Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  She kissed his hand again, then dropped it, and drew up her black shawl over her head, for she heard a step on the threshold. Don Atanasio heard it too, and immediately took up his mixing-knife and went to work again at the plaster. The newcomer was the lieutenant who commanded the infantry men quartered in Santa Vittoria. He asked for six grains of quinine in three doses.

  He was a quiet young fellow, scrupulously neat in his close-fitting tunic with its turned-down velvet collar, his small red moustache, carefully trimmed, and his red hair parted behind and well brushed below his cap. He had singularly bright blue eyes with rough red eyebrows and a bright and healthy but much-freckled complexion.

  Don Atanasio proceeded to weigh out the little doses of the valuable drug, and the officer watched him as he cut the clean white paper into smaller sizes and neatly folded each package.

  ‘Do you know all those Pagliuca brothers?’ he asked suddenly.

  The apothecary stopped in his work and looked at him keenly. The officer was a Piedmontese, and was, therefore, unpopular in the south.

  ‘Eh!’ ejaculated the apothecary. ‘They formerly lived here. I have seen them.’

  Concetta did not stir in her hiding-place at the end of the counter, behind the marble mortar. The officer was silent for a moment, and the apothecary hastily folded the last package, slipping one end of the doubled paper into the other, as chemists do, and taking up another sheet of paper in which to wrap the three doses together.

  ‘One of them has suddenly returned here,’ said the officer. ‘He is in the neighbourhood, and is not here for any good purpose. Most probably he has come to do some injury to the gentleman who killed his brother, the brigand.’

  In spite of herself Concetta drew a sharp breath between her teeth. The officer’s eyes turned inquisitively towards the corner where she sat.

  ‘It is the cat,’ said Don Atanasio, calmly. ‘One lira and fifty centimes, Signor Lieutenant,’ he added, handing the officer the package across the counter.

  ‘They say that it is Francesco Pagliuca who has come back, and that he was seen this morning in Randazzo,’ said the young man, while he counted out the money in big coppers; for, as usual in the south, there was a scarcity even of the flimsy little paper notes. ‘We do not know him by sight, you see,’ he continued, ‘and I should be very glad of any information, if you should see him in the village. One thirty — forty — fifty — there it is.’

  He laid the last copper on the marble slab.

  ‘A thousand thanks, Signor Lieutenant,’ said Don Atanasio, collecting the coins.

  ‘And you will let us know if you see the young man?’ asked the officer.

  ‘You shall be served,’ replied the apothecary, gravely.

  The officer thanked him, nodded, and went out, with a little clattering of his light sabre. When he was gone, Don Atanasio’s grave face relaxed in a smile.

  ‘And those are the men who expect to rule us Sicilians,’ he said in a low voice, more to himself than to his daughter. ‘They wish to catch a man. What do they do? They warn his friends by asking questions. What can such people catch? A crab, as we say, that will bite their own fingers. Then they complain. They are like children. They do not even know what the mafia is, and they come to Sicily.’

  Concetta sat quite still in her corner, thinking. It seemed to her sure that Francesco Pagliuca had come to kill Orsino Saracinesca, for his brother’s sake. That was what the officer thought, and all the soldiers would be looking out for Francesco, and on the smallest excuse he would be arrested on mere suspicion. It did not strike her that he could possibly have come for any other purpose, and her one desire was that Orsino should be killed. That was man’s work, that killing, and she would leave it to the men. But if none of them would do it, she would some day take her father’s gun and wait for Orsino at the cemetery, for he often passed that way. She was not afraid to kill him, but she considered it to be the duty and business of the Corleone men. They had prior rights, and, besides, they were men. A woman should not do any killing so long as there were men to do it, except in self-defence.

  It was clearly her duty, she thought, to warn Francesco that the soldiers were aware of his presence in the neighbourhood. It would be much wiser of him, she reflected, to communicate with the outlaws who were about Noto, and get half a dozen resolute fellows to help him. She had no knowledge of his character, though she had often met him, and she supposed him to be like his brothers, bold and determined. So she wished to warn him, in order that he might safely accomplish what she supposed must be his purpose.

