Part 16

“Signora Antonelli, are you beginning with that too?” said the syndic, quite kindly. “It was a mistake; but why did no one tell me that the blind frequent the church of Lucia? Now, since it is decided, I cannot annul the decision; I cannot.”

“But their rights and patents, Signor Sindaco?”

“Their rights are worth nothing. They have to do with the Jesuits’ monastery, but there is no longer such a monastery. And tell me, Signora Antonelli, what will become of me if I yield?”

“The people will love you as a good man.”

“Signora, people will believe that I am a weak man, and every day I shall have four hundred laborers’ wives outside the town-hall, begging now for one thing, now for another. It is only to hold out for one day. To-morrow it will be forgotten.”

“To-morrow!” said Donna Elisa; “we shall never forget it.”

The syndic smiled, and Donna Elisa saw that he thought that he knew the people of Diamante much better than she.

“You think that their hearts are in it?” he said.

“I think so, Signor Sindaco.”

Then the syndic laughed softly. “Give me that envelope, Signora.”

He took it and went out on the balcony.

He began to speak to the women. “I wish to tell you,” he said, “that I have just now heard that old Fra Felice is dead, and that he has left a legacy to you all. He has written down five numbers that are supposed to win in the lottery next Saturday, and he bequeaths them to you. No one has seen them yet. They are lying here in this envelope, and it is unopened.”

He was silent a moment to let the women have time to think over what he had said.

Instantly they began to cry: “The numbers, the numbers!”

The syndic signed to them to be silent.

“You must remember,” he said, “that it was impossible for Fra Felice to know what numbers will be drawn next Saturday. If you play on these numbers, you may all lose. And we cannot afford to be poorer than we are already here in Diamante. I ask you therefore to let me destroy the testament without any one seeing it.”

“The numbers,” cried the women, “give us the numbers!”

“If I am permitted to destroy the testament,” said the syndic, “I promise you that the blind shall have their church again.”

There was silence in the square. Donna Elisa rose from her seat in the hall of the court-house and seized the back of her chair with both hands.

“I leave it to you to choose between the church and the numbers,” said the syndic.

“God in heaven!” sighed Donna Elisa, “is he a devil to tempt poor people in such a way?”

“We have been poor before,” cried one of the women, “we can still be poor.”

“We will not choose Barabbas instead of Christ,” cried another.

The syndic took a match-box from his pocket, lighted a match, and brought it slowly up to the testament.

The women stood quiet and let Fra Felice’s five numbers be destroyed. The blind people’s church was saved.

“It is a miracle,” whispered old Donna Elisa; “they all believe in Fra Felice, and they let his numbers burn. It is a miracle.”

* * * * *

Later in the afternoon Donna Elisa again sat in her shop with her embroidery frame. She looked old as she sat there, and there was something shaken and broken about her. It was not the usual Donna Elisa; it was a poor, elderly, forsaken woman.

She drew the needle slowly through the cloth, and when she wished to take another stitch she was uncertain and at a loss. It was hard for her to keep the tears from falling on her embroidery and spoiling it.

Donna Elisa was in such great grief for to-day she had lost Gaetano forever. There was no more hope of getting him back.

The saints had gone over to the side of the opponent, and worked miracles in order to help Donna Micaela. No one could doubt that a miracle had happened. The poor women of Diamante would never have been able to stand still while Fra Felice’s numbers burned if they had not been bound by a miracle.

It made a poor soul so old and cross to have the good saints help Donna Micaela, who did not like Gaetano.

The door-bell jingled violently, and Donna Elisa rose from old habit. It was Donna Micaela. She was joyful, and came toward Donna Elisa with outstretched hands. But Donna Elisa turned away, and could not press her hand.

Donna Micaela was in raptures. “Ah, Donna Elisa, you have helped my railway. What can I say? How shall I thank you?”

“Never mind about thanking me, sister-in-law!”

“Donna Elisa!”

“If the saints wish to give us a railway, it must be because Diamante needs it, and not because they love _you_.”

