Part 9

“I have not driven her out, for who is there to fill her place?”

“Silvestra?”

“No! No!”

“Angelantonia? Balascetta?”

“Each worse than the other!”

“One must have patience.”

“But a spoon, think of that!”

“It’s too much! it is!”

“Don’t remain silent about it, Donna Cristina, don’t remain silent!”

“Whether silent or not silent!” burst out Maria Bisaccia, who for all her placid and benign expression never let a chance escape her to oppress or put in a bad light the other servants of the house, “we will think for ourselves!”

In this fashion the chatter from the windows on the loggia continued, and accusation fled from mouth to mouth throughout the entire district.

II

The following morning, when Candia Marcanda had her hands in the soap-suds, there appeared at her door-sill the town guard Biagio Pesce, popularly known as “The Corporal.” He said to her, “You are wanted by Signor Sindaco at the town-hall this very moment.”

“What did you say?” asked Candia, knitting her brows without discontinuing her task.

“You are wanted by Signor Sindaco at the town-hall this very moment.”

“I am wanted? And why?” Candia asked in a brusque manner. She did not know what was responsible for this unexpected summons and therefore reared at it like a stubborn animal before a shadow.

“I cannot know the reason,” answered the Corporal. “I have received but an order.”

“What order?”

The woman because of an obstinacy natural to her could not refrain from questions. She was unable to realise the truth.

“I am wanted by Signor Sindaco? And why? And what have I done? I have no wish to go there. I have done nothing unseemly.”

Then the Corporal cried impatiently, “Ah, you do not wish to go there? You had better beware!” And he went away muttering, with his hand on the hilt of his shabby sword.

Meanwhile several who had heard the dialogue came from their doorways into the street and began to stare at the laundress, who was violently attacking her wash. Since they knew of the silver spoon they laughed at one another and made remarks that the laundress did not understand. Their ridicule and ambiguous expressions filled the heart of the woman with much uneasiness, which increased when the Corporal appeared accompanied by another guard.

“Now move on!” he said resolutely.

Candia wiped her arms in silence and went. Throughout the square everyone stopped to look. Rosa Panara, an enemy, from the threshold of her shop, called with a fierce laugh, “Drop the bone thou hast picked up!”

The laundress, bewildered, unable to imagine the cause of this persecution, could not answer.

Before the town-hall stood a group of curious people who waited to see her pass. Candia, suddenly seized with a wrathful spirit, mounted the stairs quickly, came into the presence of Signor Sindaco out of breath, and asked, “Now, what do you want with me?”

Don Silla, a man of peaceable temperament, remained for a moment somewhat taken aback by the sharp voice of the laundress and turned a beseeching look upon the faithful custodians of the communal dignity. Then he took some tobacco from a horn-box and said, “Be seated, my daughter.”

Candia remained upon her feet. Her hooked nose was inflated with choler, and her cheeks, roughly seamed, trembled from the contraction of her tightly compressed jaws.

“Speak quickly, Don Silla!” she cried.

“You were occupied yesterday in carrying back the clean linen to Donna Cristina Lamonica?”

“Well, and what of it? Is she missing something? Everything was counted piece by piece ... nothing was lacking. Now, what is it all about?”

“One moment, my daughter! The room had silver in it...!”

Candia, divining the truth, turned upon him like a viper about to sting. At the same time her thin lips trembled.

“The room had silver in it,” he continued, “and now Donna Cristina finds herself lacking one spoon. Do you understand, my daughter? Was it taken by you ... through mistake?”

Candia jumped like a grasshopper at this undeserved accusation. In truth she had stolen nothing. “Ah, I? I?” she cried. “Who says I took it? Who has seen me in such an act? You fill me with amazement ... you fill me with wonder! Don Silla! I a thief? I? I?...”

And her indignation had no limit. She was even more wounded by this unjust accusation because she felt herself capable of the deed which they had attributed to her.

“Then you have not taken it?” Don Silla interrupted, withdrawing prudently into the depths of his large chair.

“You fill me with amazement!” Candia chided afresh, while she shook her long hands as if they were two whips.

