The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ashes, a Sardinian Story, by Grazia Deledda.

It was the night of Midsummer Eve. Olì came forth from the white-walled Cantoniera [1] on the Mamojada road, and hurried away across the fields. She was fifteen, well-grown and beautiful, with very large, very bright, feline eyes of greenish grey, and a sensuous mouth of which the cleft lower lip suggested two ripe cherries. She wore a red petticoat and stiff brocade bodice sustaining and defining her bosom; from the red cap tied under her prominent chin, issued two braids of glossy black hair twisted over her ears. This hair-dressing and the picturesque costume gave the girl an almost Oriental grace. Her fingers were heavily ringed, and she carried long streamers of scarlet ribbon, with which to "sign the flowers of St John," that is, to mark those bunches of mullein, thyme, and asphodel which she must pick to-morrow at dawn for the compounding of charms and drugs. True, even were the signing omitted, there was small danger of anyone's touching Olì's selected plants; the fields round the Cantoniera, where she lived with her father and her little brothers, were completely deserted. Only one tumble-down house was in sight, emerging from a field of corn like a rock out of a green lake.

Everywhere in the country round, the wild Sardinian spring [2] was on its death-bed; the flowers of the asphodel, the golden balls of the broom were dropping; the roses showed pale in the thickets, the grass was already yellow; a hot odour of hay perfumed the heavy air. The Milky Way and the distant splendour of the horizon, which seemed a band of far off sea, made the night clear as twilight. The dark blue heaven and its stars were reflected in the scanty waters of the river. On its bank, Olì found two of her little brothers looking for crickets.

"Then you won't see the heavens burst to-night. Good children on the night of St John see the heavens open, and then they can look into Paradise, and see the Lord, and the angels, and the Holy Spirit. What you'll see is a hobgoblin if you don't go straight back home!"

"All right," said the elder, impressed; and though the other protested, he allowed himself to be led away.

Olì, however, went on; beyond the river, beyond the path, beyond the dark copse of wild olive. Here and there she stooped over some plant, which she tied with her scarlet ribbons; then straightened herself and scanned the night with the sharp gaze of her cat-like eyes, her heart beating with anxiety, with fear, and with joy.

The fragrant night invited to love, and Olì was in love. She was fifteen, and on the excuse of "signing the flowers of St John," she was making her way to a love-tryst.

One night six months earlier a stranger had come to the Cantoniera to ask for some fire-kindling. He was a contadino or farm-labourer sent by the owner of the extensive fields round the tumble-down house, and had arrived for the sowing. He was young and tall, with long black curls and coal-black eyes so bright one could hardly look at them! Olì alone was not afraid to meet their gaze with her own fine eyes, which were never abashed by anyone.

The Cantoniere, a man, not old, though worn with hard work, poverty, and many troubles, received the young man kindly, gave him a flint, catechised him about his master, and invited him to look in whenever he liked. After this the farm-servant frequented the Cantoniera assiduously. He told stories to the children, and taught Olì where to look for the best mushrooms and edible herbs.

One day he took her to the ruined nuraghe[3] on the hill, half hidden by thickets of red-berried thorn trees, and told her that among the huge stones of the gigantic tomb there was a treasure hidden.

"And I know of several other hidden treasures," he said gravely, while Oh picked bunches of wild fennel; "I shall certainly manage to find one of them; and then——"

"Then what?" asked Olì half sceptical, raising her eyes, which reflected the green of the surrounding landscape.

"Then I will leave this place. If you will come with me, I'll take you to the continent. Oh, I know all about the continent! I'm not long home from my military service. I've been to Rome, to Calabria, to all sorts of places. Over there everything is splendid. If you'll come——"

Olì laughed softly. She was still a little ironical, but flattered and happy. Behind the ruin, hidden in the thicket, her two little brothers were whistling to lure a sparrow. No other human voice, no human step was heard in the whole green immensity. The young man's arm slipped round Olì's waist. He drew her to him and closed her eyes with kisses.

From that day the two young things loved each other fiercely, trusting the secret of their passion to the silent riverside thickets, to the dark hiding-places of the solitary nuraghes. All her life Olì had been oppressed by loneliness and poverty. She loved this man for all be represented to her imagination, for the wondrous things and places he had seen, for the town from which he had come, for the wealthy master he served, for the plans he had traced for the future. He loved Olì for her beauty and for the fire of her temperament. Both were thoughtless and without conscience. Primitive, impulsive, self-pleasing, they loved because life was exuberant in their bosoms, and enjoyment a necessity.

The girl's mother had, it seemed, been just such another ardent and fantastic woman.

"She was of well-to-do family," explained Olì, "and had titled relations. They wanted to marry her to an old man who had a great deal of land. My grandfather, my mother's father, was a poet. He could improvise three or four songs in one evening, and the songs were so beautiful that when he sang them in the street everybody got them by heart. Oh yes! my grandfather was a very great poet! I know some of his poetry myself. My mother taught it to me. Let me repeat some to you."

Olì recited a few verses in the dialect of Logudoro; then went on: "My mother's brother, Uncle Merziòro Desogos, used to do painting in the churches, and he carved pulpits. But at last he killed himself because he had got into prison. Yes, my mother's relations belonged to the nobility and were educated people. But she didn't choose to marry that rich old man! She had seen my father, who at that time was as handsome as a banner in a procession." She fell in love with him and they ran away together. I remember her saying, "My father has cast me off, but I don't care! Some folk love riches; I love my Micheli, and that's enough for me!"

One day the Cantoniere went to Nuoro the town, to buy wheat. He came back more melancholy even than usual.

"Olì, mind yourself. Olì!" he said, threatening his daughter with his finger, "bad luck to that farm-servant if he sets foot in here again! He has deceived us, even as to his name. He told us his name was Quirico; but it isn't, it's Anania. He comes from Argosolo. The people of Argosolo are a race of goshawks, of thieves and jail-birds! Mind yourself, young woman! He's a married man."

Olì wept, and her tears fell with the wheat into the great coffer of black wood. But scarcely was the coffer shut down and Uncle Micheli [4] gone away to his work, than the girl was off to her lover.

Anania had just completed his sowing and still carried his grain-bag. Blackbirds sang, swinging on the olive branches. Great white clouds made the blue of the sky more intense. All was sweetness, silence, oblivion.

"Listen," said the young man; "it's unfortunately true I have a wife—an old woman. They forced her upon me (as they tried to force that rich old man upon your mother), because I was poor and she had a great deal of money. What does it matter? She's quite old and will soon die. We are young, Olì, and I care for no one but you I If you give me up, it will kill me!"

"But what are we to do?" she asked; "my father will beat me if we go on loving each other."

"Have patience, my little lamb. My wife will die very soon. And even if she doesn't, I am sure to find the treasure and then we'll go off together to the continent."

Olì protested; wept. She had no great faith in the treasure, but she let the love-making continue.

The sowing season was over, but Anania still came frequently to the farm, to watch the corn coming up, to hoe, and to weed. At the hour of siesta he did not sleep, but amused himself pulling down the nuraghe. He said he wanted stones for a wall; really he was looking for the treasure.

"If it isn't here, then it's there, and I intend to find it," he said to Olì. "You know at Maras a labourer like me found a bundle of bars of gold. He didn't know they were gold and handed them over to the blacksmith. The idiot! I'd have known quick enough! Giants used to live in the nuraghes," he went on, "and they had all their utensils of gold. Even the nails in their shoes were gold. Oh! treasures can always be found if one looks for them! When I was in Rome I saw a place where they keep gold coins and things once hidden away by those old giants. In some parts of the world there are giants alive still, and they are so rich that their scythes and their ploughs are all made of silver."

He spoke seriously, his eyes shining with golden dreams. But he could not have told what exactly he intended to do with the treasure when he had found it. He looked no further than to the flight with Olì. Beyond that all was vague.

About Easter the girl herself had occasion to go to Nuoro. She sought information about Anania's wife, and learned that the woman was elderly but by no means old, and not rich at all.

"Well," he said, when Olì reproached him for having deceived her, "she's poor now, but when I married her she had money. After the wedding I had to go to my military service, and I got ill and spent a lot. My wife was ill too. Oh you don't know how expensive a long illness is! Besides, we lent money and couldn't get it back. And I'll tell you what I suspect! While I was away my wife sold some land and has hidden the money she got for it. There! I'll take my oath that's it!"

He spoke seriously, and again Olì believed. She believed because she wished to believe, and because Anania had got her into the habit of believing anything. He was carried away himself by his imaginations. For instance, in his master's kitchen-garden he found a big ring of reddish metal, and at once concluded it was gold.

"There must be a treasure here also!" he thought, and hurried to tell his new fancy to Olì.

Spring now reigned over the wild country. Elderflowers were reflected in the blue river; voluptuous fragrance rose from the warm grass. In the clear moonlit nights, so soft, so silent, it seemed as though the vibrating air were an intoxicating love-philtre. Olì roamed hither and thither, her eyes misty with passion. In the long luminous twilight, in the dazzling noons, when the distant mountains melted into the sky, her pensive look followed her little brothers, who, half naked and dark as bronze statuettes, made the meadows merry with their bird-like pipings; and she thought of the day when she must leave them to go forth with Anania. For she had seen the gold ring of his finding, and she was filled with hope, and her blood boiled with the poison of the spring.

"Olì!" called Anania from the depths of the thicket. She trembled, advanced cautiously, fell into the young man's arms. They seated themselves on the warm grass, beside bushes of pennyroyal and wild laurel which exhaled strong perfume.

"I was almost prevented coming!" said the youth; "the mistress has been brought to bed of a daughter; and my wife has gone up to help, and wanted me to stay at home. 'No,' I told her, 'I've got to pick the pennyroyal and the laurel to-night. Have you forgotten it's Midsummer Eve?' So here I am."

He fumbled at his breast, while Olì touched the laurel and asked what it was good for.

"Don't you know? Laurel gathered to-night is for medicine, and has other virtues too. If you strew leaves of laurel here and there round the wall of a vineyard or a sheepfold, no wild animal can get in to gnaw the grapes or to carry off the lambs."

"I want it for my master's vineyard; for the threshing-floor too, or the ants will steal the grain. Won't you come when I'm beating out the grain? There'll be lots of people: it's a holiday, and at night there'll be singing."

"How stupid of him! it's clear he doesn't know my wife. She's decrepit—worn out like these stones! Wherever have I put it?" said Anania, still fumbling.

"Ah, here it is! See, it's real silver!" He drew a packet from his arm hole. Olì opened it, touched the little cross, and asked anxiously—

She looked so pleased that Anania, who had found the cross in quite a different place, thought it best to leave her to her illusion.

"Yes, there in the garden. Who knows all the precious things there may be! I shall have a search at night."

"No, it belongs to any one who finds it," replied Anania, and as if to enforce his argument, he folded Olì in his arms and kissed her.

"When I find the treasure, then you'll come?" he asked, trembling. "Say you will, my flower! It's clear I must find it at once, for I can't go on living without you. When I look at my old wife, I'd like to die; but when I'm with you, Olì, then I want to live a thousand years. My flower!"

Olì listened, and she also trembled. Around them was deepest silence; the stars shone like pearls, like eyes smiling with love; ever sweeter on the air was the scent of the laurel.

"My wife must die very soon," said Anania; "what's the good of old people in the world? In a year we shall probably be married."

"San Giovanni grant it!" sighed Olì. "But it's wrong to wish any one's death. And now let me go home."

"Ah, stay a little longer!" he supplicated. "Why should you go so soon? What's to become of me without you?"

"Perhaps we'll see each other to-morrow morning. I shall be picking my flowers before sunrise. I'll make you a charm against temptations."

But he was not thinking about temptations. He knelt, clasping Olì in his arms, and began to cry.

"No, my flower, don't go! don't go! Stay a little longer, Olì, my little lamb! You are my life. See, I kiss the ground where you put your feet. Stay a little, or, indeed, indeed, I shall die!"

Not till autumn did Uncle Micheli perceive that his daughter had gone wrong. Then fierce anger overpowered this wearied and suffering man, who had known all the griefs of life except dishonour. That was unbearable. He took Olì by the arm, and cast her out. She wept, but Uncle Micheli was implacable. He had warned her a thousand times. He had trusted her. Had her lover been a free man he might have forgiven. But this—No! this, he could never pardon.

For some days Olì found shelter in the tumble-down house round which Anania had sown his corn. The little brothers brought her scraps of food, till Uncle Micheli found it out and beat them.

Now autumn was covering the heavens with great livid clouds; it rained ceaselessly; the thickets were blown by damp winds, or they glittered with cold hoar frost. Olì made her way to Nuoro to ask help from her lover. Perhaps he had a presentiment of her coming, for outside the town he met her. He was kind, he comforted her, he wrapped her in his own jacket; he took her to Fonni, a mountain village above Mamojada.

"Don't be frightened," said the young man; "I have a relation at Fonni, and you'll be all right with her. Trust me, my little lamb! I will never desert you."

So he took her to his kinswoman, a widow with a little boy of four. When Olì saw this child, dirty, ragged, all eyes and ears, she thought of her little brothers and she wept. Ah! who now would care for the little motherless ones? Who would bake their bread, or wash their little garments in the river? And whatever would become of her father, the poor widower, so feverish and unhappy? Ah, well——Olì cried for a day and a night. Then she raised her head and looked about her with darkened eyes.

Anania had gone away. The widow, pale and thin, with the face of a spectre framed by a yellow handkerchief, sat spinning before a wretched fire of twigs. All round was misery, rags, dirt. Great cobwebs hung trembling from the smoke-blackened tiled roof. A few sticks of wooden furniture gave scanty comfort. The boy with the big ears never spoke or laughed. He was already dressed in the costume of the place with a sheepskin cap. His only amusement was roasting chestnuts in the hot ashes.

"Have patience, daughter; it's the way of the world!" said Aunt Grathia the widow, not raising her eyes from her distaff. "Oh! you'll see far worse things if you live. We are born to suffer. When I was a girl I also laughed; then I cried; now both laughing and crying are over."

Outside, night was falling. It was bitter cold. The wind roared in the chimney with the voice of a stormy sea. In the murky brightness of the fire, the widow went on with her spinning, her mind busy with memory. Olì crouched on the ground, and she too remembered—the warm night of San Giovanni—the scent of the laurel—the light of the smiling stars. Little Zuanne's chestnuts burst among the ashes which strewed the hearth—the wind battered furiously at the door, like a monster scouring the night. After a long silence the widow again spoke.

"I also belong to a good family. This boy's father was called Zuanne. Sons, you know, should always have their father's name, so that they may grow up like them. Ah, yes! my husband was a very distinguished man. He was tall as a poplar tree. Look, there's his coat hanging against the wall."

Olì looked round, and there, on the earthen wall, she saw a long cloak of orbace,[5] among whose folds the spiders had woven their dusky veil.

"I shall never take it down," continued the widow, "not though I am dying of cold. My sons may wear it when they are as clever as their father."

"Well," said the widow, not changing her voice, but with some animation on her spectral countenance, "he was a robber. For ten years he was a robber—yes, ten. He took to the country a few months after our wedding. I used to go and visit him up there on the mountain of Gennargentu. He hunted eagles and vultures and strayed sheep. Every time I went to see him we used to roast a good haunch of mutton. We slept out of doors, in the wind, on the tops of the mountains. We covered ourselves with that cloak, and my husband's hands were always burning even when it snowed. He kept company with——"

"With whom?" asked Olì, forgetting her own troubles. The child was listening too, his great ears pricked till he seemed a hare listening to the voice of a distant fox.

"Oh, well, with other robbers. They were all most intelligent men, sharp, active, ready for anything, ready especially for death. Do you suppose brigands are bad folk? You are wrong, my dear sister. They are men who live by their wits, that's all. My husband used to say, 'In the old days men made war on each other; that's over now, but they still need to fight. They organize thefts, highway robberies, bardanas,[6] not to do harm, but to make use of their ability and strength.'"

"A fine sort of ability!" said Olì; "why don't they knock their heads against a wall if they've nothing to do?"

"You don't understand, my daughter," said the widow, proud and sad; "it's all a matter of Fate. If you like, I will tell you how my husband made himself a brigand." She said "made himself a brigand" with great dignity.

"Yes, tell me," answered Olì, shuddering a little. The shadows had grown denser; the wind howled with a continuous thunder rumble; they seemed in a hurricane-pervaded forest. The words, the cadaverous face of the woman in that black surrounding, now and then momently illuminated by a flash of livid flame, excited Olì to a childish voluptuousness of terror. She seemed involved in one of those fearful legends which Anania used to relate for her little brothers; and she herself, she with her infinite wretchedness, was a part of the hideous story.

"We had been married a few months. We were well off, my dear. We had corn, potatoes, chestnuts, vines, land, houses, a dog, and a horse. My husband was a landowner. But often he had nothing to do, and then he got bored. He used to say, 'I must set up a shop, I can't stand this idleness. When I'm idle I get bad thoughts.' But we hadn't capital enough to start a shop. Then one day a friend said to him, 'Zuanne Atonzu, will you join in a bardana? There'll be a lot of us, and a clever fellow as guide, and we're going to a distant village to attack the house of a man who has three chests of money and silver. The man who's to show the way came here to Capo di Sopra [7] on purpose to tell us of it and to suggest a bard. We've got to cross mountains, rivers, and forests. Come with us.' My husband told me of the invitation. 'Well,' I said, 'what do you want with the rich man's silver?' He answered, 'I snap my fingers at the trifle I may get of the booty; but I like the idea of mountains and forests and new things to see. I'm curious to know how they manage these bardanas, and there'll be plenty of other fellows going just to show their pluck and to pass the time. Isn't it worse to have me sit in the tavern and get drunk?' I cried, I implored," said the widow, twisting her thread with her skinny finger and following the motion of her spindle with hollow eyes, "I supplicated, but he went. He gave out he was gone to Cagliari on business; but he went on the bardana. I stayed at home, for I was in the family way. Afterwards he told me all about it. There were about sixty of them, and they travelled in little groups, meeting at appointed places to consult. Corleddu was the captain, a Goliath, strong as the lightning, with eyes of fire and his chest covered with red hair. For the first few days there was rain, hurricanes were unchained, torrents rose in flood, one of the company was struck by a thunderbolt. They marched at night by torchlight. At last they reached a forest near the mountain of the Seven Brothers. There the Captain said, 'Brethren, the signs of the sky are not propitious. The affair will go badly. Moreover, I smell treachery. I believe our guide is a spy. Let us disband; and put the thing off for another time.' Many approved, but Pilatu Barras, the robber from Orani, (his nose had been shot off and lie wore a silver one) got up and said, 'Brothers in God' (he always used that expression), 'I can't have this. Rain is no sign that heaven is against us. On the contrary annoyances are good, and teach the young to put off softness. If the guide betrays us, we'll kill him. Come on, donkeys!' Corleddu shook his head, and another cried out, 'Pilatu can't smell!' Then Barras shouted, 'Brothers in God, it is dogs who smell, not Christians. My nose is of silver and can't smell, but yours is a bone of the dead! What I say is that if we disband, we smell of cowardice. There are young men among us on their first expedition. If you send them away, they'll go back to sit by the ashes of their hearths, idle, and good for nothing. Come on, donkeys!' They went on. Corleddu was right, the guide was a traitor. Soldiers were waiting in the rich man's house. There was a fight and many of the robbers were wounded; others were recognized, one was killed. Lest he should be recognized, his comrades stripped him, cut off his head, and buried it and his clothes far away in the forest. My husband was recognized, so after that he had to become a bandit. I lost my baby."

The widow had stopped spinning, her spindle fell on her lap and she spread out her hands to the fire. Olì shuddered with cold, with horror, with a fearful pleasure. How dreadful, how poetic, was all this the widow was telling! Olì had always imagined robbers were wicked. No, they were brave, wise, pushed by destiny; just as she herself was being pushed——

"Now we'll have supper!" said the widow, rousing herself. She got up, lighted a rude lamp of blackened iron, and prepared the meal; potatoes, always potatoes, for two days Olì had eaten nothing but potatoes, and a couple of chestnuts.

"Anania is your relation?" asked the girl, after they had eaten for some time in silence.

"Yes, a distant relation of my husband's. He's from Argosolo, not Fonni. But," said the widow, shaking her head contemptuously, "Anania's not at all like the blessed one! My man would have hung himself from an oak tree sooner than do this vile action of Anania's, my poor sister!"

Olì burst into tears. She retired to the chimney corner, and when little Zuanne seated himself near her, she drew his head to her knee, and held one of his little hard, dirty hands, thinking of her lost little brothers.

"They are like little naked birds," she cried, "left in the nest when their mother is shot and doesn't come back. Oh, who will feed them? The little one can't even undress himself!"

"Then he can sleep in his clothes," said the widow grimly; "what are you crying for, idiot? You should have thought of all that before; it's useless now. You must be patient. The Lord God doesn't forget even the birds in the nest."

"What a storm! What a storm!" lamented Olì; then asked suddenly, "Do you believe in ghosts, Aunt Grathia?"

"I?" said the widow, putting out the lamp and resuming her spindle, "I believe neither in the dead nor in the living."

Zuanne lifted his head and said softly, "I'm here," then hid his face again in Olì's lap.

"After that I had a son. His name is Fidele, and he's eight years old and has gone to work at a sheepfold. Then I had this one. We are very poor now, sister. My husband wasn't dishonest, you know; he had lived on his own property, and that's why we had to sell everything except just this house."

"How did he die?" asked the girl, caressing the head of the apparently sleeping child.

"How did he die? Oh, on one of his expeditions. He never got into prison," said the widow, proudly, "though the police were after him like hunters after a boar. He was clever at hiding, and when the police were looking for him on the mountains, he would be spending the night here—yes, here, at this hearth where you are sitting now."

The child looked up, his two great ears suddenly on fire; then sank again on Olì's lap.

"Yes, I tell you, here. One day, two years ago, he learned that a patrol was searching the hills for him, and he sent to tell me, 'While they are busy at that I'm going to take part in a job; on the way back, I'll stop with you, little wife. Look out for me.' I looked out three nights, four. I span a whole hank of black wool."

"Don't you understand? On a bardana, of course!" cried the widow impatiently. Then she dropped her voice. "I waited four nights, but I was anxious. Every step I heard set my heart beating. The fourth night passed. My heart had shrunk, till it was as little as an almond. Then I heard a beating at the door. I opened. 'Woman, wait no longer,' said a man with a mask over his face. And he gave me my husband's cloak. Ah——" the widow gave a sigh which was almost a groan. Then she was silent.

Olì watched her a long time. Suddenly her gaze was attracted to the frightened gaze of the little Zuanne, whose hands, hard and brown as the claws of a bird, were clenching themselves, and fingering the wall.

But when she was in bed, alone in a grey, cold garret, round whose roof the wind screeched ever louder, searching and hammering the rafters, Olì thought of the widow's story; of the mask who had said, 'Woman, wait no more'; of the long black cloak hanging on the wall; of the child who had seen the dead man. And she thought of the little naked birds in the deserted nest; of her poor little neglected brothers; of Anania's treasure; of midsummer night; and of her dead mother. She was afraid—she was sad, so sad that though she believed herself doomed to hell, she longed to die.

[1]The man in charge of a portion of the high road is called the Cantoniere, and lives in the Cantoniera.

[2]Primavera: we should call it, in June, early summer.

[3]Prehistoric ruin.

[4]In Sardinia the older persons are given the titles of Uncle and Aunt.

[5]Coarse woollen stuff.

[6]Brigandage committed by a large number in concert.

[7]The province of Sassari.

Olì's son was born at Fonni in the springtime. He was called Anania by the advice of his godmother, the bandit's widow. He passed his infancy at Fonni, and in his imagination never forgot that strange village perched on the mountain crest, like a slumbering vulture.

During the long winter, Fonni was all snow and fog; but with the spring grass invaded even the steep village street, where beetles slept among the big, sun-warmed cobblestones, and ants ran confidingly in and out of their holes. The meagre brown houses with their roofs of scandule (wooden tiles overlapping each other like fish-scales), showed on the street side narrow black doorways, balconies of rotten wood, little stairs often vine-garlanded. The Basilica of the Martyrs, with its picturesque belfry, rose among the green oaks of the old Convent court, dominating the whole little town and carved against a sky of crystalline blue. Fabulous beauty reigned on all sides. The tall mountains of the Gennargentu, their luminous summits outlined as it were with silver, crowned the great Barbagia valley, which in a succession of immense green shells rose to the hill-tops; among these Fonni with its scaled roofs and stony streets, defied the thunder and the winds. The district was in winter almost deserted, for its numerous population of wandering shepherds (men strong as the blast, and astute as foxes) descended with their flocks to the warm southern plains. But in the fine weather, a continuous coming and going of horses, dogs, shepherds, old and young, animated the mountain paths. Zuanne, the widow's son, at eleven years old was already a herdsman. He led goats belonging to different persons to pasture on the far side of the wilderness which surrounded the village. At dawn, he passed down the street whistling, and the goats knowing the sound came leaping out of the houses to follow him. Towards evening he brought them back to the entrance of the village; from there the intelligent creatures went off by themselves to the houses of their masters. Zuanne of the big ears, was generally accompanied by his friend and brother, the little Anania. They were barefoot and wore jackets and cloaks of orbace, long breeches of coarse cloth, sheepskin caps. Anania had watering eyes and a perpetual cold in his head. With tongue or finger he rubbed his dirty face into strange patterns of moustachios and whiskers.

While the goats fed among the rocks, green with eglantine and aromatic herbs, the two children roamed about. They descended to the road and threw stones at the passers-by; they penetrated into potato plantations where strong wary women were at work; they sought wind-falls in the great damp shadows of the gigantic walnut trees. Zuanne was tall and lithe: Anania stronger and for his age bolder. They were both story-tellers of extraordinary ingenuity, and were excited by strange fancies. Zuanne was always talking of his father, boasting of him, resolving to follow his example, and to avenge his memory. Anania meant to be a soldier.

"I'll catch you," he said calmly, and Zuanne the brigand replied with alacrity, "I'll murder you."

They often played at banditti, armed with guns of cane. They had a suitable den, and Anania the soldier never succeeded in discovering the robber, though the latter cried Cuckoo from the thicket in which he crouched. A real cuckoo would answer from the distance, and often the children, forgetting their murderous intent, would go off in search of the melancholy bird—a search no more successful than the search for the robber. When they seemed quite close to the mysterious voice, it would sob further off, and still further. Then the little brothers in ill luck, buried in the grass, or outstretched on the mossy rock, would punish the cuckoo with questions. Zuanne being shy only said—

and the bird would call seven times when he ought to have answered ten. Nevertheless Anania ventured bolder demands.

This time the cuckoo gave a reasonable answer, and the children in the great silence, broken only by the melancholy oracle, went on with questions not entirely merry.

Once Anania went away by himself. He walked along the high road, up and up; then crossed the copses and climbed among the granite boulders, traversing long hollows covered with the little violet flowers of the heather. At last he reached the top of what seemed an immense mountain. The sun had vanished, but he fancied there were great fires flaming behind the purple hills of the horizon, and sending up burning light over the whole sky. Anania was frightened by the red heaven; by the height he had reached, and the terrible silence which surrounded him. He thought of Zuanne's father and looked round in a panic. Ah! though he meant to be a soldier he was mortally afraid of robbers! and the long black cloak on the sooty wall at home gave him spasms of terror. Almost head over heels he fled from his peak and was glad when he heard Zuanne calling him. Zuanne's great wish was to see the brigands; so Anania told him where he had been and described the black mountains and the flaming sky; then added that he had seen them. The widow's son was first contemptuous, then excited. He looked at Anania with respect, as thoughtful and taciturn they returned home together, followed by the goats whose little bells tinkled plaintively in the silence of the twilight.

When he was not running beside Zuanne, little Anania passed the day in the great court of the church of the Martyrs. He played with the sons of the wax-candle-maker, who had his workshop close by. The quiet Courtyard was shadowed by great trees, and surrounded by an arcade falling into ruin. A little stone stair led to the church, on the simple facade of which a cross was painted. Anania and the candlemaker's children spent hours on the little stair, playing with the pebbles and making little candles of chalk. A yawning carabiniere [8] used to stand at the window of the ancient convent; in the cells military boots and tunics were visible; and a voice might be heard singing in falsetto with a Neapolitan accent—

Some monk—one of the few left in the damp and decadent spot—dirty, tattered, with broken sandals, would pass through the court mumbling his prayers in dialect. Sometimes the soldier at the window, the friar on the staircase, amused themselves talking to the children. The carabiniere would turn sharp to Anania and ask news of his mother.

He gave the message to Olì. Though he had once seen her talking to the soldier, she was angry and boxed his ears. She told him not to go back to the courtyard; but of course he disobeyed as he could not live without either Zuanne or the wax-candlemaker's children.

Except on Sunday, and on the Feast of the Martyrs in spring, sad solitude reigned in the great sunshiny court, in the ruined arcades which smelt of wax, under the big walnut tree, which to Anania seemed taller than the Gennargentu, in the Basilica where the pictures and stucco ornaments were perishing of neglect. Yet in his after life the boy remembered with nostalgic sweetness that deserted spot; and the oats which in spring used to come up between the stones, and the rusty leaves of the walnut tree falling in autumn like the feathers of a dying bird. Zuanne who was devoured with longing to play in the courtyard, and who was bored when Anania deserted him, was jealous of the candlemaker's children, and did his best to keep his friend away from them.

"I want you to-morrow," he said to the younger boy, while they roasted chestnuts in the ashes; "I've got a hare's nest to show you. She has such a lot of little ones and they're as small as your fingers! They're quite naked, with long ears. Eh! their ears are as long as the devil's!" he ended, drawing on his invention. Anania went in search of the leverets, and of course didn't find them. Zuanne swore he had seen them, that they must have run away, that it showed Anania's folly in not having looked for them sooner.

"You waste all your time with them," he said scornfully; "well, they can make wax hares for you! I'd have caught the whole nestful of the real ones, if I hadn't been waiting to show them to you. Well, now we'll look for a crow's nest."

The little goatherd did all he could to amuse Anania, but the young child found the autumn mists cold on the mountains, and he stayed among the houses. In those days he saw little of his mother and treasured up few remembrances of her. She was always out. She worked by the day in fields or houses. She dug potatoes and came home late, worn out, livid with cold, famished. Anania's father had not been to Fonni for a long time; the boy had no recollection of ever having seen him.

It was the bandit's widow who to a certain extent mothered the poor little love-child, and of her he retained pleasant memories. The widow had rocked him and hushed him to sleep with the melancholy wail of strange dirges. She washed his head, she cut his nails, she blew his nose violently. Every evening she sat spinning by the fire and telling the heroic deeds of her bandit. The children listened greedily; but Olì no longer cared for the stories and often went away to lie down on her bed in the garret. Anania's sleeping place was at her feet. Often when he went up he found his mother already asleep, but cold as ice; and he tried to warm her feet with his own little hot ones. More than once he heard her sob in the silence of the night, but he was too much in awe of her to ask her why.

He consulted Zuanne on the subject, and the little goatherd thought it his duty to impart certain information to his friend.

"You ought to know," he said, "that you're a bastard; your father isn't married to your mother. There are lots of people like that, you know," he added consolingly.

"What's he like?" asked Anania, frowning under an impulse of hatred towards this unknown father who didn't come to see him. This was probably what his mother cried about at night.

"Well," said Zuanne, cudgelling his memory, "he's tall and very handsome with eyes like fireflies. He has a soldier's coat."

"At Nuoro, Nuoro is a great city which can be seen from the Gennargentu. I know the Monsignore at Nuoro, because he christened me."

"I don't believe it. You haven't been there. I remember you haven't been there!"

After this Anania went willingly with Zuanne even when it was cold. He kept asking questions about his father and about Nuoro and the road to that city. At night he dreamed of the road, and saw a city with so many, many churches, with such big, big houses, and mountains higher than even the Gennargentu.

One day late in November Olì went to Nuoro for the feast of Le Grazie. When she came back she had a quarrel with Aunt Grathia. Indeed latterly she had been quarrelling with every one and slapping the children. Anania heard her crying the whole night through, and though she had beaten him yesterday he was full of pity. He would have liked to say—

"Never mind, mother dear. Zuanne says if he was like me that he'd go to Nuoro the moment he was grown up and find his father and make him come to see us. But I am ready to go before I'm grown up. Let me go, dear mother!" But he dared not utter a word.

It was still night when Olì rose, went to the kitchen, came back, went down a second time, returned with a bundle.

She helped him to dress; then put a chain round his neck from which hung a little bag of green brocade strongly sewn.[9]

"It's a ricetta, a receipt which will bring you good fortune. An old monk I met on the road gave it to me. Mind you always wear it on your chest, next your skin. Don't ever lose it."

"Perhaps!" said Olì. "Well, promise you'll never lose the little bag. Swear it."

Olì took the bundle, clasped the child's hand in hers, and led him to the kitchen. There she gave him a bowl of coffee and a piece of bread. Then she threw an old sack over his shoulders and they went out.

The cold was intense. Fog filled the valley and hid the immense cloister of mountains. Here and there a snow-dad summit emerged like a silvery cloud. Monte Spada, a huge block of bronze, now and then appeared for a moment through the moving veil of vapour. Anania and his mother crossed the deserted street and stepped out into the mist. They began to descend the high road which went down lower and lower into a distance full of mystery. Anania's little heart beat; for the grey, damp road, watched over by the outermost houses of Fonni, whose scaled roofs seemed black wings plucked of their feathers, this road which continuously descended towards an unknown, cloud-filled abyss—was the road to Nuoro.

Mother and son walked fast. The boy often had to run, but he did not tire. He was used to running, and the lower they descended the more excited he felt, hot and eager as a bird. More than once he asked—

Once she answered, "To pick chestnuts." Another time, "Into the country." Another, "You will see." Anania danced, ran, stumbled, rolled. Now and then he felt his chest for the charm. The fog was lifting. High up the sky appeared, a watery blue, furrowed, as it were, by long streaks of white lead. The mountains showed livid through the mist. At last a ray of pale sunshine illuminated the little church of Gonare, which on the top of a pyramidal mountain stood up against a background of leaden cloud.

"Is that where we're going?" asked Anania, pointing to a wood of chestnut trees. Drops hung from the leaves and from the bursting thorny fruit. A little bird cried in the silence of the hour and the place.

Anania resumed his delightful running. Never in any excursion had he pushed so far. The continued descent, the changed nature, the grass slopes, the moss-grown walls, the spinnies of hazel, the red berries on the thorn trees, the little chirruping birds, all seemed to him new and glorious.

The fog vanished. A triumphant sun cleared the mountains. The clouds over Monte Gonare had become a beautiful golden pink. The little church was so distinct against them that it seemed near.

"But where the devil is this place?" asked little Anania, opening his hands with a gesture of great contempt.

He began, however, to feel a little pain in his knees. He did not run so fast. He walked by Olì's side and chattered. But the woman, the bundle on her head, her face white, circles round her eyes, hardly heeded him and made absent answers.

"Shall we come back to-night? Why didn't you let me tell Zuanne? Is the wood far off? Is it at Mamojada?"

"When is the festa at Mamojada? Is it true that Zuanne has been at Nuoro? This is the road to Nuoro, I know that. And it takes ten hours to walk to Nuoro. Have you been to Nuoro? When is the festa at Nuoro?"

"It's over. It was the other day. Would you like to go to Nuoro?" asked Olì, rousing herself.

"You know your father is at Nuoro?" said Olì, guessing his thought. "Would you like to be with him?"

What was he thinking when he said that? His mother did not ask. She only said—

Towards noon they halted beside a garden. A woman, with her petticoats sewn between her legs like pantaloons, was hoeing vigorously. A white cat sometimes followed the woman, sometimes darted after a green lizard which now appeared now vanished among the stones of the wall. Ever afterwards Anania remembered these details. The day had become warm, the sky blue. The mountains were grey as if dried by the sun; the dark woods flecked with light. The sun had warmed the grass and waked sparkles in the streamlets.

Olì sat on the ground, opened her bundle, took out some bread, and called Anania who had climbed on the wall to watch the woman and the cat. Just then the post-carriage, which was coming down from Fonni, appeared at the turn of the road. It was driven by a big, red-haired man with a moustache and puffy cheeks which made him seem perpetually laughing.

Anania still on the wall, peeped into the coach. It was empty, and he cried, "Take me in it, Uncle Batusta, take me!"

"If you must know, we're going to Nuoro," said Olì eating as she spoke; "it would be a charity to give us a lift. We're as tired as donkeys!"

"Listen," said the big man, "go on to the other side of Mamojada, I have to stop there. After that I'll pick you up."

