Chapter 13

"Do you supposed, then, when a great public work is to be accomplished the promoters are to go hat in hand for permission to every peasant resident on the area?"

"A great public work seems to me a large expression: too large for this case. The railway is not needed. The acetylene works are a private speculation. I venture to recall to your Excellency that these people, whom you would ignore, own the land, or, where they do not own it, have many interests both in the land and the water." "Pardon me, your Excellency, but that is a phrase: it is not a fact. You could not, if you gave them millions, compensate them for the seizure of their river and their lands. These belong to them and to their descendants by natural right. They cannot be deprived of these by Act of Parliament without gross injury and injustice." "There must be suffering for the individual in all benefit of the general!"

"And doubtless, sir, when one is not the individual the suffering appears immaterial!"

"What an insolent priest!" thought Giovacchino Gallo, and struck the paper-knife with anger on the table.

"Take my own parishioners alone," pursued Don Silverio. "Their small earnings depend entirely upon the Edera water; it gives them their food, their bed, their occupation; it gives them health and strength; it irrigates their little holdings, _extra murus_, on which they and their families depend for grain and maize and rice. If you change their river-bed into dry land they will starve. Are not your own countrymen dearer to you than the members of a foreign syndicate?"

"There will be work for them at the acetylene factory."

"Are they not free men? Are they to be driven like slaves to a work which would be hateful to them? These people are country born and country bred. They labour in the open air, and have done so for generations. Pardon me, your Excellency, but every year the King's Government forces into exile thousands, tens of thousands, of our hard working peasants with their families. The taxation of the land and of all its products lays waste thousands of square miles in this country. The country is being depleted and depopulated, and the best of its manhood is being sent out of it by droves to Brazil, to La Plata, to the Argentines, to anywhere and everywhere, where labour is cheap and climate homicidal. The poor are packed on emigrant ships and sent with less care than crated of fruit receive. They consent to go because they are famished here. Is it well for a country to lose its labouring classes, its frugal, willing, and hard-working manhood? to pack them off across the oceans by contract with other states? The Government has made a contract with a Pacific island for five thousand Italians? Are they free men or are they slaves? Can your Excellency call my people free who are allowed no voice against the seizure of their own river, and to whom you offer an unwholesome and indoor labour as compensation for the ruin of their lives? Now, they are poor indeed, but they are contented; they keep body and soul together, they live on their natal soil, they live as their fathers lived. Is it just, is it right, is it wise to turn these people into disaffection and despair by an act of tyranny and spoilation through which the only gainers will be foreign speculators abroad and at home the gamblers of the Bourses? Sir, I do not believe that the world holds people more patient, more long-suffering, more pacific under dire provocation, or more willing to subsist on the poorest and hardest conditions than Italians are; is it right or just or wise to take advantage of that national resignation to take from half a province the natural aid and the natural beauty with which God Himself has dowered it in the gift of the mountainborn stream? You are powerful, sir, you have the ear of the Government; you will not try to stop this infamous theft of the Edera water whilst there is still time?"

Don Silverio spoke with that eloquence and with that melody of voice which few could bear unmoved; and even the dull ear and the hard heart of the official who heard him were for one brief moment moved as by the pathos of a song sung by some great tenor.

But that moment was very brief. Over the face of Giovacchino Gallo a look passed at once brutal and suspicious. "Curse this priest!" he thought; "he will give us trouble."

He rose, stiff, cold, pompous, with a frigid smile on his red, full, _bon viveur's_ lips.

"If you imagine that I should venture to attack, or even presume to criticise, a matter which the Most Honourable the Minister of Agriculture has in his wisdom approved and ratified, you must have a strange conception of my fitness for my functions. As regards yourself, Reverend Sir, I regret that you appear to forget that the chief duty of your sacred office is to inculcate to your flock unquestioning submission to Governmental decrees."

"Is that your Excellency's last word?"

"It is my first, and my last, word."

Don Silverio bowed low.

"You may regret it, sir," he said simply, and left the writing-table and crossed the room. But as he approached the door the Prefect, still standing, said, "Wait!"

Gallo opened two or three drawers in his table, searched for some papers, looked over them, leaving the priest always standing between him and the door. Don Silverio was erect; his tall frail form had a great majesty in it; his pallid features were stern.

"Return a moment," said Gallo.

"I can hear your Excellency where I am," replied Don Silverio, and did not stir.

"I have here reports from certain of my agents," said Gallo, fingering his various papers, "that there is and has been for some time a subversive movement amongst the sparse population of the Valdedera."

Don Silverio did not speak or stir.

"It is an agrarian agitation," continued Gallo, "limited to its area, with little probability of spreading, but it exists; there are meetings by night, both open-air and secret meetings; the latter take place now in one farmhouse, now in another. The leader of this noxious and unlawful movement is one Adone Alba. He is of your parish."

