aunt Grathia! _Nonna_!" (godmother), he called, his voice still sleepy, as he entered the widow's cottage. The kitchen was deserted, the sunny little street was deserted; deserted the whole village which in the desolation of midday, seemed prehistoric, abandoned for centuries.

Anania looked curiously around. Nothing was changed. Poverty, rags, soot, ashes in the hearth, cobwebs among the rafters of the roof; wild emperor of that legendary spot, the long and empty phantasm of the black cloak hanging against the earthen wall.

"Aunt Grathia, where are you? Aunt Grathia?" cried the young man.

The widow had gone to the well. Presently she returned with a malune[21] on her head and a bucket in her hand. She was just the same; yellow, thorny, with a spectral face surrounded by the folds of a dirty kerchief. The years had passed without ageing that body already dried up and exhausted of the emotions of her distant youth.

Anania seeing her was strangely moved. A flood of memories rose out of the depths of his soul. He seemed to recall a whole former existence, to see afresh the spirit which had inhabited his body before his spirit of to-day.

"_Bonos dias,_"(good day) the widow said in greeting, surveying in astonishment the handsome unknown youth. She set down first the pail, then the _malune_ slowly and without taking her eyes off the stranger. But no sooner had he smiled and asked, "What? don't you know me?" than she emitted a cry and opened her arms. Anania kissed her and overwhelmed her with questions.

How, where was Zuanne? Why had he become a monk? Did he visit his mother? Was he happy? And her elder son? And the candlemaker's son? And this one, and that one? And how had life gone on these fifteen years at Fonni? And to-morrow could he make the ascension of the Gennargentu?

"Son! dear son!" cried the widow, looking at her dismal walls; "well, what do you think of my house? Naked and sad as an abandoned nest! But sit down--will you wash your hands? here is pure fresh water, real pure silver! Wash yourself, drink, rest. I'll cook a mouthful for you. Don't refuse, son of my heart! don't humiliate me. I should like to feed you with my heart! But you'll accept what I can offer. Here's a towel, my dear. How tall and beautiful you are! I hear you're to marry a rich and lovely girl. Ah, and she's no fool, that girl! Why didn't you write before coming? Ah, dear boy! you at least haven't forgotten the deserted old woman!"

"But Zuanne? Zuanne?" said Anania, washing in the fresh water from the bucket.

The widow's face darkened.

"Don't speak of him! He has grieved me so much. It would have been far better he'd followed his father. Well no--don't talk of it. He's not a man. He may be a saint, but he isn't a man. If my husband were to lift his head out of the tomb, and see his son barefoot, with the cord and the wallet, a stupid, begging friar, whatever would he say! Ah! he'd beat him to death, he would!"

"Where is Brother Zuanne at present?"

"In a convent a long way off. On the top of a mountain! If he'd even stayed in the convent at Fonni! But no! I'm fated to be abandoned by them all! Even Fidele the other boy has taken a wife and hardly ever remembers me. The nest is deserted--the old eagle has seen all her poor eaglets fly away, and will die alone--alone!"

"Come and live with me!" said Anania. "Once I've got my degree, I'll make a home for you, Nonna!"

"What good should I be to you? Once, I was able to wash your eyes and cut your nails--now you'd have to do it for me."

"You would tell your stories to me, and to my children."

"I can't even tell the stories. I've grown childish. Time has carried away my brains, as the wind carries away the snow from the mountains. Well, my boy, eat! I've nothing better to offer you. Accept with a good heart. Oh this candle, is it yours? Where are you taking it?"

"To the Basilica, Nonna, to put before the images of the saints Proto and Gianuario. It's come a long way, Nonna. It was given me by an old Sardinian woman who lives in Rome. She told me stories too, but not such nice ones as yours."

After the modest meal, Anania found a guide with whom he arranged for the ascent of the Gennargentu to-morrow. Then he went to the Basilica.

In the ancient court, under the tall whispering trees, on the broken stair, in the crumbling _loggia_, in the church itself, which smelt of damp like a tomb, everywhere there was silence and desolation. Anania put Aunt Varvara's candle on a dusty altar, then looked at the rude frescoes on the walls, at the stucco figures gilded with a melancholy light, at the rough images of Sardinian saints, at everything which once had moved him to wonder and to terror. He smiled; but languidly and sadly. He returned to the Court and saw, through an open window, the hat of a carabiniere and a pair of boots hung on the wall of a cell. In his memory resounded once more that air from the Gioconda--

"_A te questo rosario_--"

The smell of wax reached him. Where were the children, the companions of his infancy, the little birds savage and half naked which had animated the steps of the church? Anania had no wish to see them now, to make himself known to them; yet how tenderly did he remember the games played with them beneath these trees while the dead leaves were falling, falling like the feathers of dying birds.

