Orsino was somewhat puzzled, though it all seemed so clear to her.
‘This mafia — what is it?’ he asked. ‘We hear it spoken of, but we do not any of us really know who is the head of it, nor what it can do.’
‘It has no head,’ answered the young girl. ‘Perhaps it is hard to explain, because you are not a Sicilian. The mafia is not a band, nor anything of that sort. It is the resistance which the whole Sicilian people opposes to all kinds of government and authority. It is, how shall I say? A sentiment, a feeling, a sort of wild love of our country, that is a secret, and will do anything. With us, everybody knows what it is, and evil comes to everyone who opposes it — generally death.’
‘We are not much afraid of it, since we have the law on our side,’ said Orsino, rather incredulously.
‘You are not afraid because you do not understand,’ answered Vittoria, her voice beginning to express her anxiety again. ‘If you knew what it is, as we know, you would be very much afraid.’
She spoke so simply and naturally that it did not occur to Orsino to be offended at the slight upon his courage.
‘We shall take an escort of soldiers to please you,’ he said, smiling, and drawing her to him again, as though the discussion were over.
But her terror for him broke out again. She had not told him all she knew, still less all she suspected.
‘But I am in earnest!’ she cried, holding herself back from him so that he could see her eyes. ‘It is true earnest, deadly earnest. They mean to kill you — in the end, they will! Oh, tell me that you will not go!’
‘San Giacinto has bought the place — —’
‘Let him go, and be killed, then, and perhaps they will be satisfied! What do I care for anyone but you? Is it nothing, that I love you so? That we have told each other? That you say you love me? Is it all nothing but words, mere words, empty words?’
‘No, it is my whole life, dear — —’
‘Then your life is mine, and you have no right to throw it away, just to please your cousin. Let him get a regiment of soldiers sent there by the government to live in Santa Vittoria. Then after three or four years the brigands will be all gone.’
‘Three or four years!’ Orsino laughed, in spite of himself.
‘Ah, you do not know!’ exclaimed Vittoria, sadly. ‘You do not know our country, nor our people. You think it is like Rome, all shopkeepers and policemen, and sixty noble families, with no mafia! You laugh now — but when they have killed you I shall not live to laugh again. Am I your life? Then you are mine. What will there be without you, when they have killed you? And the Winchester rifles shoot so far, and the outlaws aim so straight! How can you be saved? Do you think it is nothing that I should know that you are going to your death?’
‘It is an exaggeration,’ said Orsino, trying to soothe her. ‘Such things are not done in a civilised country in the nineteenth century.’
‘Such things? Ah, and worse, far worse! Last year they buried a man up to his neck in the earth, alive, and left him there to die, in the woods not far from Camaldoli, because they thought he was a spy! And one betrayed some of the band last summer, and they did not kill him at once, but caught him and tortured him, so that it took him three days to die. You do not know. You laugh, but you do not know what people there are in Sicily, nor what Sicilians will do when they are roused. Promise me that you will not go!’
‘Even if all you tell me were true, I should go,’ answered Orsino.
‘Will nothing keep you from going?’ asked the girl, piteously.
‘You will laugh at all this when I come back to you. You will wonder how you could have tried to frighten me with such tales.’
She looked at him a long time in silence, and then her lip quivered, so that she quickly raised one hand to her mouth to hide it.
‘It would have been better if I had never left the convent,’ she said in a broken voice. ‘When they have killed you, I shall go back and die there.’
‘When I come back, we shall be married, love—’
‘Oh, no — not if you go to Camaldoli — we shall never be married in this world.’
The slight and graceful girl shook all over for a moment, and then seemed to grow smaller, as though something crushed her. But there were no tears in her eyes, though she pressed her fingers on her lips as though to force back a sob.
‘Let us go back,’ she said. ‘I want to go home — I can pray for you, if I cannot save you. God will hear me, though you do not, and God knows that it will be your death.’
He put his arm about her and tried to comfort her, but she would not again lift her face, and he kissed her hair once more, when they were again in the shadow on the bridge. Then they waited till no one was passing through the small room, and went in silently to find her mother. She stopped him at the door of the ballroom.
‘Promise me that you will not speak to my mother nor my brothers about — about us,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Very well. Not till I come back, if you wish it,’ he answered.
And they went in amongst the people unnoticed.
CHAPTER VIII
VITTORIA REALISED THAT it was beyond her power to keep Orsino in Rome, and she was in great trouble. She had begged him not to speak of their betrothal, scarcely knowing why she made the request, but she was afterwards very glad that she had done so. To her, he was a condemned man, and her betrothal was a solemn binding of herself to keep faith with a beloved being who must soon be dead. She did not believe that she could really outlive him, but if Heaven should be so unkind to her, she had already made up her mind to return to the convent where she had been educated, and to end her days as a nun. The acute melancholy which belongs to the people of the far south, as well as of the far north, of Norway and of Sicily or Egypt alike, at once asserted itself and took possession of her. The next time Orsino saw her he was amazed at the change. The colour was all gone from her face, her lips were tightly set, and her brown eyes followed him with a perpetual, mute anxiety. Her radiance was veiled, and her beauty was grievously diminished.
