Part 5

To Cyrille, with his political views, his poetic communism, and his genuine tenderness of temper, it was a daily torment to mark, track, and prevent the continual petty thefts and crooked intrigues of those forest-squatters. More than once he was on the point of writing to Adolfo Gandolfo, and begging him to tender his resignation to the old prince. But many reasons restrained him: in the first place, gratitude; in the second, that natural reluctance of every high-spirited man to confess himself beaten; besides this, there was always a feeling which had entered into him of affection for the trees and for the animals, and a great sense of repose in the dim green solitudes which closed in around his refuge. If he went away, in impatience and thanklessness, what could await him? Only the stifling life of cities, the sordid struggle of intellect with want. Where again if he left Le Selve would he see the light of morning on the snows of Soracte? Where again behold the evening’s gold gleam on the line of the sea by Ostia? Where smell the bourgeonning blossoms of the lime? Where stroke the velvet antlers of the deer? Where watch the nightingales pluck the small white moths off the pale azure discs of the succory? Where see the day decline in pomp behind the hoary boughs of oaks which as saplings saw the armies of Theodoric and of Constantine pass beneath their sapling shadows; the spell of Rome held him and the sorcery of Nature; of that Nature which is eternally young, yet allied with the greatest ages of the earth.

The year did not pass without the warning of the women to him being verified. Once a bullet whistled past him as he rode, and cut off the oak leaves at his shoulder. But the forest growth hid the would-be assassin from his sight; and another night, when he rode over the wooden bridge often used by him in returning homeward, the planks gave way beneath his horse’s tread, and the animal and he escaped by a miracle from a bad fall on to jagged rocks and into deep water; and when he examined it by daylight it seemed to him that the timbers had been sawn nearly asunder, so as to give way under vibration. But of the guilty persons there was no trace. What affected him more was when his dog, a greyhound of large size and great beauty, sent to him by Gandolfo, was found dead one noonday stretched out on the terrace, with all the signs of death, by a poison which the woodlanders extracted from adders which they caught and robbed of their venom, treating it as they did also the poison of the night-shade, and the hemlock, and the corn-crowfoot, in a manner learned by oral recipes handed down from remote Etruscan times. It was only the eldest living son who received that teaching from the head of the family, and in turn passed it to his heir, with many another dark secret of subterranean waters, and buried passages, and rock tombs and hollow ways in which a fugitive from justice might dwell safely many a year. Muriella had no doubt as to who had slain the greyhound; for Alcide was so good-natured, so industrious, so quiet, by comparison with his ordinary habit, that she felt sure he had done some evil successfully. Cyrille offered rewards and made investigations as to the dog’s death uselessly. Concerning his own danger he said nothing; he sent workmen to mend the bridge, affecting to take for granted that the timber had been rotten and old. If any were disappointed by his escape, they kept their chagrin to themselves and bided their time.

Vengeance is like a good Falernian or Chianti wine; it only mellows with keeping.

After the pleasure of trapping and shooting, in and out of season, the main and favourite diversion of the squatters of Le Selve was smuggling; the smuggling of all kinds of game netted out of season, of ingeniously-hidden wines, carried across the woods from the Este districts to the very gates of Rome, or as far as Nepi and Corneto; of charcoal burned by themselves from the stolen wood of the violated groves around them, and taken in sacks under the walls of villages and little towns; even of the very pips of the pine-cones baked in their ovens they made traffic, and carried them away and sold them for what they could get; they took everything across the forest by night, with their poor starved cows or buffaloes harnessed to the wagons; and it was not only the small gains which were dear to them but the pleasure in the contraband-dealing, and the relish of cheating the _gabellotti_ at the gates of the capital itself. More than one of them had stabbed a guard and taken to the hills, where such a fugitive could no more be traced than if he were an adder under a pile of stones. The ground was honeycombed with subterranean places, in the past Etruscan sepulchres, now the storehouses of these men, their entrances known to them alone, and their retreat safe from discovery.