He kept his promise. Presently the wayfarers were sitting beside him on the box seat. He began to gossip with Olì. Anania was tired, but he felt acute pleasure in his position between his mother and this big man with the long whip, in the fresh fields and blue sky framed by the hood of the vehicle, in the swift trot of the horses. The greater mountains had now all disappeared; and the child thought of how Zuanne would envy him this long journey into a new district. "What a lot I shall tell him when I go home," he thought; "I'll say to him, 'I have ridden in a coach and you haven't.'"

"If you wish to know," she answered him, "I'm going to service. I've arranged with a good mistress. It's hopeless living at Fonni. The widow of Zuanne Atonzu has turned me out."

"That's not true," thought Anania. Why did his mother lie? Why didn't she say the truth that she was going to Nuoro to find her boy's father? Well, she probably had her reasons for lying. Anania did not bother himself, especially as he was sleepy.

"Who's at the Cantoniera now?" asked Olì suddenly. "Is my father there still?"

She sighed heavily. The vehicle stopped for a moment then rolled on. Anania was asleep.

At Nuoro, he became aware of delusions. Was this the city of his dreams? Well, yes, the houses were bigger than the houses at Fonni, but not at all so big as he had expected. The mountains, sombre against the violet sky, were small, quite ridiculous. The streets, however, seemed wide; and the children in them were very impressive, for in speech and in garments they were quite unlike the children of Fonni.

Till evening, mother and son wandered about Nuoro. At last they went into a church. Many people were there, the altar flamed with candles, sweet singing was blended with a sound still sweeter which came the boy knew not whence. Ah! that was something really beautiful! Anania thought of Zuanne and the pleasure of describing his adventures.

"Don't move till I come back. I'm going to find the friend at whose house we shall sleep."

He remained alone at the bottom of the church. It was alarming, but he encouraged himself looking at the people, the candles, the flowers, the saints. Also he had the charm hidden on his breast. That was a comfort. Suddenly he remembered his father. Where was he? Why ever didn't they go and find him?

Olì soon returned. She waited till the service was over, then took her boy's hand and led him out by a side door. They walked down several streets. At last they got beyond the houses. It was late, it was cold; Anania was hungry and thirsty. He felt sad, and thought of Aunt Grathia's hearth, of the roast chestnuts, and of Zuanne's chatter. They were in a lane bordered by hedges; the mountains, which seemed so small to the child, were visible.

"Look here," said Olì, and her voice shook, "did you notice the last house with the big open door?"

"Your father's in there. You want to see him, don't you? Turn back and go in at the big door. You'll find another door straight before you. It will be open. Go in by that door, and look about you. It's a press where they make oil. A tall man with his sleeves turned up and his head bare is walking behind the horse. That is your father."

Olì shuddered. "I'll come presently. You must go in first. When you see him, say, 'I am the son of Olì Derios!' Do you understand? Come along!"

They turned back. Anania felt his mother's hand shake and he heard her teeth chatter. They stopped at the big door; she bent down, arranged the charm round the child's neck and kissed him. "Go on," she said, giving him a push.

Anania entered. He saw the other door, faintly illuminated, and went on. He found himself in a black, black place, lighted only by a red furnace upon which a cauldron was seething. A black horse went round and round, turning a large, heavy, very oily wheel in a sort of round vat. A tall man, bareheaded, with his sleeves turned up and all his clothes stained black with oil, followed the horse, stirring the crushed olives in the vat with a wooden pole. Two other men moved backwards and forwards, pushing a screw fixed in a press, from which flowed the black and steaming oil. Before the fire sat a boy with a red cap.

Anania, frightened, but encouraged by the thought of his amulet, did not speak. He gazed about him, bewildered, and expecting his mother to come in. The man with the pole looked at him with shining eyes, then asked—

Could this be his father? Anania looked at him shyly, then pronounced the words his mother had taught him.

The two men who were turning the screw stopped suddenly and one of them cried—

The tall man threw his pole down, approached the child, stared, shook him and asked—

The oil-miller rushed out, followed by the boy with the red cap. But Olì had disappeared; and nothing more was heard of her.

Learning what had occurred, Aunt Tatàna, the oil-miller's wife, came to the mill. She was a woman not young, but still beautiful, fair and plump, with soft, warm brown eyes surrounded by little wrinkles. On her upper lip was a very faint golden moustache. Her manner was quiet, but cheerful and kind. She put her hands on Anania's shoulders, bent down and examined him.

"Don't cry, poor little man!" she said gently. "Mother will come in a few minutes! Be quiet, you!" she added, turning to the men and the boy, who were inclined to meddle.

Anania wept inconsolably and answered no questions. The boy kept staring at him with wicked blue eyes and a mocking smile on his round rosy face.

"Where has she gone? Isn't she coming? Where shall I find her?" sobbed the deserted child desperately. Something must have happened to his mother; she had been frightened; where could she be? Why didn't she come? And this horrible, oily, rough man—was this his father?

But the coaxing and gentle words of Aunt Tatàna comforted him a little. He stopped crying, and rubbed the tears all over his cheeks in his usual way; then thought of flight.

The woman, the oil-miller, the two men, and the boy were all talking loud. They swore, laughed, disputed.

"He's your own child. He's just like you!" said the woman, turning to her husband. But the miller cried—

"Have you no heart? Holy Saint Catharine! can men be so cruel?" said Aunt Tatàna, jesting but serious. "Ah, Anania, that's you all over! You are always yourself!"

He insisted, so she said, temporising, "Well, well, go for the police to-morrow. At present finish your work; and remember the words of King Solomon about leaving the evening wrath till the morning."

The three men returned to their work; but while the miller stirred the olives under the wheel, he muttered and swore, and the others laughed. The woman said quietly—

"You are making bad worse. You have only yourself to blame. By Saint Catharine it's I who ought to be offended! Remember, Anania, that God doesn't leave wages till Saturday!"

"Hush! little son!" she said, "we'll set it all right to-morrow. There! don't you know little birds always leave the nest when they get wings?"

"But did you know of this little bird's existence?" laughed one of the men; and the boy crowded on Anania and said teasingly, "Why has your mother run away? What sort of a woman is she?"

"Bustianeddu!" thundered the miller, "if you don't go this moment I'll kick you out!"

"You can tell him the sort of woman she is!" cried one of the men, and the other laughed till his sides shook and he neglected the screw of the press.

Aunt Tatàna was fondling the child, examining his poor clothes and asking him questions. He answered in an uncertain, lamentable voice interrupted by sobs.

"Poor little one! Poor little dear! Little bird without wings! without wings and without a nest!" said the kind soul, "be quiet, my little pet. Aren't you rather hungry? Come! we'll go in and Aunt Tatàna will give you some nice supper, and then we'll put you to bed, with the guardian angel; and to-morrow it will all come right!"

After this promise he allowed himself to be led to a little house beside the olive-mill. Here she gave him white bread and cheese, and an egg and a pear. Never had Anania supped so well! The pear worked wonders, added to Aunt Tatàna's sweet words and motherly caresses.

While he ate, Aunt Tatàna moved about preparing her husband's supper. She talked to Anania and gave him good counsels which she said she had herself been taught by King Solomon and Holy Saint Catharine.

"Well, come in," said the woman, opening the door. "Come in, poor orphan, you also are without a mother! What's Uncle Anania doing? Is he angry still?"

"Oh I suppose so!" said Bustianeddu, sitting down and gnawing the core of the stranger child's pear.

"They've all arrived," he went on, discoursing and gesticulating like a grown person; "my father, and Maestro Pane, and Uncle Pera, and that liar Franziscu Carchide, and Aunt Corredda, every single one of them——"

"They're saying you'll have to adopt the kid. Uncle Pera laughs and says, who will Uncle Anania leave his goods to, if he has no child? Uncle Anania ran at him with the pole. Then they all laughed like mad."

Aunt Tatàna's interest was overpowering. Telling Bustianeddu to mind the child, she went back to the mill.

"My father has 100 lire in the chest of drawers, and I know where he keeps the key. We live close here, and have some land for which we pay taxes. One day the Commissioner came and seized the barley. What's in that saucepan making that cra—cra—cra—? Don't you think it's burning? I'd better look in." (he lifted the cover) "The devil! Potatoes! I thought it was something better. I'm going to taste them!"

With two fingers he hooked out a boiling lump, blew on it and ate it up. Then he took another.

"We know how to make macaroni, my father and I," said the imperturbable youngster, "do you know? And tomato sauce——"

He was thinking of his mother, his mind besieged by sad questions. Where had she gone? Why hadn't she come into the mill? Why had she gone away and forgotten him? Now that he had eaten and was warm, Anania would have liked to run away. To run away and look for his mother. To run away and find his mother. This idea took firm roots and would not leave him.

After a while Aunt Tatàna came back. She brought with her a ragged woman with uncertain step, a red nose, and a large hanging mouth; a horrible-looking person.

"And this—this is the little bird?" she said stammering and looking lovingly at the foundling. "Let me see your little face, to bless you! By God's truth, he's as pretty as a star! And the man doesn't want him? Well Tatàna Atonzu, it's for you to pick him up—to pick him up like a sugar-plum——"

"Aunt Nanna," said the incorrigible Bustianeddu, pretending to drain a glass, "have you had enough for to-day?"

"Eh? Eh? What? What do you mean? What are you doing here, you little fly, you p—poor little orphan? Go home to your b—bed."

"You'd better go to bed yourself," said Aunt Tatàna, "take yourselves off, both of you."

She gave the woman a gentle push, but before going away Nanna begged for a drop of something. Bustianeddu offered her water; she snatched at the glass eagerly, but after one sip shook her head and set it down. Then she moved unsteadily away. Aunt Tatàna sent Bustianeddu after her, and shut the door.

She took him to a big room behind the kitchen and undressed him, coaxing him with sweet words.

"Don't be frightened, my little one. Mother will come to-morrow; or else we'll go together and look for her. Do you know how to cross yourself? Can you say your Credo? Yes, every night we ought to say the Credo! I'll teach it to you, and some nice prayers; especially one by San Pasquale which will prepare you for the hour of death. Ah! I see you have a Rezetta! What a pretty one! That is nice! San Giovanni will take care of you. Yes, he was once a little naked boy like you, though afterwards he baptized our Lord Jesus. Go to sleep, my pet. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen."

Anania found himself in a great bed with red pillows. Aunt Tatàna covered him up; then she went away, leaving him in the dark. He held his amulet very tight, shut his eyes, and did not cry. However he could not sleep.

To-morrow! To-morrow! But oh dear! how many years had passed since they had started from Fonni? What ever would Zuanne think? Strange fancies, confused thoughts passed through the little mind; among them all, the figure of his mother remained distinct. Where had she gone? Was she cold? To-morrow he would see her again. To-morrow. If they didn't take him to find her he would go by himself. To-morrow——

Anania heard the olive-miller come in. He disputed with his wife. He cried, "I don't want the child! I don't want him!"

Then there was silence. But, suddenly, someone opened the door, came into the room, walked on tip-toe to the bed, cautiously lifted the quilt. A bristly moustache touched Anania's cheek. He was pretending to be asleep, but he opened his eyes, a tiny, tiny bit, and saw that the person who had kissed him was his father!

A few minutes later Aunt Tatàna came in and lay down in the great bed beside Anania. He heard her praying a long time, whispering and sighing—then he fell asleep.

[8]Carabinieri—The country police.

[9]La Rezetta, an amulet containing prayers written on paper, flowers gathered on St John's night, relics, etc.

III

No one reported to the police that a child had been deserted. Olì was able to disappear unhindered. It was never exactly known whither she had gone. Someone said he had seen her on the steamer from Sardinia to Civita Vecchia. Later, a Fonni shopkeeper, who had been to the continent on business, declared he had met Olì in Rome, smartly dressed and accompanied by other women of obvious character.

These things were told at the olive-mill, the child being present. He listened eagerly. Like some little wild animal which has apparently been tamed, he continually meditated escape. At Fonni, while living with his mother, he had thought of running away to find his father; now he was with his father and he thought of running away to look for Olì. She might be far off, she might be beyond the sea—no matter; he felt capable of finding her by himself. Not that he loved her! No, he could not love one who had given him more blows than kisses, one who had deserted him! Instinctively he felt that was shameful. But then neither did he love his father. Anania could not forget his first impression, the terror and repulsion with which the dark, oily, angry man had inspired him, the man who had kissed him in secret while before the world he stormed at and insulted him.

But Aunt Tatàna—ah, she loved him! She washed and brushed and dressed him; she taught him prayers and the precepts of King Solomon. She took him to church, and gave him nice things to eat, and let him sleep with her. Little by little Anania gave her his affection. In a short time he was another boy. He grew fat and gave himself airs; he had forgotten his rough Fonni costume, and wore a nice little suit of dark fustian. He acquired the Nuoro accent, and was knowing and sharp like Bustianeddu.

Yet his little heart remained unchanged. It could not change. Dreams of flight, of adventure, of wondrous accidents, were blended in his childish soul with nostalgic yearning for his native place, for the people and the things he knew, for the liberty he had enjoyed, for the unkind mother who had become to him an object of pity and of shame. Though he was better off, the little wild creature suffered under the dislocation of all his habits. He wanted he knew not what. He thought he wanted his mother—because everyone had a mother! because to have lost his mother was not so much grief as humiliation. He understood that his mother could not be with the olive-miller, because he had another wife; well, then, he would rather be left with his mother. He belonged to her; perhaps also he instinctively felt her the weaker and became her champion.

As time passed, all these thoughts, these instincts grew fainter, but they did not disappear from his little soul; so also her physical image was transformed in his memory, never obliterated.

One day he learned something unexpected about Bustianeddu, whose friendship he had so far endured rather than courted.

"My mother's not dead," said this boy, almost boastingly, "she's away on the continent like yours. She ran away one time when my father was in prison. When I'm grown up, I'll go and find her. I swear it. I've an uncle on the continent too. He's a schoolmaster. He wrote that he'd seen my mother in a street and was going to beat her, but the people held him off. It was my uncle gave me this red cap."

This story was quite comforting to Anania, and drew him into intimacy with Bustianeddu. For years they were companions, at the olive-mill, in the streets, beside Aunt Tatàna's fire. Bustianeddu was much the age of Zuanne, Anania's lost brother. At bottom he was warmhearted and generous. He said he attended school; but often the schoolmaster asked the boy's father for his invisible pupil. The father was a small dealer in skins and fleeces; when these inquiries reached him, he tied his son up with a rope of undressed leather, locked him in, and bade him learn his lessons. Like older criminals, Bustianeddu came out of prison more reckless and cunning than before. But his father was often away from home; and then the boy, weighted with responsibility, became very serious. He swept the house, washed the linen, cooked the dinner. Anania was delighted to help him. In return Bustianeddu gave him advice and taught him many things good and evil. They were often at the olive-mill where "Big Anania" (so called to distinguish him from his son) worked for his master the rich Signor Daniele Carboni. Big Anania called Signor Carboni "Master," because he had served him for years—as olive-miller, field-labourer, gardener, vine-dresser, according to season; he was, however, very independent, and his work though well paid was not without its risks.

On one side of the olive-mill was the courtyard through which Anania had entered that first night; on the other a garden which sloped down to the high road. It was a beautiful garden, partly orchard, partly wild, with rocky boulders among which straggled bushes of white thorn, Indian figs, almond trees, and peaches. There was one oak tree with rugged stem, harbouring nests of great locusts, caterpillars, and all sorts of birds. The garden belonged to Signor Carboni, and was the envy of all the boys in the neighbourhood. The old gardener, Uncle Pera Sa Gattu (the cat), carried a cudgel to keep them out. From this garden the strong, beautiful Nuoro girls could be seen going to the fountain, amphoras on their heads, like the women of the Bible. Uncle Pera ogled them while he sowed his peas and beans, putting three peas in each hole, and shouting to scare the sparrows.

Anania and Bustianeddu watched him from the mill window, anxious themselves to get into the sunny orchard, and waiting till the gardener should take himself off. Uncle Pera, a dried-up little man, clean-shaven, his face the colour of brick-dust, was too fond of his vegetables to desert them often. Not till nightfall did he go up to the mill to warm himself and to gossip.

This was a good olive year and the press was at work night and day. Two ettolitri of olives produced about two litri of oil. Near the door stood a tin for oil to feed the lamps of this or that Madonna; pious persons poured into it a few drops from each load of olives. All round the press the floor was crowded with barrels and tubs, with sacks of black, shining olives, with heaps of steaming refuse. The whole place was dark, hot, dirty. The cauldron was always boiling, the wheel turned by the big bay horse was always in motion, always distilling oil. The smell of the husks, though too strong, was not exactly disagreeable. The furnace sent out a fine heat, and round it in the long chilly evenings were gathered all the coldest persons of the neighbourhood. Beside the miller and his staff, five or six people came regularly. Efès Cau, once a man of means, now reduced by drink to extreme poverty, slept almost nightly at the mill, contaminating the corner where he lay, to the great annoyance of cleaner persons.

Anania and Bustianeddu sat in a corner on a heap of hot husks, amused by the talk of their elders, delighted by the absurdities of the drunken Efès.

Uncle Pera offered him wine; but Franziscu Carchide, the handsome young shoemaker, interposed.

Anania and Bustianeddu laughed till their sides ached, squatting on the husks like a pair of chickens.

"To prick him, of course. Then he'll dance with a vengeance. I've brought the pins."

The sot was still dancing, singing, reeling, stretching his hand to the glass. The people and the children laughed.

"Aren't you ashamed?" she said, seizing Efès by the arm; "don't you see all these beggars, these filthy persons are mocking you? And what are they laughing at me for? I've been out working to-day. Good Lord, how I have worked! Ah, Efès, Efès! have you forgotten how rich your house used to be? Your mother had gold buttons as big as my fist. Your house was like a church, so clean, so full of fine things. If you had kept from the drink, everyone would have treasured you like a sugar plum. Now you're a laughing-stock, like a dancing bear. What are they laughing at now? By the Lord, they must be all drunk! Come, miller, spare me a drop of oil to eat with my supper. Your wife is a saint, miller, but upon my word you are a devil. When are you going to find that treasure you talk about?"

Meanwhile Efès, seated on a sack, wept, thinking of his mother and the rich home of his youth. Carchide strove to console him with another glass, but Efès wept on, even while he drank.

A farmer from a neighbouring village, and Bustianeddu's father, a young man with blue eyes and red beard, conspired together to make Nanna drunk. She told scandalous stories of Uncle Pera, and Uncle Pera swore at the two men who worked the screw of the olive press, and told them they were lazy good-for-nothings.

Maestro Pane, the humpbacked carpenter, who wore his grey moustache at one side only of his toothless mouth, sat under the window beating his fist on his knee and talking very loud. No one, however, listened, for he was in the habit of talking to himself.

"Yes, that old gardener waits every morning till the girl comes down to the fountain. Then he calls her in, promising to give her some lettuce——"

"Well, what harm am I saying? I say that when she comes in for the lettuce you teach her the Ave Maria."

They all laughed, even little Anania, though he could not imagine why Uncle Pera should teach the Ave Maria by force to the girl who was going to the fountain.

That night when Anania was safe in Aunt Tatàna's big bed he could not sleep, but turned and twisted as if pins were pricking him.

"What's the matter, child?" asked Aunt Tatàna in her gentle way, "have you the stomachache?"

"Holy Saint Catharine!" sighed the good woman, "how wicked boys are nowadays! Suppose someone put pins in your bed? Would you like it? No? Wouldn't you? Then you are more wicked than Efès. All people in the world are wicked, my little lamb, but we must have pity on one another. If we don't pity each other we shall be like the fishes in the sea which devour their brothers. King Solomon said no one must judge but God. Do you understand?"

Anania thought of his mother, his mother who had been so wicked and had deserted him; and he felt sad—so sad!

One day in March, Bustianeddu invited Anania to dine with him. The skin-dealer was away on his business, and the boy, after two days' imprisonment for truancy, was alone at home. On his right cheek was the mark of a heavy blow administered by his irate parent.

"They want to make a scholar of me," he said to Anania, spreading out his hands like a man discussing some matter of importance, "but I don't intend to be a scholar. I intend to be a pastry-cook. Why shouldn't I?"

"Because they think it disgraceful!" said the other, drawling the word contemptuously, "they think learning a trade is disgraceful when one might be a scholar. That's what my relations say. But I've got a joke ready for them! Just you wait a bit."

He had prepared macaroni; at least he gave this name to certain lumps, greasy, and hard as almonds, seasoned with dried tomatoes. The boys ate in company with a grey cat, which snatched morsels from the dish with his paw, and ate them furtively in a corner.

"How clever he is!" said Anania, following the creature with his eyes; "our cat has been stolen!"

"Lots of ours have been stolen. They disappear and we don't know what becomes of them."

"All the cats in the place disappear. What do the people who take the poor things do with them?"

"They roast them. Cat is good, you know; just like hare. On the continent they sell cats as hares. So my father says."

Bustianeddu thought the moment had come for telling his plans. "I can't stay here," he said pompously. "I intend to go away. I'll find my mother and be a pastry-cook. If you like, you may come with me."

"We'll take the hundred lire which are in that chest of drawers. If you like, we'll take them now. Only we must hide them for a while, for if we set out at once my father will guess we've got them. We'll wait till the cold weather's over. Then we'll go. Come here."

He led Anania to a dirty room where was great confusion of evil smelling lamb's skins. He found a key in a hiding-place and opened a drawer with it. The drawer contained a red note for a hundred lire, some silver and a few smaller notes. The little thieves took the red note, shut the drawer and put back the key in its place.

"Now you keep it," said Bustianeddu, "and when it's dark we'll hide it down the hole of the oak tree in the garden behind the mill. Then we'll wait."

Before he had time to object, Anania found the note thrust into his bosom, and rubbing against his precious amulet. He passed a day of intolerable anxiety; fevered with remorse and terror, hope and the wildest of projects.

To escape! to escape! How and whither he knew not, but his dream was to come true. He was sick with alarm and joy. A hundred seemed a treasure inexhaustible; but for the present he felt himself guilty of a grave crime, and the hour which was to deliver him from the stolen property seemed to be never coming.

It was by no means the first time the boys had trespassed in Uncle Pera's garden; it was easy to jump down from the window of the unused mill stable. But never had they ventured in at night and it was some time before they could screw up their courage for the deed. The evening was clear and cold. A full moon rose behind the black crags of Orthobene and flooded the garden with gold. The two children, flattening their noses against the window pane, heard a long despairing wail, a human or superhuman lament.

"Whatever's that?" said Anania; "it must be a devil! I won't go. I'm frightened."

"Then stay here, silly. It's only a cat!" said Bustianeddu scornfully, "I'm going. I'll hide the money in the oak, where Uncle Pera won't think of looking. Then I'll come back. You stay here and keep watch. If any danger comes, whistle."

What this danger might be the two friends did not know, but the mere imagination sufficed to make the adventure delightful; the fantastic moonlight, even the long drawn lamentation of the cat, added to its flavour. Bustianeddu jumped down into the orchard, Anania stayed at the window, all eyes and ears, trembling a little with fear. Hardly had his companion vanished in the direction of the oak tree, when two black shadows passed close to the window. Anania shuddered, whistled faintly, and crouched to conceal himself. What spasms of alarm and strange enjoyment did he not feel. How ever would Bustianeddu escape? What was actually happening down there in the dark? Oh! the lament of the torn-cat was more horrible than ever! It ended in a wild and lacerating shriek; then ceased. Silence. What mystery! What horror! Anania's heart was bursting in his bosom. What had befallen his friend? Had he been seized? arrested? He would be taken off to prison, and Anania himself would have his part in the woeful punishment!

"I didn't hear you at all. But I did hear two men coming. I hid under the cabbages. Who do you suppose they were? Uncle Pera and Maestro Pane. What do you suppose they were doing? They were snaring cats. The caterwauler got caught and Uncle Pera killed him with his stick. Maestro Pane put the beast under his cloak and said quite jolly, 'What a fat one!' 'Not so bad,' said Uncle Pera, 'the last was as thin as a tooth-pick.' Then they went away."

"When they go in they'll roast him. Then they'll have supper. Now we know what becomes of our cats. They snare 'em—those two. It's a mercy they didn't see me."

Anania was not offended. He shut the window and they went back to the olive-mill. The usual scene was in progress. Efès, leaning against the wall was singing his accustomed song:—

"——the Sindaco was a friend of my father's when we were rich," said the handsome young man whose family had always been in the direst poverty; "when I arrived he was there to meet me. He invited me to his house. Damn those rich folk! Thirty men-servants, if you please, and seven women. We crossed two courts, one within the other; very high walls, iron gates, the window all barred——"

"What do you know about it?" asked Carchide scornfully; "at their father's death the Syndic and his brothers weighed out their gold by the pound. The Syndic's wife has eight tancas[10] in a row—all watered by streams; with more than a hundred fountains. They say his father had found a treasure. The King of Spain hid more than 100,000 gold ducats there at the time he was making war on Eleonora of Arborea, and the Syndic's father found it."

"Ah, ha!" said the olive-miller, leaning on his black pole while a shiver of excitement ran through him.

"Those are what I call rich men," continued Carchide; "here at Nuoro you're all snoozers."

"My master is wealthy," protested the miller, "he's got more in one corner of a field than your scrubby Syndic in all his tancas together."

"I like that!" said the young man with a gesture of scorn, "you don't know what you're talking about!"

The young shoemaker and the miller were near blows, but their quarrel was interrupted by Efès Cau falling into a fit. He sank on the heap of husks, twisted, writhed, wriggled like a worm, his eyes rolling, his face convulsed.

Anania fled to a corner screaming with terror, but Bustianeddu was all curiosity and he joined the persons who tried to restrain the poor wretch. Presently Efès returned to himself and sat up, still trembling and glaring.

"Who—who knocked me down? Why did you strike me? Am I not enough punished by God without your interfering?" Then he began to cry.

They laid him down again and he huddled himself up and called on his mother and dead sister.

Anania watched; pitying, but still terrified. He would have liked to help, but could not restrain his disgust; the man had once been rich—now he was a heap of stinking rags flung on the refuse like an unclean thing.

Bustianeddu had run for Aunt Tatàna. She came, leaned over the sufferer, touched him, spoke to him kindly, put a sack under his head.

"He must have some broth," she said; "Ah! this sin of his! this sin! Run, little son," she went on, turning to Anania, "run to the Signor padrone, and beg a little soup for Efès Cau. Look! do you see the result of sin? There, take this bowl and run!"

Anania went gladly, Bustianeddu accompanying him. The padrone's house was at no great distance, and the boy had often been sent there to fetch fodder, lamp-oil, and other trifles.

The streets were lighted in patches by the moon. Groups of peasants went by, singing wild and melancholy choruses. Before Signor Carboni's white house, there was an enclosed square court with high walls. Entrance was through a large red door. The boys hammered loudly. At last the door opened and Anania handed in the bowl, explaining the sad case of Efès Cau.

"Go to the devil, Maria Iscorronca,[11]" said Bustianeddu; "we don't want your dirty broth!"

"Little animal, I'll pay you out!" said the girl chasing him into the street. Bustianeddu scampered off, but Anania made his own way into the moonlit court.

"What is it? What do those boys want?" asked a faint little voice from the shadow near the kitchen-door.

Anania went forward. "It's only me!" he said, "Efès Cau is fearfully bad. He's at the mill, and Mother wants the mistress to send him a cup of soup."

The servant who had failed to catch Bustianeddu, now made an attack upon Anania. But the little girl who had said "Come in," sprang to the rescue of the boy from the mill.

"Let him alone. What harm has he done? Go and fetch him the soup at once—this minute!" said the young lady, dragging the maid by her skirt.

This protection, this piping-tone of authority, this plump, rosy little person dressed in blue woollen, with an important little turned up nose, very round cheeks, eyes shining in the moonlight between two curls of auburn hair—pleased Anania immensely. He recognized the padrone's daughter Margherita Carboni, known by sight to all the children who frequented the olive-mill. Once or twice Margherita had handed the barley or the lamp-oil to Anania when he had been sent for them. He often saw her in the orchard garden, and sometimes her father had brought her to the mill. Never had he imagined that this rosy young lady with the superb air, could be so affable and pleasant.

"He had his dinner here—in this very courtyard," she said very seriously, "he seemed perfectly well."

"It's because he drinks;" said Anania also very serious, "he twisted about like a cat!"

Then Anania's face grew red; he had suddenly remembered the torn cat which Uncle Pera had caught in the snare, and that reminded him of the hundred lire stolen and hidden in the oak tree in the garden. Stolen! The hundred lire stolen! Whatever would Margherita Carboni say, if she knew that he, Anania, the son of the olive-miller, the foundling, the dependent with whom the little lady was deigning to be so pleasant and affable—had stolen a hundred lire and that these hundred lire were at this moment hidden in her own garden! A thief! He was a thief; and he had thieved an enormous sum. Now he perceived the full shame of his evil deed. Now he felt humiliation, grief, remorse.

"Like a cat?" echoed Margherita setting her teeth and twisting her little nose; "dear me! dear me! It would be better he died."

The maid came back, bringing the soup. Anania could not say another word. He took the bowl and moved away carrying it carefully. He was near crying and when he came up with Bustianeddu at the turn of the street, he repeated the words "It would be better he died."

"Who? Is the broth hot? I'm going to taste," said Bustianeddu, putting his face to the bowl. Anania was furious.

"Get away! You're wicked. You'll get like Efès Cau! What did you steal that money for? It's a mortal sin, to steal. Go and get the money and put it back in the drawer."

"The money is my father's, and you're a ninny. Well! I'll go away alone, alone," replied Bustianeddu energetically.

"All right, go, and never come back," said Anania, "but I shall tell—Aunt Tatàna!" He was afraid to call her his mother again.

"Sneak!" burst out Bustianeddu doubling his fist; "if you tell I'll kill you like a lizard. I'll smash your teeth with a stone. I'll gouge out your eyes!"

Anania still afraid for the soup, bent his shoulders to receive the violence of his friend, but he did not withdraw the threat of telling Aunt Tatàna.

"What devil did you meet in that courtyard," continued the other furiously, "what did that horrid maid say to you? Speak!"

"You're a bastard anyhow! That's what you are! Well I shall go off at once, with the money, and without you."

He went away running, leaving Anania overwhelmed with grief. A thief, a bastard, a foundling, and now left behind by his friend. It was too much, too much! He began to cry and his tears fell into the soup.

"When, when shall I be able to go?" he sobbed, "when shall I be able to find her?"

"When I'm grown up," he answered himself, more cheerfully, "for the present—it can't be helped."

Having given the soup to Aunt Tatàna, he went to the stable window. Silence. No one was to be seen, nothing was to be heard, in the great garden, damp and moonlit. The mountains showed faintly blue against the vaporous heaven. All was silence and peace. Suddenly from the mill came the voice of Bustianeddu.

"Then he hasn't gone? he hasn't taken the money? He hasn't been into the garden? Suppose I go myself?"

But his courage was not equal to this. He went into the mill and hovered round Aunt Tatàna who was ministering to Efès. She asked him her usual question. "What's the matter with you? Have you the stomachache?"

"Jesus! Jesus! Holy Saint Catharine!" cried the good woman when Anania had made his confession, "what has happened to the world? Even the little birds, even the chickens in the egg, go wrong!"

Anania never knew the means by which Aunt Tatàna persuaded Bustianeddu to restore the stolen money. But ever after the friends were on strained terms. They slanged each other and fought about every trifle.

The winter passed; but the olive press was at work even in April, for never had there been such abundance of olives. At last the day came when Anania the elder shut down the press, and went into the country to look after his master's wheat. He took the little boy with him, having intentions of making him an agriculturist. Anania liked to be useful. He carried the implements and the provision wallet proudly and ran by his father's side all day. The cornfields extended over a wide undulating plain, across which two tall pine-trees, voiceful as torrents, threw long shadows. It was a sweet and melancholy landscape, bare of trees, here and there spread with isolated vines. The human voice lost itself echoless, as if swallowed up by the lonely murmur of the pines, the thick foliage of which seemed to assimilate the grey blue colour of the far mountains.

While his father worked his hoe, bending over the transparent green of the young wheat, Anania wandered about the naked and melancholy fields, crying with the birds, hunting for herbs and mushrooms. Sometimes the father looking up, saw him in the distance, and his heart tightened; for the place, the occupation, the child's small figure, all reminded him of Olì, of her little brothers, of their sin, of all the love and the happiness they had enjoyed together. Where was Olì? Who could tell? She was lost, she had vanished like the birds of the fields. Well—so much the worse for her. Anania the olive-miller thought he was doing all anyone could expect, in bringing up the child. If ever he found the treasure of his dreams, he would put the boy to school. At least he would make a farmer of him. What more could he do? What about the men who didn't acknowledge their children, who instead of taking them home and bringing them up like Christians, left them to misery and an evil life? Yes, some quite rich men, gentlemen, behaved like that. Yes, even his master, even Signor Carboni. Thus "big Anania" consoled himself; yet still the oppression of sadness remained in his heart.

Looking out over the distance he thought he saw the nuraghe near Olì's old home. At meal-times, or during the midday rest, when they stretched themselves under the sounding pine-trees, he questioned his son about his life at Fonni. Anania was shy with his father and seldom dared to meet his eyes; but once pushed into the path of recollection, he chattered willingly, abandoning himself to the homesick pleasure of telling about the past. He remembered everything, the village, the widow's house and her stories, Zuanne of the big ears, the carabiniere, the friars, the convent court, the chestnuts, the goats, the mountains, the candle factory. But in spite of the miller's suggestions he spoke little of his mother.

"Oh, no. He said to me, 'Tell your mother to come here. I want to talk to her.'"

He sighed. He was relieved hearing she had not gone to talk to the carabiniere. Yes; he was still fond of her. He still remembered her clear and burning eyes; he remembered her little brothers; he remembered her father so sorrowful and so poor. But what could he do? Had he been free he'd have married her. As it was, he had to desert her. It was vain to think any more about it. They finished their frugal meal; then he said to the child:

"Run down there to that fig tree, look and you'll see a very very old house. Root about in the ground there. Perhaps you'll find something!"

The boy sped away, glad to leave the grave, toil-stained man. And the father thought:

"Innocents find treasures easily. If we could find a treasure, then I'd hand over a good lot to Olì, and if my wife were to die, I'd marry her. It was I who made her go wrong."

But Anania found nothing. Towards evening, father and son went slowly home, following the broad white road, the depth of which was flooded with twilight gold. Aunt Tatàna had hot supper waiting for them and a fire crackling on the dean swept hearth. She blew Anania's nose, washed his eyes, told her husband the events of the day.

Nanna had tumbled into the fire, Efès had a new pair of shoes, Uncle Pera had beaten a boy. Signor Carboni had been to the mill to look at the horse.

"That's all the work he has done. What does the padrone expect? Even animals are flesh and blood."

After supper the olive-miller had forgotten all about Olì and her woes. He went to the tavern. Aunt Tatàna got her distaff, and told stories to the son of her adoption. Bustianeddu came to listen also.

"Once upon a time there was a king with seven golden eyes on his forehead like stars;" and so forth.

Or she told the story of Marieddu and the Hobgoblin. Marieddu had escaped from the Hobgoblin's house. "She ran and ran, all the time dropping nails which as fast as she dropped them began to multiply. They multiplied until they filled the whole plain. Uncle Hobgoblin followed her, followed her, but he never could catch her up because the nails kept sticking into his feet."

Dear! what shudders of delight this story of Marieddu gave the two children! What a difference between the dark cottage, the figure, the stories of the widow of Fonni, and the dear kitchen, the warmth, the sweet face and the enchanting legends of Aunt Tatàna. Yet there were times when Anania was bored. Or at least he did not experience the wild emotion which the widow's narratives had awaked in him. Perhaps it was because the good Zuanne, the beloved brother, was not there and in his place was Bustianeddu, who was so naughty and so cruel, who pinched him and called him names even when people were listening and in spite of Aunt Tatàna's admonitions.

One evening Bustianeddu called him "bastard" in the hearing of Margherita Carboni, who had come with her servant bringing a message to the miller. Aunt Tatàna pushed Bustianeddu away, and silenced him, but it was too late. Margherita had heard, and Anania felt unspeakable distress. Aunt Tatàna got bread and honey and set him and Margherita to eat it together; she gave none to Bustianeddu. But what was the good of bread and honey, when he had been dubbed "bastard" before Margherita Carboni? The little girl was dressed in green; her stockings were violet, and round her neck was a scarf of vivid rose colour. It lent colour to her soft cheeks and brought out the blue of her shining eyes. That night Anania saw her in his dreams; lovely, and coloured like the rainbow. Even in his dream he felt the grief of having been called "bastard" before her.