Donna Micaela shrank back. At last she thought she understood why Donna Elisa was angry with her. “If Gaetano were at home,” she said. She stood and pressed her hand to her heart and moaned. “If Gaetano were at home he would not allow you to be so cruel to me.”

“Gaetano?--would not Gaetano?”

“No, he would not. Even if you are angry with me because I loved him while my husband was alive, you would not dare to upbraid me for it if he were at home.”

Donna Elisa lifted her eyebrows a little. “You think that he could prevail upon me to be silent about such a thing,” she said, and her voice was very strange.

“But, Donna Elisa,” Donna Micaela whispered in her ear, “it is impossible, quite impossible not to love him. He is beautiful; don’t you know it? And he subjugates me, and I am afraid of him. You must let me love him.”

“Must I?” Donna Elisa kept her eyes down and spoke quite shortly and harshly.

Donna Micaela was beside herself. “It is I whom he loves,” she said. “It is not Giannita, but me, and you ought to consider me as a daughter; you ought to help me; you ought to be kind to me. And instead you stand against me; you are cruel to me. You do not let me come to you and talk of him. However much I long, and however much I work, I may not tell you of it.”

Donna Elisa could hold out no longer. Donna Micaela was nothing but a child, young and foolish and quivering like a bird’s heart,--just one to be taken care of. She had to throw her arms about her.

“I never knew it, you poor, foolish child,” she said.

VII

AFTER THE MIRACLE

The blind singers had a meeting in the church of Lucia. Highest up in the choir behind the altar sat thirty old, blind, men on the carved chairs of the Jesuit fathers. They were poor, most of them; most of them had a beggar’s wallet and a crutch beside them.

They were all very earnest and solemn; they knew what it meant to be members of that holy band of singers, of that glorious old Academy.

Now and then below in the church a subdued noise was audible. The blind men’s guides were sitting there, children, dogs, and old women, waiting. Sometimes the children began to romp with one another and with the dogs, but it was instantly suppressed and silenced.

Those of the blind who were _trovatori_ stood up one after another and spoke new verses.

“You people who live on holy Etna,” one of them recited, “men who live on the mountain of wonders, rise up, give your mistress a new glory! She longs for two ribbons to heighten her beauty, two long, narrow bands of steel to fasten her mantle. Give them to your mistress, and she will reward you with riches; she will give gold for steel. Countless are the treasures that she in her might will give them who assist her.”

“A gentle worker of miracles has come among us,” said another. “He stands poor and unnoticed in the bare old church, and his crown is of tin, and his diamonds of glass. ‘Make no sacrifices to me, O ye poor,’ he says; ‘build me no temple, all ye who suffer. I will work for your happiness. If prosperity shines from your houses, I shall shine with precious stones; if want flees from the land, my feet will be clothed in golden shoes embroidered with pearls.’”

As each new verse was recited, it was accepted or rejected. The blind men judged with great severity.

The next day they wandered out over Etna, and sang the railway into the people’s hearts.

* * * * *

After the miracle of Fra Felice’s legacy, people began to give contributions to the railway. Donna Micaela soon had collected about a hundred lire. Then she and Donna Elisa made the journey to Messina to look at the steam-tram that runs between Messina and Pharo. They had no greater ambition; they would be satisfied with a steam-tram.

“Why does a railway need to be so expensive?” said Donna Elisa. “It is just an ordinary road, although people do lay down two steel rails on it. It is the engineer and the fine gentlemen who make a railway expensive. Don’t trouble yourself about engineers, Micaela! Let our good road-builders, Giovanni and Carmelo, build your railway.”

They carefully inspected the steam-tramway to Pharo and brought back all the knowledge they could. They measured how wide it ought to be between the rails, and Donna Micaela drew on a piece of paper the way the rails ran by one another at the stations. It was not so difficult; they were sure they would come out well.

That day there seemed to be no difficulties. It was as easy to build a station as an ordinary house, they said. Besides, more than two stations were not needed; a little sentry-box was sufficient at most of the stopping-places.