  The difficulty lay in finding him. Her father might help her, perhaps, but it was doubtful. It was quite certain that he could not say or do anything which could thwart Francesco’s plans, but, on the other hand, she knew that he would be careful not to seem to help him, for he had to keep on good terms with the authorities, for the simple reason that he held a government license as apothecary, which could easily be taken from him.

  ‘Did you know that Francesco Pagliuca had come back?’ she asked, after a long silence, during which the plaster had been finished, folded up, and laid aside ready to be called for.

  ‘I knew,’ answered Don Atanasio, but he did not seem inclined to say anything more.

  ‘Why did you not tell me, father?’ asked the girl.

  ‘It might have given you pain, my child. And then, one does not say everything one knows. One forgets many things. He slept at the house of Don Taddeo, the grocer.’

  ‘Where is he now? Is he still here?’

  ‘Who shall say where he is? Heaven knows where he is. I cannot know everything.’

  He answered with a little irritation, for he understood that Concetta wished to see her dead lover’s brother, and he could not understand how any good could come of the meeting.

  Concetta rose slowly to her feet and came out from behind the counter. She had grown very thin, but she was not less beautiful. She drew her black shawl together under her chin, and it fell over her forehead to her eyes. There was no disguise in it, for everyone knew her, but she felt that it gave her some privacy in her grief, even in broad day and in the street.

  ‘I go to breathe the air,’ she said quietly, moving towards the door.

  ‘Go, my daughter, you need it,’ answered the apothecary.

  He watched her sadly, and as she went out he moved to the entrance of the shop and looked after her. Tall, sad, and black, and graceful, she walked smoothly along the shady side of the street, which was deserted in the blazing noon. Don Atanasio did not go in again till she had turned the corner and was out of sight.

  She found the grocer’s brother, the fat and cross-eyed sacristan, eating dark brown beans out of an earthen bowl with an iron fork, in the open shop. No one else was there. It was a cool, vaulted place, with a floor of beaten cement and volcanic ashes, and a number of big presses in a row behind a long walnut counter, black and polished with age. Hams and sides of bacon hung from the ceiling, and the air smelt of salt pork, cereals, and candles. The fat man sat on a bench, in his shirt sleeves, eating his beans with a sort of slow voracity. He looked up as Concetta’s shadow darkened the door.

  ‘Will you accept?’ he asked, lifting his earthen bowl a little as he spoke.

  ‘Thank you, and good appetite,’ answered the girl. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Always to serve you, most gentle Concetta,’ said the man. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Eat,’ replied Concetta, sitting down upon a rush-bottom chair. ‘I do not come to disturb you. Are you all alone?’ She peered into the shadows at the back of the shop.

  ‘Eh, you know how it is? Taddeo eats and then goes to sleep, and while he sleeps I keep the shop. In truth, it needs no great merchant to do that, for no one comes at this hour.’

  ‘And you and your brother do not eat together?’

  ‘Generally we do, but to-day, who knows how it was? He ate first and went to sleep. Then I brought my beans here for company. This is our conversation. I open my
mouth, and before I can speak the beans answer me. This I call, indeed, conversation.’

  ‘And Francesco Pagliuca, with whom does he converse upstairs?’ asked Concetta, lowering her voice.

  The man looked up quickly, with his mouth full, as though to see whether she were in earnest and knew the truth. A glance convinced him that she did.

  ‘He went to Randazzo at dawn,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘He makes love with the notary’s daughter there.’

  Concetta did not believe that this could be the only reason for Francesco’s return.

  ‘Why does he not stay at Randazzo, then?’ she enquired. ‘Why should he come here at all? It is a long way.’

  ‘Perhaps he is afraid of Basili’s friends,’ suggested the fat man. ‘Or he prefers to sleep here because the air is better. He will certainly not tell us why he comes.’