That year Easter was not till the end of April. The olive miller fulfilled his Easter duty, and his confessor bade him legitimize his son. At Easter too, Anania, now eight years old, was confirmed. Signor Carboni was his godfather. The confirmation was a great event not only for the boy but for the whole place. Monsignore Demartis, the beautiful and imposing bishop, convened everybody to the Cathedral and publicly bestowed the Chrism on a hundred children. Through the open doors, which seemed enormous to Anania, spring, with its sunshine and fragrance, penetrated into the church. It was crowded with women in their purple dresses, with fine ladies, and wondering children. Signor Carboni, stout, florid, with blue eyes and reddish hair, wore a velvet waist-coat crossed by a huge gold chain. He was greeted, saluted, sought after by all the most conspicuous persons, by the peasants both male and female, by the fine ladies and the crowding children. Anania was proud and happy to have such a godfather. True, Signor Carboni was standing sponsor for seventeen others, but that did not detract from the importance of this singular honour done to each of the eighteen.

After the ceremony the eighteen children with their respective parents adjourned to their godfather's house, and Anania was able to admire Margherita's drawing-room of which he had heard marvels. It was a great room with red walls and huge eighteenth century chairs; cabinets adorned with wax flowers under glass shades, with marble dishes of fruit, and plates with slices of cheese and sausage, all of marble. Liqueurs, coffee, cakes and pastry were handed round, and the lovely Signora Carboni who had deep dimples in her cheeks, black hair drawn very tight on her temples, and a pretty muslin gown with flounces and little spots of pink and blue, was most amiable with everybody and kissed all the eighteen god-children, giving each of them a present.

Anania long remembered these details. He remembered too, how ardently and how vainly he had wished that Margherita would come and look at his new clothes, which were of yellow fustian, and as stiff as the skin of the devil. And he remembered that Signora Cecita Carboni had kissed him, and with her jewelled hand had tapped lightly on his little head (cropped horrible close) and said to the miller:

"Never mind, gossip," replied Big Anania, carrying on the agreeable jest of this lady who was not exactly his fellow sponsor, "this chicken's feathers were as thick as a wood——"

"I'm so glad. Believe me, it's only legitimate sons who are the support of their father in his old age."

"What demon eyes this young highlander has! Well, youngster, what are you hiding them for? Laughing at me, eh? you little devil!"

Anania was laughing for joy at being publicly addressed by his godfather and favourably regarded by Signora Carboni.

Anania hung his head, then looked up with the bright eyes which Aunt Tatàna's ministrations had quite cured of their weakness. Then he tried to hide behind his parent.

"Well, answer your godfather!" said the miller, shaking him. "What do you intend to do with yourself?"

"Bravo!" said Signor Carboni. "You intend to be a scholar. A priest, I suppose?"

"The deuce! I said he had bright eyes! So you intend to be a lawyer, little mouse?"

"——will assist him," repeated the Signora like an echo. These words decided Anania's destiny, and he never forgot them.

Fierce sunshine was making the grass yellow. Bees and wasps buzzed round Aunt Tatàna's little house; the elder tree in the courtyard wore the wondrous lace of its tiny flowers.

The company which used to meet at the mill now assembled in the courtyard; Uncle Pera with his cudgel, Efès and Nanna generally drunk, the handsome shoemaker, Bustianeddu and his father, as well as other persons from the neighbourhood. Maestro Pane had set up a workshop in a cellar opposite the courtyard. All day long was a coming and going of people, who laughed, talked, quarrelled, and swore.

Little Anania spent his days among these folk; from them he learned rude words and actions, and they accustomed him to the sight of drunkenness, and careless misery. In another smoke-blackened and cobwebby cellar beside Maestro Pane's workship, a poor, sick girl was withering. Years ago her father had gone away to work in an African mine, and he had never been heard of again. The girl, Rebecca, lived alone, diseased and abandoned, in her squalid den, swarming with flies and other insects. A little further on lived a widow, whose five children were supported by begging. Maestro Pane sometimes begged himself. But one and all they were merry. The five beggar children never stopped laughing. Maestro Pane talked to himself and related long pleasant tales of the jolly days when he was young. Only in the long luminous afternoons, when the streets were silent and the wasps buzzed over the elder flowers, inducing sleep to the little Anania stretched at the threshold, then in the hot stillness could be heard the sharp cry of Rebecca. It rose, it grew, it broke off; it recommenced, it hurled itself on high, it dashed itself to earth. It seemed, so to speak, to pierce the silence with a shower of sibilant arrows. In this cry was all the grief, all the evil, the poverty, the forlornness, the unseen wretchedness of the place and its dwellers; it was the voice even of things, the lament of the stones which dropped one by one from the blackened walls of the prehistoric houses, of the crumbling roof, of the broken stairs and worm-eaten balconies which menaced ruin; of the spurge which grew on the pathway, of the wild olive which shadowed the walls, of the children who had no food, of the women who had no clothes, of the men who drank to stupefy themselves, and beat their wives and their children and their beasts because they could not strike at their destiny; it was the voice of all sickness uncured, of all the misery ineluctably accepted like life itself. But who heeded?

Little Anania, stretched across the threshold flapping away the flies and the wasps with a branch of elder, thought sleepily—

"Whew! Why is that girl screaming? What makes her scream? Why are there any sick people in the world?"

He himself had grown plump, fattened by the abundant food, by idleness, by sleep. He slept a great deal. In the silent afternoons not even Rebecca's cry kept him awake. He slept, the branch of elder in his hand, flies settling on his face. He slept, and he dreamed he was there, far away, in the house of the widow, in the kitchen watched by the long black cloak which was like a gibbeted phantom. But Olì his mother was no longer there. She had fled far away, far away to an unknown land. And a monk had come out of the convent and was teaching the little lonely one to read. He wanted to learn, to learn things that he might be wise and able to journey to find his mother. The monk talked and talked but Anania could not hear him, because from the long black cloak came an acute, a lacerating, deafening lament! Ah God! he was afraid! It was the voice of the ghost of the dead bandit.

And, besides the fear of the ghost, Anania was troubled by a strange feeling round his nose. That was the flies!

[10]Large enclosed pastures.

[11]An insulting nickname equivalent to "witch."

At last came part fulfilment of his dream. One October morning he got up very early, Aunt Tatàna washed him and brushed him, and dressed him in his best suit, that one of yellow fustian which was as stiff as the skin of the devil. Big Anania was at breakfast, eating roast liver. When he saw his boy dressed for school, he laughed with satisfaction, and said, threatening with his finger—

"Ho! ho! If you aren't a good boy. I'll send you to Maestro Pane to make coffins."

Bustianeddu came for Anania and somewhat contemptuously took him under his wing. It was a splendid morning. The fresh breeze carried pleasant odours of new made wine, of coffee, of refuse grape-skins. Hens clucked in the street. Peasants came in from the country their long carts decked with vine branches, attended by frisking and noisy dogs.

Anania was happy, though his companion reviled the school and the schoolmaster and the teachers.

"Yours is like a cock," he said, "he has a red cap and a great hoarse voice. I had to put up with him for a year. May the devil bite his heels!"

The school was at the far side of Nuoro, in a convent surrounded by dreary gardens. Anania's class-room was on the ground floor, its windows facing the deserted street. The walls were flecked with dust; the master's desk had been gnawed by rats; the benches were adorned with spots of ink, with carvings, with names scribbled like hieroglyphics.

Anania felt defrauded when instead of the master like a cock he saw a mistress, dressed in the costume of the place, a pale, small woman with a little moustache just like Aunt Tatàna's.

Forty idle children made the room lively. Anania was the tallest of them all. Perhaps for this reason the little mistress turned oftenest to him. Besides the moustache she had two terrible, fierce, dark eyes, and she addressed Anania by his surname, speaking partly in Italian, partly in Sardinian. He was honoured by her persistent attention, though he found it a little tedious. At the end of three hours he was actually able to read and to write two letters. One of them was a mere round O, but that did not detract from the importance of his attainment. At eleven o'clock he was dead sick of the school and the mistress and his stiff, smart clothes. He thought longingly of the courtyard, the elder tree, the basket of fruit into which he was in the habit of thrusting predatory fingers. He yawned. Was the going away hour never coming? Many of the children were in tears, and the mistress wasted her breath preaching about order and the love of lessons.

At last the door burst open. The school officer—also dressed in costume—showed his shaven face for a single instant and shouted, "Time!" The children made one simultaneous rush to the door, tumbling over each other and shouting. Anania was left to the last, and the mistress began to pat his head with her scraggy fingers.

That, of course, referred to Aunt Tatàna. He suddenly felt quite fond of his teacher, who now hurried after the rest of the noisy children.

"What style of going out is that?" she cried, capturing as many as she could. "Come now! Two and two! In a proper line!"

She placed them in order, and they filed down the corridor through the door, out into the street. There they were set free and they scattered like birds escaped from a net, screaming and jumping. Older and more serious scholars issued from the other class-rooms, all in their rows. Bustianeddu fell upon Anania, slamming his copy books on the child's head and seizing his arm.

"Yes," replied Anania, "but I'm so awfully hungry. I thought it was never going to stop."

"Did you imagine it would only last a minute?" said the other in his superior voice. "Just you wait a bit. You'll know something of hunger in a little while! Look! there's Margherita Carboni!"

The little girl with the violet stockings, the rosy handkerchief, the green woollen sleeves, appeared among the female pupils, who were dismissed after the boys. She passed in front of Anania and Bustianeddu without noticing them, followed by other girls, rich and poor, young ladies and peasants, some nearly grown up, and in training as coquettes. The older boys stopped to laugh with and admire them.

Anania did not answer. Boys and girls of that dignity seemed to him quite old enough for love-making.

"Oh, indeed, will you, Ninny? Better wash your face first," said Bustianeddu; then he pulled the little boy's hand and they ran.

After that day, followed many similar ones. Winter came back, the olive mill was reopened, the scenes of the previous year were re-enacted. Anania was top of his class. No one doubted that he was to be a doctor or a lawyer—possibly a judge. All knew that Signor Carboni had promised to assist his education. He knew it himself, but as yet had no idea of the worth of that promise. Gratitude began in him later. For the present he was overpowered by shyness augmented by delight whenever he encountered his florid and affable godfather. He was often invited to dinner at Signor Carboni's, but in the kitchen with the servants and the cats. This was no annoyance to him, as at table with the gentry he could not have opened his lips for pride and alarm.

After dinner Margherita used to come to the kitchen and entertain him. She asked questions about the people at the mill, then took him to the courtyard, to the granaries, to the cellar. She was delighted when, aping Bustianeddu's grand manner, he said, "Good Lord! What a lot of things you have!"

She never condescended to play with him, but Anania cared little for play. He was timid and grave; without understanding its significance he was already conscious of his position's irregularity.

After the mistress with the moustache came the master like a cock: then an old man, much addicted to snuff, who wept when he pointed to Spitzbergen and said, "Here Silvio Pellico was imprisoned." Then came a master with a round face, who was very pale and very lively, and who presently committed suicide. This lamentable event was morbidly impressive to the whole school, and for a long time the children neither spoke nor thought of anything else. Anania could not explain to himself why a man of such great cheerfulness should have cut his throat; but he declared before the whole school that he was ready to follow the example at the earliest opportunity. Fortunately the opportunity was lacking. At this time he had no sorrows. He was loved at home, he did well at school. His life unfolded evenly without change in its events, without change in the faces which surrounded him. One day was like another, one year was like another, resembling an interminable roll of stuff printed all over on the same pattern.

In winter the same people assembled round the olive press. In spring the elder flowered in the courtyard, the flies and the bees buzzed in the luminous air. The same figures moved in the streets. Uncle Barchitto, the madman, with his staring blue eyes, his long beard, and flowing hair, like a Jesus become old and a beggar, continued his harmless extravagances. Maestro Pane rapped on the table and talked to himself in a loud voice. Efès and Nanna reeled and stuttered. The ragged children played with the dogs, and the cats, and the chickens, and the baby pigs. The women squabbled. The young men sang melancholy love songs in the serene moonlit nights. Rebecca's lament shook the air like the cry of the cuckoo across the sadness of a barren landscape. As the sun sometimes shines out from an unexpected quarter of a cloudy sky, so the florid figure of Signor Carboni sometimes appeared in this district of dismal poverty. Then the women came to their doors smiling and saluting; the men who did no work, and passed their time stretched out indolently in the sunshine, sprang to their feet and blushed; the children ran after him and kissed his hand which he carried carelessly behind his back. In hard winters he gave polenta (maize) and oil to the whole neighbourhood. People came to him for small loans which they never repaid. Everywhere in the dirty wind-swept lanes he met boys and girls who called him Godfather, and men and women whom he addressed as Gossip. He could not keep count of his god-children, and Uncle Pera declared that many called him Gossip merely to get his money.

"They all hope he'll educate their sons," said the old gardener, warming himself at the olive press furnace, his cudgel across his knees.

"Well, there's one he's going to educate," said the miller, looking proudly at Anania who was gazing out of the window.

"Oh, shut up, you old grasshopper," said the miller; "you're just like the devil—the older you get the more disagreeable you are!"

"Why doesn't the padrone educate his own bastards?" said the old man, hawking and coughing. Anania, who was looking out of the window felt a shudder run through him as if he had been struck.

The miller coughed in his turn and wished Anania would go away, but he could not restrain himself from reply.

"Dead, dirty, malignant rat!" he exclaimed, "how dare you speak of the master so?"

"Do you suppose it's not known?" said the old man taking up his cudgel as if to defend himself; "that boy who works for Franziscu Carchide—he's a son of Jesus Christ, is he? What I say is why doesn't the padrone educate that boy?"

"He isn't. He's the padrone's son. Look at him! He's the image of Margherita."

"Well," said the miller, defeated, "that boy's as bad as the devil. What's the good of educating him? You can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear."

Anania stood at the window beside the heap of husks, oppressed by mysterious sadness. He knew the boy at Carchide's; he was wild, but not more so than Bustianeddu and many of the schoolboys. Why did not Signor Carboni take him into his house and give him a home, as the olive miller had done for his son? Then he thought—

Ah! the mother! the mother! As Anania grew and his mind opened, its ideas and perceptions taking form unobserved like the petals of a wild flower, so the thought of his mother became ever clearer in the haze of his new found conscience. He belonged now to the Fifth Elementary Form, and was associated with boys of every condition and of every character. He began to have knowledge of the science of good and evil. He was now intelligently ashamed if any one alluded to his mother, and remembered that he had always felt ashamed instinctively. Yet he was consumed by the desire to know where she was, to see her again, and reproach her with having deserted him. The unknown land, mysterious and far, to which she had fled, was taking to Anania's eyes clear outline and appearance, like that land discerned amid the mists of dawn to which the voyaging ship draws ever nearer. He studied geography with interest; and knew exactly how he should go from the island to that continent which concealed his mother. As once in the mountain village he had dreamed of the town where his father lived, so now he pondered upon the great cities described by his teachers and his books, and in one of them, and in all, he saw the figure of his mother. Her physical image, like an old photograph, was growing fainter and fainter in his memory; but he always thought of her as dressed in the Sardinian costume, barefoot, slender, and very sorrowful.

That year an event occurred which was deeply impressive to his imagination. This was the return of Bustianeddu's mother.

Anania was a pupil at the Gymnasium, secretly enamoured of Margherita Carboni, and believing himself quite grown up. The woman's reappearance moved the whole neighbourhood, and Anania wondered over it by day and by night. Ostensibly, however, he took no interest in the event.

Some time passed before he saw the woman who had hidden herself in the house of a relative. Bustianeddu, however, who had become grave and astute beyond his years, spoke frequently of her to Anania.

Uncle Pera was growing old and the olive-miller assisted him in the cultivation of his beans and teazles. Anania had free ingress to the garden, and often carried his books to a grassy bank beside the streamlet, whence under the shadow of the prickly pears he could see the wild panorama of mountains and valleys. Here Bustianeddu would find him when he wanted to pour out his confidences. Bustianeddu spoke sceptically and coldly, unaware of the tumults of emotion working in the soul of his friend.

"It would have been better for her to stay away," said Bustianeddu, lying on his face, his legs in the air. "My father was ready to kill her; but he takes it more quietly now."

"Of course I have. My father doesn't like me to visit her, but, of course, I go. She's grown stout. She's dressed like a lady: I didn't recognize her. The devil!"

"You didn't recognize her?" exclaimed Anania, surprised and thinking of his own mother. Ah, he would know her at once!

"She will be dressed like that too, and her hair in the fashion. Oh God—oh God—what will she be like?"

Her face eluded him, he was bewildered, confused, then tried to console himself trusting to his instinct.

"Why? Because this is her own town. She was working at a dressmaker's in Turin. She got tired of it and came home."

There was a pause. Neither of the lads believed in the dressmaker at Turin, but they accepted the story. Anania even said—

"No," said Bustianeddu, defending his father, "he's quite right. You see there was no necessity for her to go away, and work for her living!"

"No end of people come to my father to beg him to forgive her. Even our member of parliament! Grand-mother came yesterday. She said, 'Jesus forgave the Magdalen; remember, my son, that we are all born to die, and it's only our good deeds we can carry over there. Look at the condition of your house! Only the rats are at home in it.'"

"He went away," said Bustianeddu with great indignation; "of course he went away!—for shame!"

Next day he related. "Even Aunt Tatàna has begun to meddle. She preaches long sermons. She said to my father, 'Fancy you are taking a friend as a guest. Oh, do take her! She's penitent. She will reform. If you won't take her back, who knows what will become of her! King Solomon had seventy women in his house, and he was the wisest man in the world!'"

The skin-dealer never relented. His wife lived at the far side of the town near the school. She wore the costume again; but slightly altered, slightly embellished with tags and ribbons. Her dress proclaimed her a woman of equivocal character. The husband did not forgive, and she continued her own life.

Anania saw her whenever he went to the Gymnasium. She lived in a black house, the windows of which were outlined with white, the white lines ending in a large cross. There were four steps to the door, and the woman often sat on these steps sewing or embroidering. She was large and handsome, very dark, no longer young. In summer her head was bare, her raven locks raised high on a cushion above her low forehead. Round her long full throat she wore a handkerchief of grey silk.

When he saw her, Anania grew red. He felt a morbid kindness for her, yet often thought he hated her. He would have liked to go to his school another way so as to avoid the sight of her; but an occult and malignant force drew his steps always to that street.

Anania, studying his Greek grammar as he paced the little path which divided the expanse of ashy green teazles, heard a rap at the gate. He had not the garden to himself. His father was there, hoeing and singing love songs of the poet Luca Cubeddu. Nanna was weeding, helped by Uncle Pera. Efès, in his usual condition, lay on the grass. The weather was almost hot. Rosy clouds chased each other over the milky heaven, disappearing behind the Cerulean summits of Monte Aliena. From the valley, as from an immense verdure-clad shell, indefinite sounds and perfumes rose into the sunny air.

Now and then Nanna raised herself upright putting her hand to her back. She blew kisses to the student. "Bless him!" she said tenderly. "There he is studying away like a little bishop! Who knows what he mayn't turn out! He'll be a judge, or an examining Inspector. All the girls of the place will be picking him up like a sugar plum! Ah, my poor back!"

"Get on with the weeds!" growled Uncle Pera, "or I'll break your back in good earnest. Get on with the weeds and let the boy alone."

"Bad luck to you, old tyrant! If I were a lass of fifteen, you wouldn't be talking like that!" she said, bending over the weeds; but after a minute she looked up again, blowing more kisses to Anania.

Anania and Efès, one from his book, the other from the grass, looked up with the same look of faint anxiety. Suppose it were Signor Carboni? Efès felt all the weight of his degradation when the benevolent padrone, who never worried him with useless reproaches, sat down and talked to him: Anania thought of his mother and remembered the incongruity between his position and that of Margherita whom he was yet daring to love. The knock was repeated.

"I'll go and see who it is," said Anania, running and tossing his book in the air to encourage himself.

"If it's the master," said Uncle Pera, "Efès must get up and pretend he's doing something. It's abominable to see him sprawling about like a dead dog."

"Get up, you old blunderbuss!" continued Uncle Pera, attacking the sot, "get up and pretend you're some use!"

But the alarm subsided when Anania returned bringing a thin, pale, young man with a face like a scarecrow, dressed in the Fonni costume.

"I suppose you don't know him," said the student to his father; "I didn't! It's Zuanne Atonzu. What a big fellow he is!"

"What have you done with your horse? At the tavern? Why you've forgotten we're kin. Well? Are we too poor for you to lodge with us?"

They went off together. Anania was childishly pleased at seeing this humble shepherd in his rough clothes which recalled to him a whole wild and far off world. Zuanne was overcome by shyness beholding this handsome young gentleman, fair and fresh with his white collar and splendid necktie.

Then he took the guest to his own room and began to exhibit his possessions. Quaint furniture filled the long narrow room. The ceiling was of cane, whitewashed; there were two wooden chests like antique Venetian coffers, roughly carved with griffons, eagles, and fantastic flowers; a pyramidal chest of drawers, baskets suspended from the walls, and pictures in cork frames: in one corner a vessel of oil, in the other his bed covered with a quilt knitted by Aunt Tatàna. The window looked out on the courtyard elder; between the window and the bed was a little table with a green cover, and a white wood book-case, the corners of which had been carved by Maestro Pane in imitation of the chests. On the table were sundry books and much manuscript written by Anania; a few boxes strangely tied up, almanacs and a packet of Sardinian newspapers. All was tidy and very dean; sweet odours and waves of light entered by the window. The tiled floor was cracked in places, and a couple of elder leaves fluttered over it, chasing each other as if in play. A volume of Les Misérables lay open on the desk. Anania had intended to show everything to the visitor as to a long missed brother; but Zuanne's stupid expression as he opened and shut the mysterious boxes, damped his friend's enthusiasm.

Why had he brought this bumpkin into his little room? It was fragrant not only with the scent of honey, of fruit, of lavender which Aunt Tatàna hoarded in the chests, but also with the perfume of his lonely dreams. From its windows opening on the elder flower and the moss-grown roofs of neighbouring cottages, the world was opening for him, virgin and flowery like the untrodden mountains of the horizon. His pleasure had changed into disappointment.

Something had detached itself and fallen away from him, as a stone sometimes detaches itself from the rock, never to return. His native village, the past, the first years of his life, the homesick memories, the poetic affection for the brother of his adoption—all seemed to vanish in a flash.

"Let's go out," he said brusquely; and led the shepherd through the Nuoro streets, avoiding his schoolfellows lest they should ask who was this peasant walking awkwardly at his side. They passed before Signor Carboni's house. Suddenly appeared at the door a plump and rosy face, illuminated, it seemed, by reflection from a blouse of republican scarlet.

Anania snatched off his hat and the reflection of the blouse flamed on his face also. Margherita smiled, and never were the round cheeks of any maiden marked with more adorable dimples.

"Woman? Why, she's a young girl! only nine months older than I am!" cried Anania.

Zuanne was much confused and said no more; but a most strange thing happened to Anania. His will became unable to keep his mouth shut; and he lied, knowing that he lied, but overwhelmed by felicity at the notion that what he said might have been true.

That evening, the olive-miller lounging in his kitchen, made Zuanne describe the ruins of Serrabile, an ancient city discovered near Fonni, and he asked whether there was any chance of treasure being found there. But Anania stood at the window of his little room, watching the slow rising of the moon between the black teeth of Orthobene.

At last he was alone! Night reigned, passionate and sweet. Already the cuckoo was filling the lonely valley with her palpitating cries. Ah! thus sadly did Anania feel his heart palpitate and cry, out of an infinite solitude.

Why had he told that lie? And why had the stupid shepherd said not a word on hearing the stupendous falsehood? Clearly he knew nothing of love—love for a superior creature, love without limit and without hope. But why had Anania stooped to a lie? For shame! He had calumniated Margherita, put himself further than ever from her. It must be the same spirit of vanity, the same desire of the marvellous, which once upon a time had made him tell Zuanne of an imaginary encounter with robbers. Ah! God!

He pressed his cold hands upon his burning cheeks; he fixed his eyes on the melancholy visage of the moon. He shuddered. Then he remembered a bright cold winter moon, the theft of the hundred lire, the figure of Margherita appearing before him like the shadow of a flower against the golden disc of the moon. Ah! his love must have dated from that night; only now after years and years had it burst forth breaking the stone beneath which it had lain buried, like a spring which can no longer keep its course below ground.

These similes of the flower against the moon, of the rising spring, came ready made to Anania. He was pleased with his poetic fancies, but they could not lay the remorse which tormented him. "How vile I am!" he thought; "vile enough to lie, and about her. Well, I may be successful at my books, I may become a great lawyer; but morally I shall never be anything but the son of that lost woman!"

He stood a long time at the window. Some one passed down the street singing, and somehow the song reawakened his memories of infancy and of Fonni, Fonni with its crimson sunsets! He fell into a dream, luminous and melancholy like the moon he was watching. He imagined himself still at Fonni. He had never gone to school, had never felt the shame of his birth. He was a shepherd, simple like Zuanne. And he saw himself standing at the extremity of the village, in a rosy summer twilight; and behold Margherita passed, Margherita she also poor and an exile in the mountain village, wearing that narrow skirt characteristic of the place, the amphora on her head, as if she were a woman out of the Bible. He called to her and she turned, radiant in the sunset dazzle, and she smiled to him rapturously.

He went. They walked together by the road high up on the shoulder of the valley in whose depth night was waiting, waiting till the purple should fade in the heavens and veils of shadow should fall upon all things. Together they descended to the fountain. Margherita set the amphora under the silver stream of gurgling water, and immediately it changed its tone to one of merriment, as if the descent into the jug had agreeably interrupted the eternal tedium. The two young things sat on a stone bench before the fountain, and they talked of love. The amphora filled, the water overflowed, and for some moments was quite silent as if listening to the lovers. And now the sky was grey and the veils of shadow had fallen on the higher peaks, the more luminous folds of the mountains. And as night enwrapped the valleys, the desire of Anania waxed bolder. He put his arm round the girl's waist, she laid her head on his shoulder, and he kissed her.

At this time Anania was seventeen. He had no friends and mixed little with his schoolfellows. He was painfully conscious of the stain upon his birth. Once overhearing the remark, "If I were he, I would not stay with my father," he fancied the words must refer to himself.

"That's it!" he thought; "why am I here with this man who betrayed my mother and flung her into a bad life? I don't exactly love him, and I certainly don't hate him, but what I ought is to despise him. He is not wicked; he's not completely trivial like the majority of our neighbours. Sometimes I feel quite fond of him, when I hear his simple talk about treasure hunting, when I see his respectful affection for his elderly wife, his unchanging fidelity to his master. But I ought to despise him! I wish to despise him! What claim has he on me? Did I ask him to bring me into the world? I ought certainly to leave him now I understand——"

But gratitude, affection, much confidence, bound him to Aunt Tatàna. She lived almost exclusively for him. She adored him, though she had not succeeded in making him what she would have liked, a pious and obedient boy, reverent of God and the king and the priests. She saw, alas I that he was wrong-headed and self-sufficient, but she loved him none the less. She laughed and jested with him; she taught him to dance; she amused him with all the gossip of the place. Every morning before he was up she brought him a cup of coffee. Every Sunday she promised him money if he would go to mass.

"Go later," she would insist. Anania did not go, but Aunt Tatàna gave him the money all the same.

The day after his idyllic dream, woven of the moonlight which streamed in at his little window, Anania took Zuanne for a walk, starting with the intention of treating his friend to a cup of aniseed at the tavern.

"Who knows when we shall meet again!" sighed the shepherd. "When are you coming to see us?"

"I can't" said Anania, seeking an excuse, "I have to work so hard. I ought to finish with the Gymnasium this year."

"There are a great many convents at Rome, aren't there? And more than a hundred churches."

They entered the tavern. It was empty, smelling of tobacco and spirits, swarming with flies.

A girl was sitting on the bench. She was dark, and very handsome, though untidy and dirty.

The girl mimicked him, looking Anania in the face. He returned her look. Zuanne grew red, and looked at the floor. When they came out he asked shyly.

Anania was half-flattered, half-angry. "What makes you think that? Because she looked at me? Good gracious, what are eyes for? You intend to be a monk, I suppose?"

"You're going to be a monk!" repeated Anania astounded. "Come along, then! we'll visit the churchyard. That's what will suit you."

It was soon after Zuanne's visit that the boys at the Gymnasium acted a comedy. They had wanted Anania to take the part of the heroine, but he had obstinately refused. Nor did he repent his resolution, for when the night of the performance came he had a place in the second row of the spectators immediately behind his godfather (now Syndic of Nuoro) by whose side sat Margherita in a white hat and a red dress which shone like a flame.

The Captain of the Carabinieri, the Secretary of the Sub-Prefecture, the Assessor and the Director of the Gymnasium, sat in the front row with the Syndic and his resplendent daughter; but the young lady did not seem pleased with her company; she kept turning her head, though haughtily, to look at the students.

The hall had once been a convent church; now it was the theatre, exhibition-room, centre of reunion for all Nuoro. A curtain, not innocent of patches, concealed the stage, but it blew about in the wind and gave visions of boyish legs jumping and dancing. At last it was drawn with much difficulty and the comedy began.

The time was that of the Crusades, the scene an ancient and much turreted castle, of which, however, nothing was visible but one room containing a round mahogany table and six Vienna chairs.

The faithful Hermengild (a diminutive school-boy, his face rouged with red paper, his legs awkwardly astraddle, his costume one of Signora Carboni's dresses) was embroidering a scarf for the no less faithful Godfrey, a warrior away on some distant expedition.

The Captain of the Carabinieri seated by her side, turned his head slowly, and glared at the student. But Anania was so happy he wanted to laugh, and wanted to impart to Margherita all the joy which her nearness had waked in him.

At the sixth mocking criticism whispered by the little student, the Captain could endure no more.

"Hold your stupid tongue, will you?" he shouted. Anania shivered, and drew back as a snail withdraws into its shell. He was so angry that for some minutes he could neither hear nor see.

Hold your tongue. Exactly; he was not to be allowed to make his harmless jokes, not to be allowed to speak. Oh yes! he quite understood! He must not lift his eyes, because he was poor and dependent and a foundling. What was he doing here among all these great folk, among all these rich and courted young people? How had he dared to lean towards Margherita Carboni to whisper with her, to make trivial jokes for her smile? He was quite conscious of the triviality of his conversation. How could the son of an olive-miller, the son of an Olì, be expected to talk otherwise? "Hold your tongue, do!" the Captain had said.

Presently Anania revived. He looked contemptuously at the fringe of red hair round the Captain's bald head. He saw deformed ears and the end of a waxed moustache. He felt a ferocious wish to box the deformed ears as many times as there remained hairs on his hideous head. Margherita presently turned round, surprised by Anania's silence. Their eyes met. Seeing him depressed, Margherita's eyes became shadowed. Anania saw it and he smiled. In a moment they were both merry again. Margherita tried to give her attention to the stage, but felt that Anania was smiling still, and that his long, half-closed eyes were still fixed on her.

A delicate intoxication overpowered them both. After the comedy there was a farce at which Signor Carboni laughed immoderately. Margherita was vexed to see her father laughing like a baby. She had read that fashionable persons never attend to the play, still less are amused by it. The Secretary of the Sub-Prefecture frequently turned his back on the stage, and Margherita would have liked her father to do the same.

It was near midnight when Anania accompanied the Carboni's to their home. The Assessor—old and a babbler—walked with the Syndic, telling of an American medical discovery: that microbes are essential to the human organism. The boy and girl walked in front, laughing when they slipped on the cobbles of the miry streets. Other persons went by, laughing and chattering. The night was dark, warm, velvety. Now and then a breeze from the east came, went, returned wafting a wild perfume from the woods outside the town. Stars, infinite like human tears, sparkled in the limitless heaven. Jupiter flamed over Orthobene.

Who does not remember in his early youth some such night, some such hour? Stars quivering in the depths of a night more luminous than twilight, stars not seen but felt—ready to descend upon our brow; the brilliant bear like a golden chariot waiting to carry us to the land of dreams; a dark pathway; felicity so near, she can be grasped and retained for ever and for ever.

More than once Anania felt the girl's hand touch his. The mere thought that he might take it and press it seemed sacrilege. He felt a sort of double consciousness. He spoke yet seemed silent, his thoughts far away. He walked and stumbled yet seemed scarce to touch the earth. He laughed yet was sad almost to tears. He saw Margherita by his side, so near, that he might touch her, yet she appeared far away, intangible like the breath of the wind which went and came. She laughed and jested with him. In her eyes he had seen the reflection of his own distress; yet he told himself she could only regard him as a faithful dog. He thought—

"Could she guess I was consumed with the desire to press her hand she would cry out with horror; she would regard me then as a rabid dog."

What did they say to each other that starlit night, in the dark streets swept by the odorous breeze? He never was able to remember; but, for a long, long time the dull talk between the old Assessor and Signor Carboni remained in his mind.

At last, however, the Assessor's high nasal voice became silent. Margherita and Anania stopped, bid him good-night, went on their way; but now the boy felt himself awakened from a dream, once more solitary, sad and shy, stumbling in the darkened street. The Syndic had interposed his portly person between the poor young creatures!

"What else could you expect? Our Director's a fossil—he couldn't choose better. Life's not like that—never has been! If the theatre isn't like life, its ridiculous. If they must have chosen something mediæval, still it might have been something less absurd—something true, human, touching. They might have had Eleonora d'Arborea dying because she had helped the plague-stricken——

"But," said Signor Carboni, astonished by the boy's eloquence, "I don't think our theatre's equal to such a grandiose subject."

"Then a modern comedy would be better—something moving. These stupid legends have had their day," said Margherita, catching up Anania's tone.

"What, Miss? you too? Well, I agree they might have had something more interesting. What's that you said about the Director?"

Anania grew red, remembering he couldn't go anywhere without Signor Carboni's assistance. What did the question mean? Had his godfather forgotten? Was he mocking him? Did he want to make the boy feel the weight of his obligation, keeping him on tenter hooks, exhibiting him as at his patron's mercy?

"Do you really want to go, my lad? Then you shall, you shall. You're shaking your wings like a young bird. Oh! you shall fly—you shall fly!"

He made the gesture of throwing a bird in the air; then slapped his godson's shoulder. Anania heaved a sigh of relief. He felt as light as if he had really been launched in flight. Margherita laughed. That laugh vibrating in the stillness of the night seemed to Anania the rose-bush's obscure desire for the bird which perches on it to sing.

VII

These were Anania's last days at home, and heavy weight of sentiment oppressed him. He was still the young bird joyfully ready for flight; but he was sad and tormented by vague fears of the unknown. What was the world like, which had already usurped his thoughts? And the adieu was painful to that humble world in which his childhood had monotonously passed, unstained by active grief, brightened by his evolving love for Margherita. The languor and sweetness of early autumn contributed to render him sentimental. Light clouds veiled the sky. Behind the mountains a vaporous horizon concealed yet suggested worlds of ineffable dream. The pale green twilights were brightened by rosy cloudlets, meandering slowly and interruptedly over the glaucous heaven. In the garden was the rustle, the odour of burning weeds; it seemed to Anania that something of his soul vanished in the smoke of these melancholy fires.

Good-bye! good-bye! gardens and orchards, guardians of the valley! Good-bye! distant roar of the torrent which announced the winter! Good-bye, cuckoo, which foretold the return of spring! Good-bye! grey and savage Orthobene with his holm-oaks outlined against the clouds like upstanding hairs on a sleeping giant. Good-bye! distant cerulean mountains! and good-bye, tranquil and kindly hearth, little room scented with fruit, with honey, and with dreams! Good-bye, humble companions, unconscious of their own ill-fortune, wicked old Uncle Pera, miserable Nanna and Efès, suffering Rebecca, extravagant Maestro Pane, crazy beggars, girls careless of their beauty, children born to want—all of them mean and distressful persons whom Anania did not love, whom he was leaving gladly, yet with a wrench.

And good-bye, Margherita! Light and sweetness among shadows, a rainbow in the cloud, a frame of pearl glorifying the dingy painting of dull memory I Margherita, good-bye!

The day of departure drew near. Aunt Tatàna made endless preparations. She provided shirts and socks, fruit, and cakes white as ivory, cheese, a fowl, dozens of salted eggs, wine, honey, raisins, saddle-bags, and baskets filled to the brim.

"Hush, my son! You will find it all necessary. There you will have no one to care for you, poor child. Oh! what will become of you?"

The miller and his wife had long, secret consultations and Anania guessed their tenor. One evening they went out together and he anxiously awaited their return.

Till that moment he had expected to cross the sea: now he understood that some one had decided against that plan.

"Signor Carboni, I suppose?" he said, with ill-concealed bitterness and pride; "don't deny it. What's the good of keeping me in the dark? I see through you. Why won't he send me to the continent? I'll pay all his money back to him in the end."

"Bah!" said Aunt Tatàna alarmed by these symptoms of pride, "whatever have you taken into your head?"

Anania panted, bent his head over a book without seeing a word of it. The woman caressed him.

"Well, what do you wish, my son? Cagliari or Sassari? You mentioned them both yesterday. Why on earth should you go further? Jesus! Mary! The sea's a horrible thing! People get sick on the sea—so I have heard—sometimes they die. And the storms. Do you never think of the storms?"