It was at a garden party, in a great, old villa beyond the walls, two days after the dance. Orsino had not been able to see her in the meantime, and had wisely abstained from visiting her mother, lest, in any way, he should betray their joint secret. She was already in the garden when he arrived with Corona, who caught sight of Vittoria from a distance and noted the change in her face.
‘Vittoria d’Oriani looks ill,’ said the Princess, and she went towards her at once.
She was too tactful to ask the girl what was the matter, but she saw how Vittoria’s eyes could not keep from Orsino, and she half guessed the truth, though her son’s face was impenetrable just then. An old friend came up and spoke to her, and she left the two alone.
They quietly moved away from the more crowded part of the garden, walking silently side by side, till they came to a long walk covered by the interlacing branches of ilex trees. Another couple was walking at some distance before them. Orsino glanced down at Vittoria, and tried to say something, but it was not easy. He had not realised how the mere sight of her stirred him, until he found himself speechless when he wished to say many things.
‘You are suffering,’ he said softly, at last. ‘What is it?’
‘You know,’ she answered. ‘What is the use of talking about it? I have said all — but tell me only when you are going.’
‘To-morrow morning. I shall be back in a fortnight.’
‘You will never come back,’ said Vittoria, in a dull and hopeless tone.
She spoke with such conviction that Orsino was silent for a moment. He had not the smallest belief in any danger, but he did not know how to argue with her.
‘I have thought it all over,’ she went on. ‘If you try to live there, you will certainly be killed. But if you only go once, there is a chance — a poor, miserable, little chance. Let them think that you are coming up from Piedimonte, by way of Randazzo. It is above Randazzo that the black lands
begin, all lava and ashes, with deep furrows in which a man can lie hidden to shoot. That is where they will try to kill you. Go the other way, round by Catania. It is longer, but they will not expect you, and you can get a guide. They may not find out that you have changed your plan. If they should know it, they could kill you even more easily on that side, in the narrow valley; but they need not know it.’
‘Nothing will happen to me on either side,’ said Orsino carelessly.
Vittoria bent her head and walked on in silence beside him.
‘I did not wish to talk about all that,’ he continued. ‘There are much more important things. When I come back we must be married soon—’
‘We shall never be married if you go to Sicily,’ answered Vittoria in the same dull voice.
It was a fixed idea, and Orsino felt the hopelessness of trying to influence her, together with a pardonable impatience. The couple ahead of them reached the end of the walk, turned, met them, and passed them with a greeting, for they were acquaintances. Where the little avenue ended there was a great fountain of travertine stone, behind which, in the wide arch of the opening trees, they could see the Campagna and the Sabine mountains to the eastward.
Vittoria stopped when they reached the other side of the basin, which was moss-grown but full of clear water that trickled down an almost shapeless stone triton. The statue and the fountain hid them from any one who might be coming up the walk, and at their feet lay the broad green Campagna. They were quite alone.
The young girl raised her eyes, and she looked already as though she had been in an illness.
‘We cannot stay more than a moment,’ she said. ‘If people see us going off together, they will guess. I want it to be all my secret. I want to say goodbye to you — for the last time. I shall remember you always as you are now, with the light on your face.’
She looked at him long, and her eyes slowly filled with tears, which did not break nor run over, but little by little subsided again, taking her grief back to her heart. Orsino’s brows frowned with pain, for he saw how profoundly she believed that she was never to see him again, and it hurt him that for him she should be so hurt, most of all because he was convinced that there was no cause.
‘We go to-morrow,’ he said. ‘We shall be in Messina the next day. On the day after that go and see my mother, and she will tell you that she has had news of our safe arrival. What more can I say? I am sure of it.’
But Vittoria only looked long and earnestly into his face.
‘I want to remember,’ she said in a low voice.
‘For a fortnight?’ Orsino smiled lovingly, and took her hand.
‘For ever,’ she answered very gravely, and her fingers clutched his suddenly and hard.
He still smiled, for he could find nothing to say against such possession of presentiment. Common sense never has anything effectual to oppose to conviction.
‘Goodbye,’ she said softly. ‘Goodbye, Orsino.’
She had not called him by his name yet, and it sounded like an enchantment to him, though it was a rough name in itself. The breeze stirred the ilex leaves overhead in the spring afternoon, and the water trickled down, with a pleasant murmur, into the big basin. It was all lovely and peaceful and soft, except the look in her despairing eyes. That disturbed him as he met it and saw no change in it, but always the same hopeless pain.
‘Come,’ he said quietly, ‘this is not sensible. Do I look like a man who is going to be killed like a dog in the street, without doing something to help myself?’
Her eyes filled again.