“Very well, you may go. We will see in time.” Without saying good-bye, Candia made her exit, striking against the door-post as she did so. She had become green in the face and was beside herself with rage. On reaching the street and seeing the crowd assembled there, she understood at length that popular opinion was against her, that no one believed in her innocence. Nevertheless she began publicly to exculpate herself. The people laughed and drifted away from her. In a wrathful state of mind she returned home, sank into a condition of despair and fell to weeping in her doorway.

Don Donato Brandimarte, who lived next door, said to her by way of a joke:

“Cry aloud, Candia. Cry to the full extent of your strength, for the people are about to pass now.”

As there were clothes lying in a heap waiting to be boiled clean she finally grew quiet, bared her arms and set herself to work. While working, she brooded on how to clear her character, constructed a method of defence, sought in her cunning, feminine thoughts an artificial means for proving her innocence; balancing her mind subtly in mid-air, she had recourse to all of those expedients which constitute an ignorant argument, in order to present a defence that might persuade the incredulous.

Later, when she had finished her task, she went out and went first to Donna Cristina.

Donna Cristina would not see her. Maria Bisaccia listened to Candia’s prolific words and shook her head without reply and at length left her in a dignified way.

Then Candia visited all of her customers. To each one she told her story, to each one she laid bare her defence, always adding to it a new argument, ever increasing the size of the words, becoming more heated and finally despairing in the presence of incredulity and distrust as all was useless. She felt at last that an explanation was no longer possible. A kind of dark discouragement fastened upon her mind. What more could she do! What more could she say!

III

Donna Cristina Lamonica, meanwhile, sent for La Cinigia, a woman of the ignorant masses, who followed the profession of magic and unscientific medicine. Previously, La Cinigia had several times discovered stolen goods and some said that she had underhand dealings with the thieves.

Donna Cristina said to her, “Recover the spoon for me and I will give you a rich present.”

La Cinigia answered, “Very well. Twenty-four hours will suffice me.” And after twenty-four hours she brought the news, “The spoon is to be found in the court in a hole adjacent to the sewer.” Donna Cristina and Maria descended to the court, searched, and to their great astonishment found the missing piece.

The news spread rapidly throughout Pescara. Then in triumph, Candia Marcanda immediately began to frequent the streets. She seemed taller, held her head more erect and smiled into the eyes of everyone as if to say, “Now you have seen for yourselves?”

The people in the shops, when she passed by, murmured something and then broke into laughter. Filippo Selvi, who was drinking a glass of brandy in the Café d’Angeladea, called to Candia, “Over here is a glass waiting for Candia.”

The woman, who loved ardent liquor, moved her lips greedily.

Filippo Selvi added, “And you are deserving of it, there is no doubt of that.”

A crowd of idlers had assembled before the café. All wore a teasing expression upon their countenances. Filippo La Selvi having turned to his audience while the woman was drinking, vouchsafed, “And she knew how to find it, did she? The old fox....”

He struck familiarly the bony shoulder of the laundress by way of prelude.

Everyone laughed.

Magnafave, a small hunchback, defective in body and speech and halting on the syllables, cried:

“Ca-ca-ca—Candia—a—and—Cinigia!” He followed this with gesticulations and wary stutterings, all of which implied that Candia and La Cinigia were in league. At this the crowd became convulsed with mirth.

Candia remained dazed for a moment with the glass in her hand. Then of a sudden she understood. They still did not believe in her innocence. They were accusing her of having secretly carried back the spoon, in agreement with the fortune-teller as to the placing of it, in order to escape disgrace.

At this thought, the blind grip of rage seized her. She could not find words for speech. She threw herself upon the weakest of her tormentors, which was the small hunchback, and belaboured him with blows and scratches. The crowd, taking a cruel pleasure in witnessing the scuffle, cheered itself into a circle as if watching the struggle of two animals, and encouraged both combatants with cries and gesticulations.

Magnafave, terrified by her unexpected madness, sought to flee, dodging like a monkey; but, detained by those terrible hands of the laundress, he whirled with ever-increasing velocity, like a stone from a sling, until at length he fell upon his face with great violence.

