by Ouida
In the night she was delirious.
In the morning she was stupid.
But as no one thought her ill, and everybody knew she was stubborn, they paid her no attention, till an attendant shook her, made her get out of bed, and tumbled her into a bath. Annunziata, who had the common horror of her nation as to water, shivered, and was very sick, but as she had ceased to scream, they thought she was getting reconciled, and put her on the clothes of the institute, and placed her in the common room of the the old women.
There she sat quite still, and dumb, shivering all over.
The old folks around her were busy working, some plaiting, some sewing, some knitting, some picking linen to make lint, some only staring vacantly and mumbling — who shall say what wishes, what regrets, what memories?
Annunziata stared with her eyes at the dull wall, the high barred windows, the great, unfamiliar, hateful chamber, but all she really saw was her own little den with the poplars waving green against the little window, the sunny roads where her feet had carried her so many years, the green hillside where she so long had wandered, the broad blue radiant light, the rose of day‐break on the plains.
You cannot cage a field‐bird when it is old; it dies for want of flight, of air, of change, of freedom. No use will be their stored grain of your cage; better for the bird a berry here and there, and peace of gentle death at last amidst the golden gorse or blush of hawthorn buds.
When night came, and they made her go to bed amidst all those other beds again, Annunziata was very cold; cold as marble. No one had been unkind, for she had been quite mute and passive all though this long dreary colourless summer day behind the grey blinds within the four walls.
‘Casa mia, casa mia,’ she murmured feebly, when they laid her down on the hard pallet: it was a stifling midsummer night, but she was till quite cold.
She was so cold that the woman in attendance called for help: there was no doctor near at hand, and the director was away at a dinner party for the Prefect.
They tried to put some warm drink down her throat but she spat it out; her lips began to grow blue, and her eyes fixed.
‘Let me get out, let me get home,’ she muttered, with a tremulous voice. ‘There is no air here; I can’t breathe—’
The women were not frightened, for they were used to death‐beds in Montesacro; yet, awed to some show of gentleness, they lifted her up and opened a casement to let in the coolness of the night.
But Annunziata knew nought of that. She gasped for breath still, and the little life there was in her was chilling into stone. All at once she opened her eyes wide and forced herself free of their hold:
‘Lord! let me see the sun again; let me see the hills!’ she cried aloud, stretching out her arms; and in that last prayer she died.
Will she see the sun again, free from all cloud, a sun that never sets? Will something greater than ourselves, and more pitiful than the State, let that poor, dumb, tired little soul of hers arise and rejoice in the green hills of an everlasting world?
If this be the last of her, this death on a strange bed, in a prison that hypocrisy calls a refuge, then let us weep for her indeed; ignorant, valiant, true, busy and most harmless creature, almost dumb as the dogs, quite as cheerful as the birds, having borne heat, and cold, and hunger and pain without complaint so long as she was free.
‘Be good to me, O God, for my boat is so small and the deep sea is so wide,’ is the prayer of the Bréton fisher. Alas, how many boats go down, and where is the pity of God?
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE misery at this time grew yet greater at the mill‐house; greater for this family, which had for so many centuries been the possessors of a homely abundance, than for those who by long usage were accustomed to hardship and penury. All Pastorini’s savings had gone when Carmelo was in prison, and the mill brought in not a farthing. People who a few years before would have given him ten years’ credit now did not like to trust him for a month. Popular favour is a fickle thing, and comes and goes alike without reason. He took the good grey horse to a distant market and sold it, being reluctant to keep it to want; the old mule he knew would soon have to follow; without grist to grind the mill only cost what it could not pay; the usciere began to call with summonses for trifling debts, for when one tradesman turns crusty, all turn so.