A barefooted woman with an amphora on her head, passed at the far end of the court. Anania trembled, for the woman reminded him of his mother. Where was his mother? Why had he not dared, even though he had wished, to speak of her to the widow? Why had not the widow alluded to her old, ungrateful guest? To escape from these questions the young man went next to the Post Office, and sent a picture card to Margherita. Then he visited the Rector, and towards evening he walked along the road to the west, the road which looked down on the immensity of the valleys.

Seeing the Fonni women going to the fountain, straitened in their strange "_tunics_," he remembered his early love dreams; and how he had wished himself a herdsman and Margherita a peasant girl, delicate and graceful, but with the amphora on her head like some Pompeian damsel made in stucco. And he smiled again contrasting his romantic fancies with the rough disillusion which had awaited him among the wonders of the Basilica.

A glory of sunset spread itself over the heaven. It seemed an apocalyptic vision. The clouds painted a tragic scene: a burning plain, furrowed by lakes of gold and rivers of purple from whose depths rose bronze coloured mountains, edged with amber and pearly snow, severed by flaming apertures which seemed mouths of grottoes, sending up fountains of gilded blood. A battle of solar giants, of formidable denizens of the infinite, was in progress among these aerial mountains, in the profound grottoes of the bronze clouds. From the apertures flashed the gleam of arms carved in the metal of the sun; the blood poured in torrents, rolling into the lakes of molten gold, serpentining in rivers which seemed arrows, inundating the fiery plains of heaven.

His heart dancing with admiration and joy, Anania remained absorbed in contemplation of the magnificent spectacle, until the vision had fled and the shades of evening had drawn a violet pall over all things. Then he returned to the widow's house and drew a stool beside the hearth. Memory again assailed him. In the penumbra, while the old woman was preparing supper and talking in her dreary tones, he again saw Zuanne of the big ears busy with his chestnuts; and another figure behind silent and vague as a phantom.

"So they've killed all the Nuoro brigands?" said the widow, "but do you believe it will be long before new ones appear? You are deceived, my son. So long as there are men with hot burning blood in their veins, men clever for good or for evil, so long will there be brigands. It's true that just now they're no good--all towards, mere despicable thieves; but in my husband's time it was not like that! How brave they were then! so kind and so courageous. My husband once met a woman who was crying because----"

Anania was only moderately interested in Aunt Grathia's recollections. Other thoughts were passing through his brain.

"Look here," he said, when the widow had concluded the tale of the weeping woman, "have you never had any news of my mother?"

Aunt Grathia who was dexterously turning an omelet, made no reply. Anania waited. He thought, "She knows something!" and in spite of himself became agitated. After a short silence the widow said--

"If you know nothing of her, why should I? Now, my son, come over to this chair and eat with a good heart."

Anania sat in front of the basket which the widow had placed on a chair and began to eat.

"I knew nothing of her for a long time," he said, confiding in the old woman as he had never been able to confide in any one before; "but now I believe I have traced her. After leaving me, she went away from Sardinia. A man I know saw her in Rome--dressed in town fashion."

"Did he really see her?" asked Aunt Grathia quickly. "Did he speak to her?"

"More than that," replied the young man bitterly. "After that nothing more was heard of her. But this year, in Rome, I made enquiries at the _Questura_, and learned that she's living there, in Rome, under another name; but she's reformed, yes, quite reformed. She's working and living honestly."

Aunt Grathia had come nearer to her guest, her hollow eyes widened, she stooped and stretched out her hands as if to gather up the young man's words. He had grown calm thinking of Maria Obinu; when he said, "she has reformed" he felt happy, sure at that moment he was not deceiving himself in thinking Maria was _she_.

"Are you certain, really certain?" asked the old woman bewildered.

"Yes. Yes--s--s!" he cried, imitating his sweetheart in the joyous almost singing pronounciation of the word. "Why I've been living in her house for two whole months!"

He turned to drink, looking at the wine through the rosy light of the rude iron lamp. It was thick and he scarcely tasted it. Then he rubbed his mouth and seeing that the old grey napkin was torn, he put it over his face and looked through a hole, saying:

"Do you remember the night Zuanne and I dressed up? I put this very cloth over my head like this----But what's the matter?" he exclaimed, suddenly throwing the napkin down and changing his tone. His face had turned pale.

He saw that the widow's countenance, generally cadaverous and expressionless, had become strongly animated, showing first surprise then pity. He understood at once he was himself the object of her pity. The edifice of his dream fell into ruin, broken to atoms for all time.

"_Nonna_! Aunt Grathia! you know!" he cried apprehensively, his nervous fingers stretching the old cloth to its full length.

"Eat your supper. Then we'll talk. No, finish eating!" said the old woman, recovering herself. "Don't you like the wine?"