If they could only avoid forming a company, taking fine gentlemen into their service, and doing things that cost money, their plan of the railway would be realized. It would not cost so much. The ground they could certainly get free. The noble gentlemen who owned the land on Etna would of course understand how much use of the railway they would have, and would let it pass free of charge over their ground.

They did not trouble themselves to stake out the line beforehand. They were going to begin at Diamante and gradually build their way to Catania. They only needed to begin and lay a little piece every day. It was not so difficult.

After that journey they began the attempt to build the road at their own risk. Don Ferrante had not left a large inheritance to Donna Micaela, but one good thing that he had bequeathed her was a long stretch of lava-covered waste land off on Etna. Here Giovanni and Carmelo began to break ground for the new railway.

When the work began, the builders of the railway possessed only one hundred lire. It was the miracle of the legacy that had filled them with holy frenzy.

What a railway it would be, what a railway!

The blind singers were the share-collectors, the Christ-image gave the concession, and the old shop woman, Donna Elisa, was the engineer.

VIII

A JETTATORE

In Catania there was once a man with “the evil eye,” a _jettatore_. He was almost the most terrible _jettatore_ who had ever lived in Sicily. As soon as he showed himself on the street people hastened to bend their fingers to the protecting sign. Often it did not help at all; whoever met him could prepare himself for a miserable day; he would find his dinner burned, and the beautiful old jelly-bowl broken. He would hear that his banker had suspended payments, and that the little note that he had written to his friend’s wife had come into the wrong hands.

Most often a _jettatore_ is a tall, thin man, with pale, shy eyes and a long nose, which overhangs and _hacks_ his upper lip. God has set the mark of a parrot’s beak upon the _jettatore_. Yet all things are variable; nothing is absolutely constant. This _jettatore_ was a little fellow with a nose like a San Michele.

Thereby he did much more harm than an ordinary _jettatore_. How much oftener is one pricked by a rose than burned by a nettle!

A _jettatore_ ought never to grow up. He is well off only when he is a child. Then he still has his little mamma, and she never sees the evil eye; she never understands why she sticks the needle into her finger every time he comes to her work-table. She will never be afraid to kiss him. Although she has sickness constantly in the house, and the servants leave, and her friends draw away, she never notices anything.

But after the _jettatore_ has come out into the world, he often has a hard time enough. Every one must first of all think of himself; no one can ruin his life by being kind to a _jettatore_.

There are several priests who are _jettatori_. There is nothing strange in that; the wolf is happy if he can tear to pieces many sheep. They could not very well do more harm than by being priests. One need only ask what happens to the children whom he baptizes, and the couples whom he marries.

The _jettatore_ in question was an engineer and wished to build railways. He had also a position in one of the state railway buildings. The state could not know that he was a _jettatore_. Ah, but what misery, what misery! As soon as he obtained a place on the railway a number of accidents occurred. When they tunnelled through a hill, one cave-in after another; when they tried to lay a bridge, breach upon breach; when they exploded a blast, the workmen were killed by the flying fragments.

The only one who was never injured was the engineer, the _jettatore_.

The poor fellows working under him! They counted their fingers and limbs every evening. “To-morrow perhaps we will have lost you,” they said.

They informed the chief engineer; they informed the minister. Neither of them would listen to the complaint. They were too sensible and too learned to believe in the evil eye. The workmen ought to mind better what they were about. It was their own fault that they met with accidents.

And the gravel-cars tipped over; the locomotive exploded.

One morning there was a rumor that the engineer was gone. He had disappeared; no one knew what had become of him. Had some one perhaps stabbed him? Oh, no; oh, no! would any one have dared to kill a _jettatore_?

But he was really gone; no one ever saw him again.

It was a few years later that Donna Micaela began to think of building her railway. And in order to get money for it, she wished to hold a bazaar in the great Franciscan monastery outside Diamante.

There was a cloister garden there, surrounded by splendid old pillars. Donna Micaela arranged little booths, little lotteries, and little places of diversion under the arcades. She hung festoons of Venetian lanterns from pillar to pillar. She piled up great kegs of Etna wine around the cloister fountain.