"You never said a word about it! You mustn't be so capricious. You can study just as well in Sardinia as on the continent? Why should you go to the continent?"

Ah yes, why? What did Aunt Tatàna know of his secret desires? It was not for the sake of his studies that he wanted to cross the sea. Had he not, since the first day, that sunny autumn day when Bustianeddu had led him to the Convent school, had he not been thinking of something very different from mere study?

"You are still a child, my son. At seventeen do you want to run about the world alone? Would you die at sea away from every one, or wither in a city which you tell me is as big as a forest? Go to Cagliari. Signor Carboni will give you introductions. He knows everybody at Cagliari, even a Marquis. Well, then, be reasonable. You shall go further when you are older. You are like a leveret just weaned. It leaves the form and runs away to the very wall of the tanca, then it comes back. Presently it goes further, and further still. It learns what it may do; it sees the path along which it will run. You must wait. Think how near we shall be, think how you can run back to us if anything goes wrong. At Christmas you'll be able to come back——"

Next day he began his leave-takings. He visited the Director of the Gymnasium, a priest who was a great friend of Aunt Tatàna's, the doctor, the Deputy; then the tailor, the grocer, and the shoemaker, Franziscu Carchide, the handsome young man who had been one of the habitués of the olive-mill. Carchide had, however, made a fortune, no one knew how; he had a big shop with five or six workmen, he dressed like a gentleman, talked affectedly and flirted with the young ladies whose feet he measured.

"Send him a diamond ring," said one of the workmen, "for he's engaged to the Syndic's daughter."

But Anania, irritated by the joke which he thought an insult to Margherita, would not sit down and hurried away. As he went out he met the lad whom rumour called the padrone's son, a tall boy with blue eyes really very like Margherita's, but sadder.

"Good-bye, Antonino," said the student, and the other looked at him with flashes of hatred and envy in his melancholy pupils.

When he came in Anania told everything to Aunt Tatàna, who was preparing a sweetmeat, compounded of oranges, honey and almonds, for him to present to some great person at Cagliari.

"Look," said the boy, "your priest gave me a crown, and the doctor gave me two lire. I don't like to take it."

"Oh, bad child! It's the custom to give presents to a boy going away for the first time!" said the woman, shaking and stirring the slender strips of orange-peel in the shining copper saucepan. Strong smell of boiling honey perfumed the kitchen. Everywhere were little yellow baskets packed with the stores for the student. Anania sat down with the cat on his knee.

"I wonder where I shall be in a week? Stay quiet, Mussittu, put your tail down! Your priest read me such a long sermon."

"I suppose he told you to make your confession and take the Communion before starting?"

"That was necessary twenty years ago, when one went to Cagliari on a horse and took three days over it. It's not the fashion now!"

"You bad child! don't you believe in God? Holy Saint Catharine, what will become of you at Cagliari? I hope you'll anyhow go to La Sea (the cathedral), where there's a picture that does miracles. Cagliari's a very pious place. You won't speak against religion, I hope?"

"Never mind Cagliari! Every one believes what he can and what he likes. I venerate God more in my heart than all the hypocrites."

These words were somewhat consolatory to the good woman. She told him the Bible story of Eli, and then let him continue the description of his visits.

The kitten had climbed on his shoulder and was licking his ear, tickling him in a way that somehow reminded him of Margherita. He was telling the vulgar joke about Carchide's engagement when Nanna came in, Aunt Tatàna having sent her to buy comfits for her sweetmeat. Her skirt was torn, and she looked even worse than usual, as she stood unrolling her package and trying to listen to the conversation.

"Did you hear," said simple Aunt Tatàna, "that horrid Franziscu Carchide wants to marry Margherita Carboni?"

"Oh, I know Franziscu," said Nanna, "he's mad. He asked first for the doctor's daughter. They chased him out with the broom handle, and now he thinks he'll get Margherita because he made her shoes too small."

"That's what I say. But there's an officer, a general I think, who wants to marry Margherita. No, I say, she's a rose and she must marry a pink—fresh and sweet, both of them. Take it!" she went on offering a comfit to Anania. He drew back, while the kitten vainly stretched its paw to the little white object.

"Keep off! You smell like a wine barrel!" said the boy, and Nanna staggered and dropped all her comfits on the floor.

"My pink!" she said coaxingly. "You shall be Margherita's pink! Why are you going away? But I know! it's to become a judge——"

He danced the kitten up and down, feeling quite affectionate to Nanna. Then suddenly became very gloomy. Who was the officer who wanted to marry Margherita? Was it that horrible Captain with the red neck who had said, "Hold your tongue, do!" Then he thought of something still worse. Margherita married to some young man, handsome—rich—eternally lost to the poor student.

He set the cat down, and went away, shut himself up in his own room and looked out of the window. He was suffocating. It had never occurred to him that Margherita might marry.

"No, no!" he said, squeezing and shaking his head between his hands. "She mustn't marry. She must wait. She must wait till—till I——. But why should she wait? How could I marry her? I am the son of a lost woman. I have no mission in life but to find my mother and draw her out of the abyss. Margherita could never stoop to me. But until I have fulfilled my mission, I need Margherita as I need a lighthouse. Afterwards—I can die content."

He did not think that his "mission" might be prolonged indefinitely and without success. It did occur to him that he might aspire to Margherita if he were to renounce his mission; but this seemed monstrous, and he put the idea away.

The thought of finding his mother had grown and developed with his growth. It palpitated with his heart, vibrated with his nerves, flowed with his blood. Only death could eradicate it; but it was of his mother's death that he thought when he wished that their meeting might not take place. The yearning for this solution, however, seemed to him great cowardice.

Later he asked himself if it were natural sentimentality which had created this thought of his mission; or whether the thought had made him sentimental. At present he accepted his preoccupations and sentiments without analysis. Accepting them thus childishly he rooted them so firmly in his soul and in his flesh, that no logic, no conscious reasoning could have sufficed to pluck them up.

He spent a fevered night. Already far distant was the time in which he had been content to see Margherita in the orchard garden, without caring for the colour of her hair, the grace of her bosom. Then his dreams had been all fantastic; raptures, meetings, flights to mysterious places, preferably to the white tablelands of the moon; but had he learned she was about to marry, it would have occasioned him no suffering. Once he had thought of persuading her to follow him to the mountains where they might poison themselves with a poison that would not disfigure their corpses; yes, they would lay themselves on the rocks among the wild flowers and the ivy, and they would die together; but into this dream entered the desire neither for a kiss nor for a pressure of the hand.

Afterwards had come the idyllic dream of the mountains at Fonni, of the lover's kiss, of Margherita's surrender. Then came the night of the acting, when the immediate vision of her hair, her eyes, her bosom, had caused him a delicate intoxication.

Now he was racked by the thought that she might be destined for another. In his fevered slumber he was in agony, in his dreams he was writing, writing, at a despairing letter which he never succeeded in bringing to a termination. Then, still dreaming, he remembered having composed a sonnet in dialect for her, and he decided on sending it. He awoke. He rose and flung the window wide. It was near dawn. The heaven was quite clear, a great red star was setting behind the black obelisk of Orthobene, like a dying flame on a candlestick of stone. Cocks were crowing, answering each other with rivalry of raucous cries, each apparently angry with the other, and all with the delay in the coming of the light. Anania looked at the sky; he yawned, and a cold shiver ran from his feet to his head. Oh God! what was happening to him? Part of his soul must detach itself from him, must remain here, under that clear heaven, in sight of those wild mountains whose crests were candlesticks for the stars. As a wayfarer, burdened by too heavy a load wishes to drop some of it so as more lightly to follow his path, so Anania felt a great longing to leave part of his secret with Margherita. He shut the window, seated himself at his table, trembling and yawning. "How cold!" he said aloud.

The sonnet was already written out on pink paper ruled with violet lines. It bore the poetic title "Margherita," and was in the form of an allegory, also highly poetic.

A most lovely marguerite grew in a green meadow. All the flowers admired her, but specially a pale and lowly buttercup which had grown by her side. The buttercup was sick with love for his beauteous neighbour. And lo! on a sweet spring morning, a lovely maiden passed through the meadow, and plucked the daisy, kissing it and hiding it in her bosom, never noticing that she had squashed the unhappy buttercup. But the buttercup seeing his adored neighbour snatched away was glad to die.

The poet read his verses with breaking heart, for instead of the symbolic maiden he saw a captain of Carabinieri with a long moustache. He folded the sheet, enclosed it in an envelope, but remained long undecided whether or no it should be sealed. What would Margherita think of it? Would she receive a sonnet from him? Yes; because when the postman rapped out his three terrible knocks, which seemed a knocking of the iron hand of destiny. Margherita would herself run to take in the letters. That is if she were at home at the time of the postman's coming. She would be there at midday certainly. Therefore it was necessary to post the poetic epistle early.

Feverish agitation preyed upon the student. He could neither hear nor see. He sealed the envelope, left the house, and roamed the dark, deserted streets like a somnambulist. What o'clock was it? He did not know. Cocks were still crowing behind the walls. The damp air smelt of straw. A poor woman who baked barley bread in the poorer houses, came and went on her fatiguing business. The steps of two tall black Carabinieri resounded on the pavement. There was no one else.

Though it was still dark, Anania feared he might be seen. He slunk along the wall, and the moment he had posted the letter he took to his heels. He saw the Carabinieri again at the end of the street, changed his direction and made his way home almost without noticing it. But he could not go in. He was choking. He wanted air, he wanted immensity, and again he ran, his hat in his hand, his feet hurrying towards the high road. But when he had reached it he was still unrelieved. The horizon was clouded, the great valley dark. He went on and up. Only when he was at the foot of Orthobene could he breathe, expanding his nostrils like a colt escaped from the halter. He would have liked to shout aloud for excitement and joy.

It was getting light. Thin azure veils covered the great damp valley. The last stars had vanished. Involuntarily Anania repeated the line—

"Care stelle dell'Orsa, io non credea—"
("Dear stars of the Bear, I believed not—")

and tried to forget what he had done, though the thought of it was causing him acute spasms of happiness.

He began the ascent of Orthobene, plucking the leaves, the tufts of grass, throwing stones and laughing aloud. He seemed mad. The turf smelt sweet. The heaven was the colour of cyclamen behind the immense purple rocks of Monte Albo. Anania stood upon a rock looking at the huge cloister of the far mountains, upon which streamed the delicate reflection of the sunrise. Suddenly he became pensive.

Good-bye! To-morrow he would be away beyond the mountains, and Margherita would think in vain of the forgotten buttercup who loved her and who was himself.

A finch sang from its wild nest in the heart of an ilex tree, expressing in its trembling note, all the solitude of the place and of the hour. The note found its echo in the young lad's soul; and he remembered the song of another little bird which had sung from out the damp leafage of a chestnut tree on a morning long ago. A morning long ago, over there, over there, on one of those far distant hills, perhaps on that rosy spur thrust out towards the morning! And again he saw the child merrily descending the slope, beside a sorrowful woman; the child all unconscious of sorrow.

"And now again," he said to himself, "I am glad to go, and who knows what may be awaiting me?"

"Where have you been, galanu meu (my treasure)? What took you out before sunrise?" asked Aunt Tatàna.

"Here it is. But what's the matter, dear heart? Cheer up. Get back your colour before you go to your godfather. What? Aren't you going to him to-day? What are you staring at? Has an ant got into your coffee?"

He was staring at a little gold bordered cup reserved exclusively for him. Good-bye, little cup! Just once more to-morrow, and then, Good-bye. A lump rose in his throat.

"I'll go to my godfather later. I've got to finish packing," he said, as if talking to the cup.

"Suppose we never see each other again?" he said to Aunt Tatàna. "Suppose I die before I come back? I daresay it would be better. What's the good of living to be old?"

Aunt Tatàna, looked at him anxiously, crossed herself and said, "Have you been having bad dreams last night? Why does my little lamb without wool talk like this? Have you the headache?"

"You don't understand!" he cried, springing to his feet. He went to his room and packed his books and dearest possessions, now and then his eyes turned to the window.

What would he see from the window of the room which awaited him at Cagliari? The sea? The real sea? The infinite distance of azure water, under the infinite distance of azure heaven? The thought of all that azure had a soothing effect. He repented having been cross to Aunt Tatàna. He was very ungrateful—still nerves are nerves and uncontrollable. But he would not be ungrateful. No! throw down portmanteau, books, boxes, rush to the kitchen, where the good woman is sweeping with an air half sad, half philosophical, grieving probably over the tragic words of her lamb without wool, fall upon her, enfold her and her broom in one embrace, and drag her into a vertiginous whirl of a dance!

"Bad boy, what's the matter with you?" cried the elderly woman palpitating with joy. And then in the middle of the dance he was off again, running and imitating the puffing of a train.

His packing done, he went on with his good-bye visits, going first to Maestro Pane. The old carpenter's shop, generally thronged, was at the moment deserted, and Anania had to wait some time sitting on the bench, his feet among the abundant shavings which strewed the floor. A light breeze blew in from the door, agitating the great cobwebs and the layers of sawdust.

At last Maestro Pane came in, put on an old soldier's tunic, its buttons carefully polished, and smiled with childish satisfaction when Anania told him he looked like a general.

"I have the helmet too," he said, "but when I put it on the children laugh. So you're off, my boy? God go with you and help you. I have nothing to give you."

"My heart is not wanting, but heart isn't enough. Well, when you're Doctor of Laws I'll make you a writing desk. I've got the pattern!"

He looked up a furniture catalogue and showed a splendid bureau with columns and carving.

"You think I can't do it? You don't know Maestro Pane. If I've not made much precious and expensive furniture it's only because I lack capital. It will be well done."

"I'm sure it will, and when I'm a doctor and a rich man I'll have you to make all the furniture of my palace."

"Will you really?" cried the old hunchback, delighted. "In how many years will it be?"

"Too long. I shall be in heaven by that time. In the workshop of the glorious St Joseph." (He crossed himself.)

"And tell me, what does this catalogue mean by furniture Lui-gi-de-ci-mo-quart-o," (Louis XIV.) he asked reading in syllables.

"I know that much. He was a king very fond of women," said the old man with a grin on his great toothless mouth.

"Because I'm not a scholar do you think I know nothing? Victor Emmanuel liked hoeing his garden, and Queen Esther liked picking lavender in the fields, and that King Luigi liked girls."

Anania next knocked at Nanna's low door, but the old madman sitting on a stone close by told him she wasn't at home.

"I'm waiting for her myself, you must know. Last night Jesus Christ told me he was wanting a servant."

"Down there, in the lane. He had a long cloak and his shoes were burst. Why don't you give me a pair of shoes, Nania Atonzu?"

"There are pole cats and vampires at Iglesias. Well good-bye. Shake hands. I won't eat you. And where's that mother of yours now, I wonder?"

"Good-bye, take care of yourself," said Anania, freeing his hand from the madman's hard fingers.

"I'm going away myself; to a place where one feasts all day; beans, lentils, sheep's fry——"

"Eh!" cried the old man, when he had gone some distance, "write to me when you're gone, and don't fall into the hands of the scarlet women."

Anania had other friends to see including the beggar widow, who received him in a little chamber beautifully clean, and gave him a cup of first-rate coffee.

"Are you going to Rebecca?" she said jealously. "She's taken to begging. A shame, isn't it, for a girl like that? Tell her so."

"For the vampire. When the vampire comes in at night she stops to count the teeth of the sickle. She can't count further than seven so she keeps beginning again. Then the dawn comes, and the moment she sees the light she flies off. Why do you laugh? It's quite true. God bless you, dear; good journey and do the place credit!" said the beggar, going with him to the street.

He went to Rebecca. Huddled up in her dark hole she seemed a wild beast sick in its den—though considerably more than twenty she was still the size of a child.

Seeing the lad, she flushed all over and offered him a bunch of black grapes on a rude cork-tray.

"I'm not worthy. I'm not Margherita Carboni. I'm a poor wretch," said the girl excitedly. "Take the whole bunch. It's quite clean. I haven't touched it. Uncle Pera su gattu brought it."

"Uncle Pera?" said Anania, who believed all the scandals about the old gardener.

"Yes, poor old fellow. He always remembers me and brings me something every day. Last month I was ill, for my sores broke out again. Uncle Pera sent for the doctor and brought me my medicines himself. He's what my father ought to have been. But my father has left me! Well, never mind." (for she saw that touched Anania). "Why won't you take the whole bunch? It's really quite clean!"

"Give it to me. But where can I put it? Let me wrap it in this newspaper. I'm off to-morrow. Going to Cagliari. I do hope you'll get well."

Next Anania saw the handsome Agata at the tavern door so he stepped across to take leave of her.

"You've been flirting with that lump of dirt," she said, pointing to Rebecca. "Go away, you smell of her."

"She's jealous of me!" continued Agata, making eyes at him. "Look! she's watching you. The silly fool! She's always thinking of you because last New Year's Eve she drew you for a sweetheart."

A shepherd, who had been drinking a cup of brandy, came out and pinched the girl as he passed.

"Sas manas siccas (wither your hands), skinned hare!" cried Agata. She beckoned Anania into the tavern, and asked what he would drink.

However, she fetched white wine, and, as he drank, leaned languidly against the bar watching him. She said, "I'm going to Cagliari as soon as I've bought a new dress with gold buttons for the chemisette. I'll go to Cagliari and get a place. We shall meet again. The devil! Here comes Antonino! he's my sweetheart, and is mad jealous of you. Ah, my jewel, good-bye! good-bye!"

Saying this she flung herself upon him with a wild cat spring and kissed him hotly on the lips. Then she pushed him away, and he went out, confounded and agitated, hurrying past Antonino whose look of hate he now understood. For some minutes he walked not knowing whither. He was new to kisses, and could only think of Margherita, the longing to see her making his blood boil.

"Child of my heart!" cried Nanna, crying and laughing, and offering him a parcel, "are you really going? God go with you and bless you as he blesses the ears of corn. We shall see you again, but meantime—here take this, my darling. Don't refuse or I shall die of grief."

To prevent Nanna's death he accepted the parcel, but shuddered, feeling something very unpleasant on his cheek.

"There!" said Nanna, when she had kissed him, "I couldn't help it. It will wash off, dear. It won't prevent the flower-smelling kisses of the golden girls who will pick you up like a sugar plum."

Anania made no protests, but this thrust into reality restored his moral equilibrium and cancelled the burning sensation given him by the kiss of Agata.

When he got home he opened Nanna's parcel, and found it contained thirteen soldi (half-pence).

But after dinner he went into the courtyard and stretched himself on a mat under the elder tree, round which buzzed the bees and the flies. The air was warm. Between the boughs Anania saw great white clouds floating across the blue heaven. An infinite sweetness fell from those clouds. It seemed a rain of warm milk. Distant memories, wandering, changing, like the clouds, passed through his mind confused with recent impressions. Now he was back in the dreary landscape guarded by the sounding pines, where his father had ploughed and sown the padrone's corn. The sounding of the pines is like the voice of the sea. The sky is deeply, monotonously blue. Anania remembered the lines—whose? Baudelaire's perhaps?—

"Blue the colour of her eyes,
Deep and empty as the skies."

The eyes of Margherita? No, that was an insult to her! But it was satisfactory to be able to quote such an original verse—

"Blue the colour of her eyes,
Deep and empty as the skies."

Who is that behind the pine-tree? The postman with the red whiskers! On his head he wears a crow with outstretched wings. It is pecking hard at the poor man's forehead.

"Rat-tat-tat!" Margherita runs to the door, receives the pink letter, and begins to fly. Anania wants to follow her, but he can't move, can't move, can't speak. It's because the postman is shaking him.

"My son, it's three o'clock. When are you going to your godfather?" asks Aunt Tatàna.

She it is, not the postman, who is shaking him. Anania springs to his feet, one eye still shut, one cheek pale, the other red.

"I'm rather sleepy. It's because I was awake all last night. Very well, I'll go now."

He washed, combed his hair, spent half an hour in making his parting first at the side, then in the middle, then doing away with it altogether.

"Are you there still? When ever are you going?" called the good woman from the courtyard. He looked out of the window and asked—

"Say you are going to-morrow. Say you'll get on well, that you'll always be a good boy."

"Bless me, what have you to do with money? You know nothing about it!" said the old woman raising her hands.

On the contrary, he visited Bustianeddu; then went to the garden to take leave of Uncle Pera, also of the figs, the teazles, the far-reaching landscape.

He found the old gardener stretched on the grass, his stick by his side, at rest like its master.

"Going to sea? Oh yes, there's sea at Cagliari. God bless you, my lad. Old Uncle Pera has nothing to give you but his prayers."

Anania repented his frequent mockery of the old man, who at any rate was kind to Rebecca. He bent down, his hands on his knees. "Have you any commissions?"

"You?" said the boy, amused at the mania all men, even decrepit ones, have for going away.

"Ah, for a distant one," said the old man, pointing to the horizon; "for eternity."

Not till evening, nor till he had passed and repassed vainly before Margherita's window did Anania knock and ask for his godfather.

"There's no one at home. They'll be back soon, if you'll wait," said the maid. "Why didn't you come earlier?"

"Oh, very well. It's better to waste your time with that scum Agata, than to come and visit your benefactors."

The servant was insulting as she had been that long ago night when he and Bustianeddu had come for the basin of soup. Nothing was changed. He was still a dependent, an object of charity.

"But I'm grown up!" he thought. "I can renounce it all, go to work, be a soldier—anything that's not abject!"

He moved from the window, brushing against the writing desk, which was already illuminated by the moon. Among the papers, untidily tossed about, he spied a pink envelope lined with green.

The blood rushed to his face. His ears burned, he shook from head to foot. Mechanically he bent and took up the envelope. Yes, it was that one, torn and empty. He felt as if he were touching the remains of some sacred thing which had been violated and destroyed. It was all over! His soul was empty and torn to pieces like this envelope.

Suddenly, brightness flooded the room. Margherita had come in! He tried to drop the envelope, but perceived that the girl had seen it in his hand. Shame now was added to his grief.

"Good evening," said Margherita, placing a lamp on the desk; "they've left you in the dark."

"Good evening," he murmured. He resolved to explain, then to escape, never to be seen in this house again.

He looked at her in astonishment. Yes, it certainly was Margherita. At that moment he hated her.

"Forgive me," he stammered, "I didn't do it intentionally. I'm not a beast; but I saw this—this envelope, and I couldn't help—looking——"

Margherita blushed and seemed confused; but Anania as if freed from a burden began to recover his wits. Wounded pride counselled him to assert the sonnet a jest. But Margherita in her walking dress, with her small waist and her bright green ribbon was so beautiful and so rosy that his hatred all disappeared. He wished he might put the lamp out and be alone with her in the moonlight, he wished he might fall at her feet and name her with sweetest names. But he couldn't, he couldn't! though he saw she also was raising and dropping her eyes in delicious alarm, expecting his cry of love.

"Yes, he laughed. Then he gave it to me and said, 'Who in the world has sent it?'"

They spoke anxiously and very low, already involved in a delicious conspiracy. Suddenly Margherita changed her voice.

She hurried out, and the boy remained in the greatest perturbation. He felt the warm, soft hand of his godfather clasping his own, and he saw the blue eyes and the shining gold chain. But he hardly heard the good advice and the pleasantries with which Margherita's father favoured him.

Bitter doubt tormented him. Had Margherita understood the significance of the sonnet? She had said nothing to the point in those precious moments, which he had stupidly not turned to profit. Her agitation was not enough. It told nothing. No, he must really know more—know all.

"Know what?" he asked himself ruefully. "There's nothing to know." It was all useless. Even if she cared for him—but this was folly. Nothing was any good. Great emptiness surrounded him, and in this emptiness the voice of Signor Carboni lost itself and was unheard.

"You're lucky in having only your studies to mind," ended the godfather hearing a sigh from the boy. "Be cheerful; be a man and do us credit."

Margherita now came back accompanied by her mother, who in her turn was prodigal of counsel and encouragement. The girl went hither and thither about the room. She had dressed her hair coquettishly with a curl on her left temple. What was still more important, she had powdered herself. Eyes and lips were resplendent. She was a wonder; and Anania followed her about deliriously, his thoughts running on kisses. She must have understood, she must have been attracted by the fascination of his gaze, for when he was going away—she followed him to the great entrance door!

The court was bathed in moonlight, as it had been that night long ago, when the proud, sweet vision of her had waked his childishness to a sense of duty. So now she was proud and sweet. She stepped lightly, with a rustle of wings, ready to fly. Ah! she was a true angel! Anania thought himself still dreaming. Presently she would float up and vanish, and he would not be able to follow her. And the desire to put his arm round that slender waist with its green ribbon made him giddy.

"I shall never see her again!" he told himself; "I shall fall dead the instant she has shut the door!"

The contact of their hands perhaps caused some grand explosion. For they felt as it were a great booming in their ears, and the heat and the light of a thunderbolt fell round them, while—rapturously—they kissed each other.

[12]Sign of familiarity and friendship.

VIII

At Cagliari Anania went through the Lyceum course, then two years at the University. He was studying Law. These years were like an intermezzo in his life; sweet and inspiriting music.

He began a new existence from the moment he set foot in the train, and was carried across the lonely plains, the dreariness of which was aggravated by autumn. He felt a new person clothed in a new vesture, soft and comfortable after one torn and narrow. Was it Margherita's kiss which made him so happy? or the good-bye to all the petty wretchednesses of the past? or the somewhat timorous joy of liberty with the thought of the unknown world to which he was hurrying? He neither knew nor sought to know. How beautiful, how easy was life! He felt strong, handsome, victorious. All women loved him, all the doors of life opened to his feet. Pride and enjoyment enwrapped his soul like an odorous, an intoxicating vapour, through which he discerned horizons as yet undreamed.

The whole way from Nuoro to Macomer, Anania stood in the corridor of the railway carriage, violently shaken by the jerks of the little train. Few persons got in or out at the desolate stations, where bored acacia trees seemed waiting for the train, to hurl upon it companies of fast yellowing leaves.

"Take them!" said the acacias to the train, "take them, contemptuous monster; we are stuck always here, and you move about. What more do you want?"

"Yes," thought the joyous student, "life is movement." And he understood the jocund strength of running water. Till now his soul had been a morass, its edge smothered in fetid weeds. Yes! the acacias stuck in the stagnant Sardinian solitudes knew the truth. Yes! move, run, hurry! that is to live!

"Is this devil of a train never going on!" asked the student during one of the interminable delays.

The railway official, who knew Anania by sight as he knew almost all his passengers, calmly lit his pipe and said, sucking its stem:—

Ah t if he could fly! Anania looked at a black nuraghe on a high rock, like a nest of gigantic birds, and wished he could fly thither with Margherita; to be alone with her and with the memories which floated on the wild scent of the heather; alone, inspired by the shadows and by the phantoms of epic passions. Ah, how great he felt!

But now the cerulean heights of his native Barbagia vanished at the horizon. One peak of Orthobene towered behind the others, violet against the pale sky. Still an outline—a point, one alone—then nothing. The mountains were setting like the sun or moon, leaving a pensive twilight in the soul of the spectator.

Good-bye, good-bye! Anania felt a moment's sadness, then again his thoughts turned to Margherita's kiss. Ah! he seemed to have the delicious creature beside him. The vivid impression of her person, the electric contact of her fresh lips, still gave him delirium. At moments he shivered. Had it not all been a dream? If she were to forget? or to repent? But hope soon returned: pride, intoxication, and the joy in his new existence, endured for days. Everything went well with him. Fortune favoured him in the smallest things. Arrived at Cagliari, he found at once a delightful room with two balconies to the windows. From one he could see the hills and the great luminous sea, sometimes so calm that the reflection of steamers and sailing-boats was clear as if engraved on steel. From the other, almost the whole town was visible, rising like a Moorish city in bastions to the castle, overgrown with palms and flowers.

At first Anania liked this balcony best. Beneath was a wide white street, opposite a row of small old houses tinted with rose colour (like old painted beauties), and with Spanish balconies full of carnations and of ragged coloured garments put out to dry in the sun. Anania scarcely noticed the cottages. His fascinated eye passed on to the grand view of the Moorish city, where coloured houses rose one above the other to the pyramid of mediæval towers profiled against an oriental sky.

At the end of October it was still summer. The air was impregnated with strange fragrance, and the ladies who passed under Anania's balcony were dressed in muslins and gauze. The student felt himself in an enchanted land. The scented and enervating air, the new conveniences of his fine room, the pleasure of a new life, all combined to give him a sense of dream. He fell into a somnolent languor, through which the impressions of his new existence and the records of his recent past came to him veiled and sweet. Everything seemed beautiful and grand—the streets, the churches, the houses. And oh! how many people there were at Cagliari! What fashion! What luxury!

The first time he passed before the Caffé Montenegro, and saw the smart young men sitting there with their straight moustaches and their yellow shoes, he remembered with a strange feeling of contrast the toil-stained, unkempt figures who assembled at the mill. What was going on there now? The humble life of the poor neighbourhood was certainly pursuing its melancholy course, while here in the shining Caffé, in the luminous streets, in the tall, sunlit, wind-kissed, spray-freshened houses all was light and luxury and joy.

His happiness was increased by a letter from Margherita, first of many. It was a simple, tender letter, written on large white note-paper in a round, almost boyish hand. Anania had been expecting a little azure epistle with a flower in it. Was this unconventionality to show him her superiority? But the simple and affectionate expressions of this girl, who seemed in her first letter to be continuing a long and uninterrupted correspondence, convinced him of her ingenuous and deep love, of her sincerity and force of character. He experienced an ineffable joy. Every evening, said Margherita, she stood long hours at the window, fancying that at any moment he might pass by. Their separation was a great pain, but she comforted herself thinking he was working and preparing for their future. She told him where to direct his reply, and enjoined the greatest secrecy, for of course if her family suspected their love it would be vigorously opposed. Vibrating with love and happiness, Anania wrote his reply at once. He was, however, remorseful at the thought of deceiving his benefactor, and could hardly satisfy himself with the sophistry: "Making the daughter happy is doing good to the father."

He wrote of the marvels of the city and of the season. "At this moment the frogs are croaking in the distant gardens, and I see the moon rising like an alabaster face in the warm twilight heaven. It is the same moon that I used to watch from Nuoro, the same round melancholy face that I used to see looking down on the rocks of Orthobene. Now it seems sweeter to me; how changed, how smiling!"

After posting the letter Anania felt the same impulse, to run to the fresh air of the mountains, that he had felt after posting the sonnet. He restrained himself somewhat, but walked swiftly towards the hill of Bonaria.

Evening was falling with almost Eastern softness. The moon shone pale through the moveless trees; above the mother-o'-pearl sea-line the blue of the heaven melted into green, furrowed with rosy and purple clouds. The broad road leading to the Santuario was deserted. He seemed in a dream.

Anania sat on the lofty terrace of the Santuario, broadly moonlit. He intoxicated himself with the splendid vision of the sea. The waves mirrored the light-permeated heaven, the rosy clouds, the moon: then broke themselves beneath the cliff, like immense shells of pearl dissolving into silver. Four sailing-boats, drawn up in line against the luminous background, seemed to Anania huge butterflies come down to drink and to rest upon the waters. Never had he been so happy as in that hour. Waves, great and resplendent as the sea, seemed rolling over his soul. He felt as if some beneficent sorcery had wafted him to a mysterious orient land, and dropped him on the threshold of an enchanted palace, open to receive him for ever.

By the moonlight, by the dying rays of day, he reread Margherita's letter. He kissed the sheet, put it away, and unwillingly rose to return to the town. As night came on, the moon seemed to strew the pathway with silver carvings and with coins. Far off a chorus of fishermen was heard, and still the pleasant croaking of the frogs. All was sweetness; but now the lad felt a strange invasion of melancholy, a presentiment perhaps.

For when he had reached the little garden of San Lucifero, he heard loud cries, shrieks, shrill screeching of women, oaths of men. He ran. Before the pink cottages opposite to his own balcony was a group of persons engaged in a quarrel. It would seem the neighbours were not astonished, for no heads appeared at the windows of the larger houses. Apparently the place was used to such scenes, to the madness of these persons who took each other by the ears, spitting out the grossest insults. Quite close was a big man dressed in black velvet, motionless, watching, it would seem enjoying, the excitement.

The man turned his eyes slowly on the young student. "The police? Oh, the police come every week. They give a push here, and a blow there, and finish it off. Next day it begins again. They'll have to turn those women out," said the big man, pointing at two of the brawlers. "I'll have to take it in hand myself, and get a petition to the authorities signed by all the respectable householders."

"Never mind" she said, "it's only some stupid matter of jealousy. They'll soon be turned out. We're going to appeal to the government."

The shouts redoubled. A woman cried out she was being killed. A child sobbed. God! How horrible! Anania, trembling and attracted by some irresistible force, rushed to his balcony. Above him was the purest of heavens, the moon, the stars; below, at the foot of the vaporous picture of the city, the savage scene, the group of demons, belching forth roars of rage, abominable words. Anania watched in anguish, his soul oppressed by a tremendous thought.

Then came the police. Two of the brawlers ran away, the rest calmed down, the women shut themselves into their houses. In a short time all was silence, broken only by the distant rumble of a carriage, by the hoarse croaking of the frogs.

But in Anania's soul dolorous tumult raged still. Alas! the illumined sea which had flooded his soul while he poured over his letters on the hill of Bonaria, had grown dark, and was tossed and torn by tempest.

"Oh God! oh God! grant she may be dead. Have pity on me, Lord!" he sobbed that night, racked with insomnia and sad thoughts.

The idea had shot through his mind that one of the brawling women who lived in the pink cottage might be his mother. He no longer however thought that, for the landlady when she brought his supper had told him particulars of the women which would not fit for Olì. But what matter? If she were not here, she was there; in some unknown but real place; at Cagliari, in Rome, somewhere, she was living or had been living, a life like that of the women whom the decent inhabitants of the Via S. Lucifero wanted to chase from their vicinity.

"Why did Margherita write to me?" said Anania in anguish, "and why have I replied? That woman will always stand between us. What have I been dreaming? To-morrow I must write to Margherita and tell her all."

"But how can I tell her?" he asked, again turning and tossing on his bed. "And if that woman is dead? Why must I renounce my happiness? Doesn't Margherita probably know about my birth? If it shocked her, she would not have written to me. Yes, but she thinks my mother is dead, or at any rate dead for me. While I feel she is alive, and that it is my duty to seek her, and find her, and lift her out of hell. Perhaps she has reformed already. No, she hasn't. I am sure she hasn't! Oh, it's horrible! I hate her! I hate her, hate her! I'll murder her."

Atrocious visions appeared before his eyes. He saw his mother brawling with other women of her own sort, with lurid and bestial men. He heard cries. He shook with hatred and disgust.

At midnight he wept, smothering his sobs, biting the pillow, wringing his hands, tearing his breast. He snatched away the amulet Olì had given him on the day of their flight from Fonni, and flung it against the wall. Could he but tear out and hurl from him the whole memory of his mother!

Suddenly he marvelled at his tears, rose, and found the amulet, but did not again put it round his neck. He asked himself whether he would have minded so much about his mother if he were not in love with Margherita. He answered himself, Yes, just as much. A sort of emptiness filled his mind. He wearied of his self-torment. Then other thoughts came to him. He heard the moaning of the wind, the loud roar of the sea. He thought of a forest searched by the wind, silvered by the moon; he remembered the woods of Orthobene, where so often while he was picking violets the sound of the wind in the ilexes had seemed to him the sound of the sea. Then suddenly the cruel problem assaulted him with renewed fury. "Suppose she has reformed? It will be just the same, just the same. I've got to seek her, and find her, and help her. It was for my good she deserted me. Otherwise, I shouldn't have had a name or a place in society. If I had stayed with her I'd have been a beggar. I'd have lived in shame, I'd have been a thief, a criminal. But isn't it all the same? Am I not ruined just the same? No! no, it's not the same! I am the son of my own deeds. Only Margherita won't have me because—Oh why, why? why shouldn't she have me? Am I dishonoured? What fault is it of mine? She loves me. Yes, she loves me because I'm the son of my own deeds. And probably that woman is dead. Ah, why do I delude myself? She is not dead, I feel it. She's alive, and she is still young! How old is she? Thirty-three, perhaps; ah yes, quite young!"

The idea that she was still young softened him somewhat. "If she were fifty I couldn't forgive her, that would make it impossible. Oh, why did she desert me? If she had kept me with her she wouldn't have gone back into sin. I would have worked for her. By this time I'd have been a labourer, a shepherd, a workman. I should never have known Margherita. I should have been quite happy."

But the dream of what he might have been disgusted him. He did not love labour. He did not love poor people. He had endured the poverty of the environment in which he had lived till quite lately, only because he had good hope of rising above it in the future.

