Part 4

Now he attended faithfully to his flocks, and strove to learn how cheese is made--the ricotta and the _caciocavallo_, and all the other products of the flocks; but in the gossip that went on at eventide in the yard, among the shepherds and _contadini_, while the women were preparing the beans for the soup, if ever _massaro_ Neri's son was mentioned as soon to marry _massaro_ Agrippino's Mara, Jeli said not a word, and never dared open his mouth.

One time when the keeper insulted him, by saying, jestingly, that Mara refused to have anything more to do with him, after every one had declared that they were to be husband and wife, Jeli, as he went to the pot where the milk was boiling, replied, as he slowly shook in the rennet,--

"Now Mara has grown to be so pretty, she seems like a lady."

But as he was patient and laborious, and quickly got hold of the secrets of the business, even better than one who had been born to it, and as he was accustomed to be with animals, he came to love his sheep as if they were his own, and for this reason the distemper--_il male_--did not do so much damage at la Salonia, and the flock prospered, so that it was a delight for _massaro_ Neri every time that he came to the estate, and the next year it was no great trouble to induce the _padrone_ to increase Jeli's wages, so that he came to have as much as he got in looking out for the horses. And it was money well spent, for Jeli never thought of reckoning up the miles and miles that he travelled in search of the best pasturage for his flock, and if the sheep were with young or were sick, he would take them to his saddle-bags and carry the lambs in his arms, and they would lick his face, thrusting their noses out of his pocket, and they would even suck his ears.

In the famous snow storm of Santa Lucia's night, the snow fell four handbreadths deep in the _lago morto_ at la Salonia, and all around for miles and miles there was nothing else to be seen when day came, and nothing would have been left of the sheep but the ears, had not Jeli got up three or four times in the course of the night to drive the sheep into the yard, so that the poor beasts shook the snow from their backs and did not remain, as it were buried, as was the case in so many of the neighboring flocks--at least so _massaro_ Agrippino said when he came to give a look to a field of beans which he had at la Salonia, and he also said that that story of _massaro_ Neri's son marrying his daughter Mara was a lie made up of whole cloth--that Mara had some one else in mind.

"It was said they were to be married at Christmas," said Jeli.

"Nothing of the sort; they aren't to marry at all; it's all the gossip of envious folks who meddle with others' business," replied _massaro_ Agrippino.

But the keeper, who had known about it for some time, having heard it talked about in town when he was there on Sunday, told the story as it really was, after _massaro_ Agrippino had gone away.

"The engagement was broken because _massaro_ Neri's son had learned that _massaro_ Agrippino's Mara was keeping company with Don Alfonso, the signorino, who had known Mara from a little girl; and _massaro_ Neri had declared that his son was to be a man respected as his father was, and the only horns he wanted in his house should be those of his oxen."

Jeli was present at this conversation, sitting with the others in the circle at breakfast, and at that instant was cutting his bread. He still said nothing, but his appetite left him for that day.

While he was driving his sheep out to pasture he began to think of Mara, as she had been when she was a little girl, when they were together all day long wandering through the _valle del Jacitano_ and over the _poggio alla Croce_, and how she stood looking at him, with her chin in the air, while he climbed up to the tree-tops after the birds' nests; and he thought also of Don Alfonso, who used to come and see him from the neighboring villa, and how they would stretch themselves out on their bellies, stirring up crickets' nests with straws. All these things he considered and reconsidered for hours and hours, as he sat on the edge of the brook, holding his knees between his arms, and thinking of the tall walnuts of Tebidi, and the thick bushes in the valleys and the slopes of the hills, green with sumachs, and the gray olive trees spreading through the valley like a fog, and the red-tiled roof of the house, and the campanile that looked like "a handle of a salt cellar" among the oranges of the garden.

Here the campagna stretched away naked, desert, speckled with dried grass, blending silently with the distant horizon.

In Spring the bean pods had begun to fill out when Mara came to la Salonia with her father and mother and the boy and the ass, to pick the beans, and they all came together to sleep at the farm for two or three days during the picking.