“Every man may be betrayed, for Christo was,” said Alcide once; “but an outlaw is almost always safe and welcome.”

It was quite true. There is an universal feeling amongst the people of fraternal unison against the law and the fiscal agents; and the little children will carry bread and wine to such a fugitive from justice and never speak, or tell where they have found him. Whatever feud there might be between the families in other matters, they are of one accord, of strict and mutual support concerning their enterprises in smuggling and in brigandage.

“This contraband carrying is an organised conspiracy,” said Cyrille to the under-steward, when he had become aware of the practice.

“No doubt,” said Fausto, with a gesture of indifference.

“And you have never attempted to put it down?”

“No; before me nobody ever did. Why should I?”

“Do you think it right?”

Fausto shrugged his shoulders. “I do not say whether it is right or it is wrong. It has always been done. The people would not like it meddled with, be sure. They regard it as one of their rights.”

“But it is a bad, dangerous, and dishonest life.”

“They do not see it so. It pleases them.”

“And you connive at it?”

“It hurts nobody,” said Fausto sullenly. “There is no thief so big as the Revenue.”

Cyrille said no more; but he resolved to make an example of the first convoy which he could surprise. He saw that Fausto, for some gain of his own, or out of personal fear, closed his eyes to the practice. He determined to lie in waiting himself to hear the wagon wheels passing over the road on the first moonless night after this conversation. He understood why he had so often heard afar off in the still hours after midnight the faint grinding of wheels on rutty paths, and the far-off voices of swearing men. He took up his stand where three woodland paths met, on the edge of the only road which led across the woods of the Gandolfo to Montefiascone northwards, and south-westwards to Rome. He had reason to believe that it was a frequent route with the forest thieves.

He was alone, for he trusted no one enough to ask their company. It was pitch dark; the moving of night birds and beasts was audible as they stirred in branch or brake; a deep runlet of water fell down through the undergrowth, rippling and splashing. He had a seven-chambered revolver in his belt; he hoped not to be forced to use it. It was extremely cold, as nights in February are even in the south; but he had known what it was to pace up and down on guard on the terraces of Gatschina when snow was six feet deep around, and the cold of the Patrimony of St Peter had small terrors for him. He stood immovable, his back against the trunk of an ilex tree; his repeating watch told him that five quarters had passed since he came there. He was not sure that the smugglers were out this night, though he had reason to believe so. It might well be that he had come there for nothing; but he was resolved to wait until the dawn.

At last, in the darkness and stillness, he heard the distant sound of cleft hoofs moving through muddy earth, and springless carts groaning as the rough wooden spokeless discs of the wheels alone can groan on their rusty axles. All the soldier in him was roused; he had not felt so much alive since the day that he had passed the frontier of his country. They were distant perhaps half a mile. By one of these three paths fronting him they were forced to enter on the high-road; there was no other. Nearer and nearer came the creaking of the carts, the crushing of the soil, the low voices of men: he waited until he could hear the heavy breathing of the cattle, then he flashed a lantern on them, and levelled his revolver.

“It is I--halt!” he said in a clear voice.

They instinctively pulled the buffaloes backward, and fell back themselves one against another. They thought he had guards with him. The cattle paused willingly, the gasping of their breath, the blowing of their nostrils, sounding painfully on the stillness.

“Stir not a step, or you are dead men,” he said to them. “You are carrying contraband.”

He was by no means certain what they had with them, but his venture sped home. They had crapes over their faces. They had charcoal and game in their carts. They huddled together in fear, and did not speak lest he should recognise their voices. There were three carts, yoked severally to four buffaloes and two cows; the men were but three. They had no firearms, only their knives. They eyed him evilly, but they were afraid to strike him. His revolver, they knew, would be quicker than their steel; and they thought that he had armed force behind him hidden in the brake. They muttered under their breath dreadful curses against him, but they did not rebel.

