by Ouida
As none of the old men and women involved, understood anything at all of these fresh laws, printed up in big type on the walls of the Communal Palace, they were swept into the net as easily as quails are at Naples.
If a regiment of the blind, the infirm, and the very aged would have been any use to the Minister of War, he could have had a large one from these nettings of Messer Nellemane.
But, alas! they were of now use for anything; and, being nigh their end, so took it to heart when they were locked up that most of them died incontinently; and thought nobody really would believe it, for it sounds too absurd, many a humble little home under the pines of the hill‐side, or down amongst the maize and vines of the level ground was the sadder, because an old granddam or grandsire sat no more on the wooden settle cheerily telling the tale of his day’s wanderings.
These laws came into effect on the first day of June, just twenty days after Carmelo and Viola were married, and one fine afternoon, as Annunziata was trotting about with her stick, feeling happy because her rheumatism was gone for the moment, and because her girl was happily wedded, she was touched on the shoulder by Bindo Terri, the municipal guard, and arrested.
In vain she wept, and prayed, and sobbed, and moaned that she had always been an honest woman. She was a mendicant under the Act; she had no private means of subsistence, nor did she work for her living; she was clearly a mendicant.
She was taken off to the guard‐house with her basket, full of scraps and pence and odds and ends, as proof of her guilt, found upon her, and without any more words or any hearing at all, was carried away to Pomodoro and there consigned to prison.
‘It is the new law,’ said Bindo, and that was all he would say to her: he was very stern and very arrogant, and very much puffed up with this addition to the joys and powers of his office.
‘Do not tell Carmelo; for the love of God , do not tell, or he will come burning the town down to get me out!’ cried the simple soul to Bindo.
And so distraught and wretched was this poor old trot at the thought of the disgrace and sorrow she should bring on those she loved, that she fretted herself in half an hour into such a state of body and mind, that the gaoler forthwith pronounced her in his own mind to be mad, and sent her to the same hospital where young Carmelo had languished through the winter nights and spring‐tide days.
It was precisely for such cases as hers that the Confraternità di S. Francesco had been instituted, but, as the modern moralities of that society forbade them to encourage beggars, the Count Saverio, though he heard of her case, could not on principle bestir himself on her behalf.
He was, indeed, at the moment he heard of it, occupied with his stock‐broker, who interested him much more, and he said quickly to the clerk who told him of it:
‘A vagrant; a confirmed mendicant. Now we could not interfere; it would be an injurious example. We are bound to take broad views: to consider the public.’
Meantime, Bindo hied quickly homeward and said to his young brother, who resembled him as one pea resembles another:
‘I took up the old ‘Nunziatina this morning. Let some lad go say so at the mill house; best not go yourself.’
The lad winked and ran off; half an hour later, as the family at the mill were sitting down to their frugal noonday meal, Viola and Carmelo at the places that would be theirs all their lives, a grinning youngster looked in at the house door and cried to them:
‘Your old woman is in prison — the new law’s out today! — they have taken her to the town—’
Then he ran away swiftly to escape from the chastisement he merited.
They all rose to their feet; Viola was trembling very much:
‘It cannot be true. It cannot be true. They never would touch ‘Nunziatina. All the world knows her!’
‘I will go and see,’ said Carmelo, and his face was very dark.
‘No!’ said Demetrio Pastorini. ‘Get not yourself into more trouble. Most like it is but an idle word. Stay you with your wife; and Dante, do you harness me Bigio.’
‘Nay, Father, that cannot be,’ said Carmelo. ‘It is Viola’s aunt that is in peril and misery. Come with me if you will, but let me go.’
‘Be it so,’ said Pastorini. ‘But remember, for the love of the saints, no violence. You are not alone in life now.’
Carmelo looked out of the door at the bank of mud, where once had been his bright boschetto.
‘We are slaves,’ he said bitterly. ‘Slaves can but submit.’