The little butcher Sandro had become bankrupt, and had disappeared from Santa Rosalia; the big one, he who was in good odour with the municipality, would give nothing without money down on the nail. The old man was shrunken out of all likeness to himself; the baby alone throve in the midst of the desolation, and there was likelihood of another coming; more hungry mouths and no food for any of them was the future that faced Carmelo and his father. The summons for having encumbered the road with the sacks of torbo had been served on Carmelo, and as he had not appeared to answer it, and could not employ any man of law to dispute it, it was passed as a matter of course on to Pomodoro, where the Pretore, merely seeing that Carmelo Pastorini was in question, decided without further examination that his late prisoner had been at fault, and so the matter with fines, penalties for contempt of court in not appearing, &c., ran up to a matter of thirty‐eight francs. As for looking for thirty‐eight francs in the millhouse till, you might as well have looked for emeralds and rubies. After due course a gravamento was instituted for the payment, as it had been done with poor old Pippo; and Carmelo, possessing nothing of his own in the world except a gun, his clothing, and the little coral earrings he had given his wife in the bridal week, these were seized and taken off by the usciere. Carmelo laughed aloud when he saw the distraint warrant.
‘He set down three sacks on a hillside road to lighten the mule for a minute!’ said his father piteously. But he himself said nothing. He only laughed till those were frightened who heard him. His father, without letting him know it, persuaded the usciere to take some of his own clothing instead of his son’s. If he had still had the mule he would have sold that, but three months had gone by since the offence had been committed, and the mule had now gone to other masters, and the price of him and the baroccino had brought food for the many mouths round the mill‐house table.
Viola, who could do nothing, grew so wretched that she reproached herself bitterly for having married Carmelo; alone, she thought, he might have done better; he could have gone away, he would have had only himself to keep. It began to seem to her that she had done nothing but harm to all she loved.
When on this day of Annunziata’s removal to Montesacro they heard only that she had been once more arrested, Viola felt her timid and patient soul grow desperate.
‘Oh, Carmelo,’ she sobbed, ‘and it was they who killed Raggi, though I never told you!’
‘Dear,’ said the young man with a bitter smile, ‘I guessed that long ago. These are the wretches that have hour lives in their keeping; dog‐butchers, thieves, extortioners! The people are like the steer who goes peaceably to be murdered when he could toss and gore.’
‘But would it be any better if the people rose?’
‘Who can tell?’ said Carmelo gloomily. ‘ I have heard say that twenty years ago, when they first drove out the stranieri, it was our people, the soldiers of the people, the leaders of the people, who were the first to plunder and pillage all the people’s treasuries. And how can we do anything; we who have no union, no chief, who cannot read, who can only struggle blindly just as the birds do in the nets? That is the misery of it. Our people are timorous. They scurry like mice before a uniform; they crouch and crawl before a drawn sword. Yet anything were better than this. It would be an easier death to be shot down by artillery than to be bled to death slowly like this, a drop every day.’
‘But what will be the end?’
‘Who shall tell? This I do believe, that when they deal with us as with criminals for every little action of our days they will make us devils. If the army were with us, then, indeed — I have heard tell that the soldiers are muttering and growing restive; but alas! there
will be always men found who will point the cannon on the poor.’
Viola listened, and understood enough to be alarmed and very disquieted for the safety of her beloved.
This day, made bold by the pains of what she loved, as does will be and mother‐birds, she took heart of grace and resolved to essay a last chance for help and hope. It was a very faint one, and if she had not been a simple, ignorant, and most trustful creature, would never have dawned on to delude her for a moment.
As it was, she tied a handkerchief over her shapely head, took her little apple‐blossom of a boy in her arms as a shield and prayer in one, and went straight, unknown to any of her family, towards the communal palace, and there asked with beating heart if she could see Messer Nellemane.
Now Messer Nellemane was growing very indifferent to Santa Rosalia; he knew very well that he would soon leave it for some higher official grindstone under which to squeeze the body‐politic; and he was beginning almost to be high and might with his own master, the Most Worshipful the Cavaliere Durellazzo. Therefore he very seldom deigned to see any petitioner of the populace, and such were always dealt with now by the chancellor, the conciliator, or Bindo. Nevertheless, when he heard that the wife of Carmelo, the granddaughter of Pippo, wished to see him, he bade her be shown to him; Messer Nellemane not being one of those who believed in the virtue of women , had a sudden evil notion come up in his mind of what her errand might be. But she would come in vain, he said to himself; such philandering was not to be indulged in; ambition was his sole Venus; he knew the mischief that one weakness may work in a public career; he meant to go through life with a blameless, a snow‐white morality. There is nothing more useful.