“Take your carts to the Fattoria,” he said. “Go on before me. If you stir out of the road a bullet will find you.”

Sullenly but timidly they pulled their cattle across out of the high-road, and into the avenue which led to the house. He walked behind them, his revolver covering them, as they knew and felt in every nerve of their spines. Cattle move slowly on the best of roads, and this road was thick with half-frozen mud, and crossed by runlets of water, and the beasts splashed heavily through the slush on their leaden-footed way.

But at last the half-mile of distance was traversed, and the lamp burning before a shrine on the balustrade before the house shone across the sward like a beacon. To his infinite surprise, no one of the men had attempted any rebellion.

He fired a shot in the air, and all the members of the household tumbled up from their slumbers and came out, as he had bade them do when they should hear the signal, with arms and torches. He caused the cattle to be stabled, the carts with their loads locked up in an outhouse, and consigned the prisoners to one of the strong-rooms made for such use in earlier ages. When he saw their faces he recognised in one the peasant Alcide. He was amazed at the extreme ease of his own victory; what to do with it was more perplexing.

“Take them bread and water, Caterina,” he said to her.

“Not I, sir. Let the rogues fast.”

“If you will not, I must.”

She obeyed, with great reluctance.

“Think of yourself, sir,” she said when she returned. “Get to rest.”

“No, I shall remain up; I do not altogether trust our household. There is a great deal of tribal feeling in your woods.”

“Is that why you went alone, sir?”

“Yes.”

Caterina groaned aloud. “’Tis sheer madness. I wonder they did not knife you like a sheep. You trust too much to that little steel honeycomb of yours.”

“One can only die once,” said Cyrille, and thought: “I died when I left my love and my country.”

He remained the rest of the night awake and armed; seated by the kitchen fire, where he could hear the slightest movement which might take place in any of the long stone passages and basement chambers.

There was no sound anywhere till the cocks crowed at dawn. An hour after sunrise he had the men whom he had captured brought before him. In one he recognised, as he expected to do, the peasant Alcide; the other two were neighbours of his, young, unintelligent, ill-looking boors who had followed Alcide’s lead.

The dark-browed, lean, unwashed man scowled at him as he had done in the death-chamber of the old Adamo; his eyes were like jewels and scintillated dangerously. He had been disarmed when brought there, but his fingers fingered nervously at his hairy breast seeking the poignard which was always used to lie within his belt. Cyrille cross-questioned him minutely, but failed to get any confession out of him.

“You took me in the act,” he said sullenly. “Make what you can of that.”

In his own mind Alcide was certain that his niece had betrayed him; but he would let no word escape him which could be construed into confession or facilitate condemnation.

The theft of the charcoal and game, and the intent to run them contraband, were evident, and he did not deny them; but he did not admit either. He left his accuser to collect evidence as he could.

There was enough of it to justify Cyrille in sending him and his companions to the nearest guardhouse, which was a dozen miles on the other side of the woods.

It would have been the wisest course to pursue, and Alcide would have had a year or more of prison; his companions, more excusable, as tempted by him, perhaps less.

But his present judge was a man who held the creeds of Tolstoi; who abhorred the eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth of modern legislation; who had infinite compassion for the poor and ignorant, and even for the most vicious. He took a course which he thought would be just both for his employers and to the thief.

“I could send you to take your trial,” he said in conclusion, “and your trial would undoubtedly end in your conviction. I perhaps shall do wrong if I spare you. But my employers leave me large discretion, and I shall exercise it in your favour. I confiscate the stolen charcoal; it is the property of my masters; and the game I shall send to the hospitals of Rome; but I will restore to you your carts and cattle, and I will set you free. All I ask of you is to offend no more.”

Alcide’s face did not change; he shrugged his shoulders slightly; the other two offenders fell on their knees and blessed the saints, and swore their willingness to lead a cleanly life.