‘What did my brother die for in the wars?’ said his father.
Viola entreated to go with them, and, being not a month after her marriage, neither man could find heart to refuse her.
The way to Pomodoro, as the way to all things southward, lay along that river road which was to be disfigured by the tramway at such time as speculators and municipalities should have finished their squabbles. There was a short cut that passed by her grandfather’s cottage, too narrow for waggons and carriages, but broad enough for a little baroccio like the miller’s.
They passed that way to save time, and say a word to Pippo.
But as they drew nigh the cottage, close enough to discern the blue Madonna, Viola, whose eyes were quickest to see their beloved little, humble home, cried out:
‘Nonno is moving away! — moving away and never telling us!’
Carmelo checked the horse and sprang to the ground: his cheeks grew very white; his teeth clenched; he had caught sight of other figures than Pippo’s amidst the chairs and tables, the mattresses and saucepans, the bowls and jugs that were put out in a heap beyond the door.
The figures he had seen were the Usciere and his assistants, two straggling do‐nothings of the place, who lent themselves to this despised office for sake of the two francs a day they got by it, and the pleasure of seeing the pain of better people than themselves, which is a joy to scoundrels, always.
‘Your grandsire is only cleaning, Viola,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Only cleaning his things. I think I will go and help him if you will go on with father to Pomodoro.’
But Viola also had seen what he had seen.
‘They are selling his things!’ she said, with a piercing scream, and ere either man could stay her she had sprung off the cart on to the shaft, and from the shaft on to the ground, and had run onward across the path into the house.
The elder Pastorini threw the reins on his grey steed’s back, and got down likewise. Carmelo was already on the grass.
‘Oh nonno, nonno, what is it?’ cried Viola, as she ran into the entrance room, and saw her grandfather sitting there in his basket chair by the cold hearth, just as he had done through all the long, lonely evening of her nuptial day.
Pippo lifted her head; his face was set and stern, but calm.
‘They are selling the old things,’ he said. ‘I thought they could not get blood out of a post, but it seems they can.’
Then he put his pipe in his mouth again.
Viola threw herself on her knees by the old man, and hid her face on his arm.
‘Oh, nonno, nonno!’ she moaned, ‘Why did you not let me stay with you? I would never have left you if I had known.’
‘No,’ said the old man, with his mouth quivering a little on the pipe stem that it clenched. ‘I knew well you wouldn’t, my lass. You were aye thoughtful of me. But you could have done not a mite of good, and you would only have lost your own joy.’
On the threshold Carmelo had seized by the shoulders one of the men who was carrying out the bed that had been Viola’s, and was shouting in his ear:
‘Thief, and the servant of thieves, let go! Carry off one of these things from this house and I will brain you all—’
Then old Pippo rose, and struck on the floor with his stick.
‘Carmelo, son of Demetrio,’ he cried in a stern loud voice. ‘You are wedded mate to my girl, but you are no master of mine, and in my house have no voice. What I bid you to do, do; but nought else. Come quiet to my side, and let them work their will.�
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Obedience and respect to elders are fine old primitive virtues that are strong, like the olive and the chestnut on their hills, in the heart of the Italian. Carmelo heard, and hesitated a moment, then took his hand off the man’s shoulders, and looked wistfully at Pippo.
‘You will not resist?’ he muttered.
‘Where is the good of resisting? When you cannot make resistance good, it is but a silliness and a paltriness. They are stronger than we. They take the goods. Let them, and go your ways. Make not your wife mourn for you in the Murata; that would be harder to bear than loss of cup and platter, bed and board.’
Carmelo stood still, like a chidden child.
Outside the elder Pastorini was speaking with the Usciere, begging for delay, and praying of him to put back the goods into the house.
‘If you pay me this sum down now, I will, though it is late,’ said the Usciere.
Demetrio Pastorini felt a mist in his eyes, and a ball in his throat.