"But why do I make this stupid prayer?" he asked angrily; "she is not dead! After all, why must I seek her? Didn't she give me up? I'm a fool. Margherita would laugh if she knew I was thinking anything so silly. And I'm neither the first nor the last illegitimate son who has raised himself and grown to be respected. Yes; but that woman is the shadow. I've got to find her and make her live with me, and live properly; and an honest woman won't ever live with us. Us! I and she are all one. To-morrow I must write to Margherita. To-morrow. Suppose she loves me still in spite of it?"

He felt almost faint at the sweetness of this thought. Then was conscious of its improbability and fell back into despair. Neither the next day nor later could he bring himself to write to Margherita. The unfulfilled resolve pursued him, goaded, prostrated him, as if he were a leaf in the grip of the blast.

"I will tell her by word of mouth," he thought; yet feared he would have even less courage for that, and reviled himself for a coward; then found unconfessed comfort in the shameful certainty, that this very cowardice would always hinder him from accomplishing what he called "his mission."

Often, however, this mission appeared so heroic that the idea of deliberately giving it up distressed him.

"My life would be pointless like the lives of most men, if I gave that up." And in these romantic moments he was not averse to the conflict between his duty and his love, love morbidly increased by the conflict.

After that evening of the brawl, Anania deserted the balcony which gave on the street. The appeal to the government was unsuccessful in uprooting the women, and the sight of the pink cottages hurt his eyes. However, going out and coming in he often encountered the two women, or saw them on their balcony among the carnations and the washed rags hung out to dry.

One of them, she of Capo di Sopra, was tall and lithe, with black hair and dark bright blue eyes. She it was who especially attracted Anania's attention. Her name was Marta Rosa; she was often drunk, and some days miserably attired, roaming the streets dishevelled, barefoot, or in old red slippers. At other times she wore a hat trimmed with feathers, and a smart cape of violet velvet. Sometimes she sat in her balcony pretending to sew, and sang in a voice fairly clear and melodious, the pretty stornelli[13] of her native place, interrupting herself to scream insolences to the passers-by who had mocked her, or to her neighbours with whom she was in continual hot water for seducing their sons or husbands. When she sang her voice reached to Anania's room, and he suffered keenly in hearing it.

"Why doesn't she think what she's singing?" Anania asked himself; "why doesn't she think of death, and of God, and reform? But how can she reform? No one will give her work. Society doesn't believe in the repentance of such women. She could commit suicide; that's the only remedy!"

Marta Rosa filled him with pity and with rage. Though he knew where she came from, and what family she belonged to, he could not entirely get rid of the fancy that she might be his mother. At any rate his mother must be very like her. Hideous thought!

One evening Marta Rosa and her companion, a fair-haired woman, pitted with small-pox, stopped the student in the street, and invited him to visit them. He pushed the fair one away and fled, shivering with horror and disgust. Oh God! It seemed as if had spoken to him. After that the two woman jeered at him whenever they met. He signed a second and a third appeal to the Prefecture, but afterwards regretted he had done so.

Meantime the days passed on. The warm autumn was followed by a mild winter. Except on rare days of wind and dust, it felt like spring. Anania studied hard, and he wrote long letters to Margherita.

Their love was no different from that of a hundred thousand poor students and rich young ladies. But Anania thought no couple in the world had ever loved as they loved. Never had man been born who had felt fires like his. Notwithstanding the dread that Margherita might give him up if she knew about his mother, he was happy in his love. The mere thought of seeing the girl again gave him giddiness of delight He counted the days and the hours to the meeting. In the whole veiled and mysterious future, he discerned but one luminous point:—his return home for the Easter holiday, which meant the meeting with Margherita. As time passed on his fever increased. He remembered nothing but her blue eyes, her softly tinted cheeks. All other figures disappeared behind this beloved image.

During his first year at the Lyceum at Cagliari, just as at the Nuoro gymnasium, Anania made no friends, scarce even acquaintances. He sat at his books, or wandered solitary on the seashore, or stood dreaming on his balcony, from which he saw the shining picture of waves and sky, the sailing-boats and steamers apparently carved upon a metallic background.

One day, however, when it was nearing the hour of sunset, he went off towards Monte Urpino, beyond the groves where the almond trees had been in flower since the first days of January; and this excursion had its results. He discovered a pine forest with lonely, moss-carpeted paths. Between the rosy fir-stems patches of delicate brilliance were thrown by the sinking sun. On the left were visions of green meadow, of almond flower, of hedges red in the evening glory; on the right pine groves and shadowed banks, covered with iris blossoms.

The lad wandered hither and thither, full of delight. He could have gone on for ever. The foreground was delicious, but the distance was enchantment. He plucked the iris flowers, murmuring the name of Margherita. He ascended a hill green with asphodel, from which he had a vision of the city so red in the sunset, of the sea which seemed an immense cauldron of boiling gold. The sky flamed, the earth exhaled delicate fragrance. Little purple clouds lost on the horizon suggested a caravan with men and camels, vanishing in splendour. Anania felt so happy that he fluttered his handkerchief and cried aloud, saluting the invisible being who was the soul of the sea, the glory of the heaven, the spirit of that ineffable distance—Margherita!

After this that pine forest on Monte Urpino was the country of his dreams. He fancied himself its proprietor, and was irritated if he met other persons on the lonely paths. Often he lingered till it was night, was present at the red sea-reflected sunset, or sat among the irises watching the rise of the moon, great and golden behind the motionless pines. Once when he was seated on a grassy slope beside a little ravine, he heard the tinkle of grazing flocks, and home-sickness, as yet unknown, overpowered him. Before him, beyond the ravine, the path lost itself in the mystery of distance; the rose-flooded trees blended into the purity of the sky, the velvet moss caught the sunshine. Above the horizon Venus shone out, solitary and smiling, as if she had preceded the stars to enjoy the sweetness of the hour undisturbed.

Of what was the solitary star thinking? Had she a distant love? Anania dared to compare himself with the radiant star alone in the heaven as he was alone in the forest. Perhaps Margherita was looking also at the evening star. And what was Aunt Tatàna doing? The fire was burning on her hearth, and the kind, good, elderly woman was preparing the evening meal, and thinking of her dear boy so far away. And he—he was hardly thinking of her at all! He was ungrateful, selfish! How could he help it? If in Aunt Tatàna's place had been another woman, his thought must have flown to her continually. But that woman was—Ah, where was that woman? What was she doing at this moment? Did her eyes also see the evening star? Was she dead? Was she alive? Was she rich? or was she a beggar? Suppose she were blind! or in prison! This last fancy was perhaps caused by the distant tinkle of a flock led as Anania knew by a jailbird, an old shepherd let out from the prison of S. Bartolomeo on ticket-of-leave. Enough! the boy rose, scattering his sad thoughts. He descended into the ravine, scrambled up again, and went back to the town, comforting himself with the thought that Easter was drawing near.

At last came the day of return. Anania left Cagliari almost sick with delight. He feared he might die on the way, might never see the dear mountains, the familiar street, the fair landscape, the face of Margherita.

"Yet if I were to die now," he thought, leaning his forehead on his hand, "she would never forget me—never!"

Fortunately he arrived quite safe and sound. He saw his dear mountains, his wild valleys, the whole fair landscape; and the purple countenance of Nanna who had come to meet him at the station. She had waited for more than an hour. When she saw the lad's handsome face she opened her arms and cried:—

"How do you do? Here, catch this!" and to protect himself from her embraces, he tossed into her arms the portmanteau, a parcel, and a basket.

He ran and disappeared, leaving the woman stupefied. Ah! Here he was in the familiar street. She would be waiting at the window, and no witness, not even Nanna, was wanted for that greeting. But how small were the houses of Nuoro! and the streets how narrow and empty! All the better! It's cold too at Nuoro! Spring has come, but it's still pale and delicate like a child who has been ill. Here are some people coming towards him, among them Franziscu Carchide. Franziscu recognizes the young student, begins to make signs of welcome. What a bore!

Carchide could not take his eyes off Anania's yellow shoes. The boy was chafing with annoyance. At last he escaped. On! on! His heart beat louder and louder. A woman came to her door, looked at him as he ran by, and said:—

Well yes, it was he! What business was it of hers? Ah! here, here is the street which leads to another, to the well known, the beloved street! At last! It is no dream. Anania hears footsteps and is vexed. Luckily it is only some children who run, shout, rush away again. And who will there be in the other street? He longs to run like the children. But he mustn't, he can't. On the contrary, he assumes an aspect of the greatest rigidity. He is quite composed. He adjusts his necktie, brushes the lapels of his coat. He is wearing a long, light overcoat which she has never seen. Will she know him at once in this coat? Perhaps not. Now he is in the street. Here is the red door, the white house with the green window shutters. But she is not there! Oh God, why is she not there!

Anania stood still with beating heart. By happy chance the street was empty. Only a black hen passed quietly by, lifting her claws very high before setting them on the ground, amusing herself pecking at the wall. What can be the pleasure of that? Is she looking for ants, or testing the wall's strength? Well! he must go away, to avoid the observation of curious eyes. He begins to walk away as slowly as the hen, and though there is still no one at the window he does not take his eye from it for an instant. His heart suddenly comes into his mouth! He turns quite faint. Margherita has come! She is pale with passion, and she looks at him with burning eyes! Anania also grows pale, and no thought of salutation comes to him, nor a smile. He cannot think. For some instants he can see nothing but those burning eyes from which rains unspeakable joy.

He walked on automatically, turning his head at each step, followed by those intoxicating eyes. Only when Nanna, the portmanteau on her head, the parcel in one hand, the basket in the other, appeared puffing and blowing at the end of the street, did astonishment overpower him and quicken his halting step.

[13]These stornelli called mutos are improvised by the women of the Nuoro district. The subject of the first three lines is always independent of the subject of the second three, the two verses being connected only by the rhyme.

PART II

"'Twas now the hour that turneth back
desire
To those who sail the sea; and melts the
heart,"—

of those about to visit unknown shores. Among these was Anania. The train had carried him to the coast. It was evening, a clear, still autumn evening heavy with melancholy. The dented mountains of Gallura were faintly visible in the violet distance. The air was scented with heather blossom. A far off village with grey campanile against the violet sky came into sight. Anania looked at the strange outline of the mountains, at the quiet sky, at the cistus bushes among the rocks, and nothing kept back his tears but the fear of ridicule from his fellow-travellers: a priest, and a student from lowland Campidano who had once been his school-fellow.

At last he was a man! True he had thought himself a man ever since he was fifteen, but then he had thought himself a young man, now he was an "old young man." Youth, however, and health shone in his eyes. He was tall and slim with a seductive little gold-tipped chestnut moustache. Now stars came out above the Gallura range, here and there fires shone red among the dark tufts of heath. Good-bye, then, native land, sad island, aged Mother, loved but not loved enough. A powerful voice from beyond the sea draws your best sons from your warm lap, even as the wind calls the young eagles, inviting them to leave their nest among the lonely crags. The student looked at the horizon and his eyes darkened with the sky. For how many, many years had he not heard the voice which was calling him away!

He remembered the adventure with Bustianeddu, the childish project of flight; then the ceaseless dreams, the inextinguishable desire for a journey towards the lands beyond the sea. Yet now that he was leaving the island he felt sad, half repenting that he had not gone on with his studies at Cagliari. He had been so happy there! Last May, Margherita had come for the fantastic splendours of the Feast of St Efès. He had spent never-to-be-forgotten hours with her among merry companies of fellow citizens. Margherita was charming, very tall and well-formed. Her beautiful hair, her dark blue eyes shadowed by long black lashes, attracted the attention of passers-by who turned their heads to look at her. Anania, slighter and shorter than she, walked by her side trembling with jealousy and joy. It seemed impossible that this beautiful creature, so regal, so reserved, in whose disdainful eyes shone the pride of an imperial race, should abase herself to love, even to look at him. Margherita talked little. She was no flirt, and unlike the generality of women did not change look or voice when a man admired or addressed her. Was this superiority, simplicity, or contempt?

"Am I enough for her?" the lover asked himself. "Yes, surely, for she feels that no other love can equal mine."

He really did love her very deeply. He had eyes for no one else. He never looked at a woman except to compare her with Margherita and find her inferior. The more he became a man, the more she a woman, the more their love took flame. Anania had days of delirium in which he thought of the long years that must elapse ere he could have her, and felt the waiting an impossibility, felt he must die consumed by desire. But on the whole he loved her calmly, with patience, with constancy, and purity.

During the last vacation they had often been alone together in Margherita's courtyard, under the chaste eyes of the stars, the impassive face of the moon. Their meetings were facilitated by the servant who was also the medium of their correspondence. For the most part they were silent, Margherita trembling lightly, pensive, and vigilant. Anania panted, smiled, and sighed, oblivious of time and space, of all the things and affairs of men.

"You are so cold!" he would say. "Why don't you speak the same words that you write?"

"Of what? If your father surprises us, I will kneel to him and say, 'No, we are doing no harm. We are united for eternity.' Don't be afraid, my dearest! I will be worthy of you. I have a future before me. I intend to be somebody."

She made no answer. She did not say that if Signor Carboni were to find out, the future might be shattered. But she continued vigilant.

At bottom her coldness was not displeasing to Anania, and only augmented his ardour. Often seeing her so beautiful and so frozen, her eyes shining in the moonlight like the pearl eyes of an idol, he dared not kiss her. He gazed at her in silence, and his breast heaved with felicity or with anguish he knew not which. Once he said—

"Margherita, I feel like a beggar on the threshold of a wondrous palace given him by a fairy into which he dares not enter."

"God be praised, the sea is calm," said the priest, Anania's fellow-traveller. The young man started from his memories and looked at the gold-green sea, which in the dusk suggested a moonlit plain, at the ruins of a little church, at a path through the thickets, lost on the extreme verge of the shore, as if traced by a dreamer who had hoped to carry it on across the velvet ripples of the sea. He thought of Chateaubriand's Renato, and fancied he saw that melancholy figure on a rock which overhung the waves.

"No, it's not Renato. Perhaps its Eudorus, who on the sea rocks of wild Gallia dreamed of the flowers in his distant Hellas. No, it is not Eudorus; it's just a poet thinking—"

"'This granite rock supreme above the sea
What does it here?'"

But the rock and the church and the path and the silhouette of the uncertain personage have all disappeared. Strange questions are still, however, troublesome in Anania's mind, falling without answer like stones thrown into the sea.

Why should he not stop on this wild, gently melancholy coast? Why should not the half seen figure on the rocks be his own? Why not build a house on the ruins of that church? Why waste himself in this stupid sentimentality? Why was he going to Rome? why studying Law? Who was he? What was life? Nostalgia? Love? What was Margherita doing? Why did he love her? Why was his father a mere servant? Why had his father told him to visit, the moment he got to Rome, those places where gold coins were kept which had been found among the ruins? Was his father a criminal or only a monomaniac? Had he inherited monomania from his father? Monomania in a different form? Was it monomania, a mental disease, this continual thinking of his mother, of that woman? And was she really in Rome, and would he find her?

"'Anninia,'"[14] said the drawling tones of the mocking student from Campidano, using the nickname which Anania's companions had fastened on him, "are you asleep? Wake up! Life's just this, a circular ticket giving the right to stop longer or shorter time at definite places. At least give thanks that sea-sickness won't interrupt your love dreams."

The priest, who was young and narrow-minded, also had his gibe. "Don't be so gloomy, man. 'There's trout even in hell.' We are leaving our beloved fatherland, but at least we shan't be sea-sick!"

The sea was certainly smooth, and the passage began under the best auspices. The moon was near setting and threw strange gleams on the rock of Capo Figari, which suggested a cyclopean sentinel guarding the melancholy sleep of the abandoned isle. Good-bye! good-bye! island of exile and of dream!

Anania remained motionless leaning on the rail of the deck till the last vision of Capo Figari had disappeared and the little scattered islets which rose blue from the waves like petrified clouds, were absorbed into the vaporous distance. Then he sat on a little bench, and scornfully rubbed tears from his eyes. Battista Daga, his companion, who was always sea-sick no matter what the condition of the sea, soon retired. Anania remained alone on the deck, numbed by the damp breeze, and saw the moon, red like molten iron, sink into a turbid and sanguinous distance. At last he too turned in, but was long ere he slept. He felt as if his body were incessantly growing longer and shorter. An interminable line of carts seemed crossing over his torpid person. The most unpleasant recollections of his life came into his head. The clashing of the waves cut by the keel seemed the wind in the widow's cottage at Fonni. Oh what a vain, useless, odious thing was life! What was the good of living at all? However at last sleep vanquished his sufferings.

In the morning he felt another person, agile, strong, happy! He had closed his eyes on a gloomy grief-stricken land, on livid waves and a bloody moon. He awakened in a sea of gold, in a land of light. He was close to Rome.

Rome! His heart beat with joy. Rome! Rome! Eternal country, mother and lover, siren and friend, healer of all sorrows, river of oblivion, fountain of promise, abyss of every ill, source of every good!

Anania felt ready for the conquest of the world. Civita Vecchia was black and damp under the morning sky, but it seemed picturesque and beautiful to him.

Daga, who had been on the continent for a year, smiled at his companion's enthusiasm.

The noisy arrival of the express train gave the Sardinian youth an electric shock, a sense of terror, the first giddy impression of a civilization, violent, even destructive. The red-eyed monster would ravish him away as the wind ravishes the leaves. He would be pitched into a cauldron of new life, boiling over with terrible joys and griefs. Ah! that would be life in reality! dreamed of but never known I civilization! the human ebb and flow! the omnipotent palpitation of the great collective heart! Then he looked out of the train and watched the long melancholy lines of the Campagna Romana, warm green under the autumnal sun, reminding him of the tablelands of his home; but the new life upon which he was entering usurped all his thoughts obliterating the landscape, putting memory to flight. Everything, the walls, the trees, the bushes, the air itself, seemed in motion flying madly by, as if terrified, as if pursued by some unseen monster. Only the express train, itself a monster but beneficent, protecting, the immense warrior of civilization, advanced violently towards the persecutor dragon to fall upon and destroy it.

In Rome, the two students lived on the third floor of a huge house in Piazza della Consolazione, kept by a widow with two pretty daughters—telegraphists at a newspaper office. The companionship of Daga, a chameleon-like personage, sometimes merry, sometimes hypochondriacal, often choleric, often apathetic, always egotistical and sarcastic, was a great solace to Anania during the first days of his residence in the capital. The pair slept in one room, divided by a screen made out of a yellow rug. The room was vast but dark, with one little window looking out on the internal court. Anania's first glance from this window filled him with dismay. From the lurid depths of the court rose high walls of dirty yellow, pierced with irregular windows from which exhaled kitchen odours of grease and onions. Iron rods ran along the walls and across the court; from them depended miserable garments of doubtful cleanliness, one of these rods passed just under the student's window, long strands of twisted pack-thread floating from it. Anania stood looking gloomily at the faded walls, but Battista Daga shook the rod and laughed.

"Look!" he said, "the rings on this rod and the skeins of thread dance as if they were alive. It's amusing!"

Battista went on. "That's life! an iron rod spanning a dirty court and men who dance suspended over an abyss."

"Don't destroy my illusions," said Anania, "I'm dull enough without your philosophy. Let's go out. I'm smothering." They went out and walked till they were tired, bewildered by the noise of carriages and trams, by the splendour of the lamps, by the violent rush and raucous cries of the motors, above all by the surging of the crowd.

Anania felt depressed, alone in a desert, alone on a stormy sea. Had he fallen or cried out none would have heard or seen him; the crowd would have stepped on his prostrate form without looking at it. He remembered Cagliari with yearning nostalgia. Oh enchanted balcony, picture of the sea, sweet eye of the Evening Star! Here no stars were to be seen, no horizon; only a repellent conglomeration of stones and among them a swarm of men, who to the young barbarian seemed of a race inferior to his own.

For the first days Rome, seen through bewildered eyes under the influence of fatigue and of the dark habitation in Piazza della Consolazione, caused him almost feverish sadness. In the older part of the town, in the narrow streets, the stuffy shops, the wretched dwellings whose doors seemed mouths of caverns, Anania thought of the poorest Sardinian village which was dowered at least with light and air. In the modern streets everything seemed too big, the houses were like mountains, the piazzas the size of tancas. Was this the intoxicating Rome, great but never oppressive, which he had imagined at Civita Vecchia?

He began to attend the University lectures, studying Civil and Penal Law under Ferri. Here again his ideas were upset. The students were entirely noisy; laughing at and mocking everybody and everything. In Hall IV., while they were waiting for Ferri, the row and the joking passed all limits of decorum. One student would leap upon the chair and deliver a parody of the expected lecture. His fellows shouted, hissed, applauded, cried, "Viva il Papa!" "Viva St Alphonso di Liguri!" "Viva Pio Nono!" Sometimes the student in the chair, with red, set face, would mimic the mewing of cats, the crowing of cocks. Then the roaring and the hissing redoubled. Paper balls were thrown and lighted matches; the student persisted till the arrival of the professor, who was received with thunders of applause.

Later Anania took part in this noise and tumult, but at first the absurdity, the scepticism, the vanity and egotism of his companions shocked him. He felt more than ever alone, unlike the rest, and he repented that he had come to Rome. But one evening he and Daga were crossing Via Nazionale at the fall of evening. The pavements were deserted, the radiance of the electric lamps was lost in the azure dusk. The windows of the banks were brightly illuminated.

"It seems as if all the gold in the Bank was shining at the windows!" cried Anania.

Presently they stopped again. On the left, in the indescribable depth of Via Quattro Fontane, the sky burned with violet clearness; on the right the full moon was rising from the black outline of Santa Maria Maggiore which was silhouetted against a silver background.

They went, and spent a long time wandering round the divine mystery of the spot, looking at the moon through every arch. Then they sat on a shining column, and Daga said—

"I feel as if I were in the moon. Don't you think that in the moon one would feel just as one feels here in this great dead world?"

[14]Huah-a-bye baby.

It was raining. An ashy shadow burdened the room, of which Daga had given his companion the brighter part, because he liked sleeping till ten o'clock and was intolerant of the faintest light. Stretched on his bed Anania looked at the yellow screen, while he fancied a marble bas-relief yellowed by damp, and was conscious of discouragement, almost physical in its nature.

"What's the matter with him?" thought Anania irritated, "isn't he quite happy, rich, talented, esteemed?" He began to make comparisons.

"He isn't in love, the fool! he has parents who worship him; he's independent—while I? Well then, what about me? Am I not happy? Aren't my blue devils called up by rain clouds, by nebulous monsters? I declare I'm mad! I love and am loved. I have before me a future of love and peace. I'm ambitious, perhaps I have only to open my arms to embrace the world. Margherita is beautiful. She is rich. She loves me and is waiting for me. What is it that I want? Why this stupid sadness?"

Even his nostalgia was cured. Rome had by this time revealed herself before his eyes like some marvellous panorama emerging from the morning mists. She was now so delightful to him that one morning, looking down from the terrace of the Villa Medici on the refulgent picture drawn in the green hollow of the Campagna like a mother-o'-pearl city carved in a shell of emerald, and looking away to the lonely horizon which reminded him of the solitudes of Sardinia, he asked himself whether his new love for the Eternal City was not greater than the old love for his home.

In his life of study he had felt the spirit of Rome, severe and gentle, blowing on his own little spirit. He was assiduous at his lectures, he frequented libraries, galleries, museums. Certain pictures had struck him—he felt as if he had already seen them. Where? when? By degrees he recognized that the feeling came from the resemblance between the figures in the picture to the people of his home. That Madonna of Correggio's has the dark face of Bustianeddu's mother; that old man of Spagnoletto's is the Bishop of Nuoro; and the sarcastic physiognomy of Uncle Pera, the gardener, lives in the copy of a picture by an unknown Tuscan of which the original is at Venice.

Daily in the streets, the churches, the shops, Anania found objects of Art and of Beauty which filled him with enthusiasm. Ah! how beautiful was Rome! How he loved her! And yet—a shadow brooded upon all the love, all the enthusiasm, a cloud hung over all things.

Last night about eleven, before the rain had begun, the two students were walking in Via Nazionale, at this hour almost empty, with broad shadows between the electric lamps. They were talking in the Sardinian dialect, and presently one of those nocturnal butterflies who flit over the pavements, accosted them in the same speech:—

She was tall, dark, with large, hollow eyes. The electric light gave a cadaverous pallor to her small face emerging from the fur collar of a light jacket. As when Marta Rosa had stopped him at Cagliari, Anania shuddered. He dragged Daga away who had answered the woman roughly. It was not the first time Anania had encountered such wandering phantasm in the lonely streets, and always he had felt a chill at his heart.

Was it she? Could it be she? But this time—oh this time—the woman had spoken in Sardinian. She was a Sardinian. It might be she!

Stretched on his bed after long hours of melancholy oppression Anania thought—

"I can't go on living like this. I must know. Oh to hear that she were dead! dead! But I will seek her. Did I not come to Rome for this? To-morrow—to-morrow! From the very day I arrived I have said that I And to-morrow comes and I do nothing. But what can I do? Where must I go? And supposing I do find her?"

Ah! that was his dread. He must not even think of what might happen when he had found her! Then he thought:

"Would it be a good plan to confide in Battista? Suppose I tell him I'm going out now to the Questura [15] to get information; what will he advise? I must confide in some one. I want counsel—help. I can endure this sad secret no longer. So many, many years I have borne its weight. I want to get free, to throw it off as one throws off an oppressive burden. I want to get free, to breathe. I must dislodge this gnawing worm. I shall be told I'm a fool. I shall be convinced. Well, so much the better if I am convinced. I shall be told to let it alone. What a horrible day this is! I feel as if I was in one of Dostoyevsky's novels, seeing a procession of grey and famished folk passing across the end of the room. The sky is lowering. Am I going asleep? I must get up and go about this business at once. Battista Daga!" he cried, rising on his elbow, "aren't you going out?"

Again he hoped a fraternal voice would ask his reason. His heart beat considering how he should explain.

But Daga only asked from behind the screen, "Are you going to get the rain taken up?"

Anania laughed, and his secret fell back on his heart like lead. Not a screen, but an immense and impenetrable wall divided him from his fellows. He must neither ask nor expect help from any one. He must be sufficient to himself.

He got up, dressed, sought in his desk for the certificate of his birth. Then he opened the door.

It rained without intermission, furiously. Descending the dark stair he listened to the echoing clatter of the rain on the glass roof. It seemed the roar of a cascade which in a moment must smash the glass and inundate the staircase, already overflowed by the noise of the imminent catastrophe. He went out and wandered through the rain-washed streets. He passed through a deserted alley, under a black and mysterious arch; looked gloomily at the damp chiaroscuro of certain interiors, of certain small shops in which pale figures of women, of poor men, of dirty children, moved to and fro; caves where charcoal sellers assumed diabolical aspect, where vegetables and fruits in baskets grew putrid in the muddy darkness, where blacksmiths, and cobblers and washerwomen consumed themselves in the forced labour of an imaginary penitentiary, more sad than the real prison because more hopeless and lasting.

Anania thought of the savage surroundings of the widow at Fonni, of the mill, the encompassing poverty, the miserable figures in the poor homes of Nuoro. He seemed condemned always to be in sad places, among the grief-stricken and the poor.

After long and useless wandering, he came in and sat down to write a letter to Margherita.

"I am mortally sad," he wrote. "On my soul lies a great and bruising weight. For many years I have wished to tell you what I am writing now. I don't know how you will receive it. But whatever you may think. Margherita, never forget that I am impelled by inexorable fate, by a duty which is more bitter to me than a crime. Perhaps—but I will not influence you in any way; only remember that on your decision depends my life or my death. By death I mean moral death; the death which does not kill the body but condemns the whole man to a slow agony. First, let me explain. But oh! I can't, I can't! You will repel me! Yet my sorrow is so lacerating that I feel the need of flinging myself before you, of exposing my anguish——"

Having written thus far he stopped and read the letter over. He could not write another word. Who was Margherita? Who was he? Who was that woman? What was life? Here were all the stupid questions beginning over again. A long time he looked at the window panes, at the iron rod and the rings and the threads, dropping water, chafed by the wind, against a murky and faded background. He even thought of killing himself.

Presently he tore the letter, first in long strips then into little squares which he arranged in a pattern. Then again he looked at the window panes, and the rods, and the rings and the threads which seemed like soaking marionettes.

Towards evening the rain ceased and the two students went out together. The sky had cleared, the city noises reanimated the soft air; a rainbow made a marvellous frame for the picture of the Forum Romanum.

Daga was in a mood of thoughtless merriment. Anania walked automatically, noticing nothing, his hands in his pockets, his hat on his eyes, his lips shut. As usual they went down Via Nazionale. Daga stopped before Garroni's to look at the papers, while Anania walked on absently, advancing towards a line of chattering young priests habited in red. The reflection of their scarlet cassocks made a sanguinous reflection on the wet pavement, and all the footpath seemed on fire. They were foreigners, merry, thoughtless boys, frisking like flames and filling the streets with their laughter. Thus they would pass through life, thoughtless and unconscious, no passion involving them in shadows, no flame shining on their path but that of their long scarlet cassocks. Anania felt envious and said to Daga, who rejoined him—

"When I was a child I knew the son of a famous brigand. The boy was on fire with wild little passions, and meant to avenge his father. Now he has become a monk. What do you make of that?"

"That won't do," said Anania eagerly, "we explain too many psychological mysteries by that word fool!"

"Well, anyhow he's a monomaniac. Folly itself is a complicated psychological mystery, a tree of which monomania is the stoutest branch."

"Well, he had the monomania of brigandage, an hereditary monomania. He is a primitive sort of person, and by becoming a monk he tried to free himself from his monomania. He went from bad to worse. He'll end by going mad. A normal intelligent man, if he has the ill luck to become the victim of a fixed idea, throws it off by giving way to it. Take love, for instance. That's a fixed idea, if you like! a continual itch to be near some particular person—alone with her. There's no remedy for that state of obsession but to get near—the fixed idea! Wait a moment, I see something I want" (he stopped before a shop window)—"a crocodile card-case."

"What an idiot you are! where's the Police Office?" asked Anania, turning on his heel.

"Do you think you're at Nuoro? There are dozens of offices. I've noticed one at San Martino dei Monti."

"Will you come with me?" said Anania, turning up Via Depretis. He had grown pale; his hands trembled in his pockets.

"What are you going to do at the Questura? What's the matter with you? Have you committed a crime?"

He hurried. His friend followed, curious and a little disturbed. "Who is the person? Who wants the address? Someone at Nuoro? Is it a mystery? Speak, you wretch!"

"Well," said Daga as they arrived at S. Martino, "I'm not your pet dog. If you won't open your mouth, I'll leave you here."

Daga waited. A quarter of an hour passed. The young man forgot his comrade's mysterious business in enjoyment of the grand scene spread out before him. The rosy haze of incipient twilight filled the air. The lamps were like pearls in the streets of the immense fan, stretching out from the Piazza dell' Esquilino. Foot-passengers and carriages passed as on a huge stage before a limitless background.

"They're all marionettes moved by an invisible thread," thought the student. "There they go passing, hurrying, disappearing. Each one thinks himself great, the pivot of the world, with an universe existing for him alone. While in reality they are all very small. I wonder how many of them have committed crimes? That swell there with the silk hat? Perhaps he has poisoned someone. They all have cares. No, not all. It's a lie to say humanity suffers. The chief part of humanity neither suffers nor enjoys. All those people going to the Pincio for instance! What can those people either enjoy or suffer? Is that Anania Atonzu coming back? Yes, here he is. He also is a marionette. He looks like Punch when he says 'the die is cast!'"

In his olympian superiority of the moment, Daga smiled more mockingly than ever.

"Yes," replied Anania, leaning against the wall. For some minutes he also gazed at the Piazza where lamps were beginning to replace the luminous twilight. In the depths of the central street which seemed a road cut through a forest, Monte Mario could be seen, a distant wall against a background of reddened silver. Anania, he knew not why, suddenly remembered that evening when he—a child, had climbed the Gennargentu and seen a fearful heaven—all red, in which hovered the ghosts of dead robbers.

And now too, he felt a mystery hovering round him; and the vision of the city inspired him with fear: the vision of that forest of stone traversed by shining streets, like rivers of which the waves were the heart beats of suffering men.

[15]Police detective inquiry office.

III

Yes, as Battista had said, and in the words of the ancient Roman, the die was cast. The police office at Anania's instance undertook the search for Rosalia Derios. Before the end of March her son was informed that a woman answering the description lived at such a number of Via del Seminario, on the top floor, and made her living by letting rooms. This person was called, or had assumed the name of Maria Obinu and said she was a native of Nuoro. She had been fourteen years in Rome and at first had lived—well, a little irregularly. But for some years she had been quite respectable—at least in appearance; and let furnished rooms with or without board.

Anania took the information coolly. The description agreed. He did not precisely remember his mother's face, but knew she was tall with black hair and light eyes. He was sure that at Nuoro there was no family named Obinu, and that no one had a female relative living in Rome and letting rooms. This Obinu Was giving a false name, None the less, he felt instinctively that the woman was not, could not be his mother. This gave him a sense of relief. He had done his duty. Maria Obinu was not Rosalia Derios, Rosalia Derios could not be in Rome if the omniscient Questura failed to find her. He was not obliged to make further search. After days and months of oppression and suspense he at last breathed freely.

The spring had penetrated even into the dreary court of the house in Piazza della Consolazione, to that great yellow well, which exhaled the odours of victuals, and was noisy with the voices of servant maids and the piping of imprisoned canaries. The air was warm and sweet with the fragrance of violet and lilac; over the azure sky passed roseate clouds.

Standing at the window, Anania was again conscious of nostalgia. The scent of violets, the pink clouds, the warm spring breeze reminded him of his home, of the vast horizons, the clouds he had watched from the window of his little bedroom, sinking behind the holm-oaks of Orthobene. Then he remembered the pines of Monte Urpino, the silence of the hills clothed with blue iris and asphodel, the mystery of the paths, the pure eyes of the stars. And against the cerulean background of these nostalgic memories, the delightful figure of Margherita rose supreme, her little feet on the grass of the fresh landscape, her brown hair gold-tipped in the brilliance of the sunshine.

It was these recollections which touched him in the Roman spring; otherwise it seemed artificial, the sunsets too highly coloured, the abundance of flowers and perfumes exaggerated. Piazza di Spagna decked with roses like an altar, the Pincio with its flowering trees, the streets in which flower girls offered baskets of ranunculus and violets to the passers-by—all this ostentation, all this merchandise of spring, gave the Sardinian an idea of a vulgar holiday, which would end in weariness and disgust.

Beyond the horizon, Spring was a maiden wild and pure; she wandered among the tancas covered now with waving grass, she twittered with the water birds on the banks of lonely streams, she was merry with the lambs, with the leverets leaping among the cyclamen, or beneath the immense oaks sacred to the ancient shepherds of the Barbagia; she slept in the shadows of the moss-grown rocks, during the voluptuous noons, while round her bed of periwinkle and fern, golden insects buzzed their love stories, and bees sucked the dog roses extracting their bitter honey, sweet and bitter like the Sardinian soul. Anania lived and loved in that distant spring land. He sat at the window studying his books and watching the blue sky and the rosy clouds. He fancied himself an enamoured prisoner. A pleasant somnolence stole his strength, his will, his power of definite thought. Ideas came and went in his mind—like the people in the street. He made no effort to detain them, they passed languidly, leaving furrows of sadness in their wake.

More than ever he loved solitude. His companion irked him. They were no longer entirely good friends.

Daga tyrannised over the younger lad, he borrowed money (which he never repaid) he laughed at him and talked displeasingly.

"We view life under different aspects," said Daga, "or, rather, I see it and you don't. I am short-sighted, but I have strong eyeglasses. People and things seen through them are small but very dear. You are short-sighted too, but you haven't even a pair of spectacles."

Sometimes Anania did indeed believe he had a veil before his eyes. His blood ran with diffidence and apprehension. Even his love for Margherita was mixed with anxiety; and this nostalgia, this love of solitude, this sleepiness of spring, this indifference to life—to that imperious life which had ever eluded him—all this was just diffidence, grief, and apprehension; and indeed he knew it.

One day at the end of May, Anania surprised his companion kissing the elder daughter of the landlady.

"You are a brute!" he exclaimed, "haven't you been making love to the other one?"

"Why, you fool, it's the girls who come and throw themselves into my arms. Am I to push them away? If the world walks sideways, let us find our advantage in it. It's the women nowadays who corrupt the men, and I should be stupider even than you if I didn't accept their offers, up to a certain point!"

"That's very fine," returned Anania, "but why do these adventures happen only to certain people? What about me, for instance?"