Nevertheless, he let her enter.
When he saw the baby in her arms he frowned, and his face flushed angrily; when Helen comes to woo, she does not thus cumber herself.
‘Signora mia!’ he hastened to say, however, with benevolent courtesy, ‘it is long since we met. I have been so much occupied. Un bel bimbo davvero! What is his age?’
Viola, trembling very much, and with her great dark eyes wide open and strained, took no heed of his words.
‘I am come to beg you to be merciful to us,’ she said in a low gasping tone. ‘Sir, dear sir, we are in great wretchedness. My father‐in‐law is ruined. My husband thinks of going to Maremma to work as a day‐labourer. My poor old aunt is taken again, and my grandfather — oh, my grandfather—’
There her sobs choked her.
Messer Nellemane’s black eyes shone with a pleasure he could not conceal, though all his features were composed into a regretful and sympathetic gravity.
‘I am very pained at all this,’ he said blandly. ‘I had heard something of it—’
‘Oh stop, stop it! you can!’ murmured Viola, her whole form trembling, and clasping the baby to her convulsively.
‘I!’ cried Messer Nellemane in amaze‐ ment. ‘I! cara mia signora! What have I, what can I possibly have to do with the misfortunes of your relatives? Alas! would I could say they were altogether undeserved misfortunes, but when the law is obstinately set at defiance—’
‘Oh, it is you!’ cried Viola, forgetful of all wisdom, and borne away on the tide of her own strong feeling. ‘You rule all; at a word from you all is done or undone. ‘Nunziatina would be left in peace, and my husband could stay in his own place, if only you would cease to persecute us.’
Messer Nellemane drew himself up, the most rigid monument of offended dignity and unutterable surprise.
‘Persecute?’ he repeated; ‘persecute? I? Signora mia! you cannot know what you are saying! What am I here? nothing. The mere instrument of the will of the council and the syndic; the merest pen in the hand of an unblemished and most benevolent magistracy! You must see, if you reflect a moment, that the troubles of your relatives all rise from their own neglect of repeated warnings that, if they pursued certain modes of conduct, the law — the law which is absolutely impartial and impersonal — must take its course.’
‘No!’ said Viola, stung out of all prudence and holding her little child close to her breast as she spoke. ‘No, no! these are all words. When I was a maiden you had wicked and cruel thoughts of me, and you have revenged yourself on me and mine. If I had taken your gifts, and hearkened to your dishonest wooing, you would have spared my grandfather and the Pastorini and the old woman, who has no sin in all the world except to belong to me!’
Offended majesty and insulted virtue reigned together on every line of Messer Nellemane’s countenance.
‘You are mad, woman!’ he said very sternly. ‘How dare you use such indecorous language to me? I never saw you but twice, and then I regarded you as the betrothed of the youth Carmelo. Foolish fancies are not my foible. My time, like my heart, is in the service of the nation!’
Viola was vibrating and throbbing with passion. She scarcely heard him.
‘It is because the dear old creature brought your presents back to you that you hate her, that you hate them all!’ she cried with tremulous indignation and emotion. ‘It is because I feel they suffer through me that I know not how to bear to see them suffer. Carmelo and I can do well enough; we are young and strong, and we have love and health to bear us up; but old people — the old people — and it is all because you hate them. It is all through me!’
‘This is insanity!’ said Messer Nellemane, lifting his hands. ‘It is worse: it is defamation! You are using the language of libel. All, I repeat, all that has befallen your family is the simple and inevitable result of their inattention and disobedience to the laws of the land. Their contumacy has met with its natural, and I must say, however private compassion may plead for them, its just chastisement.’