The figures that he saw were a total of nigh two hundred francs, nigh 8 l pound . if you put it in English sovereigns, and Demetrio had no money at home, nay, was in debt to more than one, now that the steam mill took from him the wheat of more than half the peasantry; for folks will run to what is new, and what is popular, and what brings them credit.
He stood irresolute, meditating whether he could raise money by any means, and the men went on with their work, hauling out into the open air the poor sticks that made the furniture of Pippo. Rich and rare things look sorry when thus treated and thrown together in the sun and dust; these poor little things of Pippo’s looked little more than fit for firewood or the dust‐heap.
‘They give us all this trouble,’ said the Usciere, like an ill‐used man. ‘They give us all this trouble with their obstinacy, and we take all they have, and then when it is all put together it is not worth a kick from a dog.’
He gave a shove as he spoke to the mound of things, and a copper vessel or two rolled down in a clatter.
They were all silent; the assistants were making a great noise bringing down the steep stone stair an old chest of drawers, older than Pippo himself. It was the chest in which Viola had kept her mother’s wedding gown until the day of her own marriage, with the orange leaves and the lavender to drive away the moths.
Viola, on her knees by the old man’s side, was rocking herself violently to and fro, weeping.
‘And Annunziata, Annunziata!’ she murmured in her sobs.
Carmelo stood aloof; his arms folded, his face very dark.
‘What of her?’ asked Pippo.
‘They have taken her up; she is in prison; they call her a beggar.’
Pippo gave a short hard laugh, as his teeth still held the pipe stem.
‘Why don’t they get out the guns, and set us all in a row and fire us down? ’twould be quicker done, and easier.’
‘It is the new law,’ said the voice of the Usciere, who was lending a hand to get out the walnut drawers.
‘Law, law, law!’ muttered Pippo, with his eyes savage like a wild cat’s, under his white eyebrows. ‘There’s law for this and that and t’other, till all the land is sick; but there’s no law against the poor starving to death: there’s no law against their dying naked on the naked floor. Will you tax the mother’s breasts next, or the babe’s swaddling clothes? You’re ripe to do it. But the mothers should cheat you, and dash out the brains of their sucklings on the house wall, ere they be old enough to sweat and pine and drag the cannon for the State that curses them.
‘Then the old man dashed his pipe upon the ground and rose.
‘Get you all gone to Annunziata,’ he said, as he forced Viola roughly from the ground. ‘Get you gone to her, and leave me alone with the thieves. I have the roof above me yet, and I am not a maiden to mourn for a lost looking‐glass. I can lie on the floor well enow, and a bit of dry bread needs no platter. Get you gone.’
They had no choice but to obey him. Carmelo’s downcast lowering eyes, and compressed and pallid lips told his father with how violent an effort did he keep down his arm and his words; his father knew, too, that this effort was strung, nearly to breaking point, and he was thankful that Pippo’s will set him free to carry away the lad ere he should do to these enemies what no man could absolve or efface.
They got up into the cart again, and drove on by the edge of the river; Viola was still weeping convulsively.
‘Grandfather, who has led such an honest, hard‐working life, and never owed one penny!’ she said amidst her tears. ‘And what is it all for? It is not a debt. It is no debt, and who has any right to make these claims?—’
Carmelo’s hand grasped hers.
He could not speak.
All the words of the dead German were echoing in his ears, and he was saying to himself, as Pippo had done,
‘How long, O Lord? O Lord?’
Viola thought to herself with shrinking and sorrow:
‘If I had let Messer Gaspardo make a bad woman of me, all these my dear ones would not have suffered thus.’
And no doubt Messer Nellemane was the cause of all their woes.
But what shall we say of the State and the Law that make Messer Nellemane possible?