In this way Jeli saw the girl morning and evening, and they would sit together on the wall of the sheep-fold and talk, while the boy looked after the sheep.

"It seems as if I were at Tebidi again," said Mara, "when we were little things, and used to stand on the foot bridge."

Jeli also remembered everything, though he said little, being always a judicious youth, and of few words.

When the harvest was over, and the eve of parting had come, Mara went out to talk with the young man, just as he was making "ricotto cheese," and he was wholly intent in skimming the whey with his ladle.

"Now I'll say _addio_," said she, "for to-morrow we return to Vizzini."

"How have the beans gone?"

"Bad! _la lupa_[11] has eaten them all this year."

[11] A parasitic disease.

"It depends on the rain which has been scarce," said Jeli. "We have had to kill even the lambs because there hasn't been enough feed for them. Over all of la Salonia there hasn't been three inches of grass."

"But that doesn't affect you. You always have your wages, good year or bad."

"Yes, that's so," said he. "But it disgusts me to give those poor creatures to the butcher."

"Do you remember when you came for the _festa_ of Saint John, and were left without a _padrone_?"

"Yes, I remember."

"It was my father who got you a place here with _massaro_ Neri."

"And why didn't you marry _massaro_ Neri's son?"

"Because it wasn't the will of God. My father has been unlucky," she continued, after a brief pause. "Since we came to Marineo, everything has gone ill with us. The beans, the corn, that piece of vineyard that we have yonder. Then my brother went off to the army, and we lost a mule that was worth forty _onze_."

"I know," said Jeli, "the bay mule."

"Now, that we have lost all our property, who would want to marry me?"

Mara was breaking up a twig of briar while she said this, with her chin in her bosom, and, with her elbow, she gently nudged Jeli's elbow without appearing to mean it. But Jeli, with his eyes on the churn, also made no response, and she went on,--

"At Tebidi they used to say that you and I would be husband and wife, do you remember?"

"Yes," said Jeli, and he laid his ladle on the top of the churn. "But I am a poor shepherd, and I can not pretend to a _massaro's_ daughter like you."

La Mara remained silent for a little while, and then she said, "If you want me, I will willingly be yours."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"And what will _massaro_ Agrippino say to it?"

"My father says that now that you know your trade, and since you are not one of those who waste their wages, but make one _soldo_ into two, and do not eat to consume bread, in time you will come to have flocks of your own, and will be rich."

"If that is so," said Jeli, in conclusion, "I will gladly take you."

"There," said Mara, as soon as it had grown dark and the sheep were relapsing into silence, "if you want a kiss, I will give you one, because we are going to be husband and wife."

Jeli took one in "holy peace," and not knowing what to say, added, "I have always loved you, even when you were going to desert me for the son of _massaro_ Neri."

But he had not the heart to speak of the other one.

"Don't you see? We were meant for one another," said Mara, in conclusion.

_Massaro_ Agrippino, in fact, said "Yes," and _gnà_ Lia put on a new gown, and she had a pair of velvet trousers made for their son-in-law. Mara was as lovely and fresh as a rose, with her white mantellina, reminding you of the Paschal lamb, and that amber necklace which made her neck look so white; so, when Jeli walked through the street at her side, he marched stiffly and erect, dressed in his new cloth and velvet suit, and he did not dare even blow his nose with his red silk handkerchief, lest he should make a fool of himself; and the neighbors and all who knew the story of Don Alfonso laughed in his face.

When Mara said "_sissignore_," and the priest made her Jeli's wife with a grand sign of the cross, Jeli took her home, and it seemed to him as if they had given him all the gold of the Madonna, and all the lands that he had seen with his eyes.

"Now that we are husband and wife," said he, when they reached their house, as he was sitting in front of her, and trying to appear very humble, "now that we are husband and wife, I may tell you that it does not seem to me true as you pretended--you might have had ever so many better husbands than I--so beautiful and gracious you are."