"What happens to men doesn't happen to asses. The proverbial Sardinian donkey, sardu molente, is eternally blindfolded. His business is just to turn the wheel, and if the world were to collapse he'd never find it out. The mill is his fixed idea. Suppose some day a wretched historian wanted to write the donkey's life? he would find it vain to describe how his hero ate and slept, what he studied, whether he was intended for a doctor or a lawyer, whether he lived on land or sea or in the clouds. Such things didn't enter into the life of that excellent beast as they enter into the life of all other creatures."

"I might ask you, what is morality? but you wouldn't be able to answer. I will inform you that morality, or whatever you like to call it, is the result of circumstances. A donkey is highly moral so long as he has no opportunity to be anything else. The young ladies of this house know you are engaged. I am not, so they unlade their sweet electric discharges on me."

"Don't threaten my eyes with that finger! I snap my fingers at you and at all the engaged chaps in the world."

"I'm going at once!" he said, "at once. It seems there are prying people here, as well as persons in search of amusement. I leave you to your amusement. I am going away."

"Good-bye, then," said Battista, throwing himself on his bed, "but please remember that if I hadn't taken care of you at first, you'd have been squashed by the trams. You thought they were alive, didn't you?"

"And you, remember——" began Anania, stung by his companion's ridicule. But he checked himself and grew red.

"Oh, I remember perfectly. I owe you twenty-seven lire. Don't be afraid for your twenty-seven lire. My father, you recollect, has seven tancas in a row."

"With a river in the middle!" cried Anania, banging his books on the table. "I defy you and your father and your tancas! I snap my fingers at you."

Thus they separated, the two little supermen who in the Coliseum had thought themselves as high as the moon. Anania flung out of the dingy room with the intention of never setting foot in it again.

Once in the street, his heart still swelling with indignation, he went automatically towards the Corso, and almost without noticing it, found himself in Via del Seminario. It was burning noon, parched by a hot east wind. The awning of the shops flapped spitefully against the passers-by. The smell of the pavement was blended with perfume of flowers but also with odours of paint, of drugs, of provisions. Anania's nerves were on edge. He encountered a flock of young priests with floating black cassocks and compared them to crows. He remembered a long ago quarrel with Bustianeddu, and hated Battista Daga who represented the race of vain-glorious and cynical Sardinians. In this mood he rang at the door of Maria Obinu.

A tall, pale woman, shabbily dressed in black, came to open. Anania felt sudden dismay. Her greenish eyes seemed familiar.

He went in. Signora Obinu took him across a dark vestibule, then into a small parlour, grey, dreary, badly lighted. His attention was caught by a variety of Sardinian objects, specially the head of a deer and a wild sheepskin nailed to the wall. He thought of his birthplace and felt his doubts reborn.

"I want a room. I'm a student, a Sardinian," he said looking at the woman from head to foot.

She was about thirty-seven, pallid and thin; her nose sharp, almost transparent. Her thick black hair, still dressed in Sardinian fashion, that is in narrow plaits coiled on the nape of the neck, made her seem almost pretty.

"A Sardinian? That's nice!" she answered frankly and with a pleasant smile. "I have no room just now, but if you can wait a fortnight there's an English lady going away."

He asked to look at the room. It was in a state of indescribable confusion. The bed was pulled out from the wall, and stood between piles of antique books and other curiosities. There was a folding india-rubber basin which the "Miss" used as a bath, and in it a fragrant branch of cassia. On the window-sill a book lay open. It was poetry, Giovanni Cena's Madre (mother) and Anania was struck by seeing it. He decided to take the room.

In the vestibule there was a large ottoman. He said: "Can't I sleep here till the lady leaves? I want to get out of the place I'm in at once. I go to bed late and I get up early——"

"'Miss' goes to bed early, but the other two, her father and Signor Ciri never come in till late."

They returned to the parlour and Anania stood looking at the stuffed head of the deer.

"Suppose it is she?" he was thinking. His coolness surprised him. He could have borne it even if at that very moment the woman had revealed herself. At bottom, however, he was deeply moved. He continued his investigations.

"This is Sardinian," he said touching the yellowing sheepskin, "why don't you use it as a rug?"

"It's a relic of my father. He was a hunter," said the woman still smiling kindly.

"She's lying," thought Anania. Then he looked attentively at the deer's head and asked, "Are you a native of Nuoro?"

"I was born accidentally at Fonni," he said with careless voice, fingering the horns of the stag; "yes, at Fonni. My name is Anania Atonzu Derios."

Having said the name, he turned and faced the woman. She did not move an eyelash.

But that evening when he had brought his portmanteau and books to his new domicile, Maria said to him:

In vain he protested. His things were all carried into her little chamber and Anania took possession. He felt shy, intruding thus into the long narrow room which seemed like a nun's cell. The little white bed smelt of lavender and reminded him of the simple pallet beds of the patriarchal Sardinian homes. Again, Sardinian fashion, Maria Obinu had decorated the grey walls with a row of little pictures, with sacred images, three wax candles, and three crucifixes, a branch of olive, and an immense crown made of sugar. At the head of the bed hung two bunches of medals which had been blessed by the Pope. In one corner a lamp burned before a representation of blue-pencil souls in Purgatory praying before three red-pencil ensanguined flames. What a difference between the Englishwoman's room and that of Maria Obinu! They were divided by at least five centuries.

Anania was again in doubt. Why did she give him her room? Ah! she was too anxious—too affectionate! He was unpacking when she knocked and asked, without entering, whether he wished the lamp extinguished before the Holy Souls.

In his hand was a quaint little object, a small case of greasy material hung on a thin chain blackened by time. He put the amulet round his neck and said:

"I am pious myself. This is the Ricetta of San Giovanni, which wards off temptation."

The woman looked. Her smile faded and Anania's heart beat. "You don't believe in it?" she said severely; "well, whether you believe or not, don't jest at it. It's holy."

Stretched on the lavender-scented bed, Anania pondered. If this Maria Obinu were Olì? If it were She? So near and yet so far! What mysterious thread had led him to her, to the very pillow where she must have wept for her deserted child? How strange is life!—a thread upon which men dance like rags moved by the wind; was it really she? Then he had arrived at his goal insensibly, almost unintentionally, by force of his subconscious will which had given him suggestion. Suggestion of what? But surely this was folly! Childishness! It couldn't be she! But if it were? Did she already know she was with her son while he was racked by doubt? Then why didn't she reveal herself? What was she afraid of? Had she recognised the amulet.

No, it could not be she. A mother must betray herself; could not help crying out on meeting her child. The idea was absurd. No, it was not absurd. A woman can control herself under the most violent emotions. Olì would be afraid—after deserting her son—throwing him away. Well, so much the more she ought to betray herself. A mother is always a mother—not a mere woman. And how could Olì, a wild creature, a child of nature, have so assimilated the hypocrisy of cities, as to be able to feign like an actress? Impossible! Maria Obinu was Maria Obinu, a nice kind woman, mild and unconscious, who had reformed by luck rather than by strength of character, who eked out her penitence—perhaps scarcely felt—by the ostentation of very questionable religious sentiment. It could not be She.

"I'll press for information. She must tell me her history," he thought. "However I'm satisfied it's not she. I tell you it's not she! you imbecile, you idiot, you fool!"

Then he remembered his first night at Nuoro and the secret kiss his father had pressed upon his forehead. He half expected that now his door would open and a furtive shadow would come in the trembling light of the little lamp and imitate that shamefaced kiss.

"If it happens, what shall I do?" he asked himself, anxiously. "I'll pretend I'm asleep. But, good Lord! what a fool I am!"

The noises in the street and in the neighbouring Piazza of the Pantheon grew fainter and fewer, as if themselves weary and retiring to a place of repose. The belated lodgers came in. Then all was silence in the house, in the street, in the city. But Anania still kept vigil. Perhaps the lamp——

"I'll put it out," he thought and got up. A noise! a rustle! Was the door opening? Oh God! He sprang back into bed, shut his eyes, waited. His heart and his throat pulsed feverishly. The door remained shut. He calmed himself and laughed. But the lamp was left still alight.

"My Margherita, this moment your letter has arrived and I reply at once. At least twenty times in the last few days I have taken my pen to write to you but have not managed it. I have a great deal to tell you. First, I have moved. I fell out with Battista Daga because I caught him kissing the elder of the landlady's girls while he still makes love to the younger one. That made me sick. Besides the place was too far from the University. Now that the heat has begun the long journey to and fro is a bore. As to Daga we made it up next day. I met him close to my new rooms and he said he was coming to look me up, though first he had said he wouldn't. I'm very comfortable here. The new landlady is a Sardinian. She says she was born at Nuoro. She's nice and kind and very pious—quite maternal in her care of me. She has given me her own room, until the departure of a very beautiful English lady whom I'm to replace. This 'Miss' is extraordinarily like you. Don't be jealous though. First, because I'm violently in love with a young lady at Nuoro; secondly because 'Miss' is going away in a few days; thirdly she's as mad as a March hare; fourth she's betrothed; fifthly I'm under the care of all the saints in heaven who are hung round the walls of my room, not to mention the blessed souls in Purgatory. They are illuminated day and night by a taper, which I know not why, seems to me itself a soul at expiation (now I'm writing what you call nonsense).

"Well, I must tell you that at my new landlady's, there are two or three more foreigners, a clerk at the War Office, a Piedmontese tailor, very fashionable and refined, and a French bagman who can fire off eighty lies in eight minutes. He reminds me of your suitor, the most worshipful Signor Franziscu Carchide of Nuoro. Yesterday, for instance, while 'Miss' and the tailor were arguing about the Boer war, Monsieur Pilbert told me, half in French half in Latin, that by force of suggestion he had made the hair come out on his baby's head and in a single hour it grew an inch, then stopped growing and at last set itself Se développer naturellement. Signora Obinu—that's the landlady—has a queer little old Sardinian cook, who has been thirty years in Rome and still can't speak Italian. Poor old Aunt Varvara! She was almost ravished from Sardinia, carried off by a violent padrone, a captain of Dragons (so she calls him) who terrified her. She's black and tiny, like a jana[16] keeps her native costume jealously locked up, and wears a ridiculous gown bought in the Campo dei Fiori, and a bonnet which might have belonged to the Empress Josephine. I often visit Aunt Varvara in her dark and torrid kitchen. We talk in dialect; she weeps, and asks after all the people she knew in the island. She thinks of returning to Sardinia, though she's horribly afraid of the sea and believes the storm in which she crossed to the continent is still going on. She knows nothing of the place she's living in. Rome, for her, is just a place where everything's dear, and a field of danger in which at any moment she may be assaulted by a passing vehicle. She says the trams seem to her like awful stags (she has never seen a stag) and that she can't go to mass at the Pantheon because that church with the round hole on top, like a Sardinian oven, makes her laugh. She wants to know whether in Sardinia we still bake at home. I said yes, and she began to cry, thinking of the jokes and games in the days when she baked bread in her father's oven. Then she asked if there are still shepherds, and if they still sit on the ground under the trees. How she sighed thinking of a certain Easter banquet forty years ago at Goceano! Aunt Varvara can't bear the Englishwoman, and she in her turn regards the old thing as a savage. Sometimes while she does her cooking she sings songs in the Logudorese dialect. Also this dirge which I have heard at Nuoro:

"Then in the evening mistress and maid repeat the Rosary in dialect; and it amuses me to join in from my room, because it makes Aunt Varvara furious. She breaks off her prayers to swear at me.

"'Su diaulu chi ti ha fattu' ('Go to the devil who made you!')" she shouts, and the padrona says, changing her voice:

"Enough of this, Margherita, my own, my sweet lovely Margherita! Let's turn to something else. It's very hot now-a-days, but generally grows fresh in the evening. I work hard all day—seriously; because it's not only my duty but my pleasure. I go oftener than anybody to the University and to the Libraries. For this reason I'm the darling of the Professors. In the evening I walk along the banks of the Tiber and spend hours watching the running water. I ask myself silly questions such as 'What is water?' It's not true that the Tiber is clear coloured. Sometimes it's yellow and muddy, oftener it's green, sometimes blue, sometimes livid. I have seen it quite milky and reflecting the lamps, the bridges, the moon, like polished marble. I compare the perennial flowing of the water to my love for you,—thus constant, silent, inexhaustible. Why, oh why, are you not here with me, my Margherita? The mere thought of you makes everything more beautiful, gives everything deeper meaning. What would not the world be if I could see it reflected in your adored eyes! When, when will the tormenting and delicious dream of our souls be made real? I don't know how I manage to live thus divided from you, but I turn with joy to the thought that in two months we shall again be together. O my Margherita, my pearl of pearls, I cannot express even to you what I feel. No human speech could express it. It's a continual fire which devours me, an unspeakable thirst which only one fountain can slake. You are that fountain; you are the garden whose flowers shall refresh my soul.

"Margherita, I am alone in the world, for you are all the world to me. When I lose myself in the crowd, in the sea of unknown persons, it is enough for me to think of you, and my heart swells with love to them all, for your sweet sake. When your letters come, I am so happy I feel quite giddy. I seem to have attained the summit of some great mountain—if I stretch out my hand I shall touch the stars. It is too much! I dread falling—falling into an abyss, being reduced to ashes by contact with the stars. What would become of me, if, Margherita, if I should lose you? I laugh when you tell me you are jealous of the beautiful and cultured women whom I must be meeting here in Rome. No woman could be to me what you are. You are my life, you are my past, my home, my race, my dream. You are the mysterious wine which fills for me the empty cup we call Life. Yes, I like to fancy life a cup which we continually lift to our lips. For many this cup is never filled, and they try painfully to suck what is not there, and die slowly for lack of nourishment. But for others, and I belong to the happy number, the cup contains divine ambrosia. . . .

"I have interrupted this letter, because Battista came to see me. He seems getting into trouble with the two girls and wants to follow me here. We shall see. I will speak to my landlady about it. I don't bear malice, because as friend Pilbert assures me, hard words are things with no real existence.

"I return to my letter, quite upset by a confidence made to me a few minutes ago by Aunt Varvara. She tells me she knows Daga, having seen him here with the padrona several times. I don't like it, for you must know Signora Obinu has not always borne the best of characters. I looked questioningly at Aunt Varvara but she shut up her lips and shook her head mysteriously. I promised next vacation to visit her old home and learn its history for her during the last thirty years. This pleased her so much that she let me catechize her a bit. I got out of her that Signora Obinu left children in Sardinia, one of whom has been adopted by a rich Signore of Campidano. Aunt Varvara thinks Battista Daga may be Maria Obinu's son."

Anania stopped writing, and read and reread the last few lines. A little black ant ran over the page and he looked at it with eyes full of thought. What was this little being called an ant? Why did it live? Ought he to crush it with his finger or not to crush it? Was there such a thing as Free-Will?

At this time, though he was attending Ferri's lectures, Anania still believed in free-will. He sometimes committed small crimes just to prove to himself that he had willed to commit them. This time, however, he let the ant alone. It vanished under a book ignorant of the danger it had escaped. As often before, he tore up part of his letter. Then he leaned his forehead on his hands and reread the remainder, a wave of bitterness overflowing his heart.

"Yes," he thought, "I am too near the stars; I don't see the abyss into which I must ineluctably fall. Why do I continue to deceive myself? It's my mother she may be, and Battista Daga visits her because she is still—But why has he never spoken of her? After all, why should he speak? He has not confided his adventures to me. He comes here—because—Oh God! Oh God! I am the son of Maria Obinu! She knows my whole life. She told the old jana in her own way that I have been adopted by a rich Signore. Has she left other children in Sardinia? No, that part must be a lie—she went away at once after deserting me. She said that as a blind. Oh God!"

"I must find out," he thought, "I must know. Why this burning lamp, these pictures, these prayers,—if it's not for that reason. But I will unmask you, lost soul! I will kill you, chase you away, because you are my curse! because you will be the curse of that pure noble creature. Oh my poor, poor Margherita!"

He struck his fist violently on the letter, while his eyes flamed with hatred. Then again he sank on his chair, and dropped his head on the table. He wished he could burst his head, think no more! forget! annihilate himself!

He felt vile, black and viscid as a lump of mud. He felt himself flesh of the solid flesh of his mother, himself a sinner, miserable, abject. Tumultuous recollections passed through his mind. He remembered the generous ideas so often caressed, the dream of finding and rescuing her, the infinite pity for her ignorance and irresponsibility; the pride with which he had regarded his own compassion—the thirst for sacrifice. It had all been self-deception. A vague hint given by a childish old woman had sufficed to turn his soul to mud, to rack it with storm, to impel it towards crime. "I will kill her." Yes, those words were already a crime.

He thought of the peace he had enjoyed since he had been in this house, and raised his head struck by a new idea. During the week passed in this convent cell of Maria's, he had at the bottom of his heart accepted the idea that she was his mother, and the recognition of her redemption, of her honest and hard working life had made him happy. He had welcomed the thought of their relationship. His horizon had cleared. He was freed from a weight which had crushed and nailed him to the earth, and was now ready to fly to the stars. And since she, either for fear, or for self castigation, or for love of independence, refused to acknowledge him, then he was glad to renounce her—now her future was assured, her life purified. He could do her no good. He might harm her by intrusion. His mission could not be accomplished; he was spared the solution of the cruel problem. He might now—after his long suffering—prosecute his life, tranquilly, happily. He had fulfilled his duty by the mere desire to fulfil it. And this ideal duty which had cost him so much had seemed to him so heroic as to fill his soul with pride. The stars were near.

But now the abyss had reopened. All within and without his soul was a lie; all delusion, all dream—even the stars.

But perhaps the thing he was thinking now was the delusion? If he were deceiving himself. If Maria were not she? He went back on his old thoughts. "Whether she is Maria or not, whether she is near or far, she exists and she calls me. I must return on my steps, begin again, find her dead or alive. Oh, if she were but dead!"

However, he waited for his landlady's return and to calm himself somewhat tried to analyse this passion which goaded him. But for that matter he knew well enough that the greater part of his trouble arose not from passion but from the fact that his Ego was made up of two cruelly contrasted personalities. One was the fantastic child, violent, melancholy, with sick blood in his veins, the child who had come down from his native mountains dreaming of an unreal world; who in his father's house had meditated flight without ever attempting it, who at Cagliari had wept wildly imagining that Marta Rosa could be his mother. The other was a being, normal and intelligent, who had grown alongside the morbid child, who saw clearly the unreality of the phantoms and nebulous monsters which were his torment, yet who had never succeeded in liberating him from the obsession. Continual conflict, cruel contradiction, agitated by day and by night these two personalities; but the fantastic and illogical child, victim and tyrant alike, always came off the victor. Often he had asked himself whether he would have suffered so acutely had he not been in love with Margherita; always he answered himself "yes."

"I should like to speak to you," said her young lodger, opening the door. "Please come here a moment."

She was dressed in black, with an old hat of faded violet velvet. She had run up the stair and was panting, her face unusually red, her forehead hot and shining.

"The matter with me? nothing," she answered, surprised; then resumed her usual pleasant smile. "Why are you sitting in the dark? Well, what have you to say to me?"

She seemed struck by his voice and his frown, the more so that in the morning he had complained of not feeling well.

"How hot it is! Suffocating!" she said, "are you perhaps feeling it? Tell me what you want."

Anania was striking a match against the wall. He was thinking. "Better catch her suddenly before she speaks to that old monkey Aunt Varvara."

"What's become of the candle? Well, look here, a friend of mine came here—ah su diaulu t'a fattu, the devil made you, candle, that you won't light! What a beast of a candle!"

He raised his head and looked sharply at the woman who was quietly watching his efforts with the candle. "Battista Daga, another student, has been here. He wants a room. Can you give him one?"

"We'll see," she said calmly, "when does he want it?" Anania began to feel irritated.

Maria Obinu raised her eyebrows. She seemed trying to remember. Suddenly her face and her eyes burned.

"Look here," she said proudly, "if you mean that pale young man, with the crooked nose, and the look of mortal sin—tell him that in my house there is no place for him!"

"Why not? Please tell me. I assure you I know nothing against him. We slept for six months in the same room,—Daga and I. But I really don't know much about him—what he's up to. Tell me."

Anania had sat down by the table, inadvertently pushing the candle against the wall.

"I have nothing to tell you," answered the woman. "I'm not bound to give account to anyone. Let me alone. I live by my work and ask nothing from anyone. I'm better than the ladies to whom you gentlemen lift your hats! Ah!" she went on sighing heavily, "life is long! Days of trial will come to you young lads too! You will get to know the world, will find the hedge thick with serpents. They rise on every side of the path of life. You also will come upon the stone which will make you trip. And many, Signor Anania, many will never get up again. They will strike their heads against that stone and die of the blow. Perhaps those are the best off. Ah! but the Lord is merciful! The Lord is merciful!"

"Bostè est sapia che ì s'abba"[17] he said ironically, "upon my word, I don't understand your sermon. What has it to do with Battista Daga? Tell me. Signora Maria."

"Move that candle! It's setting fire to the calendar! What are you thinking of!" cried the landlady, jumping up, "are you trying to ruin me?"

"What a silly boy! Doesn't he deserve a box on the ear?" said Maria, recovering herself and pulling the tuft of hair which fell on his forehead.

"Don't! don't!" cried Anania, shaking his head from her touch. A sudden recollection had shot through him. Yes—in a far distant place, in a long distant time, in a black kitchen guarded by the long funereal cloak of a bandit—Olì, exasperated by poverty and grief, used sometimes to pull the wild locks of a naughty little boy.

Anania was moved by the recollection. He seized Signora Obinu's hand and held it tight. Was it the same hand which had struck the child, the hand which had led him to the olive-mill.

"A silly boy!" repeated Maria, "if I hadn't been there, there'd have been a fine conflagration. Well, may I go away now?"

"I feel as if I had seen your hand before now. Some other time this hand has pulled my hair, has boxed my ears, has caressed me——"

"Signora Maria, do you believe in spirits? No? Yet they exist. I believe in them. Last night a friendly spirit came and told me many things, among them, that you are my mother."

Maria laughed, somewhat forcedly, as if wishing to hide something. The young man saw he had chosen a very childish method of approaching her. Yet if she was really his mother she could not fail to be upset, finding he had guessed it. However she laughed, perhaps trying to carry off some terror of informing spirits.

"No, I don't see. Signora Maria! wait! Explain to me, do! Don't go away! What does it all mean?"

"Of course I do see," thought Anania shutting the door. "Well, is it any business of mine what Daga is? and what she is? Hasn't everyone their faults?"

[16]A dwarf of Sardinian legend.

[17]A proverb. Wise as water, viz. very wise.

"Aunt Varvara," said the student to the old servant as she was preparing the coffee. "How happy I am! I feel wings growing. A few more days—then good-bye! Yes, I have wings. I shall jump on the window-sill, cry zsss—ss—and off! I launch myself in flight, and there I am in Sardinia."

"A-a-ah!" cried the old woman terrified, "do get down, sweetheart! You'll break your neck! Oh God!——"

"Well, if you'll give me some coffee, just one little cup, I won't fly just yet. How good your coffee is, my dear! How do you get it so good? No one can make it so well except my mother at Nuoro."

The old woman, greatly flattered, poured out a cup, which being the first from the pot was truly exquisite.

"Upon my word it is good!" said Anania, raising ecstatic eyes. "It gives me nostalgia."

"A shudder of the heart, Aunt Varvara; that shudder which comes when we think of paradise. Would you like to come home with me, little aunt, on a pillion? think! what fun!"

The old woman heaved a tremendous sigh. "Ah—if it weren't for the sea. Are you very rich?" she asked suddenly.

"Are there still Barons of Baronia? I have heard that phantoms haunt their castle. Once there was a woodcutter who spent the night under the castle wall, and he saw a lady with a long gold tail like a comet. Do you know what a comet is? By our Lady of Good Counsel! you'll kill yourself drinking so much coffee!"

Aunt Varvara went on. She mixed the legends of the Castello of the Castle of Burgos with those of the castle of Galtelli, confused historic records come down by popular tradition, with events which had happened in her own childhood, not it is true very recent. She told a story of a great lord who had lost his way on a moor, and not till he heard a little bell at evening dusk, could he find his way to an inhabited place. The great lord was very rich and very stupid, and he promised to leave all his wealth to the church whose bell he had heard. And ever after that, the bell has tolled at evening dusk so that lost men may be able to find their way.

"No, no, my dear little heart. It belongs to the church of Illori. I can tell you the name of the great rich man. It was Don Gonario Area."

"And the nuraghes," continued Aunt Varvara, walking about the steaming kitchen, "are there still nuraghes? You know when the Moors came to Sardinia to steal the cattle and the women, the Sardinians hid their money in the nuraghes. Stupid boy, why don't you look for treasure on your tancas?"

Anania thought of his father who had again written requiring him to visit the museums where antique gold coins are preserved.

"Once," continued Aunt Varvara, "I went to pick lavender near a nuraghe. I remember as if it were yesterday. I had the fever, and in the evening I had to lie down on the grass, waiting till some cart should pass which would carry me home, and this is what I saw. The heaven behind the nuraghe was all the colour of fire—it looked just like a scarlet cloth. And suddenly a giant rose on the patiu[18] and started blowing smoke out of his mouth. The whole sky became dark. By our Lady of Good Counsel, it was horrible! But quite suddenly I saw St George with the full moon on his head, and a great sword shining like water in his hand. Tiffeti! Taffeti!" cried the old dame, flourishing a kitchen knife! "St George slashed off the giant's head, and the sky became quite bright again."

"It may have been the fever, but I did see the giant and Santu Jorgi; yes, I saw them with these eyes!" asseverated the old lady, poking her fingers into her organs of vision.

Then she asked whether on the days of the greater feasts, horses still galloped along the edge of the cliff, decorated with coloured ribbons and ridden by half naked boys. And again whether for Sant' Antonio they lighted fires, and in the middle of the fires stuck stakes, on top of which were roasted oranges and pomegranates and arbutus berries, and dead rats.

Anania listened with pleasure to Aunt Varvara's suggestive stories and questions. Though the trains were shrieking within a few yards and the amorous cats were miouing among the columns of the Pantheon, he so identified himself with the old woman's recollections that he fancied he had only to open the door, to find himself in a lonely Sardinian landscape on the top of a nuraghe watched by a giant, or rapt in the savage excitement of a race of Barbs, in the company of a philosophic and contemplative old shepherd with soul turbid and great like the clouds. In the homesick babble of the aged exile he already felt the aroma of his native land, the breeze blown down from Orthobene and the Gennargentu. And he felt himself Sardinian, deeply, exclusively Sardinian.

"I mean to enjoy myself this vacation!" he said to his old Mend. "I shall attend all the Feasts, I shall visit the whole of my little native country. I shall climb on the Gennargentu, on Monte Raso, on the hill of the castle of Burgos! Yes, I'm determined to get up the Gennargentu. Perhaps, at Fonni, so and so, and so and so are still alive. And I wonder how the monks are getting on? and Zuanne?"

"Aren't you ever going back?" he asked Signora Obinu one day when she came into the kitchen.

"Why not? Come to the window Signora Maria! look! What a wonderful moon! Wouldn't you like to go on pilgrimage to the Madonna di Gonare, in fine moonlight like this? on horseback, quietly, quietly through the woods, up the precipices—on—on—while you see the little church painted on the sky above you, high up—high up——"

Maria shook her head and pursed up her lips; but Aunt Varvara heaved all over and raised her eyes as if to find the little country church high up—high up against the soft blue of the moonlit sky.

"Except for you and your friends," said the landlady, "and the church and devotees of the Most Holy Madonna, I'd see all Sardinia burnt up sooner than go back there."

Aunt Varvara busy with her cooking shut her eyes, unable to protest out loud against her mistress's shocking hatred of the distant fatherland.

"Ah, my sweetheart," said the old woman when Signora Obinu had gone to the dining-room, "she has good reason! They murdered her there!"

"You don't know what you're talking about! It's better to murder a woman than to betray her."

"Aunt Varvara, you said it was a Signore who seduced her. Tell me his name. Try to remember it. Tell me, has the Signora any documents? Where would they be? I might help her to find the man; might persuade him to——It would be to your own interest as well."

"She doesn't want help. She has money. Leave her in peace. She doesn't want to be reminded of her misfortune. Not a word! No! She'd strangle me if she knew I had talked about her."

He had already searched for them in Signora Maria's room. She had no papers. She had destroyed all traces of her past.

The student was consumed with the desire to ascertain something definite before he went home. Why did he not take active steps, go back to the Questura, write to Sardinia, follow up the clue? Why had he allowed so much time to slip by in vain and cowardly inertia? Many a time he had resolved to bring on a crisis, to attack her and force her to reveal herself. After the inconclusive colloquy about Daga, he had actually allowed himself to chatter with her on irrelevant matters. There were days when he did not see her at all, or try to see her. "Yet I do want to know," he thought distractedly roaming the streets, which were still crowded but by an ever decreasing crowd. "If she is not my mother, why should I torment myself? But in that case, where, where is my mother? How is she living? Is she near or far? In the turmoil of the city, in this clatter which seems to me the voice of a thousand-headed monster, is her breath, her groan, her laughter, a part of it? And if she is not here, where is she?"

That night he had a touch of fever, caused perhaps by the unwholesome though poetic philtre of the dreams which he evoked almost nightly in the silence of the Coliseum. In his delirium he thought he saw the face of Maria Obinu bending over his pillow. Was it delirium? Moonlight and the vague reflection of an illuminated window lighted the patient's room. Behind Maria he saw a cavalier in eighteenth century costume, carrying a tray on which was a glass of champagne and Olì's amulet. He felt that the cavalier, motionless in the penumbra, was insubstantial; but the figure of the woman seemed real. He wanted to light a candle but he could not move. He seemed lying on the edge of a precipice upon a stone, which drawn by an occult force flew giddily towards an unattainable point followed by all things. After the first apparition of Maria he thought, "I have fever, I know that; but I'm certainly not wandering. It was she. I was wrong in pretending to be asleep. I ought to have simulated delirium to see what she would do. Perhaps she'll come back. Suppose I try and suggest it to her?"

"Come! Come!" he began, speaking half aloud and trying to impose his will on her. "Come, Maria Obinu! I will you to come."

She did not come at once, and the strange course of the rock on which the sufferer imagined himself lying redoubled in velocity. Apocalyptic visions rose, mingled, vanished—monstrous clouds far in the depths of the fantastic abyss into which the soul of the sufferer gazed with horror. He saw the nuraghe with the giant and the saint of Aunt Varvara's delirium. But the moon detached itself from the Saint and fled over the heaven. Two other moons red and huge appeared in pursuit. Cataclysm was imminent. An immense crowd trampled each other on the shore of a storm driven sea. The waves were marine horses, which fought with invisible spirits. A cry rose out of the sea: "The stepmother! the stepmother!" Anania shook with horror, opened his eyes and thought they had turned blue.

"Now I'll pretend!" he thought, and began a feeble lament. But the woman said nothing.

"Oh God! Oh God!" murmured the youth, sighing aloud, "who is striking my head? Let me alone! Don't murder me! The moon is going out. Mother, do you remember the little song you taught me:"

"Why won't you tell me you are my mother? Tell me! Tell me! I know it of course; but you ought to tell me yourself. Do you see the knight with the amulet you gave me that morning? Don't you remember that morning we came down, and the chaffinches sang on the chestnut trees and the clouds vanished behind Monte Gonare? Of course you remember! Tell me! Don't be afraid! I love you, we will live together! Tell me!"

The woman kept silence. The patient was overcome by a spasm of real tenderness and anguish, and began to rave in reality.

"Mother! Mother! speak to me! Don't make me suffer more. I am worn out. If you know what I have suffered! You are Olì, aren't you? There's no use in denying it. You are Olì. What have you been about? Where are your papers? Ah well, we'll be silent about the past. It's all over and done with. Now we will never part again. Oh don't go away! Wait! For God's sake, don't go away!"

He raised himself, his eyes wide; but the figure moved slowly away and disappeared. The knight with the tray was still there motionless in the penumbra, and everything was turning round. Again the figure returned and again it vanished. Anania continued to cry out that he saw his mother; and this impression, made up of sweetness and anguish, he retained even after the fever had left him.

Next morning he awoke early. His limbs seemed bruised as with blows of a stick. He got up and went out without asking for Signora Obinu.

For three or four nights the fever continued to trouble him; but between the phantasms of nightmare the figure of his mother did not return. That made him think. Had it been a real vision? If so, she must have been frightened by his words, and for that reason had kept away.

After this, exhausted by fatigue and the nervous tension of the Examinations, still moreover a little feverish, he daily resolved to solve the enigma, but always in vain. He thought, "I will summon her. I will supplicate, question, threaten. I will tell her the Questura has told me all, I will frighten her with the threat of exposure. She will confess. And suppose it is She—what next?"

Always this supposition stupefied and terrified him. Sometimes he imagined a dramatic scene between his long lost mother and himself; sometimes it seemed that not one fibre in his heart would be moved. Oftener he felt frozen, watching Signora Obinu, pale and smiling, with her worn dark dress, always busy, always quiet, unconscious, insensible.

A veil fell between him and the phantasm which had tormented him. Instead of the violent scene he had imagined, dull conversations about nothings took place between him and his landlady, simple Aunt Varvara joining in.

Only a few minutes before starting for his holiday he finally decided to leave the whole matter in suspense till his return. He felt weary, defeated. The heat, the examinations, the fever, the fantasies had exhausted him. "I will rest," he thought, "I will sleep. I need forgetfulness and sleep if I am to recover myself. I mustn't turn into a neurasthenic! I will go up to my native mountains, to the wild and virgin Gennargentu How long I have intended that excursion! I will visit the robber's widow; my brother Zuanne; the son of the candlemaker; and the court of the convent and that carabiniere who sang—"

Then the thought of again seeing Margherita, of kissing her and immersing himself in love as in a perfumed bath, gave him a felicity which took his breath away. He almost wanted to flee from this devouring joy; but, driven out of his mind, it still ran in his blood, vibrated with his nerves, and swelled his heart in delicious pain. As he was starting. Aunt Varvara brought him a small wax candle which he was to carry to the Basilica of the Martyrs at Fonni, and Signora Obinu gave him a medal blessed by the Holy Father.

"If you don't value it yourself, unbeliever, give it to your mother," she said smiling, and a little moved. "Good-bye, have a good journey and come back safe. I'll keep the room for you. Get on well, and send me a postcard at once."

"Good-bye!" said Anania, taking the medal; "commend me to the Holy Souls in Purgatory."

"Of course I will," she said, shaking her finger at him, "they will protect you from temptation."

"Good-bye!" he called again from the bottom of the stair, and Maria, leaning over the bannister, saluted him with her hand. When he had reached the street he thought of going back to see if she were in tears, stopped for a moment, but went on followed by Aunt Varvara almost crying herself.

"Son of my little heart," said the old woman, "greet for me the first person you shall meet on Sardinian ground. And don't forget the wax candle."

She went with him to the tram, notwithstanding her fear of the monster, and kissed him on his cheek. Anania remembered the kiss of poor Nanna before his departure from Nuoro, but this time he was touched, and he embraced Aunt Varvara asking forgiveness for all the times he had teased her.

Then all was left behind; the old woman who in parting from the young man wept her own exile; the dreary street where lived Maria Obinu; the Piazza at that hour scorching and deserted; the Pantheon sad as a cyclopean tomb; the cats dreaming among the great ruins.

Anania, his face brushed by a light breeze, felt happy as if freed from an incubus.

[18]A court or platform round the nuraghe.

Before coming down to supper in his home, Anania stood at the window of his little room, struck by the deep silence of the courtyard, of the vicinity, of the whole country as far as to the horizon. He seemed to have become deaf. It was almost oppressive. But the voice of Aunt Tatàna resounded from the courtyard.

He obeyed. A little table was laid expressly for him in the kitchen. His "parents," according to custom, took their supper seated on the floor, with meat and cakes in a basket before them. Nothing was changed. The kitchen was still poor and dark, but very clean. The stove was in the centre. The walls were adorned with trenchers and hunting spears, with great baskets, sieves and other utensils for sifting flour: in a corner were two woollen sacks containing barley. Near the narrow door, which was thrown open, hung the seed pouch and the rest of the fanning outfit.

A baby pig, tied to the elder tree in the courtyard, grunted gently, puffed and sighed. A red cat quietly placed himself by the little table and yawned, raising great yellow eyes to Anania. He was looking about him in a kind of stupor. No, nothing was changed; yet he felt somehow as if he were in this environment for the first time, with that tall peasant of the brilliant eyes and the long oily hair, with that pretty elderly woman, fair and fat as a dove.

"At last we are alone," said Big Anania, who was eating salad made into a sandwich with girdle cakes; "but you'll see they won't leave you long in peace. It'll be Atonzu here, Atonzu there! you're an important man now you've been in Rome. I, too, when I returned from my military service——"

"Do let me speak. I remember I had the greatest difficulty in talking dialect. I felt as if I were in a new world."