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE cart drove on, and the old man Pippo sat himself down in the chimney corner, though it was a warm day, and fine of course, and saying never a word, and making no sign, he let the plunderers carry on their work of pillage. The spirit had gone out of him; something of vacancy had come over his face and into his eyes; his hands were joined on his knees, and he kept muttering:
‘Two and three make five, and four is nine, and six is fifteen—’
And so on through all the numerals; he was adding up all the sums that the municipality had claimed from him; those that had been paid by him and those for which the law was now seizing his goods.
It was a long sum, and it bothered his head; he had never been good at figures.
He sat there till it was quite dark; long after the distrainers had ransacked every hole and corner, and carried off every pot and pan and gone away leaving him nought but his four bare walls and the roof above him.
When it was quite dark, and the stars were beginning to tremble in the summer skies, the cart came by his door again and stopped and Viola came to him.
She was shivering very much and sobbing. Pippo did not either hear or see her at first; the figures were in his ears, in his heart, in his brain before his sight. She had to shake him by the shoulder to rouse him; and even then he looked stupid.
‘What did you find? he said then, and he thought his mouth moved with difficulty, and his tongue seemed fastened.
‘We found her locked up,’ sobbed his granddaughter. ‘And we could do nothing, nothing. They will not let her out, and she is so wretched, and I feared all the while that Carmelo would break into some violence; it was all his father and I could do to keep him still—’
‘They have locked her up have they?’
‘Yes! And she is always crying to them to let her see the sun!’ and Viola’s tears choked her voice as she spoke.
‘They have locked her up, have they?’ said Pippo stupidly. ‘And they have taken all my things. Well, I do not know, my lass why folk should try to be decent and honest; we are fools for our pains.
Then he turned round to the cold fireplace once more and began counting.
‘Two and three make five, and four is nine, and six is fifteen —
Viola went to the door and spoke.
‘Let me stay with him this night; I cannot leave him alone; indeed, indeed, I cannot!’
‘I will stay too,’ said Carmelo; and he came down from the cart, and bade his father drive home.
Pippo did no notice him; he was always counting.
There was no light but from the moon, for the men of the law had taken away both lamp and oil. There was nothing to use; nothing to serve; no table to spread.
Viola, checking her bitter sobs, sought in the ol
d wall‐cupboards she knew so well for a broken plate or a bent spoon, but all was gone. There was only a little rusty tin can and a half‐loaf of bread; nothing else anywhere was to be found in all the house.
Carmelo stooped down and made a little fire with some charcoal‐dust that lay in the stove, and she pumped some fresh water, and put it, with some of the bread, and an onion, from the garden in the little pot to boil. There was not a stoup of wine nor a pinch of rice in all the place.
All this while Pippo was busy counting. The young people crouched together on the ground, and the old man sat on the wooden settle; the white moon shone in through the square window; the room was full of smoke and bad smells from the steam‐mill; in other years at this season every chamber had been sweet with the scent of the lilacs by the river.
Suddenly a mouse ran across the feet of Pippo; the mouse roused him; he lifted his head from his breast and saw the figures of his children crouching together on the stones in the moonlight.
Then he looked round the empty, naked room, and laughed a little harshly.
‘They have got blood out of a post; they have got blood out of a post, have my gentlemen. They think I’ll kill myself like Nanni. It’s four hundred and sixty‐five francs in all, and I am to drive my brook underground, and spend all my mint of money on masons and engineering folk. What would the king say? what would the king say? And the old woman locked up like a purse‐lifter or a trull. This is what we lit up our oil for the day after San Martino! There’s the moon, but where’s the lilacs? I don’t smell them. What’s that smoke coming in my house? What smoke is that? Get out, you foul thing, get out! They have sold me up, but I am master here yet!’
He got on his feet struck at the smoke wildly, beating the air with his hands; then, finding nothing resist him, he looked round angrily, and slowly recognised Carmelo and Viola.
‘Why wait you here?’ he said thickly. ‘Go you home, my dears. You are lovers still, and the night is sweet to you; get you home. Nay, I would be alone. I have my house over my head; I am not out in the street yet.’