Part 18

Then at last Marcia began to speak. She spoke in a deep voice which compelled every one to listen, and she made only a few, but noble gestures. Had she no right to the child? But who had given him food and clothing? He had been dead a thousand times over if she had not been there. Ninetta had left him with La Felucca. They knew La Felucca. To leave one’s child to her was the same as saying to it: “You shall die.” And, moreover, right? right? What did that mean? The one whom the boy loved had a right to him. The one who loved the boy had a right to him. Piero and she loved the boy like their own son. They could not be parted from him.

The wife was desperate, the husband perhaps even more so. He threatened the carabiniere whenever he made a movement. Yet the carabiniere seemed to see that the victory would be his. The people had laughed when he spoke of “Signorina Francesco.” “Cut me down, if you will,” he said to Piero. “Does it help you? Will you retain the child for that? He is not yours. He is Ninetta’s.”

Piero turned to Donna Micaela. “Pray to him to help me.” He pointed to the image.

Donna Micaela instantly went forward to Marcia. She was shy and trembled for what she was venturing, but it was not the time for her to hold back. “Marcia,” she whispered, “confess! Confess,--if you dare!” The startled woman looked at her. “I see it so well,” whispered Donna Micaela; “you are as alike as two berries. But I will say nothing if you do not wish it.” “He will kill me,” said Marcia. “I know one who will not let him kill you,” said Donna Micaela. “Otherwise they will take your child from you,” she added.

All were silent, with eyes fixed on the two women. They saw how Marcia struggled with herself. The features of her strong face were distorted. Her lips moved. “The child is mine,” she said, but in so low a voice that no one heard it. She said it again, and now it came in a piercing scream: “The child is mine!”

“What will you do to me when I confess it?” she said to the man. “The child is mine, but not yours. He was born in the year when you were at work in Messina. I put him with La Felucca, and Ninetta’s boy was there too. One day when I came to La Felucca she said, ‘Ninetta’s boy is dead.’ At first I only thought: ‘God! if it had been mine! Then I said to La Felucca: ‘Let my boy be dead, and let Ninetta’s live.’ I gave La Felucca my silver comb, and she agreed. When you came home from Messina I said to you: ‘Let us take a foster child. We have never been on good terms. Let us try what adopting a child will do.’ You liked the proposal, and I adopted my own child. You have been happy with him, and we have lived as if in paradise.”

Before she finished speaking the carabiniere put the child down on the ground. The dark men silently opened their ranks for him, and he went his way. A shiver went through Donna Micaela when she saw the carabiniere go. He should have stayed to protect the poor woman. His going seemed to mean: “That woman is beyond the pale of the law; I cannot protect her.” Every man and woman standing there felt the same: “She is outside of the law.”

One after another went their way.

Piero, the husband, stood motionless without looking up. Something fierce and dreadful was gathering in him. Rage and suffering were gathering within him. Something terrible would happen as soon as he and Marcia were alone.

The woman made no effort to escape. She stood still, paralyzed by the certainty that her fate was sealed, and that nothing could change it. She neither prayed nor fled. She shrank together like a dog before an angry master. The Sicilian women know what awaits them when they have wounded their husbands’ honor.

The only one who tried to defend her was Donna Micaela. Never would she have begged Marcia to confess, she said to Piero, if she had known what he was. She had thought that he was a generous man. Such a one would have said: “You have done wrong; but the fact that you confess your sin publicly, and expose yourself to my anger to save the child, atones for everything. It is punishment enough.” A generous man would have taken the child on one arm, put the other round his wife’s waist, and have gone happy to his home. A signor would have acted so. But he was no signor; he was a bloodhound.

She talked in vain; the man did not hear her; the woman did not hear her. Her words seemed to be thrown back from an impenetrable wall.

Just then the child came to the father, and tried to take his hand. Furious, he looked at the boy. As the latter was dressed in girl’s clothes, his hair smoothly combed and drawn back by the ears, he saw instantly the likeness to Marcia, which he had not noticed before. He kicked Marcia’s son away.