  ‘Is he coming back this evening?’

  ‘I think so, for he has a box here with his clothes, and other things. But for charity’s sake, tell no one.’

  ‘I?’ Concetta laughed in a cold way, without a smile. ‘I wish to warn him that the soldiers know he was in Randazzo yesterday, and are looking out for him.’

  She told the man of the lieutenant’s visit to her father’s shop, and he listened attentively.

  ‘I could wait for him in the road,’ he said. ‘He thought that the soldiers would not know him here, because they are all new men. But they have seen him in Randazzo and have sent word. They think that he has come on account of the Saracinesca, but he has followed the notary’s daughter from Rome. They cannot touch him so long as he does no harm.’

  ‘They may prevent him from doing it,’ said Concetta, looking steadily at the man.

  ‘That would be a pity,’ he answered gravely. ‘I will wait for him in the road.’

  ‘But if he comes by the bridle-path over the hills, you will miss him.’

  ‘I do not think he will do that, for it is a bad road, and he had my brother’s best horse to ride.’

  ‘Go and wait in the bridle-path,’ said Concetta. ‘I will wait in the road, towards Camaldoli.’

  ‘He will not come before sunset,’ observed the sacristan. ‘That crazy priest of the Saracinesca, Don Ippolito, comes to play the organ in Santa Vittoria every day, and pays me to blow the bellows, and he never goes away till twenty-three o’clock.’

  Twenty-three of the clock is half an hour before the sun sets, at all times of the year, by the old reckoning, which is still in use in the south.

  ‘You can send a boy to blow the bellows,’ suggested Concetta. ‘You cannot trust anyone to warn Francesco Pagliuca.’

  They both supposed that since enquiry was being made for him, he would be in imminent danger of arrest, with or without any legal grounds, an opinion sufficiently indicative of the state of the country. The man stared blankly at the wall for a few seconds after Concetta had last spoken, then nodded, and began to eat again.

  The girl rose from her chair, and moved towards the door with her graceful, slowly-cadenced step. She had done what she had come to do and was quite sure of the man, as indeed she had reason to be, for the mafia protects its own, and generally has its own way in the end, in spite of governments and soldiers. If Concetta and the fat sacristan asked no one to help them, it was because it was such a very simple matter to warn Francesco of danger, that they needed no assistance. But as they needed none, they told no one what they were going to do.

  Concetta came home again to the quiet little shop, and Don Atanasio bolted the glass door, and they both went upstairs to dinner. The girl ate a little better than usual, and sipped half a glass of strong, black wine.

  ‘The air did you good,’ observed her father, looking at her. ‘Eh, this human body! What is it? Who shall ever understand it? You go out every afternoon, when it is cool, for two hours, and it does you no good, and you eat no more than a bee takes from a flower. And to-day you go out for half an hour into a heat that would burn up paving-stones, and you come back with an appetite. So much the better. It is not I that should complain, if you ate the house and the walls, poor child.’

  ‘When the heart is thirsty for blood, the body is not hungry for meat,’ said the beautiful, white-faced girl, in her clear, low voice.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  IPPOLITO AND ORSINO had already acquired certain fixed habits in their several occupations, so that they rarely failed to meet at the same regular hours and then separate again, each doing the same or similar things day after day. Such regularity becomes a second nature in remote places where there is little chance that anything unexpected should happen.

  Orsino had really not enough to do, after he had once familiarised himself with his surroundings. So long as San Giacinto had remained, it had been different, for he had great plans, and had spent much time in riding about the country with an engineer from Palermo who was to build the light railway round Etna. San Giacinto had now gone back to Rome, however, leaving his cousin in charge of Camaldoli, with directions to manage things with an easy hand, so as not to prejudice the people against the work of the railway when it should be begun. To do this meant, practically, to leave the tenants to their own devices, unless it were possible to help them in any way to which they should not object. At the same time, there were certain defensive measures which were always necessary, for no one knew when the brigands might grow weary of Noto and appear on the slopes of Etna again to avenge their friend Ferdinando Pagliuca.