Several ran forward to raise him. Candia withdrew in the midst of hisses, shut herself up in her house, threw herself across her bed, weeping and biting her fingers. This latest accusation burnt into her more than the former, particularly because she realised that she was capable of such a subterfuge. How to disentangle herself now? How make the truth clear? She grew desperate on thinking that she could not bring to the aid of her argument any material difficulties that might have hindered the execution of such a deceit. Access to the court was very easy; a never closed door was on the first landing-place of a large staircase and in order to dispose of waste matter and to attend to other diverse duties, a quantity of people passed freely in and out of that doorway. Therefore she could not close the mouths of her accusers by saying, “How could I have got in there?” The means for accomplishing such an undertaking were many and simple, and on this very lack of obstacles popular opinion chose to establish itself.

Candia therefore sought different persuasive arguments; she sharpened all her cunning, imagined three, four, five separate circumstances that might easily account for the finding of the spoon in that hole; she took refuge in mental turnings and twistings of every kind and subtilised with singular ingenuity. Later she began to go around from shop to shop, from house to house, straining in every way to overcome the incredulity of the people.

At first they listened to her enticing arguments for a diversion. At last they said, “Oh, very well! Very well!” But with a certain inflection of the voice which left Candia crushed. All her efforts then were useless. No one believed!

With an astonishing persistency, she returned to the siege. She passed entire nights pondering on new reasons, how to construct new explanations, to overcome new obstacles. Little by little, from the continuous absorption, her mind weakened, could not entertain any thought save that of the spoon, and had scarcely any longer any realisation of the events of every day life. Later, through the cruelty of the people, a veritable mania arose in the mind of the poor woman.

She neglected her duties and was reduced almost to penury. She washed the clothes badly, lost and tore them. When she descended to the bank of the river under the iron-bridge where the other laundresses had collected, at times she let escape from her hands garments which the current snatched and they were gone forever. She babbled continuously on the same subject. To drown her out the young laundresses set themselves to singing and to bantering one another from their places with impromptu verses. She shouted and gesticulated like a mad woman.

No one any longer gave her work. Out of compassion for her, her former customers sent her food. Little by little the habit of begging settled upon her. She walked the streets, ragged, bent, and dishevelled. Impertinent boys called after her, “Now tell us the story of the spoon, that we may know about it, do, Candia!”

She stopped sometimes unknown passersby to recount her story and to wander into the mazes of her defence. The scapegoats of the town hailed her and for a cent made her deliver her narration three, four times; they raised objections to her arguments and were attentive to the end of the tale for the sake of wounding her at last with a single word. She shook her head, moved on and clung to other feminine beggars and reasoned with them, always, always indefatigable and unconquerable. She took a fancy to a deaf woman whose skin was afflicted with a kind of reddish leprosy, and who was lame in one leg.

In the winter of 1874 a malignant fever seized her. Donna Cristina Lamonica sent her a cordial and a hand-warmer. The sick woman, stretched on her straw pallet, still babbled about the spoon. She raised on her elbows, tried to motion with her hands in order to assist in the summing up of her conclusions. The leprous woman took her hands and gently soothed her.

In her last throes, when her enlarged eyes were already being veiled behind some suffusing moisture that had mounted to them from within, Candia murmured, “I was not the one, Signor ... you see ... because ... the spoon....”

X

_THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF OFENA_

I

When the first confused clamour of the rebellion reached Don Filippo Cassaura, he suddenly opened his eyelids, that weighed heavily upon his eyes, inflamed around the upturned lids, like those of pirates who sail through stormy seas.

“Did you hear?” he asked of Mazzagrogna, who was standing nearby, while the trembling of his voice betrayed his inward fear.

The majordomo answered, smiling, “Do not be afraid, Your Excellency. Today is St. Peter’s day. The mowers are singing.”

The old man remained listening, leaning on his elbow and looking over the balcony. The hot south wind was fluttering the curtains. The swallows, in flocks, were darting back and forth as rapidly as arrows through the burning air. All the roofs of the houses below glared with reddish and greyish tints. Beyond the roofs was extended the vast, rich country, gold in colour, like ripened wheat.