"I daresay you do. After a while I got used to it; but as for you, after three days you'll be sick of this gossipy place and—and——"

His wife frowned and he changed the subject a little. "Eh! what a big place that devil of a Rome is to be sure! Give me the glass, my old beauty! What are you grimacing for? Why are you so important because you've a great man in the house?"

The lad was disturbed. Had something been heard at Nuoro of Maria Obinu? He put down his fork and said he would eat no more till he heard explanation.

"You're so hasty!" sighed the old woman. "King Solomon says the hasty man is like the wind——"

"Oh King Solomon still? I was hoping you'd forgotten him," said the young man roughly. She was silent, rather hurt. Her husband looked at her, then at Anania, and wished to punish him.

"King Solomon always said the truth. But what they're saying in Nuoro is that you're making love to Margherita Carboni."

"Why no, they're not fools," said the father, looking into his glass which was half full of wine. "If it's true, there's good cause to complain, for you ought to confess to the padrone. You might say 'My benefactor, I'm a man now and you must forgive me for having hidden my hopes from you, as I have hidden them from my own parents.'"

"Ah! holy Saint Catherine!" sighed Aunt Tatàna, who had already forgiven him. "Let the poor, tired boy alone! There's time enough to talk of these matters, and you are only a peasant and no scholar, so you don't understand."

"Yes, I'm ignorant and my son has been educated. That's all very well. But I am older than he. My hair's beginning to turn white. Experience, my wife, makes a man wiser than a Doctor of Law. My son, I will say to you one thing only; ask your conscience and see if it doesn't tell you this, that we must not deceive our benefactor."

"Fools! Fools!" he cried fuming. But he knew his father, that ignorant and primitive man, was right.

"Yes, my son," said the contadino, pushing the oily hair from his forehead, "you must go to your master, kiss his hand and say, 'I am the son of a peasant, but by your kindness and my own talents, I shall become a doctor and a gentleman and rich. I love Margherita and Margherita loves me. I will make her happy. I will make it up to her if she lowers herself to take the son of a servant for a husband. I ask your worship to bless us in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.'"

"Be quiet, little woman!" replied the peasant, drinking again, "your King Solomon says women never know what they're talking about. When I speak I have already weighed my words. The padrone will give his blessing."

"But suppose it's all nonsense?" cried Anania, uplifted with joy. He went to the door and whistled. He was bewildered. His heart thumped. He was submerged by a wave of felicity. He would have liked to ask his father questions, to tell the whole story, but he could not utter a word.

"The padrone will give his blessing." The miller must have had his reasons for saying that! What could have happened? And why had Margherita never pointed out her father's favourable disposition? If she was ignorant of it, how could the dependent have found the thing out? "Within a few hours I shall see her and she'll tell me," thought Anania. His fatigue, his anxieties, his doubts, the joy itself of the new hope, melted away before the sweet thought, "I shall see her in a little while."

The door opened silently at the young man's light tap. "Glad to see you," whispered the maid, who was in the lover's confidence. "She's coming in one moment." "How are you?" he asked in an agitated voice; "here, take this little keepsake I have brought you from Rome." "You are always so kind," said the girl, receiving the little parcel. "Wait here for a minute."

The minute seemed an hour. He leaned against the wall of the courtyard under the veiled heaven of the dark and silent night. He shook with anxiety and joy; when Margherita ran panting to his arms he felt rather than saw her; felt her soft warm cheek, her lithe though not too slender waist, her heart beating against his own. Blinded by cruel inextinguishable thirst, he kissed her wildly, almost unconsciously.

"That's enough!" she said, the first to recover herself. "How are you? Quite well again?"

"Yes, yes!" he answered hotly. "Ah God! At last! Oh!" he went on, breathing hard and pressing her hand to his breast. "I am not able even to speak. I couldn't come to your window because—because they haven't left me a minute to myself. Even now I can't see you. If you had only brought a light!"

"Nonsense, Nino! We shall see each other to-morrow." She laughed softly, touching him with the palm of her hand which Anania held to his breast. "How your heart beats!" she said, "it's like a little wounded bird. Tell me, are you really better?"

"Oh, I'm quite well, quite well. Margherita, where are you? Is it possible we are together?"

He gazed hard, trying to distinguish her lineaments in the colourless vault of the clouded night. Great dark velvety clouds passed ceaselessly over the grey sky. An oval space of clear firmament surrounded by darkness looked like a mysterious face, its eyes, two red stars, leaning down to watch the lovers. Anania sat on the stone bench and drew the girl to his knee. Disregarding her protests he held her tight in the circle of his arms.

"Light as a feather," he affirmed gallantly. "But is it really true we are together?" he repeated. "It seems a dream! How often I have dreamed of this moment which I thought would never come! And now here we are together! united! united. I am going mad, I think! Is it really a fact that I have you here on my heart? Speak! Say something! Stick a pin into me to show me I'm not dreaming!"

"What do you want me to say? It's you have things to say. I wrote everything to you, everything. You speak, Nino! You are so good at talking! Tell me all about Rome. I don't know how to talk."

"On the contrary, you talk beautifully. You have such a lovely voice. I've never heard a woman speak like you."

"I swear it's true! Why should I say what isn't true? You are the most beautiful, the gentlest, the sweetest of all girls. If you knew how I thought of you when my landlady's two girls in the first house flung themselves at me and at Battista! I felt as if they were some sort of plague struck creatures while you—you were a saint, soft and pure, and fresh, and lovely!"

"That's quite different. Don't say such horrid things! You know I get vexed when you are cold. We are betrothed. Isn't it true? Aren't we going to marry each other? Tell me yes."

"I—love—thee. If I didn't love you should I be here? Of course I love you! I can't express myself, but I do love you; probably more than you love me."

"It's not true. I love you most. But you do love me, yes I know it," he continued, becoming grave, "you who might aspire to anyone, you are so beautiful and so rich!"

"You know," he said suddenly, following the thread of his own ideas, "I've been told your family has guessed our love. Is it true?"

Margherita hesitated again. Then raised her head and said drily, "I don't know."

From her manner Anania understood something unfavourable, something unexpected which he could not make out. What was happening? Was the girl hiding some disagreeable secret? His mind flew to her, to his mother, to the distant phantom, and he asked if this shadow was coming between him and his love.

"You must tell me frankly," he said, distractedly caressing her hands, "what is going on? Am I to be allowed to aspire to you or not? May I go on hoping? You know what I am; a poor dependent on your family; the son of one of your servants."

"What nonsense!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Your father isn't a servant. Even if he were, he's a man respected and honoured by everyone, and that's enough."

"Honoured and respected!" Anania repeated to himself, pierced to the soul. "Oh God, she is not honoured and respected!" But he reflected at once that Margherita would not talk like this if she were thinking of that woman. Probably the Carboni's all thought Olì was dead. She must have something else on her mind.

"Margherita," he insisted as calmly as he could, "I must have you open your whole heart to me. I want you to advise me what I ought to do. Shall I wait? Shall I ask? Conscience and pride too bid me go to your father and tell him at once. If I don't, he may think me a traitor, a man without any loyalty or honour. But I'll do whatever you tell me. Only I won't give you up. That would be my death! I am ambitious as you know. I say it proudly because if only you'll stick to me, my ambition will come to something. I'm not like most fellows, Sardinians especially, who expect to succeed at once and have no staying power, and do nothing but envy those who do succeed. Battista Daga for instance! He's all envy and hatred. He was quite pleased when Le Maschere was hissed at the Costanza! But I'm not envious. I can wait calmly, and I shall succeed. I don't say I'll ever be famous, but I shall achieve a good position. I'm sure of it. As soon as I've taken my Degree, I shall enter for the higher examinations. I shall live in Rome and work and push myself forward. But I repeat I shall do all this only for you. Woman is at the bottom of every man's ambition. Some are afraid to say that. But I say it frankly. I'm proud to say it. I've always told you so, haven't I?"

He went on: "You are the goal of my whole life. Some men live for art or for glory, or for vanity; and some live for love. I'm one of those. I seem to have loved ever since I was born, and I shall love on to the last of my age. You! always you! If you should fail me, I shouldn't have the strength or even the wish to do anything. I should die morally. Physically too I expect. If you were to say, I love someone else——"

"Hush! be quiet!" commanded Margherita. "Now it's you who are blaspheming. Dear me! is that rain?" A drop had fallen on their linked hands. They looked up at the clouds which were passing slower now. They had become more dense; nebulous and torpid monsters.

"Listen," said Margherita, speaking a little hurriedly and absently, as if apprehensive of the rain, "we aren't half so rich as we were. My father's affairs are going badly. He's been lending money to everybody who asked for it, and they—never give it back. He is too good-hearted. That everlasting lawsuit about the forest at Orlei is going against us. If we lose, and I expect we shall, then I shall no longer be rich."

"Why should I? Besides I didn't know it myself till a few days ago. I declare it is raining!"

They got up and stood for a few minutes under the verandah. Lightning shone among the clouds, and in that flash of lilac flame, Anania saw Margherita pale as the moon.

"What's the matter? What is it?" he asked, pressing her to him. "Don't be afraid for the future. You mayn't be rich, but you will be happy. Don't be frightened."

"Oh no! I'm only thinking about my mother who's so afraid of lightning she will be getting up out of bed. You must go now," she ended, pushing him gently away.

He had to obey. But he lingered a good while under the doorway waiting for the rain to stop. Sharp flashes of joy illuminated his soul as the flashes of metallic lightning illuminated the night. He remembered a wet day in Rome when the thought of death had cloven his soul like a shaft of lightning. Yes, joy and grief were much alike; devouring flames, both of them.

As he made his way home under the last drops of rain he accused himself of selfishness.

Next morning he wrote to Margherita telling her of many heroic projects. He would give lessons so as to continue his own studies without being a further drag on her father. He would visit Signor Carboni and make a formal proposal of marriage. He would explain to the family which had patronized him that he would become its prop and its pride.

He was finishing his letter at his open window, enjoying the dewy morning silence and the fragrance from the rain-freshened fields, when he heard an outburst of uncontrollable laughter, and turning saw Nanna, ragged and trembling, her eyes tearful, her ugly mouth open, in her hand (and in imminent danger of upsetting) a brimming cup of coffee.

"Good-morning to your Worship. I wanted to startle you, that's why I asked Aunt Tatàna to let me bring the coffee. Here it is. My hands are quite clean, your Worship. Oh, what a delight, what a consolation!" she cried, crying and laughing.

"Where's the Worship you are talking to? You must say 'Thou' to me. Give me that coffee and tell me the news."

"The news? Oh, we go on living in dens like the wild beasts we are. How can I say 'Thou' to your Worship who is a resplendent sun?"

"What? no longer a sugar plum?" said Anania, sipping the coffee from the antique gold sprigged cup and thinking of Aunt Varvara.

"Ah, my dear! forgive me. I always think of you as a little boy. Do you remember the first time you came from Cagliari? Yes, little Margherita was at the window watching for you. Doesn't the moon watch for the sun?"

Anania set the cup on the window ledge. He breathed hard. How happy he felt! How blue was the sky, how sweet the air! What grandeur in the silence of humble things, in the air not yet stirred by the turmoil of civilization. Even Aunt Nanna no longer seemed horrible; under the unclean exterior of that poisoned body, palpitated a warm heart, a poetic soul.

Nanna listened without understanding a word. She—opened her lips to say—to say—At last she said:—

"Liar! Now away with you at once, or I'll beat you. No, wait a minute! tell me everything that has happened at Nuoro this year."

She began a strange rigmarole, mixing up her own affairs with the events of the town. Every now and then she returned to Margherita.

"She's the lovely one! The rose of roses! the pink! the sugar plum! Oh and her clothes! Oh God, never have been seen such marvels! When she passes people watch her like a shooting star. A gentleman charged me to steal a scrap of her scarf. He wanted to wear it on his heart. The maid up there at Carboni's says that every morning her young lady finds on her window a love letter tied up with a blue ribbon. But the rose can't do with anything except a pink. Well, well! hand me thy cup!" concluded the babbler giving herself a slap on the mouth, "it's no good! I knew your Worship when he had a tail and I can't say Lei[19] to him."

Nanna ran away, shaking and laughing, her hand over her mouth. From the courtyard she shouted up to the student who was leaning out of his window—

Again Anania threatened her and again Nanna shook with laughter; the little pig, now loose, snuffed at the woman's feet; a hen jumped on its back and pecked its ears. A sparrow perched on the elder, swinging on the end of a twig. And Anania was so happy that he sang another verse from Poliziano:

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—

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.

"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.

"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.

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——'"

"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."

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.

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—

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."

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

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."

"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!"

"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——"

"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?"

"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—

"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.

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."

"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."

"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."

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!"

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

[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."

"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?"

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.

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!"

"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!"

"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."

"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—

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."

"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.

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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.

"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?"

"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.

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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——"

"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.

"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—

"Why was I born? Why did they bring me into the world? Look! I am ruined now. My life is destroyed, my career ended. I can't go on with my studies. And the girl I was going to marry, without whom I cannot live, will give me up. I mean I must give her up."

"Yes, she knows that much, but she doesn't know that woman could ever come across our path. How could a pure, delicate girl live beside an infamous woman?"

"Mine? my advice? To leave her to her own way," replied the widow fiercely. "Weren't you deserted by her? Your bride need never see the unhappy creature. You yourself need never see her."

"You don't understand!" he said, "you can't understand. Let it alone. Now I have to consider the best way for me to see her. I must go to her to-morrow morning."

They faced each other, each pitying and scornful. Then they argued, quarrelled almost. Anania wanted to start at once, or at least the first thing to-morrow. The widow suggested summoning Olì to Fonni without telling her why.

"As you are so obstinate! You know it would be far better to leave her alone. As she has walked till now, so she will walk to the end. Let her be."

"Nonna," he answered, "you also must be afraid of me. That's silly. I'm not going to hurt a hair of her head. I'll take charge of her. She shall live with me, and I'll work for her. I'll do her good, not harm. It's my duty."

"Yes, yes, your duty. Still you ought to think, my son; to consider. How are you going to support her? How will you set about it?"

"Well, well! But I tell you she's mad afraid of you. If you come upon her, suddenly, she's capable of doing something foolish——"

"Yes; at once. On the wings of a crow. How impetuous you are, child of my heart! Go to your bed now, and don't think any more about it. To-morrow night, at this hour, she'll be here. Don't doubt it. Afterwards you shall do what you like. To-morrow, make your excursion to the Gennargentu. I should suggest you're staying away for the night——"

Even in the little room where he used to sleep with his mother nothing was changed. When he saw the poor pallet bed under which was a heap of earthy smelling potatoes, he remembered Maria Obinu's little white bed and all the illusions and the dreams which had persecuted him.

"How childish I have been!" he thought bitterly, "and I was thinking myself a man. It is only now I have become a man! Only now has life opened to me its horrible doors. Yes, now I am a man, and I will be strong. No, vile life! you shall not vanquish me! No, monster, you shall not get me down! You are my enemy; till now you have fought with vizor dosed, you miserable coward! but to-day, on this day, long as a century, you have let me see your detestable countenance. But you shan't conquer me! No, you shan't."

He unfastened the shaky window shutters, which opened on the old wooden balcony, the supports of which hardly held together. Grasping them, he leaned out.

The night was most serene; fresh, dear, diaphanous, as are the mountain nights at the end of summer. An immense silence reigned everywhere, its sublimity unimpaired by the solemn vision of the nearer crags, the vague line of the distant summits. Anania, seeing the profound valleys at his very feet, felt himself suspended—resolved, however, not to fall—over a stupendous abyss. The line of the distant mountains soothed his heart strangely. They seemed to him verses inscribed by the omnipotent hand of a divine poet on the celestial page of the horizon. But the colossal Monte Spada, and the formidable wall of the Gennargentu oppressed him, and suggested the shadow of that monster against whom he had just issued his challenge.

And he thought of the distant Margherita, his Margherita, whom he must now renounce; Margherita who at this hour was surely dreaming of him, whose eyes met his on that far horizon. And pitying her rather than himself, tears sweet and bitter, like mountain honey, rose in his eyes. He repressed them sternly; they were a feline and stealthy enemy trying to vanquish him at unawares.

"I am strong!" he repeated, supporting himself on the flimsy balcony. "Monster! it is I who shall vanquish you!"

[21]A vessel made of cork.

[22]Sign of an easy life, with no manual labour.

VIII

"I will place her here with Aunt Grathia, until I have found my feet. I will speak to Signor Carboni and to Margherita. I will tell them, 'This is how matters stand, my mother is to live with me the moment my position allows it. This is my duty, and I will do my duty though the universe fall.' He will drive me away like an unclean animal; I will have no illusions about it. Next, I will look for a post; and I shall find one, and then I will take the poor wretch with me, and we will live together, miserably of course, but I shall pay my debts, and I shall be a man. A man! say rather a living corpse."

He seemed to himself calm, cold, already dead to joy. But in the depth of his heart was a cruel intoxication of pride, a fury of infatuated resistance to fate and to society and to himself.

"It is what I willed," he thought. "I knew it might end like this. I have been allowing myself to drift. Woe is me! now I must expiate my folly. I will expiate!"

This illusion of courage sustained him through the night and through the following day, when he made the ascension of the Gennargentu.

The morning was sad, windless, but cloudy and misty; he determined to persevere in his expedition, hoping the weather would clear. In reality, he wanted to give himself proof of his courage and indifference. What were mountains from henceforth to him? What were far horizons? What the whole world? But he willed to do what he had resolved to do. Only for one moment did he hesitate.

"Suppose she finds out I am here, and refuses to come, escapes me again? Am I not temporizing in the hope of that?" he asked himself cruelly. The widow reassured him, and he set out.

The guide, mounted on a strong and patient pony, preceded him up steep paths, sometimes lost in the silver mist, sometimes appearing like a figure blotted in water colour on a too wet grey background. Anania followed him. All around him, all within him was fog. In that floating veil, he distinguished the cyclopean outline of Monte Spada; and within him among the mists which enwrapped his soul, that soul showed itself like the mountain, great, hard, and monstrous.

Tragic silence enveloped the wayfarers, broken at intervals by the scream of the vultures. Strange forms showed here and there through the fog, the cry of the carrion feeding birds seemed the wild voice of these mysterious shapes, terrified and enraged by the intrusion of man. To Anania it seemed as if he were walking through the clouds. Sometimes his head swam, and to vanquish the vertigo he fixed his eyes on the path under the horses' feet, staring at the wet and shining slabs of schist, and at the little bushes of violet heather, the sharp scent of which made the fog fragrant. About nine the fog lifted a little, fortunately, as the travellers were just then passing with difficulty along a very narrow piece of path, on the huge shoulder of Monte Spada. Anania gave a cry of admiration, torn from him by the beauty and the magnificence of the panorama. All the nearer mountains were covered with a mantle of violet flowers; beyond, the vision of the deep valleys, of the high summits to which he was drawing near, of the torn veils of luminous mist, of the play of shadow and sun, of the blue heaven painted with strange and slowly contracting clouds, all seemed the dream of a painter's madness, a picture of unimagined beauty.

"How great is nature! how strong! how beautiful!" thought Anania, his heart softened, "all things are pure on her immense bosom. Ah! if we three, Margherita, and I, and she, were here and, would it be possible for any impure things to divide us?"

A breath of hope revived his spirit. If Margherita loved him, as in these last few days she had shown that she loved him—then surely——

With this wild hope in his heart, he dreamed away a long time, till he had reached the bottom of the slope of Monte Spada, and had again begun to ascend to the topmost peak of the Gennargentu. A torrent ran at the bottom, among enormous rocks and alder trees shaken by a sudden gust of wind. The sound of the alders in the silence of that place of mystery, brought a strange fancy to Anania; it seemed as if the winds had been wakened by this hope which animated him, and that all things were moved by it, the lonely trees trembling like wild men surprised in their gloomy solitude by a sudden joy.

Then in a quick revulsion of feeling, he remembered a fancy of a few days before in the wind-shaken forest of Orthobene. Then also the trees had seemed to him men, but miserable men, tom by sorrow. Even when the wind was still, they trembled, like human creatures experienced in suffering, who even in their moments of ease must think of sorrow, inevitable and near. His depression returned. An absurd notion flashed across his thought. Kill the guide and become a bandit! He smiled at himself.

"I am a romantic, it seems! But without murder I might hide among these mountains and live alone, and feed on grasses and wild birds! Why cannot man live alone? Why can't he burst the fetters which bind him to society and which strangle him? Zarathustra? Oh yes; but even he cried once. 'Oh! how alone I am! I have no longer anyone to share my laughter, no one to give me comfort——'"

The ascent, slow and dangerous, continued for three hours. The sky had cleared, the wind blew, the schisty summits shone in the sunlight, profiled with silver on the infinite azure. Now the island displayed itself in all its cerulean vastness: clear mountains, grey villages, shining pools, here and there confounded with the vaporous line of the sea.

Anania admired; he followed with interest the explanations of the guide, he looked through his field-glass. But his trouble never passed out of his thoughts; when he tried to enjoy the sweetness of the surrounding beauty, it clutched him with tiger paw more tightly to itself.

Towards noon they reached the top of Bruncu Spina. Anania climbed on the heap of shining shale which marked the summit, and flung himself on the ground to escape the fury of the blasts which blew from all sides. The whole island was stretched out before him, with its blue mountains and its silver sea, glittering under the midday sun. Overhead the heaven was immense, infinite, void as human thought. The wind raged furiously in the great emptiness. Its assaults invested Anania in mad fury, in the violent anger of a formidable wild beast, which would permit the approach of no other being to the aereal cave where it was resolved to reign alone.

The young man resisted. The guide crawled to his side and pointed out the principal towns, and villages and mountains. But the wind ravished his words, and cut short the respiration both of speaker and of hearer.

"If it wasn't for this devil of a wind," shouted the guide, "one could send a salute to Nuoro, it looks so close to-day."

"From the highest summit in Sardinia, I will send you a greeting. I will cry to the heavens your name and my love—as I should like to cry from the highest summit in all the world, for all mankind to wonder and to applaud."

And it seemed to him that the wind was carrying away his heart, battering it against the granite colossi of the Gennargentu.

On his return he expected to find his mother with the widow. Anxiously he crossed the deserted village and stopped before Aunt Grathia's low black door. The evening was falling sadly. Strong gusts blew down the steep, stony streets. The heaven was pale. It felt like autumn. Anania listened. Silence. Through the chink of the door, he saw the fire's red brightness. Silence.

The coffee pot was gurgling among the embers, and a piece of mutton hung on a wooden spit, dropping its fat upon the burning ashes.

"Patience, my jewel of gold! I couldn't find anyone I could trust to take the message. My son is not in the neighbourhood."

"Patience, I tell you!" said the widow, rising and laying her distaff on the stool. "I did ask the driver to tell her she must come here to-morrow. I said, 'Tell her from me to come. Don't say a word about Anania Atonzu! go, son, and God will reward you, for you'll be doing a work of charity.'"

"She won't come! You'll see she won't come!" said Anania uneasily. "She'll escape us again! Why didn't I go myself? But there's still time."

He wanted to start at once for the Cantoniera, but without difficulty allowed himself to be persuaded to wait.

Another sad night passed. Though his limbs were stiff with fatigue he slept little, on that hard pallet where he had been born, on which he wished that this night he might die. The wind shook the roof, roaring like a sea in storm. It reminded Anania of his infancy; the distant terrors, the wintry nights, the touch of his mother who clasped him to her, more for fear than for love. No, she had not loved him. Why delude himself? She had not loved him. Perhaps this had been Olì's worst misfortune, her greatest loss. He felt it, he knew it; and sudden pity rose in his breast for her, who had been the victim of destiny and of men.

Had she come to-night, while he was in this mood, her son would have received her tenderly, would have forgiven her.

But the long night passed, and a day broke, made melancholy by the wind. He spent long restless hours which he considered among the most distressing of his whole life. During these hours he roamed through the alleys, as if storm driven; he went to the tavern and drank; he returned to the widow's cottage and sat by the fire, shivering feverishly, his nerves in a condition of acute irritation. Even Aunt Grathia could not rest. She wandered about the house, and as soon as the modest midday repast was over, she went forth to meet Olì.

"Remember she's afraid of you!" she said to Anania, urging him to great quietness.

"Why, my good woman," he answered scornfully, "I shall hardly even look at her! I have very few words to say."

More than an hour passed. The young man remembered bitterly the sweet impatient hour he had spent waiting for Aunt Tatàna. Now he panted for the coming of his mother, her coming which once and for all was to end his torments. And all the time he was devoured by the dark desire—that she should not come, should escape him again, should disappear for ever.

"In any case, she's ill," he thought with bitter satisfaction, "it's impossible she can live long."

"Hush! keep quiet!" she said in a low voice, "she's coming! she's coming! She's here. I've told her. Hush! She's desperately frightened. Don't be cruel to her, son!"

She went out again, leaving the door open. The wind seized it, pushing it to and fro as if romping with it. Anania waited; pale, unable to think. Each time the door opened the sun and the wind rushed into the kitchen, illuminating, shaking everything in it. Then the door closed and everything became as before. For several minutes Anania unconsciously followed the play of the sun and the wind: then he became irritated, and stepped over to slam the door; his countenance dark with nervousness and anger. Thus he appeared at the moment when the unhappy mother reached the threshold,—trembling, timid, ragged as a beggar. He looked at her; she looked at him; fear and diffidence in the eyes of each. Neither thought of extending a hand nor of uttering a greeting. A whole world of suffering and of sin lay between them and divided them inexorably.

Anania held the door open, leaning against it; the wind and the sun flooded his figure. His eyes followed the miserable Olì as Aunt Grathia pushed her towards the hearth.

Yes, it was she; the pale emaciated apparition half seen at the black window of the Cantoniera; in her grey visage the great light eyes, wan with fear and weakness, seemed the eyes of a sick and homeless cat. When she was seated, the widow fancied it a happy thought to leave her two guests alone. She went out, but Anania followed her angrily.

Olì heard the threat, for when Anania and the widow returned to the kitchen, she was standing by the door and weeping, as if about herself to slink away. Blind with grief and shame, the young man threw himself towards her, seized her arm, pushed her against the wall, then shut and locked the door.

"No!" he cried, while the woman crouched on the ground, curling herself up like a hedgehog, and weeping convulsively: "you shan't go away any more. You are not to stir another step without my consent. You are to stay here. Cry as much as you like, but from this you shan't move. Your gay doings are all over."

Olì wept louder, shaken by spasms of trembling. Through her sobs sounded frantic derision of her son's last words. He felt it, and remorse for his brutality increased his fury.

Her tears irritated instead of moving him. All the instincts of primitive man, jealous, ferocious, barbarous, vibrated in his quivering nerves. He knew it, but was unable to control himself.

Aunt Grathia looked at him, alarmed herself, and wondering whether Olì's terror had not good reason. She shook her head, threatened with her hands, became agitated, was prepared for anything except the avoidance of a violent scene. She knew not what to say; her tongue refused to speak. Ah! he was possessed by a devil, that well-dressed handsome lad! he was more terrible than an Orgolese herdsman with his cudgel more terrible than the brigands she had known in the mountains! How different the meeting she had anticipated!

"Yes," he went on, lowering his voice, and standing before his mother, "your wanderings are finished. Let us talk, crying is quite useless. You ought to be happy now you've found a good son who will pay you good for evil. If it's to be in proportion, you may expect a great deal of good! I tell you, you must not leave this, till I order it; I. Do you see? Do you see?" he repeated, again raising his voice and slapping his chest. "I am master now. I'm no longer the child whom you cruelly deceived and deserted. I'm no longer the piece of rubbish which you threw away. I'm a man now, and I shall know how to defend myself, yes, to defend myself. I shall know how, because you've never been anything but an offence to me. You've been killing me day by day; betraying and mining me. Do you understand? destroying me as one destroys a house or a wall, stone by stone—thus!"

He made the gesture of throwing down an imaginary wall, stooped, sweated, as if oppressed by some actual physical force. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, as he looked at the weeping woman his anger cooled, disappeared. He was oppressed as by frost. What was this woman he was reviling? That bundle of rags, that creeping thing, that beggar, that being without a soul? Was she capable of understanding what he was saying, what she had done? What could there be in common between him and this unclean creature? Was she really his mother? She? And if she was, what did it mean? What did it matter? The mother is not the material woman who gives to the material light, a material being, fruit of a moment's pleasure, and then flings it out into the street, or on to the knees of the perfidious seducer who has made it be born! No, that woman there was not his mother; she was not a mother at all, even unconsciously. He owed her nothing. Perhaps he had no right to reprove her, but neither was it his duty to sacrifice himself for her. His mother should have been Aunt Tatàna, or Aunt Grathia; even Maria Obinu, even Aunt Varvara, even Nanna the drunkard, anyone except that cowering creature who stood before him.

"I'd have done better to leave her alone as Aunt Grathia advised," he thought. "Perhaps I'd better let her go her own way. What does it matter to me? No, she does not matter to me at all."

"Have done," he said coldly, but no longer angrily; and he turned to the widow, signing to her to administer some consolation and enforce quietness.

"Don't you see she's frightened!" murmured Aunt Grathia, as she passed him moving to Olì's side.

"Come, come!" she said, tapping the poor thing on the shoulder, "Have courage, daughter, have patience. Crying's no good! He isn't going to eat you. After all, you know, he's the son of your womb. Come! come! Take a little coffee; after that you'll be able to talk. Do me the favour, son Anania, to go out for a little. Then you'll be able to speak better. Go out, jewel of gold!"

He did not move. Olì, however, controlled herself somewhat, and when Aunt Grathia brought the coffee she took it, trembling, and drank avidly, looking about her with eyes still frightened, yet sometimes shot with gleams of pleasure. Like all Sardinian women she loved coffee, and Anania, who had inherited the taste, looked at her with some sympathy. He seemed to be watching some wild shy animal, a furtive hare nibbling the grapes in a vineyard, trembling with enjoyment, and with fear of surprise.

"More?" asked Aunt Grathia, bending down and speaking as to a child. "Yes? No? If you'd like some more, say so. Here, give me your cup. Get up. Come and wash your eyes, and be quiet. Do you hear? Come, girl!"

Olì got up, aided by the old woman, and went straight to the water tub, as she had been accustomed to do twenty years earlier. First, she washed her cup, then herself, drying her face with her ragged apron. Her lips twitched, sobs still swelled her bosom; her red and encircled eyes, enormous in the shrunken face, shunned the cold gaze of her son.

"She must have new clothes at once, she's perfectly squalid. I've got sixty lire from my pupils at Nuoro. I'll get some more pupils. I'll sell my books. Yes, she must have clothes and shoes; and perhaps she's hungry."

"Would you like some food? If you would, tell me at once. Don't be so shamefaced. Shame won't feed you! Are you hungry?"

Anania was moved hearing that voice. It was a voice of long ago, a far distant voice; her voice. Yes, this woman was she, was the mother, the one true, only mother! Flesh of his flesh, the diseased limb, the rotten yet vital member which tortured him, but from which he could never while he lived set himself free; the member which at his own cost he must try to cure.

"Well now, sit down," said Aunt Grathia, drawing two stools to the hearth, "sit here, daughter; and you there, my jewel. Sit here together and talk—"

"Let me be," he said, "I tell you I'm not a child. For that matter," he went on, walking up and down the floor, "there's very little to say. I've said what I've got to say. She must remain here, till I make some other arrangement, and you must buy her shoes and a dress—I'll give you the money. But we'll settle all that presently. Meanwhile," he raised his voice to show he was addressing Olì, "speak for yourself, if you have anything to say."

She drew out a stained and yellowing paper, while Anania thought bitterly of his endeavours to find out if Maria Obinu had any tell-tale documents. He turned the paper round, looked at it, and gave it back.

Anania was silent, walking up and down the kitchen. The wind still whistled ceaselessly round the little house. Spots of sunshine now and then fell obliquely through the roof, like golden coins on a black pavement.

Anania walked mechanically, setting his feet on these sunny coins as he used to do when a child.

He asked himself, what more was to be said? He had already accomplished part of his grave task; but much remained to be done.

He thought, "Now I'll call Aunt Grathia aside, and hand her over the money for feeding and dressing her. Then I'll go. There's nothing more to do here."

For a moment he thought of sitting beside his mother, asking her history, giving her one word of tenderness and forgiveness. But he could not, could not! Merely to look at her was disgust. She even smelt of beggary! He longed for the moment of departure, of escape, of riddance for his eyes of that dolorous vision.

Still something held him back. He felt that the scene could not end with those few phrases. He thought that possibly between her fear and her shame, she was glad to see her son so evidently fortunate, and was yearning for the gentle word, for the human look, which he could not bring himself to give her. In his disgust, in his grief, he felt too some faint comfort in thinking—

"Anyhow she's not brazen. Perhaps she may still reform. She doesn't understand, but she's not brazen. She won't rebel."

"Look," he said after a long silence; "you'll stay here till I've settled my affairs. Aunt Grathia will buy you new clothes——"

Ah! then it was not all done! She dared—why did she dare? Ah! then she didn't understand that her son had suffered and struggled all his life to attain one end; namely, to take her away from her life of vagabondage and sin, even if he must sacrifice his whole future to do it! How could she dare to rebel? How could she wish to escape? Had she no comprehension of her position, of his determination?

"What do you mean?" he said restraining his anger. He stood to listen, shivering, agitated, driving his nails into his palms, his face working. Aunt Grathia watched, ready to defend Olì if he attempted to strike her. The three wild creatures had drawn together by the hearth, and among them rose the blue and hissing flame of a firebrand. It seemed a live thing. Olì roused herself.

"Listen," she said, "and don't get angry, for anger will be useless. The evil is done and nothing can remedy it. You may kill me, but you won't get any good by that. The only thing you can do is to let me alone. I can't stay here. I'll go away and you'll never hear more of me. You must imagine you've never seen me."

"That's just what I told him," said the widow, "but he doesn't think it possible. Where could you go? But yes—there's one way! You must stay here, as he wishes, instead of straying about the world; and we won't say who you are, and he can live in peace as if you were far away. Why, poor dear, should you leave this? Where can you go?"

"God!" burst out Anania; "God commands you now to obey me. Don't dare to repeat that you won't stay here. Don't dare! Do you suppose I'm joking? You shan't move one step without my leave. If you disobey. I'm capable of——"

"It's for your good!" she insisted, meeting the young man's anger; "Listen, at least. Don't be cruel to me, who have been the victim of every human wickedness, while I know you are indulgent to that father of yours who was my ruin——"

"I don't know how to speak," she went on; "I don't know how to speak, because I am stupefied by misfortunes. But I ask you this one thing, shouldn't I have everything to gain by staying here? If I want to go away isn't it because I'm thinking of you? Answer me. Ah! now he won't even listen!" she cried in despair, turning to the widow.

Anania was again pacing the floor, and seemed really deaf to her words, but suddenly he shuddered and cried, "I'm listening!"

"Why do you wish me to be here? Leave me to myself. As once I did you harm, so now suffer me to do you good. Let me go. I don't wish to be an impediment to you. Let me go—for your good."

"Let me go. I implore you. I'm still able to work for myself. You shall hear no more of me. I will vanish as a leaf down the wind——"

He turned round on himself. An insidious, a terrible temptation overtook him. Let her go! For a short moment wild joy shone in his soul. He might consider it all as an evil dream; one word and the dream would vanish and the sweet reality would be restored! But suddenly he was ashamed of the thought. His wrath flamed up again, his voice echoed through the gloomy kitchen.

"You are a wild beast!" murmured Olì, "you are not a Christian. You are a wild animal which devours its own flesh. Let me go, child of God! Let me go!"

"Yes, indeed, a wild beast! What's the need to shout like that? No! no! no! If any one were to hear you, he'd think there was a wild bull shut up here. Are these the manners you learned at school?"

"Yes, at my school; and I learned other things too," he said, lowering his voice however. "I learned that a man must not acquiesce in disgrace, even at cost of his own life. But I suppose you can't understand! Well, let us cut it short, and be silent both of you."

"Nonna! yes, you understand. Remember——But there—that'll do!" he cried, wringing his hands, worn out, sickened by himself and every one. He had been struck by the old woman's words, and now returned to himself, remembering that he had always prided himself on his superiority. His wish now was to end this painful and vulgar scene. He threw himself on a seat in the corner of the kitchen dropping his head in his hands.

"I've said No, and that's enough," he thought; and said brokenly, "Have done now. Have done."

But Olì perceived that now was the moment to fight on. She was not afraid, she dared anything.

"Listen," she cried humbly, "why do you wish to ruin yourself, my son?" (Yes she had courage to say "my son," nor did Anania protest.) "I know all. You are to marry a girl who is beautiful, who is rich, and if she knows that you haven't cast me off, you'll lose her. She'll be quite right, for a rose can't be mixed up with dirt. For her sake, let me go. Let her believe I am dead. She's an innocent soul, why is she to suffer? I'll go ever so far away. I'll change my name. I'll disappear, carried away by the wind. The evil I have done you without intention is enough. Yes, without intention! My son, I don't want to hurt you again. No, I don't. Ah! how can a mother wish evil to her son? Let me go!"