While Donna Micaela worked there she often conversed with little Gandolfo, who had been made watchman at the monastery since Fra Felice’s death.

One day she made Gandolfo show her the whole monastery. She went through it all from attic to cellar, and when she saw those countless little cells with their grated windows and whitewashed walls and hard wooden seats, she had an idea.

She asked Gandolfo to shut her in in one of the cells and to leave her there for the space of five minutes.

“Now I am a prisoner,” she said, when she was left alone. She tried the door; she tried the window. She was securely shut in.

So that was what it was to be a prisoner! Four empty walls about one, the silence of the grave, and the chill.

“Now I can feel as a prisoner feels,” she thought.

Then she forgot everything else in the thought that possibly Gandolfo might not come to let her out. He could be called away; he could be taken suddenly ill; he could fall and kill himself in some of the dark passage-ways. Many things could happen to prevent him from coming.

No one knew where she was; no one would think of looking for her in that out-of-the-way cell. If she were left there for even an hour she would go mad with terror.

She saw before her starvation, slow starvation. She struggled through interminable hours of anguish. Ah, how she would listen for a step; how she would call!

She would shake the door; she would scrape the masonry of the walls with her nails; she would bite the grating with her teeth.

When they finally found her she would be lying dead on the floor, and they would find everywhere traces of how she had tried to break her way out.

Why did not Gandolfo come? Now she must have been there a quarter of an hour, a half-hour. Why did he not come?

She was sure that she had been shut in a whole hour when Gandolfo came. Where had he been such a long time?

He had not been long at all. He had only been away five minutes.

“God! God! so that is being a prisoner; that is Gaetano’s life!” She burst into tears when she saw the open sky once more above her.

A while later, as they stood out on an open _loggia_, Gandolfo showed her a couple of windows with shutters and green shades.

“Does any one live there?” she asked.

“Yes, Donna Micaela, some one does.”

Gandolfo told her that a man lived there who never went out except at night,--a man who never spoke to any one.

“Is he crazy?” asked Donna Micaela.

“No, no; he is as much in his right mind as you or I. But people say that he has to conceal himself. He is afraid of the government.”

Donna Micaela was much interested in the man. “What is his name?” she said.

“I call him Signor Alfredo.”

“How does he get any food?” she asked.

“I prepare it for him,” said Gandolfo.

“And clothes?”

“I get them for him. I bring him books and newspapers, too.”

Donna Micaela was silent for a while. “Gandolfo,” she said, and gave him a rose which she held in her hand, “lay this on the tray the next time you take food to your poor prisoner.”

After that Donna Micaela sent some little thing almost every day to the man in the monastery. It might be a flower, a book or some fruit. It was her greatest pleasure. She amused herself with her fancies. She almost succeeded in imagining that she was sending all these things to Gaetano.

When the day for the bazaar came, Donna Micaela was in the cloister early in the morning. “Gandolfo,” she said, “you must go up to your prisoner and ask him if he will come to the entertainment this evening.”

Gandolfo soon came back with the answer. “He thanks you very much, Donna Micaela,” said the boy. “He will come.”

She was surprised, for she had not believed that he would venture out. She had only wished to show him a kindness.

Something made Donna Micaela look up. She was standing in the cloister garden, and a window was thrown open in one of the buildings above her. Donna Micaela saw a middle-aged man of an attractive appearance standing up there and looking down at her.

“There he is, Donna Micaela,” said Gandolfo.

She was happy. She felt as if she had redeemed and saved the man. And it was more than that. People who have no imagination will not understand it. But Donna Micaela trembled and longed all day; she considered how she would be dressed. It was as if she had expected Gaetano.

Donna Micaela soon had something else to do than to dream; the livelong day a succession of calamities streamed over her.

The first was a communication from the old Etna brigand, Falco Falcone:--

DEAR FRIEND, DONNA MICAELA,--As I have heard that you intend to build a railway along Etna, I wish to tell you that with my consent it will never be. I tell you this now so that you need not waste any more money and trouble on the matter.