There was a terrible tension in the square. The neighbors continued to go quietly and slowly away. Many went unwillingly and with hesitation, but still they went. The husband seemed only to be waiting for the last to go.

Donna Micaela ceased speaking; she took the image instead and laid it in Marcia’s arms. “Take him, my sister Marcia, and may he protect you!” she said.

The man saw it, and his rage increased. It seemed as if he could no longer contain himself till he was alone. He crouched like a wild beast ready to spring.

But the image did not rest in vain in the woman’s arms. The outcast moved her to an act of the greatest love.

“What will Christ in Paradise say to me, who have first deceived my husband, and then made him a murderer?” she thought. And she remembered how she had loved big Piero in the days of her happy youth. She had not then thought of bringing such misery upon him.

“No, Piero, no, do not kill me!” she said eagerly. “They will send you to the galleys. You shall be relieved of seeing me again without that.”

She ran towards the other side of the square, where the ground fell away into an abyss. Every one understood her intention. Her face bore witness for her.

Several hurried after her, but she had a good start. Then the image, which she still carried, slipped from her arms and lay at her feet. She stumbled over it, fell, and was overtaken.

She struggled to get away, but a couple of men held her fast. “Ah, let me do it!” she cried; “it is better for him!”

Her husband came up to her also. He had caught up her child and placed him on his arm. He was much moved.

“See, Marcia, let it be as it is,” he said. He was embarrassed, but his dark, deep-set eyes shone with happiness and said more than his words. “Perhaps, according to old custom, it ought to be so, but I do not care for that. Look, come now! It would be a pity for such a woman as you, Marcia.”

He put his arm about Marcia’s waist, and went towards his house in the ruins of Palazzo Corvaja. It was like a triumphal entry of one of the former barons. The people of Corvaja stood on both sides of the way and bowed to him and Marcia.

As they went past Donna Micaela, they both stopped, bowed deep to her, and kissed the image which some one had given back to her. But Donna Micaela kissed Marcia. “Pray for me in your happiness, sister Marcia!” she said.

X

FALCO FALCONE

The blind singers have week after week sung of Diamante’s railway, and the big collection-box in the church of San Pasquale has been filled every evening with gifts. Signor Alfredo measures and sets stakes on the slopes of Etna, and the distaff-spinners in the dark alleys tell stories of the wonderful miracles that have been performed by the little Christ-image in the despised church. From the rich and powerful men who own the land on Etna comes letter after letter promising to give ground to the blessed undertaking.

During these last weeks every one comes with gifts. Some give building stone for the stations, some give powder to blast the lava blocks, some give food to the workmen. The poor people of Diamante, who have nothing, come in the night after their work. They come with shovels and wheelbarrows and creep out on Etna, dig the ground, and ballast the road. When Signor Alfredo and his people come in the morning they believe that the Etna goblins have broken out from their lava streams and helped on the work.

All the while people have been questioning and asking: “Where is the king of Etna, Falco Falcone? Where is the mighty Falco who has held sway on the slopes of Etna for five and twenty years? He wrote to Don Ferrante’s widow that she would not be allowed to construct the railway. What did he mean by his threat? Why does he sit still when people are braving his interdiction? Why does he not shoot down the people of Corvaja when they come creeping through the night with wheelbarrows and pickaxes? Why does he not drag the blind singers down into the quarry and whip them? Why does he not have Donna Micaela carried off from the summer-palace, in order to be able to demand a cessation in the building of the railway as a ransom for her life?”

Donna Micaela says to herself: “Has Falco Falcone forgotten his promise, or is he waiting to strike till he can strike harder?”

Everybody asks in the same way: “When is Etna’s cloud of ashes to fall on the railway? When will Mongibello cataracts tear it away? When will the mighty Falco Falcone be ready to destroy it?”

While every one is waiting for Falco to destroy the railway, they talk a great deal about him, especially the workmen under Signor Alfredo.