The poor fellow could not find anything else to say, and he could not contain his delight to see Mara setting and arranging everything through the house, and playing _la padrona_. He found it impossible to tear himself away to return to la Salonia; when he started Monday, he was very slow in arranging in the pack of the ass, his saddle-bags, and his cloak, and his umbrella.

"You ought to come to la Salonia, yourself," he said to his wife, who was watching him from the door-step. "You ought to come with me."

But the young woman began to laugh, and replied that she was not born to look after sheep, and had no reason to go to la Salonia.

Truly, Mara was not born for tending sheep, and she was not accustomed to the January tramontana wind, which stiffens the hand on the staff, and it seems as if your fingers would drop off, or to furious storms that come, when the water penetrates to your very bones, and again, when the dust drives choking through the streets, when the sheep travel under the boiling sun, or to the hard bed on the ground, and the mouldy bread, and the long, silent, solitary days, when through the arid fields nothing else is seen in the distance but occasionally some sun-burned peasant driving his ass silently along over the white, interminable road.

Jeli knew at least that Mara was warm and comfortable under the quilts, or was spinning in front of the fire, talking with the women of the neighborhood, or was enjoying the sun on the balcony, while he was returning from the pasture tired and thirsty, or wet through with the rain, or when the wind drifted the snow back of his hut and put out his fire of branches.

Every month Mara went to receive the wages from the _padrone_, and they lacked neither eggs nor fowls, nor oil in the lamp, nor wine in the jug. Twice a month Jeli came home to see her, and she would stand on the balcony looking for him with her spindle in her hand, and after he had left the ass in the stable and removed his pack and filled the rack with oats, and placed the wood under the shed in the yard, or whatever he brought into the kitchen, Mara would help him hang his cloak on the nail and take off his leather leggings before the hearth, and pour him out a glass of wine, and set to work to boil the soup and get the table ready, quiet and thoughtful, like a good housewife, while talking of this thing and that,--of the brooding hen that was setting, of the cloth that was on the loom, of the calf which they were raising, never forgetting anything of what she had been doing.

Jeli, when he found himself at home, felt that he was more important than the pope.

But on the eve of Santa Barbara he came home unexpectedly late, when all the lights were out in the street and the town clock was striking midnight. He came in because the mare which the _padrone_ had left out at pasture had been suddenly taken sick, and he saw that it was a case that required the services of the farrier quickly, and he had wanted to bring him to town in spite of the rain that was falling like a torrent, and the muddy roads into which he sunk half up to his knees.

Knock and call as loud as he might behind the door, he had to wait half an hour under the eaves, while the water ran out at his heels. At last his wife came to open for him, and began to scold worse than if it had been herself who had been obliged to wander across country in such a tempest.

"Oh, what's the matter?" she demanded. "How you frightened me coming at this time o' night! Does it seem to you a proper Christian time to come? To-morrow I shall be ill!"

"Go back to bed, I will start up a fire."

"No, I'll have to go and get some wood."

"I'll go."

"No, I say."

When Mara returned with the wood in her arms Jeli said to her, "Why did you leave the door to the yard open? Was there not enough wood in the kitchen?"

"No, I went to get it under the shed."

She let him kiss her, coldly, coldly, and turned her head in another direction.

"His wife lets him wait at the door," said the neighbors, "when there is another bird in the nest."

But Jeli knew nothing about the fact that his wife was untrue to him, nor did any one care to tell him, because it could surely be of no consequence, for he had taken the woman with a damaged reputation after _massaro_ Neri's son had jilted her, because he knew of the story of Don Alfonso. But Jeli seemed to live happy and contented in the shame of it, and grew as fat as a pig; for the proverb has it "horns are lean but they make the house fat." At last, one time, the herdman's boy told it to him in his face, while they were scuffling about the pieces of cheese that had been stolen.

"Now that Don Alfonso has taken your wife you consider yourself his brother-in-law, and you are proud enough to be a crowned king with those horns on your head."

The factor and the keeper expected to see blood flow for those insulting words, but on the contrary Jeli stood stupefied, as if he had not heard, or as if it concerned him not, wearing the dull face of an ox whose horns really fitted him.