  Orsino used to ride about a good deal, more for the sake of exercise than for anything he could accomplish, and he carried his rifle now as a matter of habit, but rarely took one or two of the carabineers with him. He began to believe that there were not really any outlaws at all, and that Ferdinando’s unknown friend had left that part of the country. Ippolito, as a priest, went about unarmed, and, being naturally fearless, he rambled about as he pleased. Almost every day he walked to Santa Vittoria and spent an hour at the organ. Orsino accompanied him, when there was any reason for going to the village, but it did not amuse him to hear his brother’s music. In fact, it was rather a relief to him not to hear the piano constantly at his elbow, as he heard it when Ippolito played in their joint sitting-room in Rome.

  On the afternoon of the day on which Concetta had walked to the grocer’s shop, Ippolito strolled up to the small church as usual. There was a little lame boy who had discovered the priest’s habits, and used to hang about in the afternoon in the hope of earning a penny by calling the fat sacristan to come and blow the organ. He was not strong enough to blow it himself, and was content and glad to get a copper or two for limping into the village with his message. Ippolito now had a key of his own to the church, and went inside while the man was coming. Each day, during the twenty minutes or so which generally elapsed, he worked at the back of the instrument, repairing with bits of wire a number of trackers that ran from the pedals to a wooden stop set up on one side of the organ. At some former time the connexions had been repaired with waxed string, which the hungry church mice had gnawed to pieces. It was a troublesome job, requiring patience and some mechanical skill, as well as two or three simple tools which Ippolito had brought from Rome and now left in the organ until the work should be finished.

  Instead of the sacristan, a big boy appeared on this particular day, the same who had carried the holy water for the priest who had come down to Camaldoli when Ferdinando had been killed. He explained that the sacristan had been sent on an errand to Bronte by his brother, the grocer, and had left him, the boy, to do duty at the bellows if needed. Ippolito thought nothing of the matter, and sat down to make music, as usual. The days were growing very long, and he generally regulated his stay in the church by the sun rather than by his watch. Sometimes the fat sacristan came round from behind, perspiring, and declaring that his brother needed him at home.

  Meanwhile Concetta had gone down the road to the cemetery just beyond the shoulder of the hill, out of sight of the village and the little church in which Ippolito w
as playing the organ. It was her hour, and he had grown used to seeing her sitting on the curbstone by the churchyard gate every day when he went home just before sunset. When she passed the church and heard the music through the door that was left ajar, she knew also who was there, and her eyes darkened as she went by, and she drew her shawl more closely about her head. And she recognised the priest’s light step when he came by the cemetery gate an hour later, and she always turned her face away that she might not see him.

  The people knew her, too, and most of them pitied her, and all respected her sorrow. Some of the labourers who came down from the hill farm, by the paths that turned into the main road just at the end of the churchyard, used to touch their hats when they passed her, and, when she chanced to be looking, she nodded gravely acknowledging their greeting. They knew she was half mad, but the madness of a great sorrow has always been respected by simple folks who feel seldom, but keenly, and think little. The peasants generally passed about sunset on their way into the village.

  To-day Concetta came to the gate as usual, and when she reached it Francesco was no longer uppermost in her thoughts. At the sight of the black cross that marked the last grave on the left, the whole world vanished again, and her sorrow came down like a darkness between her and all life. She stood with dry eyes and compressed lips, grasping the iron rails that were hot with the level sun, and out of the long, low mound rose the face and figure of the well-loved man.

  There can be nothing intellectual in the spasm of a great sorrow, in the blind grasping upon emptiness for what is not, in the heart-famine that no living thing can satisfy. Such grief brings no thoughts, for it is the very contrary of thinking. It is only when each returning convulsion has subsided that thought comes back, and then it comes uncertainly like the sense of touching a small object through a heavy pall.