PART II

I

"_'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?"

"I'm afraid."

"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!"

Anania looked, and saw the resemblance to marionettes.

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.

"Look!" said Daga.

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

"Bravo!" said the other, "you're getting quite brilliant in my society!"

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.

"Let's go to the Coliseum!" said Anania.

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?"

"Yes," said Anania, answering his own inward question, "_this_ is Rome!"

[Footnote 14: Huah-a-bye baby.]

II

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.

Daga also sighed from his bed behind the screen.

"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:--

"_Bonas tardas pizzocheddos_."

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?"

"No," roared the other.

"Will you lend me your umbrella?"

He hoped Battista would ask where he was going, but all his friend said was--

"Couldn't you do me the favour of buying an umbrella?"

Anania sat up on his bed, put his lips to the screen, and said slowly--

"I've got to go to the Questura."

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.

"Take the umbrella, of course," yawned Battista; "but why are you going?"

Anania did not reply. He went out.

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?"

"He's a fool, that's all."

"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."

"Perhaps you are right."

"Of course I am. I know it's crocodile."

"I mean about the fixed idea----"

"Just think! that card-case was once living in the Nile."

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

"How do I know? I've never been taken up."

"Seriously, where is it?"

"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?"

"I want to get someone's address. Come on."

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!"

Anania strode on and made no answer.

"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."

"I'll tell you afterwards. Wait for me."

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.

"Well is the die cast?!" he asked tragically.

"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.

[Footnote 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?"

They quickly got to high words.

"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."

"Anyhow he could say his donkey wasn't immoral."

"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."

"Engaged? I? Who says so?"

"And to a daisy--a pearl cast this time before an ass.

"I forbid you to utter that name! I forbid you! Do you hear?"

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

Furiously Anania fell to packing his papers and books.

"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.

"Signora Obinu?" he asked.

"Yes, that is my name," answered the woman, her tones somewhat coarse.

"No," thought the youth, "it's not her voice."

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----"

"But this ante-room is a passage," said the woman.

"I know. But I don't mind if you don't," urged Anania.

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

"I really don't mind for a few nights."

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?"

"Yes, but I was born there by accident. My parents were just passing through."

"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.

"No, it's not _she_," he thought, and felt relieved. She was not his mother.

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

"I'll give you my own room for the fortnight."

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.

"No!" he shouted, "but please come in. I have something to show you."

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.

IV

Rome, _June_ 1st.

"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:

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.

"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:

"'Aunt Varvara have you gone clean out of your mind?'

"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!"

Presently he sprang to his feet.

"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."

Signora Obinu came home in the evening.

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

"What is it?" she asked, entering.

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.

"What's the matter?" asked Anania, roughly.

"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?"

"I'll wait till you've taken off your hat."

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."

"First take off your hat," repeated Anania.

"Why?"

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.

"You know him, I think?"

"I? No."

"Aunt Varvara told me she had seen him here several times."

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!"

She put her hand on her heart and again sighed heavily.

"She's acting," thought Anania.

"_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?"

Anania moved the candle and clapped a dictionary on the burning almanac.

"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?"

He raised his head and said:

"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----"

"Are you going crazy, Signor Anania?" she said, snatching her hand away.

"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.

"You really are crazy. I only wish I were your mother!" she said.

The voice of Aunt Varvara was heard calling her mistress.

"I can't waste any more time," said Signora Maria, turning to go away.

"What shall I say to Daga?" said Anania, brushing his hair.

"Say that if he comes here, I shall throw him downstairs. Do you see?"

"No, I don't see. Signora Maria! wait! Explain to me, do! Don't go away! What does it all mean?"

But she vanished into the darkness of the ante-room, making no reply.

"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?"

[Footnote 16: A dwarf of Sardinian legend.]

[Footnote 17: A proverb. Wise as water, viz. very wise.]

V

The time of vacation was near.

"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."

And he went to the window pretending to suit the action to the words.

"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."

"What's 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.

"Of course I am."

"How many _tancas_ have you?"

"Seven or eight. I don't quite remember."

"And bees have you? And shepherds?"

"Aunt Varvara, I have everything."

"Then why have you come to this land of damnation?"

"Because my sweetheart wishes me to be Doctor of Law."

"And who is your sweetheart?"

"The daughter of the Baron of Baronia."

"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!"

"Go on with the story. What did the woodcutter do?"

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.

"But that's the legend of St Maria Maggiore," said Anania.

"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."

"You saw all that. Aunt Varvara, because you had fever."

"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?"

He was homesick like Aunt Varvara.

"Aren't _you_ ever going back?" he asked Signora Obinu one day when she came into the kitchen.

"I?" she answered rather drearily, "no, never again, never again!"

"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."

"But why?"

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!"

"But she's alive still, Aunt Varvara!"

"You don't know what you're talking about! It's better to murder a woman than to betray her."

This threw him back into his doubts again.

"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."