Opposite the entrance to the church of San Pasquale, people say, stands a little house on a bare crag. The house is narrow, and so high that it looks like a chimney left standing on a burnt building site. It is so small that there is no room for the stairs inside the house; they wind up outside the walls. Here and there hang balconies and other projections that are arranged with no more symmetry than a bird’s nest on a tree-trunk.

In that house Falco Falcone was born, and his parents were only poor working-people. In that miserable hut Falco learned arrogance.

Falco’s mother was an unfortunate woman, who during the first years of her marriage brought only daughters into the world. Her husband and all her neighbors despised her.

The woman longed continually for a son. When she was expecting her fifth child she strewed salt every day on the threshold and sat and watched who should first cross it. Would it be a man or a woman? Should she bear a son or a daughter?

Every day she sat and counted. She counted the letters in the month when her child was to be born. She counted the letters in her husband’s name and in her own. She added and subtracted. It was an even number; therefore she would bear a son. The next day she made the calculation over again. “Perhaps I counted wrong yesterday,” she said.

When Falco was born his mother was much honored, and she loved him on account of it more than all her other children. When the father came in to see the child he snatched off his cap and made a low bow. Over the house-door they set a hat as a token of honor, and they poured the child’s bath water over the threshold, and let it run out into the street. When Falco was carried to the church he was laid on his god-mother’s right arm; when the neighbors’ wives came to look after his mother they courtesied to the child sleeping in his cradle.

He was also bigger and stronger than children generally are. Falco had thick hair when he was born, and when he was a week old he already had a tooth. When his mother laid him to her breast he was so wild that she laughed and said: “I think that I have brought a hero into the world.”

She was always expecting great achievements from Falco, and she put pride into him. But who else hoped anything of him? Falco could not even learn to read. His mother tried to take a book and teach him the letters. She pointed to A, that is the big hat; she pointed to B, that is the spectacles; she pointed to C, that is the snake. That he could learn. Then his mother said: “If you put the spectacles and the big hat together, it makes Ba.” That he could not learn. He became angry and struck her, and she let him alone. “You will be a great man yet,” she said.

Falco was dull and bad-tempered in his childhood and youth. As a child, he would not play; as a youth, he would not dance. He had no sweetheart, but he liked to go where fighting was to be expected.

Falco had two brothers who were like other people, and who were much more esteemed than he. Falco was wounded to see himself eclipsed by his brothers, but he was too proud to show it. His mother was always on his side. After his father’s death she had him sit at the head of the table, and she never allowed any one to jest with him. “My oldest son is the best of you all,” she said.

When the people remember it all they say: “Falco is proud. He will make it a point of honor to destroy the railway.”

And they have hardly terrified themselves with one story before they remember another about him.

For thirty long years, people say, Falco lived like any other poor person on Etna. On Monday he went away to his work in the fields with his brothers. He had bread in his sack for the whole week, and he made soup of beans and rice like every one else. And he was glad on Saturday evening to be able to return to his home. He was glad to find the table spread, with wine and macaroni, and the bed made up with soft pillows.

It was just such a Saturday evening. Falco and Falco’s brothers were on their way home; Falco, as usual, a little behind the others, for he had a heavy and slow way of walking. But look, when the brothers reached home, no supper was waiting, the beds were not made, and the dust lay thick on the threshold. What, were all in the house dead? Then they saw their mother sitting on the floor in a dark corner of the cottage. Her hair was drawn down over her face, and she sat and traced patterns with her finger on the earth floor. “What is the matter?” said the brothers. She did not look up; she spoke as if she had spoken to the earth. “We are beggared, beggared.” “Do they want to take our house from us?” cried the brothers. “They wish to take away our honor and our daily bread.”

Then she told: “Your eldest sister has had employment with Baker Gasparo, and it has been good employment. Signor Gasparo gave Pepa all the bread left over in the shop, and she brought it to me. There has been so much that there was enough for us all. I have been happy ever since Pepa found that employment. It will give me an old age free from care, I thought. But last Monday Pepa came home to me and wept; Signora Gasparo had turned her away.”

“What had Pepa done?” asked Nino, who was next younger to Falco.