“Of what are you thinking, Alcide?” said Cyrille, looking at the dark savage, sunburnt face of Muriella’s uncle, with its glittering eyes and its deep lines of dirt and smoke.

“I was thinking that you have not learned much since you have come here!” replied the man in tones of rasping contempt.

“You mean that I am a fool to spare you?”

Alcide showed his white even teeth flashing in his swarthy face with a grin of satirical scorn. He did not answer in words.

“I fear that I am,” said Cyrille. “But I have given you my word. I cannot withdraw it now. If any hear of this matter it will not be from me. Go. You are free. Your knife will be given back to you. Treat your cattle decently if you know how; and if I take you, when engaged in this work, a second time, I shall not spare you.”

Alcide turned on his heel, and went out of the chamber without a word of gratitude.

“The girl betrayed me to him,” he thought. “Thank him? Not I! What does he here? Interloper, and spy, and meddler. He drew me before him last night as if I had been an ox. I will be quits with him before long.”

“He dealt better with you than you deserve, you gallows-bird,” said Caterina, as he went across the courtyard. Alcide showed his white even teeth again like a wolf’s, and grinned in her face.

No one had betrayed him. Cyrille’s own observations had alone furnished him with indices which he had followed up to proof. But the Italian always believes betrayal to be the cause of all disaster, public or private, and these men were convinced that they had been betrayed; their suspicions settled, naturally, on Muriella. “She was ever an unnatural, ill-feeling wench,” said Alcide. “Always caring for birds and beasts and reptiles, and frowning where we laughed. It is but of a piece with her to serve the stranger and rob us all.”

But he did not let her see his suspicions since he had no confirmation of them; he, indeed, went out of his way to be civil and flatter her. “If you can make our poor girls like yourself we shall thank you,” he said more than once. “’Tis those good ways your mother taught you; they were never in our wild blood.”

Muriella weighed his compliments at their right worth, and distrusted all he said; but she did not know how passionately he hated her. He was a bad man, she knew, but after all he was her father’s brother, and had given her a home, such as it was. It was miserable in many ways, and made more so than it need have been by filth and want of thrift; but it was a home; it saved her from that errant and lonely life which brings down on any woman so much contempt and derision, and in a rough way they estimated her use to them and feared to lose her.

VIII.

The winter passed, and no one of the threats against the steward had been fulfilled. The woods with earliest February were again filled with the fragrance of the hellebore, earliest and sweetest herald of the spring.

“They will do nothing now, the days are lengthening,” thought Muriella, as her nostrils breathed that pungent perfume of the pale green bells, which she associated in fancy with that lady of the north whom she vaguely and wistfully envied. But though she strove to persuade herself of this she felt no certainty.

Short days or long, dark nights or fine, are all one and the same to those who hate another, and the quietude and comparative industry of her relatives filled her with apprehension as to what evils such unwonted virtues might pertain.

Her uncles were certain she was a spy of the steward’s, and said nothing before her which they would not have had repeated from the tree-tops. But the wife of Alcide was imprudent, and let dark innuendoes fall from her.

“White birds that come from the North do not always live to go back there,” she said once, and once again said, “Le Selve is full of trees, but the trees can bear three fruits--fire, and steel, and lead.”

Muriella knew that they could wait patiently for years when they meditated a revenge, but that they would strike in the end as unerringly as the gerfalcon struck the wood-pigeon.

Meantime the saints were long in answering; perhaps what she had done had been too insignificant, yet she could not think so; they would be too generous to despise, too merciful to reject it.

“Yes,” she repeated to herself again and again that winter-time; “I will pray always.”

Weeks and months went by, and she had no sign from heaven. Once she said to Cyrille:

“Do they not call you home?”

“No,” he answered in surprise; “what makes you think of things which can never be?”

“You will go home,” she repeated.

Yet if her prayer were granted, she knew that he would go away from these woods for ever; that his unknown love, of whom she thought as crowned with green hellebore and clothed with the stars, would stretch her arms out from the mists and take him.