"Persuade him to what?"

"To help her."

"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."

"But her papers----" repeated Anania.

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.

"What absurdities!" he thought. "Why should fever make one see such things?"

Then Maria Obinu came back. She advanced silently and bent over the patient.

"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:"

"_Luna, luna, Moon, moon, Porzedda luna!_" Beautiful moon!

"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--"

"'_A te questo rosario._'"

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."

"Amen; and to our happy reunion."

"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.

[Footnote 18: A court or platform round the _nuraghe_.]

VI

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.

"Nania, my son, come down!"

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----"

"What sort of a comparison is that?" protested Aunt Tatàna.

"Do let me speak. I remember I had the greatest difficulty in talking dialect. I felt as if I were in a new world."

The student looked at his father and smiled.

"That's what I feel," he said.

"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?"

Anania guessed at some secret and said.

"What's the matter? Tell me. What's being said about me?"

"Nothing, nothing; let the crows caw," said the woman.

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."

Anania flushed. He resumed his fork and ate mechanically, while he stammered--

"The fools!"

"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.'"

"Stop! You know nothing about it!" cried the son angrily.

"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."

The man drank his wine; waved a hand to implore peace, and said quietly:--

"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."

The student thumped his glass on the table so violently that the cat shuddered.

"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.'"

"And if he kicks him out?" said Aunt Tatàna.

The doubt was unflattering, and Anania laughed it off a little nervously.

"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.

"No, no," she said, "I'm too heavy. I'm too fat!"

"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."

"Stories!" said Margherita.

"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!"

"But I'm afraid I, too,--"

"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."

"Yes."

"Say that you love me."

"Yes."

"Don't say just Yes. Say it like this. I--love--thee."

"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!"

"Rich? I don't know about that. Suppose I'm not?"

"I should like it much, much better."

They were silent, each grave, each following private thoughts; almost divided.

"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?"

"Yes," she said, after a short hesitation.

"Really? Really? Then your father is not angry?"

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?"

"Yes," said Margherita, carried away by his enthusiasm.

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."

"You didn't write me all that."

"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.

"I'm pleased by the misfortunes of my benefactor," he thought. "That's mean!"

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.

"Still alive, Nanna?" he said. "Good-morning."

"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.

"Listen to those lines!" cried Anania, and he recited gesticulating--

_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.

Nanna listened without understanding a word. She--opened her lips to say--to say--At last she said:--

"I've heard that before."

"From whom?" cried Anania.

"From Efès Cau."

"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."

"And pray when had I a tail?" asked Anania, threatening her with his finger.

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--

"It was the tail of your shirt, your Worship!"

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:

_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.

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

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

"When Amelia so pure and so pale--"

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

"How are you?" cried Anania.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Whom could I send?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Scum yourself, old sinner!"

"Ah."

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

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

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

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

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

The pinches were redoubled.

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

Anania withdrew, asking himself how that minx Agata knew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well? Well? What did he say?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he had become very thoughtful and grave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margherita graciously gave permission for the journey.

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

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

[Footnote 20: In prison.]

VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To these questions there was no reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The widow's face darkened.

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

"Where is Brother Zuanne at present?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"_A te questo rosario_--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He no longer heard or saw.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Quite certain. Why should I invent it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why is she afraid?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Was she ever in prison?" he asked.

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

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

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

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

"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."

"But why? Doesn't she know who you are?"

"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?"

"But what do you want to do? You said yourself she's nothing to you."

"What is your advice?"

"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."

Anania looked at her, compassionate, but contemptuous.

"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."

"You're mad."

"You don't understand."

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?"

"Never mind."

"What do you propose to do?"

"Never mind."

"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----"

"Well then, get her here. But at once--to-morrow morning."

"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----"

"Leave it to me."

"Well--go to bed now," she repeated, pushing him gently.

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!"

And he did not perceive that the monster stood by his side--inexorable.

[Footnote 21: A vessel made of cork.]

[Footnote 22: Sign of an easy life, with no manual labour.]

VIII

In the long sleepless night, Anania decided, or believed he decided his fate.

"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.

"And that's Nuoro?" said Anania, pointing.

"Yes. It is cut in two by the hill of St Onofrio."

"I know. It's very clear."

"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."

Anania remembered his promise to Margherita.

"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.

He went in, and saw only the old woman, who sat spinning, quiet as a spectre.

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.

"Well?" said the youth.

"Patience, my jewel of gold! I couldn't find anyone I could trust to take the message. My son is not in the neighbourhood."

"But the driver of the coach?"

"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.'"

"Did he refuse to do it?"

"No, he said he would. He even promised to drive her up."

"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."

The widow came back alone, hurriedly.

"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.

"Where are you going?" he cried, "come back, or I'll go away myself."

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."

Olì wept on.

"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.

He looked at the ragged apron and thought.

"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."

As if guessing his thought Aunt Grathia asked Olì--

"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?"