“Signora Gasparo accused Pepa of stealing bread. I went to Signora Gasparo and asked her to take Pepa back. ‘No,’ she said, ‘the girl is not honest.’ ‘Pepa had the bread from Signor Gasparo,’ I said; ‘ask him.’ ‘I cannot ask him,’ said the signora; ‘he is away, and comes home next month.’ ‘Signora,’ I said, ‘we are so poor. Let Pepa come back to her place.’ ‘No,’ she said; ‘I myself will leave Signor Gasparo if he takes that girl back.’ ‘Take care,’ I said then; ‘if you take bread from me, I will take life from you.’ Then she was frightened and called others in, so that I had to go.”

“What is to be done about it?” said Nino. “Pepa must find some other work.”

“Nino,” said Mother Zia, “you do not know what that woman has said to the neighbors about Pepa and Signor Gasparo.”

“Who can prevent women from talking?” said Nino.

“If Pepa has nothing else to do, now she might at least have cooked dinner for us,” said Turiddo.

“Signora Gasparo has said that her husband let Pepa steal bread that she should--”

“Mother,” interrupted Nino, red as fire, “I do not intend to have myself put in the galleys for Pepa’s sake.”

“The galleys do not eat Christians,” said Mother Zia.

“Nino,” said Pietro, “we had better go to the town to get some food.”

As they said it they heard some one laugh behind them. It was Falco who laughed.

A while later Falco entered Signora Gasparo’s shop and asked for bread. The poor woman was frightened when Pepa’s brother came into the shop. But she thought: “He has just come from his work. He has not been home yet. He knows nothing.”

“Beppo,” she said to him, for Falco’s name was not then Falco, “is the harvest a good one?” And she was prepared not to have him answer.

Falco was more talkative than usual, and immediately told her how many grapes had already been put through the press. “Do you know,” he continued, “that a farmer was murdered yesterday.”--“Alas, yes, poor Signor Riego; I heard so.” And she asked how it had happened.

“It was Salvatore who did it. But it is too dreadful for a signora to hear!”--“Oh, no, what is done can be and is told.”

“Salvatore went up to him in this way, signora.” And Falco drew his knife and laid his hand on the woman’s head. “Then he cut him across the throat from ear to ear.”

As Falco spoke, he suited the action to the word. The woman did not even have time to scream. It was the work of a master.

After that, Falco was sent to the galleys, where he remained five years.

When the people tell of that, their terror increases. “Falco is brave,” they say. “Nothing in the world can frighten him away from his purpose.”

That immediately made them think of another story.

Falco was taken to the galleys in August, where he became acquainted with Biagio, who afterwards followed him through his whole life. One day he and Biagio and a third prisoner were ordered to go to work in the fields. One of the overseers wished to construct a garden around his house. They dug there quietly, but their eyes began to wander and wander. They were outside the walls; they saw the plain and the mountains; they even saw up to Etna. “It is the time,” whispered Falco to Biagio. “I will rather die than go back to prison,” said Biagio. Then they whispered to the other prisoner that he must stand by them. He did not wish to do so, because his time of punishment was soon up. “Else we will kill you,” they said, and then he agreed.

The guard stood over them with his loaded rifle in his hand. On account of their fetters, Falco and Biagio hopped with feet together over to the guard. They swung their shovels over him, and before he had time to think of shooting he was thrown down, bound, and had a clump of earth in his mouth. Thereupon the prisoners pried open their chains with the shovels, so that they could take a step, and crept away over the plain to the hills.

When night came Falco and Biagio abandoned the prisoner whom they had taken with them. He was old and feeble, so that he would have hindered their flight. The next day he was seized by the carabinieri, and shot.

They shudder when they think of it. “Falco is merciless,” they say. They know that he will not spare the railway.

Story after story comes to frighten the poor people working on the railway on the slopes of Etna.

They tell of all the sixteen murders that Falco has committed. They tell of his attacks and plunderings.

There is one story more terrifying than all the others together.

When Falco escaped from the galleys he lived in the woods and caves, and in the big quarry near Diamante. He soon gathered a band about him, and became a wonderful and famous brigand hero.