Again the old man asked, “But Giovanni, have you heard?”

And indeed, clamours, which did not seem to indicate joy, reached their ears. The wind, rendering them louder at intervals, pushing them and intermingling with its whistling noise, made them appear still more strange.

“Do not mind that, Your Excellency,” answered Mazzagrogna. “Your ears deceive you.”

“Keep quiet.” And he arose to go towards one of the balconies.

He was a thick-set man, bow-legged, with enormous hands, covered with hair on the backs like a beast. His eyes were oblique and white, like those of the Albinos. His face was covered with freckles. A few red hairs straggled upon his temples and the bald top of his head was flecked with dark projections in the shape of chestnuts.

He remained standing for a while, between the two curtains, inflated like sails, in order to watch the plain beneath. Thick clouds of dust, rising from the road of the Fara, as after the passing of immense flocks of sheep, were swept by the wind and grew into shapes of cyclones. From time to time these whirling clouds caused whistling sounds, as if they encompassed armed people.

“Well?” asked Don Filippo, uneasily.

“Nothing,” repeated Mazzagrogna, but his brows were contracted.

Again the impetuous rush of wind brought a tumult of distant cries.

One of the curtains, blown by the wind, began to flutter and wave in the air like an inflated flag. A door was suddenly shut with violence and noise, the glass panel trembled from the shock. The papers, accumulated upon the table, were scattered around the room.

“Do close it! Do close it!” cried the old man, with emotional terror.

“Where is my son?”

He was lying upon the bed, suffocated by his fleshiness, and unable to rise, as all the lower part of his body was deadened by paralysis. A continuous paralytic tremor agitated his muscles. His hands, lying on the bed sheets, were contorted, like the roots of old olive trees. A copious perspiration dripped from his forehead and from his bald head, and dropped from his large face, which had a pinkish, faded colour, like the gall of oxen.

“Heavens!” murmured Mazzagrogna, between his teeth, as he closed the shutters vehemently. “They are in earnest!”

One could now perceive upon this road of Fara, near the first house, a multitude of men, excited and wavering, like the overflow of rivulets, which indicated a still greater multitude of people, invisible, hidden by the rows of roofs and by the oak trees of San Pio. The auxiliary legion of the country had met the one of the rebellion. Little by little the crowd would diminish, entering the roads of the country and disappearing like an army of ants through the labyrinth of the ant hill.

The suffocated cries, echoing from house to house, reached them now, like a continuous but indistinct rumbling. At moments there was silence and then you could hear the great fluttering of the ash trees in front of the palace, which seemed as if already abandoned.

“My son! Where is he?” again asked the old man, in a quivering, squeaking voice. “Call him! I wish to see him.”

He trembled upon his bed, not only because he was a paralytic, but also because of fear.

At the time of the first seditious movement of the day before, at the cries of about a hundred youths, who had come under the balcony to shout against the latest extortions of the Duke of Ofena, he had been overcome by such a foolish fright, that he had wept like a little girl, and had spent the night invoking the Saints of Paradise. The thought of death and of his danger gave rise to an indescribable terror in that paralytic old man, already half dead, in whom the last breaths of life were so painful. He did not wish to die.

“Luigi! Luigi!” he began to cry in his anguish.

All the place was filled with the sharp rattling of the window glasses, caused by the rush of the wind. From time to time one could hear the banging of a door, and the sound of precipitate steps and sharp cries.

“Luigi!”

II

The Duke ran up. He was somewhat pale and excited, although endeavouring to control himself. He was tall and robust, his beard still black on his heavy jaws. From his mouth, full and imperious, came forth explosive outbursts; his voracious eyes were troubled; his strong nose, covered with red spots, quivered.

“Well, then?” asked Don Filippo, breathlessly, with a rattling sound, as though suffocated.

“Do not fear, father, I am here,” answered the Duke, approaching the bed and trying to smile.

Mazzagrogna was standing in front of one of the balconies, looking out attentively. No cries reached them now and no one was to be seen.