‘Oh, hypocrite!’ cried Viola, with her pale cheeks flaming as the sun flames in the west on an autumn night. ‘I did ill to come to you. You have a face of brass, a heart of stone!’
‘You are excited,’ said Messer Nellemane, coldly. ‘I am sorry that you ever miscon‐ strued my charity to a poor man’s granddaughter. I should have hoped that innocent country maidens had had purer thoughts. I fancied that it was only women of light life who put evil constructions on simple courtesies! Your child is crying. Will you excuse me if I request you to leave me now?’
The child had burst out sobbing loudly. Viola pressed it to her bosom and turned and left the room.
Messer Nellemane had been to the last victorious; he had made her feel an unwomanly, unwise, ill‐spoken creature, who had fancied an unholy passion as existing in a mere commonplace and benevolent compliment!
Her cheeks burned; her hot tears fell.
‘O bimbo mio! she wailed to the wailing child. ‘Is it indeed only the law? Will the law follow us out in to the sickly Maremma and seize our last crust there? O bimbo mio! if you were not so dear, so sweet, so fair, almost for your sake I could wish you had never been born!’
‘What a fortunate thing I resisted my momentary infatuation for her,’ thought Messer Nellemane, left alone with the prospectus and estimates of the Catacomb Metropolitan. ‘Really she has grown quite plain, and how very painfully thin! If factories were established, there would not be this class of useless, hungry and most unhappy women.’
And he stretched out his hand and unearthed from the mass of the Catacomb circulars a plan for the Giunta to turn the old Convent of S. Francesca Romana into a manufactory: it would be hideous, it would pollute the river, and it would bring to the municipality a clear forty per cent. per annum. What could be more public‐spirited?
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THIS night that Annunziata died, Carmelo and his father were sitting up by the light of a three‐branched lamp, and poring over their accounts. They kept these ill; they could make clear figures, but the miller wrote ill, and the young man, who had always been lazy in these matters, could not write at all.
Still, even their scanty education enabled them to perceive very clearly that the miller was deeply in debt, and that, unless things mended, they would share the f
ate of Pippo. And there was no chance that they would mend; the steam mill would every month take more and more. Santa Rosalia did as bigger societies have done a million times, and followed self‐interest and the breeze of the hour.
The father and son felt this bitterly; both had fancied it would have been otherwise, for they were simple enough to expect that, as the whole village hated the oppressor rusticorum, the whole village would have courage to show their hatred; neither of them had great knowledge of human nature, and both had simple and trustful characters.
‘Who could have thought all our folks would be so mean?’ muttered Pastorini.
‘They are taught to be mean,’ said his son. ‘They are ruled by a spy and a sergeant of police. What would you? All the fault is with the government.’
Pastorini sighed; he was thinking of all his dead brother had fought for; he did not understand politics, but it seemed hard.
Carmelo had his elbows on the table, and his face was resting on his hands. The yellow light of bad oil, the dregs of the oil jar, flickered on his hair and on the papers before him. It was midnight; Viola was upstairs; the moon shone in through the kitchen lattice.
‘Father,’ he said abruptly, ‘it is no use my staying here; I cannot help you; I only do you harm. Alone, when Dina is married, there will be enough perhaps for you, and Cesarellino and the girls; and the others, when they are grown up, will do for themselves after they have gone through the hell which they call soldiering. Father — never did I think to do it, but I see now that I must. I will go away, and try and work elsewhere, and my girl will go with me, and perhaps the old man, for he will lose his mind where he is—’
‘Go away? You? The eldest son?’
Demetrio Pastorini grew ashen white, and his breath came shortly; never in all the course of the centuries had the eldest son gone from the mill.
‘It will be best so,’ said Carmelo, sadly; ‘there is not enough for us all. There is ruin here, he added, striking his fist on the book. ‘Unburdened, may be you may pull through it. As for me, I am strong, I can do anything in the way of work.’