He lifted his eyelids and flashed a quick, searching glance at the priest.

"He is of my parish," repeated Don Silverio, with no visible emotion.

"You know of this agitation?"

"If I did, sir, I should not say so. But I am not in the confidence of Adone Alba."

"Of course I do not ask you to reveal the secrets of the confessional, but --"

"Neither in the confessional nor out of it have I heard anything whatever from him concerning any such matter as that of which you speak."

"He is a young man?"

"Yes."

"And the owner of the land known as the Terra Vergine?"

"Yes."

"And his land is comprised in that which will be taken by the projected works?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure that he has not sent you here?"

"My parishoners are not in the habit of 'sending' me anywhere. You reverse our respective positions."

"Humility is not one of your ecclesiastical virtues, Most Reverend."

"It may be so."

Gallo thrust his papers back into their drawer and locked it with a sharp click.

"You saw the Syndic of San Beda?"

"I did."

"Much what you say. Official language is always limited and learned by rote."

Gallo would willingly have thrown his bronze inkstand at the insolent ecclesiastic; his temper was naturally choleric, though years of sycophancy and State service had taught him to control it.

"Well, Reverend Sir!" he said, with ill-concealed irritation, "this conversation is, I see, useless. You protect and screen your people. Perhaps I cannot blame you for that, but you will allow me to remind you that it is my duty to see that the order and peace of this district are not in any manner disturbed; and that any parish priest if he fomented dissatisfaction or countenanced agitation in his district, would be much more severely dealt with by me than any civilian would be in the same circumstances. We tolerate and respect the Church so long as she remains strictly within her own sphere, but so long only."

"We are all perfectly well aware of the conditions attached to the _placet_ and the _exequatur_ at all times, and we are all conscious that even the limited privileges of civilians are denied to us!" replied Don Silverio. "I have the honour to wish your Excellency good morning."

He closed the door behind him.

"Damnation!" said Giovacchino Gallo; "that is a strong man! Is Mother Church blind that she lets such an one rust and rot in the miserable parish of Ruscino?"

When Don Silverio rejoined the Vicar of Sant Anselmo the latter asked him anxiously how his errand had sped.

"It was a waste of breath and words," he answered. "I might have known that it would be so with any Government official."

"But you might have put a spoke in Count Corradini's wheel. If you had told Gallo that the other is trafficking --"

"Why should I betray a man who received me in all good faith? And what good would it have accomplished if I had done so?"

And more weary than ever in mind and body he returned to Ruscino.

As he had left the Prefect's presence that eminent person had rung for his secretary.

"Brandone, send me Sarelli."

In a few moments Sarelli had appeared; he was the usher of the Prefecture by appointment; by taste and in addition he was its chief spy. He was a native of the city, and a person of considerable acumen and excellent memory; he never needed to make memoranda -- there is nothing so dangerous to an official as written notes. "Sarelli, what are the reports concerning the vicar of Ruscino?"

Sarelli stood respectfully at attention; he had been a non-commissioned officer of artillery; and answered in rapid but clear tones --

"Great ability -- great eloquence -- disliked by superiors; formerly great preacher in Rome; supposed to be at Ruscino as castigation; learned -- benevolent -- correct."

"Humph!" said Gallo, disappointed. "Not likely then to cause trouble or disorder? -- to necessitate painful measures?"

Sarelli rapidly took his cue.

"Hitherto, your Excellency, uniformly correct; except in one instance --"

"That instance?"

"Your Excellency will have heard of Ulisse Ferrero, a great robber of the lower Abruzzo Citeriore Primo?"

"I have: continue."

"Ulisse Ferrero was outlawed; his band had been killed or captured, every one; he had lost his right arm; he hid for many years in the lower woods of Abruzzo; he came down at night to the farmhouses, the people gave him food and drink, and aided him --"

"Their criminal habit always: continue."

"Sometimes in one district, sometimes in another, he was often in the _macchia_ of the Valdedera. The people of the district, and especially of Ruscino, protected him. They thought him a saint, because once when at the head of his band, which was then very strong, he had come into Ruscino and done them no harm, but only eaten and drunk, and left a handful of silver pieces to pay for what he and his men had taken. So they protected him now, and oftentimes for more than a year he came out of the _macchia_, and the villagers gave him all they could, and he went up and down Ruscino as if he were a king; and this lasted for several seasons, and, as we learned afterwards, Don Silverio Frascara had cognisance of this fact, but did nothing. When Ulisse Ferrero was at last captured (it is nine years ago come November, and it was not in Ruscino but in the woods above), and brought to trial, many witnesses were summoned, and amongst them this Don Silverio; and the judge said to him, 'You had knowledge that this man came oftentimes into you parish?' and Don Silverio answered, 'I had.' 'You knew that he was an outlaw, in rupture with justice?' 'I did,' he answered. Then the judge struck his fist with anger on his desk. 'And you a priest, a guardian of order, did not denounce him to the authorities?' Then Don Silverio, your Excellency, quite quietly, but with a smile (I was there close to him), had the audacity to answer the judge. 'I am a priest,' he said 'and I study my breviary, but do not find in it any command which authorises me to betray my fellow creatures.' That made a terrible stir in the tribunal, you Excellency. They talked of committing him to gaol for contempt of court and for collusion with the outlaw. But it took place at San Beda, where they are all _papalini_, as your Excellency knows, and nothing was done, sir."