Now that Easter was at hand the factor sent all the men of the estate to confession, with the hope that through the fear of God they would not do any more stealing. Jeli also went, and at the church entrance sought for the boy with whom he had exchanged those hot words, and he threw his arms around his neck, saying,--

"The confessor has bade me pardon you; but I am not angry with you for such gossip; and if you will not steal any more of the cheese from me, I will not take any further notice of what you said to me in passion."

It was from that moment that they nicknamed him _Corno d'ore_--"Gold horns"--and the nickname stuck to him and all his, even after he had washed his horns in blood.

La Mara also went to confession and returned from the church all wrapped up in her mantellina, and with her eyes cast down, so that she seemed a genuine _Santa Maria Maddelena_. Jeli, who was silently waiting for her on the balcony, when he saw her coming in that way, seeming as if she had the Holy Presence in her heart, kept looking at her,--pale, pale from his foot to his head as if he saw her for the first time, or as if his Mara had been changed for him, and he seemed hardly to dare to lift his eyes to her while she was shaking the cloth and setting the table, calm and neat as ever.

Then after long thinking he put the question to her: "Is it true that you keep company with Don Alfonso?"

Mara looked him full in the face with those black eyes of hers and made the sign of the cross.

"Why do you want to make me commit a sin on this day?" she demanded.

"I did not believe it, because Don Alfonso and I were always together when we were boys, and there never passed a day that he did not come to Tebidi when he was in the country there; and then he is rich, and has bushels of money, and if he wanted women he might get married, nor would he lack anything, either clothes to wear, or bread to eat."

But Mara was really angry, and she began to scold so that the poor fellow did not dare lift his nose from his plate.

At last, so that that gift of God which they were eating might not turn into poison, Mara changed the conversation, and asked him if he had thought of weeding that little plot of flax which they had sowed in the bean field.

"Yes," replied Jeli, "and the flax will do well."

"If that is so," said Mara, "this spring I will make you two new shirts which will keep you warm."

In truth Jeli did not realize what "cuckold" meant, and he did not know what jealousy was. Every new thing found difficulty in getting into his head, and this became so great that, in making its way in, it played devilish work, especially when he saw his Mara before him so beautiful and white and neat, and how she had herself chosen him, and how he had thought about her so many years, and so many years, ever since he was a young boy, so that the day when they told him that she was going to marry some one else, he had had no heart to eat anything or to drink all day long.

Then again he thought of Don Alfonso, who had been his companion so many times, and how he had always brought him strange feeling within his heart. Don Alfonso had grown so tall that he no longer seemed the same person, and now he had a full beard, curly like his hair, and a velvet coat and a gold chain across his waistcoat. But he recognized Jeli, and patted him on the shoulder in salutation. He had come with the _padrone_ of the estate and a number of friends to have a jollification while the sheep-shearing was in progress, and Mara also came unexpectedly, under the pretext that she was pregnant, and longed for some fresh ricotto.

It was a beautiful warm day in the pale fields, with the grain in flower and the long green rows of the vines; the sheep were gamboling and bleating for delight, at feeling themselves freed from all that weight of wool, and in the kitchen, the women had made a great fire to cook all the provisions that the _padrone_ had brought for the dinner.

The gentlemen, while they were waiting, had sat down in the shade under the carob-trees, and were playing tambourines and bag-pipes, and dancing with the girls of the estate, as if they were all of the same class.

Jeli, meantime, went on with his work shearing the sheep, and felt something within him, without knowing what, like a thorn, like a nail, like a pair of shears, working within him, slowly, slowly, like a poison.

The _padrone_ had ordered that they should kill a couple of goats, and the yearling sheep, and some chickens, and a turkey cock. In fact, he was going to do things on a grand scale, and lavishly, so as to do honor to his friends; and while all those creatures were squealing under the death-agony, and the goats were screaming under the knife, Jeli felt his knees tremble, and little by little, it seemed to him that the wool that he was shearing, and the grass in which the sheep were leaping, were stained with blood.