‘Oh, pray — please — do not speak like that! Say goodbye to me — I cannot bear it any longer — and yet it kills me to let you go!’
She turned from him and covered her eyes with her hands for a moment, while he put his arm round her reassuringly. Then, all at once, she looked up.
‘I will be brave — goodbye!’ she said quickly.
It was a silent leave-taking after that, for he could not say much. His only answer to her must be his safe return, but as they went back along the walk she felt that she was with him for the last time. It was like going with him to execution.
Orsino walked back to the city alone, thinking over her words and her face, and wondering whether there could be anything in presentiments of evil. He had never had any himself, that he could remember, and he had never seen anybody so thoroughly under the influence of one as Vittoria seemed to be.
Before dinner he went to see San Giacinto, whom he found alone in his big study, sitting in his huge chair before his enormous table. He was so large that he had his own private furniture made to suit his own dimensions. The table was covered with note-books and papers, very neatly arranged, and the gray-haired giant was writing a letter. He looked up as Orsino entered and uttered a sort of inarticulate exclamation of satisfaction. Then he went on writing, while Orsino sat down and watched him.
‘Do you happen to have a gun license?’ asked San Giacinto, without looking up.
‘Of course.’
‘Put it in your pocket for the journey,’ was the answer, as the pen went on steadily.
‘Is there any game about Camaldoli?’ enquired Orsino, after a pause.
‘Brigands,’ replied San Giacinto, laconically, and still writing.
He would have said ‘woodcock’ in the same tone, being a plain man and not given to dramatic emphasis. Orsino laughed a little incredulously, but said nothing as he sat waiting for his kinsman to finish his letter. His eyes wandered about the room, and presently they fell on a stout sole-leather bag which stood by a chair near the window. On the chair itself lay two leathern gun-cases obviously containing modern rifles, as their shape and size showed. With a man’s natural instinct for arms, Orsino rose and took one of the weapons out of its case, and examined it.
‘Winchesters,’ said San Giacinto, still driving his pen.
‘I see,’ answered Orsino, feeling the weight, and raising the rifle to his shoulder as though to try the length of the stock.
‘Most people prefer them in Sicily,’ observed San Giacinto, who had signed his name and was folding his note carefully.
‘What do you want them for?’ asked the younger man, still incredulous.
‘It is the custom of the country to carry them down there,’ said the other. ‘Besides, there are brigands about. I told you so just now.’
San Giacinto did not like to repeat explanations.
‘I thought you were joking,’ remarked Orsino.
‘I never did that. I suppose we shall not have the luck to fall in with any of those fellows, but there has been a good deal of trouble lately, and we shall not be particularly popular as Romans going to take possession of Sicilian lands. We should be worth a ransom too, and by this time the whole country knows that we are coming.’
‘Then we may really have some excitement,’ said Orsino, more surprised than he would show at his cousin’s confirmation of much that Vittoria had said. ‘How about the mafia?’ he asked by way of leading San Giacinto into conversation. ‘How will it look at us?’
‘The mafia is not a man,’ answered San Giacinto, bluntly. ‘The mafia is the Sicilian character — Sicilian honour, Sicilian principles. It is an idea, not an institution. It is what makes it impossible to govern Sicily.’
‘Or to live there,’ suggested Orsino.
‘Except with considerable tact. You will find out something about it very soon, if you try to manage that place. But if you are nervous you had better not try.’
‘I am not nervous, I believe.’
‘No, it is of no use to be. It is better to be a fatalist. Fatalism gives you your own soul, and leaves your body to the chemistry of the universe, where it belongs. If your body comes into contact with something that does not agree with it, you die. That is all.’
There was an admirable directness in San Giacinto’s philosophy, as Orsino knew. They made a final agreement about meeting at the station on the following morning, and Orsino went home a good dea
l less inclined to treat Vittoria’s presentiments lightly. It had been characteristic of San Giacinto that he had hitherto simply forgotten to mention that there might be real danger in the expedition to Camaldoli, and it was equally in accordance with Orsino’s character to take the prospect of it simply and gravely. There was a strong resemblance between the two kinsmen, and Orsino understood his cousin better than his father or any of his brothers.
He had already explained to his mother what he was going to do, and she had been glad to learn that he had found something to interest him. Both Corona and Sant’ Ilario had the prevailing impression that the Sicilian difficulties were more or less imaginary. That is what most Romans think, and the conviction is general in the north of Italy. As Orsino said nothing about his conversation with San Giacinto on that last evening, his father and mother had not the slightest idea that there was danger before him, and as they had both noticed his liking for Vittoria, they were very glad that he should go away just then, and forget her.
The old Prince bade him goodbye that night.
‘Whatever you do, my boy,’ he said, shaking his snowy old head energetically, ‘do not marry a Sicilian girl.’
The piece of advice was so unexpected that Orsino started slightly, and then laughed, as he took his grandfather’s hand. It was oddly smooth, as the hands of very old men are, but it was warm still, and not so feeble as might have been expected.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 884