"That reply is verily like this priest!" thought Giovacchino Gallo. "A man of ability, of intellect, of incorruptible temper, but a man as like as not to encourage and excuse sedition."

Aloud he said, "You may go, Sarelli. Good morning."

"May I be allowed a word, sir?"

"Speak."

"May it not well be, sir, that Don Silverio's organisation or suggestion is underneath this insurrectionary movement of the young men in the Valdedera?"

"It is possible; yes. See to it."

"Your servant, sir."

Sarelli withdrew, elated. He loved tracking, like a bloodhound, for the sheer pleasure of the "cold foot chase." The official views both layman and priest with contempt and aversion; both are equally his prey, both equally his profit: he lives by them and on them, as the galleruca does on the elm-tree, whose foliage it devours, but he despises them because they are not officials, as the galleruca doubtless, if it can think, despises the elm.

XVI

Of course his absence could not be hidden from any in his parish. The mere presence of the rector of an adjacent parish, who had taken his duties, sufficed to reveal it. For so many years he had never stirred out of Ruscino in winter cold or summer heat, that none of his people could satisfactorily account to themselves for his now frequent journeys. The more sagacious supposed that he was trying to get the project for the river undone; but they did not all have so much faith in him. Many had always been vaguely suspicious of him; he was so wholly beyond their comprehension. They asked Adone what he knew, or, if he knew nothing, what he thought. Adone put them aside with an impatient, imperious gesture. "But you knew when he went to Rome?" they persisted. Adone swung himself loose from them with a movement of anger. It hurt him to speak of the master he had renounced, of the friend he had forsaken. His conscience shrank from any distrust of Don Silverio; yet his old faith was no more alive. He was going rapidly down a steep descent, and in that downward rush he lost all his higher instincts; he was becoming insensible to everything except the thirst for action, for vengeance.

To the man who lives in a natural state away from cities it appears only virile and just to defend himself, to avenge himself, with the weapons which nature and art have given him; he feels no satisfaction in creeping and crawling through labyrinths of the law, and he cannot see why he, the wronged, should be forced to spend, and wait, and humbly pray, while the wrongdoer may go, in the end, unchastised. Such a tribunal as St. Louis held under an oak-tree, or the Emperor Akbar in a mango grove, would be intelligible to him; but the procedure, the embarrassments, the sophistries, the whole machinery of modern law are abhorrent to him.

He yearned to be the Tell, the Massaniello, the Andreas Hofer, of his province; but the apathy and supineness and timidity of his neighbors tied his hands. He knew that they were not made of the stuff with which a leader could hope to conquer. All his fiery appeals fell like shooting stars, brilliant but useless; all his vehement excitations did little more than scare the peasants whom he sought to rouse. A few bold spirits like his own seconded his efforts and aided his propaganda; but these were not numerous enough to leaven the inert mass.

His plan was primitive and simple: it was to oppose by continual resistance every attempt which should be made to begin the projected works upon the river; to destroy at night all which should be done in the day, and so harass and intimidate the workmen who should be sent there that they should, in fear and fatigue, give up their labours. They would certainly be foreign workmen; that is, workmen from another province; probably from the Puglie. It was said that three hundred of them were coming that week from the Terra d'Otranto to work above Ruscino. He reckoned that he and those he led would have the advantage of local acquaintance with the land and water, and could easily, having their own homes as base, carry on a guerrilla warfare for any length of time. No doubt, he knew, the authorities would send troops to the support of the labours, but he believed that when the resolve of the district to oppose at all hazards any interference with the Edera should be made clear, the Government would not provoke an insurrection for the sake of favouring a foreign syndicate. So far as he reasoned at all, he reasoned thus.

But he forgot, or rather he did not know, that the lives of its people, whether soldiers or civilians, matter very little to any Government, and that its own vanity, which it calls dignity, and the financial interests of its supporters, matter greatly; where the Executive has been defied there it is inexorable and unscrupulous.

Both up and down the river there was but one feeling of bitter rage against the impending ruin of the water; there was but one piteous cry of helpless desperation. But to weld this, which was mere emotion, into that sterner passion of which resistance and revolt are made, was a task beyond his powers.