He wanted to cry, "All my life you have done me evil!" but he restrained himself. What was the use? It was useless and indecorous. He would cry aloud no more. Only with his head still pressed in his hands, with voice at once sorrowful and enraged, he repeated, "No! no! no!" At bottom he felt that Olì was right. He understood that she really desired his happiness. But precisely the idea that at that moment she was more generous and more reasonable than he, irritated him and made her seem odious.

Olì was transformed. Her illumined eyes watched him supplicatingly, lovingly. As she repeated, "Let me go," her still youthful voice vibrated with infinite tenderness, her countenance expressed untold grief. Perhaps a sweet dream, which never before had brightened the horror of her existence, had touched her heart; to stay! to live for him! to find peace!

But from the depths of her simple soul an instinct for good—the flame which lies hidden even in the flint—impelled her to disregard this dream. A thirst for sacrifice devoured her. Anania understood that in her own way she wished to fulfil her duty, just as in his way he wished to fulfil his.

But Anania was the stronger. He was resolved to conquer by any means, by force if necessary, by the cruelty of the surgeon who to heal the sufferer will open his flesh with steel. She threw herself on the ground. Again she wept, implored, supplicated.

"Then what will become of me?" she sobbed, "Holy Mother! what shall I do? Must I again leave you by stratagem? do you good by force? Yes, I will leave you—I will go. You cannot compel me. I don't acknowledge your right—I am free—I will go."

He was no longer angered, but his cold eyes and grey face grown suddenly old were terrible.

"Listen," he said firmly. "We must end this. It's all settled—there's no more to be said. You will not move one step without my knowledge. Listen, and keep my words in mind as if they were the words of one dead. Till now, I have endured the dishonour and the grief of your shameful life, because I was not able to prevent it, and because I hoped some day to put a stop to it. But from to-day it is different. If you attempt to go away from here, I shall follow you. I'll kill you. I'll kill myself! I shall not wish to go on living!"

Olì looked at him in fear. He was like her father. Uncle Micheli, when he had driven her away from the Cantoniera. He had the same cold look, the same calm and terrible countenance, the same hollow voice, the same inexorable tone. She seemed looking at the old man's ghost, risen up to punish her; and she felt the whole horror of death. She spoke no further word, but crouched upon the floor, trembling with terror and despair.

Anania had not been able to get a horse that evening, so he was obliged to spend another night at Fonni, sleeping a strange sleep like the sleep of a convict on the day he has been sentenced.

Aunt Grathia and Olì sat up a long time over the fire. Olì had the cold fit which is precursor of fever; her teeth chattered, she yawned and groaned. As in the nights of long ago, the wind roared through the kitchen, stirring the black relics of the bandit. By the firelight the widow worked at her spinning, her face pallid and impassive as that of a spectre. But she told her guest no stories of her dead husband, nor did she dare to offer consolation. Only now and then she vainly implored the sufferer to go to bed.

"Go and ask him if he still has the rezetta which I gave him the day we left this. Beg him to let me look at it."

The old woman promised and Olì got up. She shook all over, and yawned so wide that her jaws cracked.

That night she was light-headed, her temperature very high. Now and then she demanded the rezetta, and grumbled childishly because Aunt Grathia, who lay beside her, would not ask Anania for it.

In her delirium a doubt crossed her mind; if Anania were not her son? Surely, he was not her son! he was too cruel, too unfeeling. She had been tormented all her life by all the people she had known; now, she could not believe that her son could torture her more even than the rest.

Still delirious, she told Aunt Grathia of the little packet she had tied round Anania's neck, that she might recognize him when he should be grown up and well-to-do.

"I meant to go to him some day when I should be very old and walking with a stick. Rat-tat-tat! I should knock at his door, and say, 'I am Most Holy Mary disguised as a beggar.' My son's servants would laugh and call their master. 'Old woman, what do you want?' 'Sir, I know you have a little packet, like this and this—I know who gave it to you.' To-day you have all these tancas and servants and cattle, but you owe them all to that poor soul who is now reduced to seven little ounces of dust. Good-bye. Give me a slice of bread and some honey. And forgive that poor soul.' 'Servants,' he would say, 'cross yourselves. This old woman who knows everything is Most Holy Mary.' Ah! ah! ah! The rezetta! I want the rezetta. That man is not my son! The rezetta! The rezetta!"

"That's the one thing wanting," he said smiling bitterly, "that she should doubt me! I'll soon prove to her that I am—myself."

"But I haven't got the thing. I threw it away. If I can find it again, I'll send it."

Aunt Grathia wished further to know the result of Anania's disclosures to his betrothed.

"If she cares for you she'll be pleased by your good action," she said consolingly. "No, no, she won't give you up because you can't disown your mother. Ah! true love cares nothing for the prejudices of the world. I loved my husband madly when all the world was against him."

"For pity's sake, jewel of gold, don't write! I can't read, and I don't want to make your affairs public property."

"Send me a token. If she sticks to you, send the rezetta wrapped in a white handkerchief. If you lose her, send it in a coloured handkerchief."

He left without seeing Olì again, for the poor thing had at last dropped asleep. He was in deep dejection. The journey seemed eternal, though he had no wish to arrive at his destination. Still, he was drawn by a slender thread of hope.

"Margherita loves me," he thought; "perhaps she loves me as Nonna loved her husband. Her family will scorn and drive me away, but she will say, 'I'll wait for you. I will love you always.' That's what she will say; but what shall I be able to promise her? My career is destroyed."

Another hope, not to be confessed, was, however, fermenting in the bottom of his heart: that Olì would make her escape. He dared not reveal this hope clearly to himself, but he felt it, felt it; in spite of himself it ran in his blood like a drop of poison. He was ashamed of it; he understood its meanness, but it was impossible to drive it away.

At the moment when he had cried, "I will kill you, I will kill myself," he had meant what he said, but now the words, the whole scene felt like some horrible nightmare. As he saw again the landscape, the street, which three days ago, he had seen with so much gladness in his soul, as he approached Nuoro, the sense of present reality pressed upon him more and more tightly.

The moment he arrived at home he looked for the amulet; and possessed by the superstition that things prearranged do not come to pass, he wrapped it up in a coloured handkerchief. Then he remembered that the sad occurrences of these few days he had always foreseen and expected, and he was vexed by his own childishness.

He tossed the little packet against the wall, then picked it up again, softening. "For Aunt Grathia," he thought.

Then he told himself, "At four o'clock I will go to Signor Carboni and tell him the whole thing. I must get it over this very day. Margherita! Margherita! Suppose I see her to-night instead? She will bid me say nothing to her father. She will tell me to wait—to go on as usual. No, I won't be such a coward. At four o'clock I will go to Signor Carboni."

At the determined hour he did indeed pass the door of Margherita's home, but he could not bring himself to stop, to ring. He passed by; despising himself, thinking he would return later; convinced at bottom that never would he succeed in addressing his godfather.

Two days, two nights, he wasted thus in a vain battle of thoughts, which changed and dissolved like agitated waves. He had altered nothing in his habits or daily life. He read with young students, he studied, he ate, he lingered under Margherita's window, and if he saw her, he gazed at her passionately. But at night Aunt Tatàna heard him tramp about his room, descend to the court, go out, return, wander hither and thither. He seemed a soul in torment, and the kind woman feared he was ill.

The day after his return home, he saw a man from Fonni cross the street and he grew deadly pale.

Yes, he was expecting something—something dreadful; the news that she had again disappeared. He understood his cowardice, yet at the same time was ready to execute his threat, "I will follow you, I will kill you, I will kill myself."

Then it seemed to him that nothing was real; at the widow's house was no one but the widow herself, with her legends and her long black phantasmal cloak. Nothing, no one else.

The second night he heard Aunt Tatàna telling her old story to a little boy from a neighbouring house.

"The woman ran—ran—throwing down the nails; and they grew and grew till they filled the whole plain. Uncle Hobgoblin followed her, followed her, but he never could catch her up, because the nails stuck in her feet——"

What anguished pleasure that story had given Anania in his childhood, especially in the first days after his mother's desertion! To-night he dreamed that the man from Fonni had brought news she was gone, that he set out to follow—to follow—across a plain sown with nails. Look! there she is! far on the horizon! Soon he will catch her up and kill her, but he is afraid—afraid—because it is not Olì at all, but a goatherd, that same goatherd who had passed down the street while Aunt Tatàna was with Signor Carboni. Anania runs—runs—the nails don't prick; he wishes they would prick; and Olì has changed into the goatherd and is singing those lines of Lenau's:

There! now he has caught her, he is going to kill her, and the frost of death has stiffened his arm—

The third day. Margherita, surprised that he did not write, invited him to the usual tryst. He went. He told of his excursion up the Gennargentu. He abandoned himself to her caresses, as a tired wayfarer abandons himself on the grass, under the shadow of a tree. But not a word could he utter of the dark secret which was consuming him.

"MARGHERITA,—I have come in after roaming wildly through the streets. Every minute I think I am going mad. It is this very fear moves me, after long and miserable indecision—to confide to you the grief which is killing me. I will cut it short.

"Margherita, you know what I am; the son of a sin, deserted by a mother who was more sinned against than sinning. I was born under a bad star, and I have to expiate sins which were not my own. I have dragged with me into a gulf from which I can never escape, that creature whom I love more than all the rest of the world. Thee, Margherita! Forgive me! forgive me! This is my greatest grief which I shall feel for the rest of my life. Listen. My unhappy mother is alive; after an existence of misery and sin, she has risen again before me like a ghost. She is wretched, ill, grown old with suffering and privation. My duty, you yourself will say it at once, is to redeem her. I have resolved to live with her, to sacrifice, if need be, life itself to fulfil my duty. Margherita, what more can I say? Never as at this moment have I felt the need of showing you all my soul. It is like a stormy sea, and words fail me at this moment which is the turning point of my life. I have your kisses still on my lips, and I tremble with love and with grief. Margherita, I am in your hands. Have pity on me and on yourself too. Be what I have always dreamed you are. Think how short life is, and that love is the only reality of life, and that no one in the world will love you as I do. Don't tread out our happiness for the sake of worldly prejudices, prejudices invented by envious men to make all equally unhappy. You are good, you are above me. Say to me one word of hope for the future. And remember, whatever may happen, I shall be yours for all eternity. Write to me at once.

"ANANIA,—Your letter seems a horrid dream. I also have no words to express myself. Come to-night at the usual time and we will decide our fate together. It is I who should say 'my life is in your hands.' Come. I wait for you anxiously.

"MARGHERITA,—Your little letter has frozen my heart. My fate is already decided, but a thread of hope still guides me. No, I dare not come. I will not come unless you first give me a word of hope. Then I will fly to you, kneel at your feet, and thank you and worship you as a saint. But now—no, I cannot. I will not. I abide by what I wrote to you yesterday. Write to me, do not kill me with this terrible suspense.—Your most unhappy.

"ANANIA, MY NINO,—I have waited for you till this moment trembling with grief and love; but you have not come. Perhaps you are never coming any more, and I write to you at this sweet hour of our meetings with death in my heart and tears in my eyes which have not yet wept themselves out. The pale moon is sinking in a clouded heaven, the night is sad, it seems to me that all creation is oppressed by the ill-fortune which has crushed our love.

"As you say, I knew what you were, and I loved you just because I am above vulgar prejudice, and I wished to make up to you for the injustice of fate. But I believed you also were superior to prejudice, and were giving up all for me as I had given up all for you. Now, it seems, I have been deceived. You have deceived me, hiding your real sentiments. I believed and I still believe, that you knew your mother was alive and even where she was, and what sort of life she was leading (indeed, every one knew that!) but that you had no affection for this unnatural mother, who had deserted you, and was your misfortune and dishonour. You considered her dead for you and for every one. And I was quite sure that if ever she thrust herself upon your notice, which I suppose is what has happened, you would not condescend even to look at her. But on the contrary, you want to drive away her who has loved you so many years and will always love you, and to sacrifice your life and your honour to one, who (if she hadn't had an easy place to drop you into) was quite ready to kill you, or to leave you in a wood or a wilderness, a prey to starvation and terror, just that she might set herself free!

"But why should I write all this? Surely you know it? Why do you try to deceive me? Why do you appeal to sentiments which I can't possibly entertain, and which I don't believe you entertain yourself? You aren't going to do this stupid thing out of affection or out of generosity—I'm sure you really hate the woman—but just out of regard to these same vulgar prejudices which 'were invented by men to make all equally miserable.' Yes, yes! You want to sacrifice yourself and to ruin me, only for the glory of saying, 'I've done my duty!' You are a silly boy, your dreams are dangerous, and what's worse, ridiculous. People may praise you to your face; behind your back they will laugh at your simplicity.

"Anania, be yourself, be kind to yourself and to me. Be a man! No, I don't bid you abandon your mother if she's weak and unhappy (though she abandoned you). We can help her, give her some money, but we must keep her at arm's length. I won't have her coming between us and upsetting our life. I won't. You see I don't deceive you, Anania. I can't in the most distant way admit the possibility of living with her. It would be hideous, a daily tragedy. Better to die once for all, and have done with it, than die daily of resentment and disgust. I might pity the wretched creature, but I should never love her. If you persist in this mad idea, you'll make me loathe her even worse than before. This is my last word; aid her, but keep her far away, so that I may never lay eyes on her, so that our world in which we live may ignore her existence.

"I daresay she'll prefer to be out of your sight. Your presence ought to mean to her continual remorse. You say she has grown old with grief and privation, that she's poor and ill. Well, it's all her own fault. It's much better for you and for herself that she should be like that; for then she can't go roaming about the world and inflicting more disgrace upon you. But she, who didn't hesitate to outrage you when she was young and strong, mustn't now make a weapon of her weakness and want to destroy your happiness. No! no! you must never permit such a thing. No, no, it's impossible you should act upon such a fatal aberration! Unless it is that you don't love me any longer, and seek an excuse to——But I am not going to doubt you and your loyalty and your love. Don't be so wicked and cruel to me, when I have sacrificed to you all my youth, and all my dreams, and all my future.

"There! I tell you I'm crying as I write. Remember our love, our first kiss, our oaths, our plans—all—all. Don't reduce all that to a handful of ashes; don't kill me with disappointments, don't act so that afterwards you will repent your madness. If you won't listen to me, consult any sensible persons, and they'll all tell you not to be ungrateful and wicked and vain-glorious.

"Why, only yesterday you told me you had called my name from the summit of the Gennargentu, and proclaimed your love eternal and superior to all other human passion! Were you lying? and only yesterday? Why do you treat me like this? What have I done to deserve it? Have you forgotten that I love you? Have you forgotten that evening when I stood at the window and you threw me a flower after kissing it? I keep that flower to sew it into my wedding-dress, and I say keep, because I am sure that you really are going to be my bridegroom, and that you don't intend to kill your Margherita (remember your sonnet), and that we are going to be so happy alone together in our own little house.

"It is I, who am waiting for a word of hope from you at once. Tell me it's all a horrid dream. Tell me you have recovered your reason, and are sorry for having made me suffer.

"To-morrow night, or rather this night, for its already morning, I shall expect you. Don't fail me. Come, my adored one, my darling, my beloved bridegroom, come! I shall expect you as a flower expects the dew after a day of burning sun. Come! revive me, make me forget. My lips shall be laid on yours like——"

"No! no! no!" cried Anania convulsively, crumpling the letter before he had read the last lines, "I won't come! You are bad! bad! bad! I shall die, but I shan't see you again!"

With the letter crushed in his hand, he threw himself on his bed, burying his face in the pillow, biting it, restraining the sobs which rose in his throat. A shudder of passion ran through him, rising like a wave from his feet to his head. The last lines had filled him with tumultuous desire for Margherita's kisses, a desire as violent as it was despairing.

Little by little he regained self-control and knew what he was experiencing. He had seen the naked Margherita, and he felt for her a delirious love, and a disgust so great as to annihilate that very love.

How mean, how despicable she was! and consciously. The goddess, veiled in majesty and goodness, had thrown off her golden robes, and appeared naked, daubed with egotism and unkindness. The taciturn minerva had opened her lips to curse. The symbolic image had burst like a fruit rosy without, black and poisonous within. She was complete woman with all her savage wiles.

But the worst torment was the thought that Margherita guessed his secret sentiments. That she was right in reproving his deceptions, in asking the fulfilment of his duties of gratitude and love.

He got up and reread the letter. Every word offended and humiliated him. Margherita had loved him out of compassion, believing him as despicable as she was herself. Probably she had meant him to be just an instrument of her pleasure, a complacent servant, a humble husband. No, probably she had not thought of anything like that, but had loved him by mere instinct, because he had been the first to kiss her, to speak to her of love.

"She has no soul!" thought the poor boy. "When I raved, when I rose to the stars and swelled with superhuman joy, she was silent because in her there was emptiness. And I was adoring her silence, and thinking it divine! She spoke only when her senses were awaked. She speaks now because she's menaced with the vulgar annoyance of being given up. She has no soul, no heart! Not one word of pity! Not the modesty to conceal her selfishness. And she's ignorant too. Her letter is copied and recopied, yet even so it's badly expressed. But the last lines—there's her art! She knew the effect they'd produce. She knows me perfectly, and I am only now beginning to understand her. She wants to allure me to the meeting, because she thinks she can intoxicate me. Deceit! deceit! But I see through her now. Ah! not one kind word, not a single generous impulse, nothing! nothing! How horrible!"—(again, he crumpled the letter)—"I hate all women! I shall always hate them! I'll become bad myself! I'll grind you all to powder and spit upon you. I'll make you all suffer! I'll kill you, tear you to pieces! I'll begin this instant!"

He took the rezetta still wrapped in the coloured handkerchief, rolled it in a newspaper, sealed and despatched it to Aunt Grathia. "It's all over," he repeated. And he seemed to be walking through emptiness, over the cold clouds as on the ascent of Gennargentu. But now vainly he looked down or around him; there was no path of escape, all was cloud, infinite giddiness. During the day he thought of suicide, a hundred times.

He went up and took information as to what examinations and public posts were open to him, and how soon he could present himself as a candidate. He went to the tavern and seeing the handsome Agata (now betrothed to Antonino) he kissed her. Whirlwinds of hate and of love for Margherita shook his soul. The more he read her letter, the more he felt her paltriness; the more he felt himself alienated from her, the more he loved and desired her. Kissing Agata, he remembered what excitement the beautiful peasant's kiss had roused in him on that former occasion. Then Margherita had been so far above him, a whole world of mystery and poetry had divided them; and this same world, fallen to ruins, divided them now.

"What's up with you?" asked Agata, making no objection to his kiss. "Have you quarrelled with? What are you kissing me for?"

"You've been drinking!" laughed Agata. "Well if that's your fancy in women, you can have Rebecca. But suppose Margherita hears of it——"

"Why not? She's going to be my sister-in-law. Is she any different from me? She's a woman like the rest of us. I doubt she's even rich. If she was certain she'd be rich, she'd only keep you on till she found a better match."

Her insinuations completed Anania's torment; he now believed Margherita capable of anything.

He went to bed early that evening, complaining of imaginary fever. He thought of staying in bed to-morrow, hoping that Margherita would hear he was ill. He even arrived at imagining that she, believing him very ill indeed, would come secretly to visit him. This dream melted him completely; he shook with emotion thinking of the scene that would follow. Then suddenly the dream appeared what it was, childish sentimentality. He was ashamed of himself, got up and went out. At the accustomed hour, he stood before Margherita's door. She opened it herself. They embraced, and both were moved to tears. But as soon as Margherita began to speak, he felt an immense displeasure; then a sense of frost, much as he had felt in looking at his mother.

No! no! he no longer loved her! He no longer desired her! He rose and went away without uttering a word.

[23]A local expression meaning, "nothing but what I wear."

"Your behaviour last night has finally revealed your character. I should suppose it needless to declare that all is over between us, were it not that you take my silence for a sign of humiliating expectancy. Good-bye, then, for ever.

"MY DEAR GODFATHER,—I intended to visit you and explain by word what now I must write to you, for at this moment, I have received from Fonni news of my mother's dangerous illness, and I must go to her at once. This, therefore, is what I have to tell you.

"Your daughter informs me that she withdraws her promise of marriage, which we had arranged together, with your consent. If she has not already done so, she will explain to you her reason for this decision, which, of course, I accept. Our characters are too unlike for us to be united. Fortunately, for us and for those who love us, we have made this sad discovery in time. It may make us unhappy now, but it will prevent an error which would be the misfortune of our whole lives. Your daughter will surely attain the happiness which she deserves, and will meet some man who is worthy of her. No one will wish her greater happiness than I do. As for me—I will follow my destiny.

"Ah! dear godfather! when you have had the explanation from Margherita, don't, don't accuse me of ingratitude and of pride, whatever happens. Whether or not I am allowed to fulfil grave duties to an unhappy mother, I know every relation between me and you, or any of your family, is at an end. I renounce all favours, which indeed would now be absurd and humiliating to us all, but in my heart I shall retain as long as I live the sincerest gratitude for all your goodness to me. In this sad hour of my life, when circumstances make me despair of everything and everybody, and especially of myself, I still look up to you, my godfather, and remember your kindness and charity which has guided me from the first hour I knew you, and which still preserves my faith in human goodness. And the duty of gratitude to you, makes me still wish to live, though the light of life is failing me on all sides. I have no more to add; the future will explain to you the real nature of my thoughts, and will, I hope, prevent your repenting of your kindness, to—Your ever most grateful.

At three o'clock, Anania was already on his way to Fonni, riding on an old horse blind of an eye, which did not travel so fast as the occasion demanded. But alas! why hide the truth? Anania was not in a hurry, although the driver of the coach, Aunt Grathia's messenger, had said.

For a time Anania could think of nothing but the letter which he had himself consigned to Signor Carboni's servant.

"He'll be angry with me," thought Anania, "when Margherita tells him of my strange excuses, he'll think she's in the right. Of course, any girl would have done what she has done. I suppose I am quite wrong, but still who ever the girl was, I should have acted the same. Perhaps I ought to have said in my letter that I was to blame, but that I simply couldn't do anything else. But no, they wouldn't understand, just as they won't be able to forgive. It's all over."

Suddenly he felt an impulse of joy at the fact that his mother was dying; but at once he tried to shudder at himself.

"I'm a monster!" he thought; but his relief was so great, so cruel, that the very word "monster" seemed farcical, almost amusing. However, after a few minutes he was really shocked at himself.

"She's dying; and it's I who have killed her. She's dying of fear, remorse, suffering. I saw her sink down that day, with her eyes full of despair. My words hurt her worse than a blow. What a lurid thing is the human heart! I'm rejoicing in my crime; I'm rejoicing like a prisoner who has gained his freedom by murdering his gaoler, while I'm thinking Margherita despicable, because she says bluntly that she can't love a bad woman. I am far worse, a hundred times worse than Margherita. But can I alter my feelings? What whirlwind of contradictions, what malign force is it that draws and contorts the human soul? Why can we not overcome this force even when we recognize and hate it? The God which governs the universe is Evil! a monstrous God, living in us as the thunderbolt lives in the air, ready to burst forth at any moment. And that infernal power which oppresses and derides us—Good Lord! perhaps it will make the poor wretch better and entirely cure her, to punish me for rejoicing at the expectation of her death!"

This idea depressed him for some moments, and he felt the horror of his depression as he had felt the horror of his joy, but was powerless to conquer it.

Sunset enfolded him as he ascended from Mamojada to Fonni; great peace overspread the rose-tinted landscape. The shadows, lengthening on the golden carpet of the stubble, suggested persons asleep, and the glowing mountains blended with the glowing sky, in which the moon already showed its shell of pearl. Anania felt his heart softening. His spirit raised itself towards the pure and mystic heaven.

"Once I imagined I was kind-hearted," he thought; "delusion—mere delusion. I exalted myself when I thought of her, and when I thought of Margherita too. I fancied I loved my mother, and could redeem her, and thus make my existence some use. Instead of that, I have killed her! What must I do now? How shall I use my freedom, my miserable tranquillity? I shall never be happy again. I shall never again believe in myself or in any one else. Now truly I know what man is—a vain though fiery flame, which passes over life and reduces everything to ashes, and goes out when there is nothing left for it to destroy."

As he ascended, the marvel of the sunset increased; he stopped his horse that he might contemplate what seemed a symbolic picture. The mountains had become violet; a long cloud of the same colour made a darkness above the horizon; between the mountains and the cloud a great sun, rayless and blood-red was going down in a heaven of gold. At that moment, he knew not why, Anania felt good; good, but sorrowful. He had arrived at sincerely desiring his mother's recovery. He felt a measureless pity for her; and the beautiful childish dream of a life of sacrifice dedicated to the unhappy one's redemption, shone in his soul, great and terrible like that dying sun. But suddenly he perceived that this dream was only for his own comfort; and he compared his belated generosity to a rainbow curved over a country devastated by storm; it was splendid, but altogether useless.

"What shall I do?" he repeated in new despair, "I shall love no more, I shall believe no more. The romance of my life is ended; ended at twenty-two, the age when most men are beginning theirs!"

When he reached Fonni it was already night. The outline of the tiled roofs showed black against the stainless moonlit sky. The air was perfumed and very fresh. The tinkle of the goats returning from pasture, could be heard, the step of the herdsman's horse, the bark of his dogs. Anania thought of Zuanne and of his distant childhood, more tenderly than when he had been at Fonni a few days ago.

He dismounted at the widow's door, inquisitive heads appeared at the windows, the low doors, the wooden balconies of the opposite houses. He seemed expected, a mysterious whisper ran around, and he felt himself wrapped in it, straitened as by a cold and heavy chain.

Aunt Grathia came to the door, a lamp in her hand. She was even more ghastly than usual, her small, bloodshot eyes sunk in great livid circles.

"Ah! she is well. She has finished her penitence in this world," replied the old woman with tragic solemnity. Anania understood that his mother was dead. He could not feel sad, but neither did he feel the expected sense of relief.

"Good God! Why didn't you send for me sooner? When did she die? Let me see her!" he said, with anxiety exaggerated, but partly sincere. He entered the kitchen which was illuminated by a great fire.

Seated at the hearth Anania saw a peasant who looked like an Egyptian priest, with a long square black beard, and wide opened, round, black eyes. In his hands he held a large black rosary, and he looked at the new-comer ferociously. Anania began to feel a mysterious disquiet. He recalled the embarrassed air of the man who had brought him the news of his mother's danger. He remembered that a few days ago he had left her suffering but not gravely ill. He suspected they were trying to conceal something from him. A terrible idea flashed through his mind. All this in one moment while the widow who remained at the door was saying to the black bearded man—

"At what o'clock did she die?" asked Anania, turning also to the peasant whose black eyes, round like holes, impressed him strangely.

"You could have done nothing," said Aunt Grathia, who was still guarding the horse. "Make haste, son Fidele!" she repeated impatiently.

"Why didn't you warn me," said Anania, stooping mechanically to take off his spur. "What was the matter with her? What did the doctor say? God knows I had no idea——Well, I'm going up to see her."

He straightened himself and moved towards the stair, but Aunt Grathia still holding the lamp hastily prevented him.

"What, my son? The thing you will see is a corpse!" she cried in horror-struck tones.

The old woman preceded him up the wooden stair. Her deformed shadow as tall as the roof, trembled on the wall.

At the door of the room where the dead woman lay. Aunt Grathia stopped and hesitated. Again she pressed Anania's arm. He noticed that the old woman was shivering; and, he knew not why, he shuddered himself.

He grew pale; the thought deformed and monstrous, like the shadows trembling on the wall, took form and filled his soul with terror.

He cried thus twice; it seemed as if his hair rose on his head; he heard his voice resounding in the funereal silence of the house. Then he collected himself and pushed the door.

On the pallet bed where a few night's ago he had himself slept, he saw the corpse delineated under the sheet which covered it. Through the open window entered the fresh evening air; and the flame of a wax candle burning by the bedside seemed to wish to fly away, to escape into the fragrant night.

Anania approached the bed; cautiously as if fearing to wake her, he uncovered the corpse. A handkerchief covered with spots of darkened blood, already dry, swathed the neck, passed under the chin, over the ears, and was knotted among the thick black hair. Within this tragic circle the face was drawn in grey, the mouth still contorted with the death spasm. The vitreous line of the eyes was visible through the heavy, half-shut lids.

Anania understood that she had severed the carotid artery. Horrified by the spots of blood, he at once recovered the dead face; leaving, however, the hair, which was twisted high on the pillow, partly exposed. His eyes had darkened with horror, his mouth writhed as if in mimicry of the contortion of the dead woman's lips.

"My God! my God! this is awful!" he said, wringing his hands, and twisting his fingers. "Blood! She has shed her blood! How did she do it? How was she able to do it? She has cut her throat! How horrible! How wrong, how wrong I have been. Oh! my God! No, Aunt Grathia, don't shut the window! I am stifled. It was I who bade her kill herself!"

He sobbed fearlessly—suffocated by remorse and horror. "She has died in despair, and I did not say to her one word of comfort. She was my mother after all, and she suffered in bringing me into the world! And I—have killed her, and I—still live!"

Never as at that moment before the terrible mystery of death had he felt all the greatness, all the value of life. To live! Was it not enough to live—to move, to feel the perfumed breeze of the serene night—in order to be happy? Life! the most beautiful, the most sublime thing which an eternal and infinite will could create! And he lived; and he owed his life to the miserable creature who lay before him, deprived of this highest good! How was it he had never thought of that? Ah! he had never understood the value of life, because he had never seen the horror and the emptiness of death. And now she, she alone, had taken upon herself the task of revealing to him, by the shock of her death, the supreme joy of Life. She, at the price of her own life, had given him birth a second time; and this new moral life was immeasurably greater than the first.

A veil fell from his eyes. He saw the contemptibleness of his passions, of his past griefs and hatreds. Had he suffered because of his mother's sin? Fool! What did that matter? What mattered a fact so trifling in comparison with the greatness of life? And because Olì had given him life, must she not represent to him the kindest of human creatures, to whom he must be eternally grateful, whom he must always love?

He sobbed still, his heart filled with strange anguish through which came to him the joy of mere life. Yes, he suffered; therefore he lived.

The widow drew to his side, took his wrung hands in hers, comforted and encouraged him.

"We'll come downstairs, son; we'll come down. No, don't torment yourself. She has died because she had to die. You did your duty; and she—perhaps, she also did hers—although truly the Lord gave us life or repentance, and bade us live——Let us come down, my son."

"She was still young!" said Anania, somewhat calmed, his eyes resting on the dead woman's black hair, "No, Aunt Grathia, I am not upset, let us stay here a moment. How old was she? Thirty—eight? Tell me," he asked again, "at what hour did she die? How did she do it? Tell me all about it."

But he did not move. He was still looking at the dead woman's hair, marvelling that it was so abundant and so black. He would have liked to cover it with the sheet, but felt a strange fear of again touching the corpse.

The widow performed this act of reverence, then taking Anania's hand, led him away. His eye fell on the small table against the wall, at the foot of the bed; but they went out and sat together on the staircase, the lamp set on the boards by their side.

The widow narrated a long history, of which Anania ever retained in his memory these sad fragments.

"She kept saying, 'Oh, I'll go! You'll see I shall go, whether he likes it or not. I've harmed him enough, Aunt Grathia, now I must set him free, and in such fashion that he shall never again so much as hear my name. I'll desert him a second time to expiate the sin of my first desertion.' Then she sharpened the knife on the grindstone, poor thing! When we got the rezetta in the coloured handkerchief, she grew so pale; and she tore the packet and wept——Oh yes, she cut her throat. Yes, this very morning at six, when I had gone to the fountain. When I came back, I found her in a pool of blood. She was still alive—her eyes horribly wide open.

"All the officials, the colonel, the Prætor, the Town-Clerk, they all invaded the house. It was like hell! People crowded in the street, the women cried like children. The Prætor took the knife and looked at me with terrible eyes. He asked if you had ever threatened your mother. But then I saw he also was in tears.

"She lived till midday. It was agony for everyone. Son, you know that in my life, I have seen terrible things—never anything like this. No, one doesn't die of sorrow and pity, for you see I am still alive. Ah! why are we born?" she ended with tears.

Anania was deeply moved. This strange old woman, who had long seemed petrified by griefs, wept; but he, he who only last night had wept for love in Margherita's arms, he could not weep; remorse and anguish were tearing at his heartstrings.

The widow raised her lamp, reopened the door, let the young man pass in, and waited. So sad she was, so black with that antique iron lantern in her hand, she looked like the figure of death, vigilantly waiting.

Anania approached the little table on tip-toe. On it he had seen the amulet and the little torn packet, laid on a sheet of glass. He looked at it, almost superstitiously. Then he took it up and opened it.

Several times Anania touched those black ashes, which perhaps were the relics of some love token of his mother's; those ashes which long ago she had placed upon his breast that they might feel its deepest throbs.

And in that memorable hour of his life, the whole solemn significance of which he knew he did not yet feel, it seemed to him that little heap of Ashes was a symbol of destiny. Yes, all was Ashes; life, death, the human kind; destiny itself which had produced them.

And yet in that supreme hour, shadowed by that figure of aged Fate, which seemed Death in waiting,—in the presence of the remains of that most wretched of all the daughters of men, who, after doing and suffering wrong in all its manifestations, had died for another's good,—Anania felt that among the ashes lurks the spark, the seed of the luminous and purifying flame; and Hope returned to him, and he felt that he loved life still.

Cuccu bellu agreste	Cuckoo, beautiful wild thing,
Natami itte ora est.	Tell me what o'clock doth ring.

Cuccu bellu e' mare	Cuckoo, beauty of the sea,
Cantos annos bi cheret a	How many years shall marry
m'isposare?	me?

Cuccu bellu 's lizu	Cuckoo, beauty of lily fair,
Cantos annos bi cheret a fagher	In how many years shall my
fixu?	son be here?

Cuccu, bellu e sorre	Cuckoo, beauty and sister dear.
Cantos annos bi cheret a mi	In how many years will my
morrer?	death draw near?

Su soldadu in sa gherra	The soldier die he must
Nan chi s' est olvedadu	In war and be forgot;
No s'ammentat de Deu.	Not even God remembers
Torrat su colpus meu	My body He dismembers,
Pustis ch' est sepultadu	When buried 'tis, I wot,
A sett' unzas de terra.	To ounces six of dust.

ASHES

(CENERE)

A SARDINIAN STORY

BY

GRAZIA DELEDDA

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN

BY

HELEN HESTER COLVILL

Author of "The Stepping-Stone,"
&c., and Translator of Grazia
Deledda's "Nostalgia," the Serial
in the Fortnightly Review, 1895.

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPY. MCMVIII

CONTENTS

ASHES

PART I

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

PART II

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

Dear Hearts, hush-a-bye!	Coro anninnò, anninnò
Tis my day to die.	Dego de partire so
While I linger still	E de fagher testamentu.
Let me make my will.

Ella era assisa sopra la verdura	Seated she was upon the
	verdure fair
Allegra; e ghirlandetta avea	All joyous; and a wreath had
contesta:	fashioned;
Di quanti por creasse mai natura	To paint the radiant vesture
	she did wear
Di tanti era dipinta la sua vesta	Each flower that blooms its
	brightest hues had shed.
E come in prima al giovin pose	When of the youth's advance
cura	she first was ware
Alquanto paurosa alzò la testa:	With motion half of fear she
	raised her head,
Poi con la bianca man ripreso il	Then lifting her robe's hem
lembo	with one white hand,
Levossi in piè con di fior pieno	She rose, and so with
un grembo.	flower-filled lap did stand.

Portate, venti, questi dolci versi	Breezes, upon your wings these
	verses bear
Dentro all' orecchie della Ninfa	And breathe them in my
mia;	Ladye's ear for me;
Dite quanti per lei lagrime versi,	Speak of the many tears I've
	shed for her.
E la pregate che crudel non sia;	And pray her sore to quit this
	cruelty;
Dite che la mia vita fugge via,	Tell her my life's sad course is
	almost run,
E si consuma come brina al sole.	Wasted, consumed, like hoar
	frost in the sun.

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

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

I masnadieri nella Taverna della Landa	Robbers in field-side
	tavern.

Luna, luna,	Moon, moon,
Porzedda luna!	Beautiful moon!

ASHES

(CENERE)

A SARDINIAN STORY

BY

GRAZIA DELEDDA

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN

BY

HELEN HESTER COLVILL

Author of "The Stepping-Stone," &c., and Translator of Grazia Deledda's "Nostalgia," the Serial in the Fortnightly Review, 1895.

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPY. MCMVIII

CONTENTS

ASHES

Author of "The Stepping-Stone,"
&c., and Translator of Grazia
Deledda's "Nostalgia," the Serial
in the Fortnightly Review, 1895.