But Anania sprang to his feet. "Speak!" he cried.

"Ah, Holy Lord! what do you expect me to say?" lamented the old woman, sighing and mumbling her lips; "why don't you go on with your supper? We can have a talk afterwards."

He no longer heard or saw.

"Speak! speak! I see you know. Where is she? Is she alive? Is she dead? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?"

He repeated the question twenty times, roaming automatically round the kitchen, turning and returning, stretching the cloth, putting it over his face. He seemed almost mad, angry rather than grieved.

"Hush! hush!" said the old woman going to his side. "I had supposed you knew. Yes--she's alive; but she's not the woman who has deceived you by pretending to be your mother."

"She didn't pretend, Nonna! It was my own fancy. She doesn't even know I thought it! Ah--then it's not she!" he added in a low voice, as much shocked as if till that moment he had been certain of his discovery.

"Go on!" he exclaimed. "Why are you keeping me on the rack? Why have you not alluded to her? Where is she? Where is she?"

"Perhaps she has never left Sardinia," said the widow, walking by his side. "Really I thought you knew and that you didn't think it mattered. I saw her this year, early in May. She came to Fonni for the Feast of the Martyrs, with a singer, a blind man, her lover. They had walked from Neoneli, a long way. She had malaria and was like an old woman of sixty. The blind man took a lot of money at the Feast, and after it was over he joined a company of beggars going to a feast in another part of the country. He left her behind. In June or July I heard she was harvesting in the _tancas_ of Mamojada. The fever was killing her. She was ill a long time in the _Cantoniera de su Gramene_, and she's there still."

Anania lifted his head and opened his arms with a gesture of despair.

"I--I saw her!" he cried. "I saw her! I saw her! Are you certain of all this?" he asked gazing hard at the old woman.

"Quite certain. Why should I invent it?"

"Tell me," he insisted, "is she _really_ there? I saw a woman with fever--yellow--earthy--with eyes like a cat's. She was at the window. Are you sure it was she? Are you sure?"

"Quite sure, I tell you. That was certainly she."

"I have seen her!" he repeated, holding his head with his hands, furious with himself that he had been so stupidly deceived; that he had sought his mother beyond the mountains and the seas, while she was trailing her dishonour and her wretchedness close to his side; that he had been so moved by strangers, yet had felt no heart beat upon seeing the face of that beggar, that living misery, framed by the gloomy window of the Cantoniera.

What then was man? What the human heart? What was life, intelligence, thought?

Ah yes! now he could answer these questions which so often had risen idly to his lips! Now that Destiny was beating with inexorable, funereal wings, shaking all things with sudden storm, now at last he knew what man was, what life, what the human heart! Deceit! deceit! deceit!

Aunt Grathia pushed a stool to Anania and made the unhappy lad sit down. Then she crouched beside him, took his hand, and long watched him compassionately.

"How cold you are, my child!" said the widow, pressing his hand. "Cry, my son. It will do you good."

Anania escaped from the grip of the hard, old fingers.

"I'm not a child!" he said irritated. "Why should I cry?"

"It would do you good, son! Oh yes, I know how much good it does one to weep. When the knock came to my door that terrible night, and a voice, which seemed the voice of Death himself, said to me, 'Woman, wait no longer,' I became a stone. For hours and hours I could not weep; and they were the worst of all hours for me. My heart in my breast had become red hot iron; it was burning me, burning me inside, tearing my breast with its sharp point. Then the Lord granted me tears, and the tears refreshed me in my grief as dew refreshes the rocks burnt by the sun. Have patience, my child. We are born to suffer, and what is this distress of yours in comparison with so many other sorrows?"

"But I am not suffering!" he protested. "I ought to have expected this. I was expecting it. I felt myself forced to come here by a mysterious power. A voice said to me, 'Go, go. You'll learn something there.' It's a blow of course. I was surprised--but that's all over. Never mind."

The widow still watched him. She saw his face ghastly, his lips pale and contracted. She shook her head. He continued--

"But why did no one tell me? There are some things one has a right to know. The driver of the coach, for instance--didn't he know?"

"Perhaps. She might have told you herself; but no, she's afraid of you. When she came here for the Feast--she and that wretched blind man who made her lead him about and then deserted her--no one here recognised her. She seemed so old, she was so ragged, so stupefied by poverty and fears. I hardly knew her myself. The blind man had some horrid nickname for her. But she confided in me--only in me. She told me her whole sad story, and conjured me never to tell you a word about her. She's afraid of you."

"Why is she afraid?"

"She's afraid you'll put her in prison, because she deserted you. She's afraid of her brothers too; they have the railway _Cantoniera_ at Iglesias."

"And her father?" asked Anania, who had never thought of these distant kinsmen.

"Her father has been dead many years. He died cursing her; at least that's what she said. She says it was his curse which destroyed her."