Meantime the beautiful springtime came and went, with the song of nightingales in the laurel shadows, and the cuckoos calling from the pines, and the marvellous flora of the Agro Romano in blossom all through the woods.

The long hot summer succeeded, with water-lilies, white and gold, on all the pools. In these woods there is something of a tropical heat; their deep shade does not bring coolness, for it excludes air; it is delightful to the eyes, but to the lungs humid and oppressive. Oftentimes for weeks not a breath stirs the pendant foliage; when there is fever and ague on the plains around Rome, there is danger here in the forest in the sultry nights and on the stagnant waters. In the higher woods there is less danger, but down in the marshes where the mosquitoes hum in vast clouds, and the swamps dry up and crack, and the horse-flies swarm in myriads, and the toads and the frogs die of drought, it were as much as life were worth to sleep there through a summer night. There was much sickness this year amongst the woodlanders, and Cyrille supplied as far as he could the place of medical aid. The remedies for such fevers were simple; and the greatest obstacle he encountered was in the bodily filth of the people and their fear of fresh air. They, who in health worked all day long in the air in all weathers, falling sick huddled together in a foul corner, and shut their wooden windows close. But though he saved their lives, they hated him all the more. The report spread amongst them that he had poisoned the watersprings because he wanted the woods clear of the squatters; and this preposterous tale found willing and credulous believers.

“Truly,” he thought bitterly, “I had better let them drop like murrained sheep. For what crime does one pay half as dear as for the madness of trying to serve one’s fellow-men?”

But he continued to do what he could, by day and by night, in despite of their evil glances and their muttered curses, and of the fingers thrust out at him in exorcism.

Thus in the long course of breathless weeks the summer drew to an end, and every day the thirsty glades looked for rain, and the parched pools and dried-up waterways hungered for the first storm in vain.

It was towards the close of a hot day in September. The air was heavy and the sky dull. He had been out all day on his usual rounds, and came in as the sun set to his evening meal. He was thirsty and tired; he had eaten nothing all day. The colourless leaden heat made him think of summer on his native plains, and even the distant horizons were veiled by the gray malarious vapours rising from the soil. The courtyard seemed to him unusually still as he passed through it. There was no one about, not even a stable-lad.

Only a man on a mule, with a horn slung at his shoulder, and some sacks on his saddle, was riding out of one of the gates he entered. He saw it was a letter-carrier from Ronciglione.

The post was a rare thing in these districts; scarcely anyone, in an area of a hundred miles square, could read, still less write. Once in half a year Caterina received news from a son who was a trader in Brazil, and another son who was a soldier in Eritrea, and Fausto had occasional correspondence concerning stallions or brood mares to be bought or sold, or bulls and rams to be had for the hiring, but these were very rarely; business was done on horseback and by word of mouth in these districts; and to Cyrille himself no single message had ever come since he had first entered the shadows of Le Selve. Absolute silence had fallen between him and his own land and his own people; he hoped that they believed him dead. The Gandolfo had promised him secrecy as to his existence and employment, and the most that he could hope for was that he might be allowed to remain in the poor substitute for resignation which is to be obtained from constant occupation and undisturbed work.

His mother had been in her grave some years. There was no one living, he thought bitterly, who loved him well enough to endeavour to learn his fate. His family, doubtless, and all those who had once formed his world, thought him dead, and better dead, in some nameless foreign grave.

Therefore his heart stood still with surprise and emotion as he returned this day from his usual rounds, and was met by Caterina, who cried to him:

“The post-boy has been here, sir; the post from Ronciglione; dead beat he was, and glad enough of bit and sup; he brought a letter for you; ’tis on your table in your chamber.”

He ascended the staircase with beating pulse, and noticed not that the curious good-will of Caterina brought her up after him and kept her at the doorway.

There was a large square envelope lying on the table, stamped with the postmarks of his native land, and sealed with a cypher which he knew.

He tore it open.