The sun, gradually descending in the clear sky, was like a rosy circle of flames, enlarging and glaring over the hill-tops. All the country around seemed to burn and the southwest wind resembled a breath from the fire. The first quarter of the moon arose through the groves of Lisci. Poggio, Revelli, Ricciano, Rocca of Forca, were seen through the window panes, revealed by distant flashes of lightning, and from time to time the sound of bells could be heard. A few incendiary fires began to glow here and there. The heat was suffocating.

“This,” said the Duke of Ofena, in his hoarse, harsh voice, “comes from Scioli, but——”

He made a menacing gesture, then he approached Mazzagrogna.

He felt uneasy, because Carletto Grua could not yet be seen. He paced up and down the hall with a heavy step. He then detached from a hook two long, old-fashioned pistols, examining them carefully. The father followed his every movement with dilated eyes, breathing heavily, like a calf in agony, and now and then he shook the bed cover with his deformed hands. He asked two or three times of Mazzagrogna, “What can you see?”

Suddenly Mazzagrogna exclaimed, “Here comes Carletto, running with Gennaro.”

You could hear, in fact, the furious blows upon the large gate. Soon after, Carletto and the servant entered the room, pale, frightened, stained with blood and covered with dust.

The Duke, on perceiving Carletto, uttered a cry. He took him in his arms and began to feel him all over his body, to find the wounds.

“What have they done to you? What have they done to you? Tell me!”

The youth was weeping like a girl.

“There,” said he, between his sobs. He lowered his head and pointed on the top, to some bunches of hair, sticking together with congealed blood.

The Duke passed his fingers softly through the hair to discover the wounds. He loved Carletto Grua, and had for him a lover’s solicitude.

“Does it hurt you?” he asked.

The youth sobbed more vehemently. He was slender, like a girl, with an effeminate face, hardly shaded by an incipient blond beard, his hair was rather long, he had a beautiful mouth, and the sharp voice of an eunuch. He was an orphan, the son of a confectioner of Benevento. He acted as valet to the Duke.

“Now they are coming,” he said, his whole frame trembling, turning his eyes, filled with tears, towards the balcony, from which came the clamours, louder and more terrible.

The servant, who had a deep wound upon his shoulder, and his arm up to the elbow all stained with blood, was telling falteringly how they had both been overtaken by the maddened mob, when Mazzagrogna, who had remained watching, cried out, “Here they are! They are coming to the palace. They are armed!”

Don Luigi, leaving Carletto, ran to look out.

III

In truth, a multitude of people, rushing up the wide incline with such united fury, shouting and shaking their weapons and their tools, did not resemble a gathering of individuals, but rather the overflow of a blind mass of matter, urged on by an irresistible force.

In a few moments, the mob was beneath the palace, stretching around it like an octopus, with many arms, and enclosing the whole edifice in a surging circle.

Some among the rebels carried large bunches of lighted sticks, like torches, casting over their faces a mobile, reddish light and scattering sparks and burning cinders, which caused noisy, crackling sounds. Some, in a compact group, were carrying a pole, from the top of which hung the corpse of a man. They were threatening death, with gestures and cries. With hatred they were shouting the name, “Cassaura! Cassaura!”

The Duke of Ofena threw up his hands in despair upon recognising on the top of the pole the mutilated body of Vincenzio Murro, the messenger he had sent during the night to ask for help from the soldiers. He pointed out the hanging body to Mazzagrogna, who said, in a low voice, “It is the end!”

Don Filippo, however, heard him, and began to give forth such a rattling sound that they all felt their hearts oppressed and their courage failing them.

The servants, with pale faces, ran to the threshold, and were held there by cowardice. Some were crying and invoking their Saints, while others were contemplating treachery. “If we should give up our master to the people, they might, perhaps, spare our lives.”

“To the balcony! To the balcony!” cried the people, breaking in. “To the balcony!”

At this moment, the Duke spoke aside, in a subdued voice, to Mazzagrogna.

Turning to Don Filippo, he said, “Place yourself in a chair, father; it will be better for you.”