"I see. She must be mad. But what has she been about all these years? How has she lived? Why didn't she get some work?"

He seemed calm, almost indifferent. His questions seemed a matter of curiosity, faint curiosity, which allowed his thought to return to other affairs. Indeed at that moment he was thinking what he must do. If he was sorry for his mother's miserable condition, he was still more distressed by the consequences which would follow from his recovery of her. The widow raised her finger and said solemnly--

"It's all in the hands of God. Son, it's a terrible rod which goads us and pushes us. Didn't my husband intend to work and to die in his bed, praise the Lord! Well, it was just the same with your mother! Of course she would have liked to work and to live honestly. But the rod pushed her on."

Anania's face blazed; again he wrung his fingers, suffocated by shame.

"It's all over for me!" he thought. "What horror! What wretchedness, what shame! Go on," he said aloud, "tell me all. How did she support herself. I wish to know all--all! Do you understand? I wish to die of shame before----That will do!" he said shaking his head as if to drive from him all cowardly apprehensions. "Tell me."

Aunt Grathia looked at him with infinite pity. She would have liked to take him in her arms, to rock him and sing him to sleep with a childish lullaby. Instead she must torture him. But--God's will be done! We are born to suffer, and no one dies of grief!

She tried, however, to soften somewhat the bitter cup which God was giving to the poor boy through her hands.

"I can't tell you exactly how she supported herself, nor what she did. I just know that after leaving you and in doing that she did the best thing she could, for otherwise you'd never have had a father, nor all that good luck----"

"Aunt Grathia, don't drive me mad!" he interrupted.

"Hush! Patience! Don't be disowning the Lord's bounty, my son. Suppose you had stayed here--what would have become of you? You might have ended vilely--as a monk, a begging monk, a cowardly monk! Ah--don't let us speak of it! Better to die than to end like that! And your mother would have followed her own life just the same, because it was her destiny. Even here, before she went away, do you suppose she was a saint? No, she wasn't. Well! well! it was her destiny. For the last part of the time she was here, she had a _carabiniere_ for a lover. He was transferred to Nuraminis a few days before she took you away. After she had left you--at least so the poor thing told me--she walked on foot to Nuraminis, hiding by day, walking at night, half across Sardinia. She joined the _carabiniere_ and they lived together for a while. He had promised to marry her; but on the contrary he got tired, ill-treated her, beat, impoverished, finally abandoned her. She followed her fated path. She told me, and poor dear, she cried so as to move the stones!--she told me she was always looking for work, but never could get any. I tell you, it's Fate! It's Fate which robs some poor creatures of work, just as it robs others of reason, health, goodness. It's useless for the man or the woman to rebel. No! on to the death, on to the crack of doom, but follow the thread which draws you! Well! at last she did do a little better. She joined the blind singer, and they lived for two years as man and wife. She led him about, to the country feasts, from one place to another. They always went on foot, sometimes alone, sometimes in companies of other wandering beggars. The blind man sang songs of his own composition. He had a lovely voice. Here he sang a song which made everybody cry. It was called "_The Death of the King_." The Municipio gave him twenty _lire_, and the Rector had him to dinner. In the three days he was here he got more than twenty crowns. The wretch! He too had promised to marry the poor soul; but instead, when he found she was ill and couldn't drag herself further, he also deserted her, fearing he'd have to spend money in getting her cured. They went away together from here to the Feast of St Elia; there the horrid man met a company of mendicants from Campidano, going to the Feast at Gallura. He went off with them leaving the poor creature, sick to death with fever, in a shepherd's hut. Afterwards as I told you, she got a little better and went here and there harvesting, lavender-picking, until the fever broke her down completely. But a few days ago she sent to tell me she was better----"

A shudder, vainly repressed, ran through Anania's limbs. What wretchedness, what shame, what grief! What iniquity, human and divine! None of the sad and blood-stained tales, related to him in his infancy by this same rough woman, had ever seemed so terrible as this, had ever made him tremble as did this.

Suddenly he remembered a thought which had shot through him one sweet evening long ago, in the silence of the pine forest, scarce broken by the song of the ticket-of-leave-man shepherd.

"Was she ever in prison?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so; once. Certain things were found in her room which had been taken from a country church by one of her friends. She was let off because she proved her ignorance of the matter."

"You are lying!" muttered Anania in a low hard voice. "Why can't you tell me the truth. She has been a thief also. Why don't you say it? Do you think it doesn't matter? Doesn't matter as much even as this?" he said, showing the tip of his little finger.

"What a nail, good God!" cried the old woman. "Why do you let your nail grow like that?"[22]

He did not answer, but sprang to his feet and walked up and down furiously. The widow did not move, and after a space he calmed himself. He stood before her, and said in a voice very quiet though bitter--