"No on will care for us; we are too feeble, we are too small," they urged; they were willing to do anything were they sure it would succeed, but --

"But who can be sure of anything under heaven?" replied Adone. "You are never sure of your crops until the very last day they are reaped and carried; yet you sow."

Yes, they granted that; but sowing grain was a safe, familiar labour; the idea of sowing lead and death alarmed them. Still there were some, most of them those who were dwellers on the river, or owners of land abutting on it, who were of more fiery temper, and these thought as Adone thought, that never had a rural people juster cause for rebellion; and these gathered around him in those meetings by night of which information had reached the Prefecture, for there are spies in every province.

Adone had changed greatly; he had grown thin and almost gaunt; he had lost his beautiful aspect of adolescence; his eyes had no longer their clear and happy light; they were keen and fierce, and looked out defiantly from under his level brows.

He worked on his own land usually, by day, to stave off suspicion; but by night he scoured the country up and down the stream wherever he believed he could find proselytes or arms. He had no settled plan of action; he had no defined project; his only idea was to resist, to resist, to resist. Under a leader he would have been an invaluable auxiliary, but he had not the knowledge whatever of stratagem, or manoeuvre, or any of the manifold complications of guerrilla warfare. His calm and dreamy life had not prepared him to be all at once a man of action: action was alien alike to his temperament and to his habits. All his heart, his blood, his imagination, were on fire; but behind them there was not that genius of conception and command which alone makes the successful chief of a popular cause.

His mother said nothing to disturb or deter him on his course, but in herself she was sorely afraid. She kept her lips shut because she would have thought it unworthy to discourage him, and she could not believe in his success, try how she might to compel her faith to await miracles.

Little Nerina alone gave him that unquestioning, blind belief which is so dear to the soul of man. Nerina was convinced that at his call the whole of the Valdedera would rise full-armed, and that no hostile power on earth would dare to touch the water. To her any miracle seemed possible. Whatever he ordered, she did. She had neither fear nor hesitation. She would slip out of her room unheard, and speed over the dark country on moonless nights on his errands; she would seek for weapons and bring them in and distribute them; she would take his messages to those on whom he could rely, and rouse to his cause the hesitating and half-hearted by repetition of his words. Her whole young life had caught fire at his; and her passionate loyalty accepted without comprehending all he enjoined her or told to her.

The danger which she ran and the concealment of which she was guilty, never disturbed her for an instant. What Adone ordained was her law. Had he not taken pity on her in her misery that day by the river? Was she not to do anything and everything to serve him and save the river? This was her sole creed; but it sufficed to fill her still childish soul. If, with it, there were mingled a more intense and more personal sentiment, she was unconscious of, and he indifferent to, it. He sent her to do his bidding as he would have sent a boy, because he recognised in her that zeal and fervent fidelity to a trust of which he was not sure in others.

Although she was a slender brown thing, like a nightingale, she was strong, elastic, untiring; nothing seemed to fatigue her; she always looked as fresh as the dew, as vigorous as a young cherry-tree. Her big hazel eyes danced under their long lashes, and her pretty mouth was like one of the four-season roses which bloomed on the house wall. She was not thought much to look at in a province where the fine Roman type is blended with the Venetian colouring in the beauty of its women; but she had a charm and a grace of her own; wild and rustic, like that of a spray of grass or a harvest mouse swinging on a stalk of wheat.

She was so lithe, so swift, so agile; so strong without effort, so buoyant and content, that she carried with her the sense of her own perfect health and happiness, as the east wind blowing up the Edera water bore with it the scent of the sea.

But of any physical charm in her Adone saw nothing. A great rage filled his soul, and a black cloud seemed to float between him and all else which was not the wrong done to him and his and the water of Edera. Until he should have lifted off the land and the stream this coming curse which threatened them, life held nothing for him which could tempt or touch him.

He used the girl for his own purposes and did not spare her; but those purposes were only those of his self-imposed mission, and of all which was youthful, alluring, feminine, in her he saw nothing: she was to him no more than a lithe, swift, hardy filly would have been which he should have ridden over the moors and pastures to its death in pursuit of his end. He who had been always so tender of heart had grown cruel; he would have flung corpse upon corpse into the water if by such holocaust he could have reached his purpose. What had drawn him to Nernia had been that flash of ferocity which he had seen in her; that readiness to go to the bitter end in the sweet right of vengeance; instincts which formed so singular a contrast to the childish gaiety and the sunny goodwill of her normal disposition.

He knew that nothing which could have been done to her would have made her reveal any confidence placed in her. That she was often out all the hours of the night on errands to the widely scattered dwellings of the peasants did not prevent her coming at dawn into the cattle stalls to feed and tend the beasts.