"No," replied Olì with trembling lips.

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--"

She made Olì sit, but Anania shook his head.

"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."

Thinking he still spoke to the widow Olì made no answer.

"Did you hear?" asked Aunt Grathia, gently, "what have you to say?"

"I?"

"Yes, you."

"Nothing."

"Have you debts?" asked Anania.

"No."

"Not to the _Cantoniere_?"

"No. They've taken all I had."

"What had you?"

"My silver buttons, my shoes, twelve silver _lire_."

"What have you now?"

"Nothing. _As you see me write me down_."[23]

"Have you any papers?"

"What?"

"Papers," explained Aunt Grathia, "your certificate of birth, for instance."

"Yes, I have that. It's here," she said touching her chest.

"Let me see."

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.

It's date was recent.

"Why did you get this?" he asked.

"For my marriage with Celestino."

"The blind man--that vile brute," explained the widow.

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."

"It's all ended! all over!" he repeated to himself sadly. "All over!"

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."

But Olì did 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----"

Her voice, suffering but still fresh and clear, rang out.

"I don't want anything."

"How do you mean?" he asked, arresting his step by the fire.

"I'm not going to stay."

"_What_?" he cried, turning round, his eyes wide, his fist clenched.

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?"

"Where God wills."

"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----"

"She's right!" said the widow.

"Hold your tongue!" shouted Anania.

Olì took courage.

"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!"

She went on humbly, content that at least he no longer threatened her.

"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."

"No!" he repeated.

"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.

"No!"

"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!"

"I will not."

Olì fell back silent and seemingly vanquished; but Aunt Grathia spoke--

"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."

"Can't understand? I understand perfectly," protested the old woman.

"_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.

Anania answered always No.

"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 raised his head and surveyed her.

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.

A sad night fell upon the wind-shaken hamlet.

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.

"I'll go, if you'll do me one kindness," said Olì at last.

"What is it?"

"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_!"

When it was light. Aunt Grathia went to Anania and told him what Olì had said.

"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."

"Son, don't be unnatural. Content her at least in this one small matter."

"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."

"We shall see," said Anania. "I'll write to you."

"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."

"Well then----"

"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 promised.

"And when will you come back yourself?"

"I don't know. Soon, certainly. As soon as I have settled my affairs."

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.

"And why should I send the _rezetta_ at all? Why should I want to please her?"

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.

What was he expecting? What did he hope?

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:

_I masnadieri nella Taverna della Landa_--Robbers in field-side tavern.

There! now he has caught her, he is going to kill her, and the frost of death has stiffened his arm--

He woke, bathed in cold perspiration. His heart had stopped; he wept.

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.

"_September_ 18_th._ 2 A.M.

"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."

"_September_ 19_th._

"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."

"_September_ 19_th._

"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."

"_September_ 19_th._ Midnight.

"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.

"Anania, why did you deceive me?

"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.

"It's all over!" he thought. "It was bound to end like this."

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?"

"Because I like it, because you're coarse----"

"You've been drinking!" laughed Agata. "Well if that's your fancy in women, you can have Rebecca. But suppose Margherita hears of it----"

"Hold your tongue! Don't dare to mention her name!"

"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."

"If you don't hold your tongue I'll strike you!" said Anania furiously.

"Oh, you're drunk! Get away! go to Rebecca!" repeated Agata.

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.

At the end of the street he turned back, leaned against her door, and called--

"Margherita!"

But the door remained shut.

[Footnote 23: A local expression meaning, "nothing but what I wear."]

IX

"_September_ 20_th._ Midnight.

"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.

M."

"P.S. I wish my letters returned, and I'll send you yours."

"NUORO, _September_ 20_th._

"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.

"ANANIA ATONZU."

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.

"You must start at once; it is possible you may find _the woman_ already dead."

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.

"She must be dead!" he thought, and stood motionless beside his horse.

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.

Anania looked at her anxiously.

"How is she?"

"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--

"Fidele, see to the horse. The straw is there. Make haste."

"At what o'clock did she die?" asked Anania, turning also to the peasant whose black eyes, round like holes, impressed him strangely.

"At two," answered a voice of the deepest bass.

"At two? That was the hour when I got the news. Why was I not told sooner?"

"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.

"_Nonna_! Do you suppose I'm afraid? Come with me."

"Very well."

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.

"Son," said the widow, in a whisper "don't be shocked."

He grew pale; the thought deformed and monstrous, like the shadows trembling on the wall, took form and filled his soul with terror.

"What is it?" he cried, guessing the fearful truth.

"The Lord's will be done."

"She killed herself?"

"Yes."

"My God! How horrible!"

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 for 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."

"Come downstairs, then I'll tell you. Come!" repeated Aunt Grathia.

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.

He got up and moved again towards the death-chamber.

"I want to look at something," he said tremulously.

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.

There was in it only a yellow pebble, and some ashes; ashes blackened by time.

Ashes!

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.