Enlightened and most nobly born signora, I remain

Your humble servant,

FALCO FALCONE.

Passafiero, my sister’s son, has written this letter.

Donna Micaela flung the dirty letter away. It seemed to her as if it were the death sentence of the railway, but to-day she would not think of it. Now she had her bazaar.

The moment after, her road-builders, Giovanni and Carmelo, appeared. They wished to counsel her to get an engineer. She probably did not know what kind of ground there was on Etna. There was, first, lava; then there was ashes; and then lava again. Should the road be laid on the top layer of lava, or on the bed of ashes, or should they dig down still deeper? About how firm a foundation did a railway need? They could not go ahead without a man who understood that.

Donna Micaela dismissed them. To-morrow, to-morrow; she had no time to think of it to-day.

Immediately after, Donna Elisa came with a still worse piece of news.

There was a quarter in Diamante where a poverty-stricken and wild people lived. Those poor souls had been frightened when they heard of the railway. “There will be an eruption of Etna and an earthquake,” they had said. Great Etna will endure no fetters. It will shake off the whole railway. And people said now that they ought to go out and tear up the track as soon as a rail was laid on it.

A day of misfortune, a day of misfortune! Donna Micaela felt farther from her object than ever.

“What is the good of our collecting money at our bazaar?” she said despondingly.

The day promised ill for her bazaar. In the afternoon it began to rain. It had not rained so in Diamante since the day when the clocks rang. The clouds sank to the very house-roofs, and the water poured down from them. People were wet to the skin before they had been two minutes in the street. Towards six o’clock, when Donna Micaela’s bazaar was to open, it was raining its very hardest. When she came out to the monastery, there was no one there but those who were to help in serving and selling.

She felt ready to cry. Such an unlucky day! What had dragged down all these adversities upon her?

Donna Micaela’s glance fell on a strange man who was leaning against a pillar, watching her. Now all at once she recognized him. He was the _jettatore_--the _jettatore_ from Catania, whom people had taught her to fear as a child.

Donna Micaela went quickly over to him. “Come with me, signor,” she said, and went before him. She wished to go so far away that no one should hear them, and then she wished to beg of him never to come before her eyes again. She could do no less. He must not ruin her whole life.

She did not think in what direction she went. Suddenly she was at the door of the monastery church and turned in there.

Within, it was almost dark. Only by the Christ-image a little oil lamp was burning.

When Donna Micaela saw the Christ-image she was startled. Just then she had not wished to see him.

He reminded her of the time when his crown had rolled to Gaetano’s feet, when he had been so angry with the brigands. Perhaps the Christ-image did not wish her to drive away the _jettatore_.

She had good reason to fear the _jettatore_. It was wrong of him to come to her entertainment; she must somehow be rid of him.

Donna Micaela had gone on through the whole church, and now stood and looked at the Christ-image. She could not say a word to the man who followed her.

She remembered what sympathy she had lately felt for him, because a prisoner, like Gaetano. She had been so happy that she had tempted him out to life. What did she now wish to do? Did she wish to send him back to captivity?

She remembered both her father and Gaetano. Should this man be the third that she--

She stood silent and struggled with herself. At last the _jettatore_ spoke:--

“Well, signora, is it not true that now you have had enough of me?”

Donna Micaela made a negative gesture.

“Do you not desire me to return to my cell?”

“I do not understand you, signor.”

“Yes, yes, you understand. Something terrible has happened to you to-day. You do not look as you did this morning.”

“I am very tired,” said Donna Micaela, evasively.

The man came close up to her as if to force out the truth. Questions and answers flew short and panting between them.

“Do you not see that all your festival is likely to be a failure?”--“I must arrange it again to-morrow.”--“Have you not recognized me?”--“Yes, I have seen you before in Catania.”--“And you are not afraid of the _jettatore_?”--“Yes, formerly, as a child.”--“But now, now are you not afraid?” She avoided answering him. “Are you yourself afraid?” she said. “Speak the truth!” he said, impatiently. “What did you wish to say to me when you brought me here?”