"Don't go," he said to Mara, when Don Alfonso called her to come and dance with the rest. "Don't go, Mara."

"Why not?"

"I don't want you to go. Do not go."

"I hear them calling me."

He uttered not another intelligible word while he stayed with the sheep that he was shearing. Mara shrugged her shoulders, and went to dance. She was blushing with delight, and her two black eyes shone like two stars, and she smiled so that there was a gleam of white teeth, and all the gold ornaments tossed and scintillated on her wrists and on her bosom, so that she seemed like the Madonna herself.

Jeli had arisen to his full height, with the long shears in his hand, and white in face, as white as once he had seen his father, the cowherd, when he was trembling with fever in front of the fire in the hovel.

Suddenly, when he saw how Don Alfonso, with his curling beard and his velvet coat, and the gold chain at his waistcoat, took Mara by the hand to dance--then--only at that moment that he touched her did he fling himself on him and cut his throat with one stroke, as if he had been a goat.

Later, while they were leading him off to the judge, bound, wholly unmanned, without daring to make the least resistance,--

"How," said he, "should I not have killed him. He robbed me of my Mara!"

RUSTIC CHIVALRY.

(_Cavalleria Rusticana._)

RUSTIC CHIVALRY.

(_Cavalleria Rusticana._)

Turiddu Macca, _gnà_ Nunzia's son, after returning from the army, used every Sunday to strut like a peacock through the square in his bersegliere uniform and red cap, looking like the fortune-teller as he sets up his stand with his cage of canaries. The girls on their way to Mass gave stolen glances at him from behind their mantellinas, and the urchins buzzed round him like flies.

He had brought back with him, also, a pipe with the king on horseback carved so naturally that it seemed actually alive, and he scratched his matches on the seat of his trousers, lifting his leg as if he were going to give a kick.

But in spite of all this, Lola, the daughter of _massaro_ Angelo, had not shown herself either at Mass or on the balcony, for the reason that she was going to wed a man from Licodia, a carter who had four Sortino mules in his stable.

At first, when Turiddu heard about it, _santo diavolone!_ he threatened to disembowel him, threatened to kill him--that fellow from Licodia! But he did nothing of the sort; he contented himself with going under the fair one's window, and singing all the spiteful songs he knew.

"Has _gnà_ Nunzia's Turiddu nothing else to do," asked the neighbors, "except spending his nights singing like a lone sparrow?"

At length, he met Lola on her way back from the pilgrimage to the Madonna del Pericolo, and when she saw him, she turned neither red nor white, just as if it were none of her affair at all.

"Oh, _compare_ Turiddu, I was told that you returned the first of the month."

"But I have been told of something quite different!" replied the other. "Is it true that you are to marry _compare_ Alfio, the carter?"

"Such is God's will," replied Lola, drawing the two ends of her handkerchief under her chin.

"God's will in your case is done with a snap and a spring; to suit yourself! And it was God's will, was it, that I should return from so far to find this fine state of things, _gnà_ Lola!"

The poor fellow still tried to bluster, but his voice grew hoarse, and he followed the girl, tossing his head so that the tassel of his cap swung from side to side on his shoulders. To tell the truth, she felt really sorry to see him wearing such a long face, but she had not the heart to deceive him with fine speeches.

"Listen, _compare_ Turiddu," she said to him at last, "Let me join my friends. What would be said in town if I were seen with you?"

"You are right," replied Turiddu, "Now that you are going to marry _compare_ Alfio, who has four mules in his stable, it is best not to let people's tongues wag about you. But my mother, poor soul, was obliged to sell our bay mule, and that little plot of vineyard on the highway while I was off in the army. The time 'when Berta spun,' is over and gone, and you no longer think of the time when we used to talk together from the window looking into the yard, and you gave me that handkerchief before I went away, and God knows how many tears I shed into it at going so far that even the name of our place is lost! So good-by, _gnà_ Lola,--Let's pretend it's rained and cleared off, and our friendship is ended."[12]