All his family were held in much greater consideration than before. They were respected, as the mighty are respected. They scarcely needed to work, for Falco loved his relations and was generous to them. But he was not lenient towards them; he was very stern.

Mother Zia was dead, and Nino was married and lived in his father’s cottage. It happened one day that Nino needed money, and he knew no better way than to go to the priest,--not Don Matteo, but to old Don Giovanni. “Your Reverence,” said Nino to him, “my brother asks you for five hundred lire.” “Where shall I find five hundred lire?” said Don Giovanni. “My brother needs them; he must have them,” said Nino.

Then old Don Giovanni promised to give the money, if he only were given time to collect it. Nino was hardly willing to agree to that. “You can scarcely expect me to take five hundred lire from my snuff-box,” said Don Giovanni. And Nino granted him three days’ respite. “But beware of meeting my brother during that time,” he said.

The next day Don Giovanni rode to Nicolosi to try to claim a payment. Who should he meet on the way but Falco and two of his band. Don Giovanni threw himself from his donkey and fell on his knees before Falco. “What does this mean, Don Giovanni?”--“As yet I have no money for you, Falco, but I will try to get it. Have mercy upon me!”

Falco asked, and Don Giovanni told the whole story. “Your Reverence,” said Falco, “he has been deceiving you.” He begged Don Giovanni to go with him to Diamante. When they came to the old house Don Giovanni rode in behind the wall of San Pasquale, and Falco called Nino out. Nino came out on one of the balconies. “Eh, Nino!” said Falco, and laughed. “You have cheated the priest out of money?” “Do you know it already?” said Nino. “I was just going to tell it to you.”

Now Falco became sterner. “Nino,” he said, “the priest is my friend, and he believes that I have wished to rob him. You have done very wrong.” He suddenly put his gun to his shoulder and shot Nino down, and when he had done so he turned to Don Giovanni, who had almost fallen from his donkey with terror. “You see now, your Reverence, that I had no part in Nino’s designs on you!”

And that happened twenty years ago, when Falco had not been a brigand for more than five years.

“Will Falco spare the railway,” people say, as they tell it, “when he did not spare his own brother?”

There was yet more.

After Nino’s murder there was a vendetta over Falco. Nino’s wife was so terrified when she found her husband dead that half her body became paralyzed, and she could no longer walk. But she took her place at the window in the old cottage. There she has sat for twenty years with a gun beside her, and waited for Falco. And of her the great brigand has been afraid. For twenty years he has not gone past the home of his ancestors.

The woman has not deserted her post. No one ever goes to the church of San Pasquale without seeing her revengeful eyes shining behind the panes. Who has ever seen her sleep? Who has seen her work? She could do nothing but await her husband’s murderer.

When people hear that, they are even more afraid. Falco has luck on his side, they think. The woman who wishes to kill him cannot move from her place. He has luck on his side. He will also succeed in destroying the railway. Fortune has never failed Falco. The carabinieri have hunted, but have never been able to catch him. The carabinieri have feared Falco more than Falco has feared the carabinieri.

People tell a story of a young carabiniere lieutenant who once pursued Falco. He had arranged a line of beaters and hunted Falco from one thicket to another. At last the officer was certain that he had Falco shut in in a grove. A guard was stationed round the wood, and the officer searched the covert, gun in hand. But however much he searched, he saw no Falco. He came out, and met a peasant. “Have you seen Falco Falcone?”--“Yes, signor; he just went by me, and he asked me to greet you.”--“_Diavolo!_”--“He saw you in the thicket, and he was just going to shoot you, but he did not do so, because he thought that perhaps it was your duty to prosecute him.”--“_Diavolo! Diavolo!_”--“But if you try another time--”--“_Diavolo! Diavolo! Diavolo!_”

Do you think that lieutenant came back? Do you not think that he instantly sought out a district where he did not need to hunt brigands?

And the workmen on Etna asked themselves: “Who will protect us against Falco? He is terrible. Even the soldiers tremble before him.”