by Ouida
“Their Honours be damned!” said Adone. “Go to the house.”
The little old man, sorely frightened, dropped his head, and pulling his donkey by its bridle went away along the grass path under the vines.
Adone went on delving, but his strong hands shook with rage and emotion as they grasped the handle of the spade. He knew as well as if he had been told by a hundred people that he was called to treat of the sale of the Terra Vergine. He forced himself to go on with his forenoon’s labour, but the dear familiar earth swam and spun before his sight.
“What?” he muttered to it, “I who love you am not your owner? I who was born on you am not your lawful heir? I who have laboured on you ever since I was old enough to use a tool at all am now in my manhood to give you up to strangers? I will make you run red with blood first!”
It wanted then two hours of noon. When twelve strokes sounded from across the river, tolled slowly by the old bronze bell of the church tower, he went for the noonday meal and rest to the house.
The old man was not longer there, but Clelia Alba said to him —
“Dario says they summon you to Dan Beda, and that you will not go?”
“He said right.”
“But, my son,” cried his mother, “go you must! These orders are not to be shirked. Those who give them have the law behind them. You know that.”
“They have the villainy of the law behind them: the only portion of the law the people ever suffered to see.”
“But how can you know what it is about if you do not go?”
“There is only one thing which it can be. One thing that I will not hear.”
“You mean for the river — for the land?”
“What else?”
Her face grew as stern as his own. “If that be so... Still you should go, my son; you should go to hold your own.”
“I will hold my own,” said Adone; and in his thoughts he added, “but not by words.”
“What is the day of the month for which they call you?” asked his mother.
“The date is passed by three days. That is a little feat which authority often plays upon the people.”
They went within. The meal was eaten in silence; the nut-brown eyes of Nerina looked wistfully in their faces, but she asked nothing; she guessed enough.
Adone said nothing to Don Silverio of the summons, for he knew that the priest would counsel strongly his attendance in person at San Beda, even though the date was already passed.
But the Vicar had heard of it from the postman, who confided to him the fears he felt that Adone would neglect the summons, and so get into trouble. He perceived at once the error which would be committed if any sentence should be allowed to go by default through absence of the person cited.. By such absence the absentee discredits himself; whatsoever may be the justice of his cause, it is prejudiced at the outset. But how to persuade of this truth a man so blind with pain and rage and so dogged in self-will as Adone had become, Don Silverio did not see. He shrank from renewing useless struggles and disputes which led to no issue. He felt that Adone and he would only drift farther and farther apart with every word they spoke.
The young man viewed this thing through a red mist of hatred and headstrong fury; it was impossible for his elder to admit that such views were wise or pardonable, or due to anything more than the heated visions evoked by a great wrong.
That evening at sunset he saw the little girl Nerina at the river. She had led the cows to the water, and they and she were standing knee deep in the stream. The western light shone on their soft, mottled, dun hides and on her ruddy brown hair and bright young face. The bearded bulrushes were round them; the light played on the broad leaves of the docks and the red spikes of great beds of willow-herb; the water reflected the glowing sky, and close to its surface numbers of newly-come swallows whirled and dipped and darted, chasing gnats, whilst near at hand on a spray a little woodlark sang.
The scene was fair, peaceful, full of placid and tender loveliness.
“And all this is to be changed and ruined in order that some sons of the mammon of unrighteousness may set up their mills to grind their gold,” he thought to himself as he passed over the stepping-stones, which at this shallow place could be crossed dryfoot.
“Where is Adone?” he called to the child.
“He is gone down the river in the punt, most reverend.”
“And his mother?”
“Is at the house, sir.”
Don Silvero went through the pastures under the great olives. When he reached the path leading to the house he saw Clelia Alba seated before the doorway spinning. The rose-tree displayed its first crimson buds above her head; on the roof sparrows and starlings were busy.
Clelia Alba rose and dropped a low courtesy to him, then resumed her work at the wheel.
“You have heard, sir?” she said in a low tone. “They summons him to San Beda.”
“Old Dario told me; but Adone will not go?”
“No sir; he will never go.”
“He is in error.”
“I do not know sir. He is best judge of that.”
“I fear he is in no state of mind to judge calmly of anything. His absence will go against him. Instead of an amicable settlement the question will go to the tribunals, and if he be unrepresented there he will be condemned in contumacium.”
“Amicable settlement?” repeated his mother, her fine face animated and stern, and her deep dark eyes flashing. “Can you, sir, dare you, sir, name such a thing? What they would do is robbery, vile robbery, a thousand times worse than aught the men of night ever did when they came down from the hills to harass our homesteads.”
“I do not say this otherwise; but the law is with those who harass you now. We cannot alter the times, good Clelia; we must take them as they are. Your son should go to San Beda and urge his rights, not with violence but with firmness and lucidity; he should also provide himself with an advocate, or he will be driven out of his home by sheer force, and with some miserable sum as compensation.”
Clelia Alba’s brown skin grew ashen grey, and its heavy lines deepened.
“You mean... that is possible?”
“It is more than possible. It is certain. These things always end so. My poor dear friend! do you not understand, even yet, that nothing can save your homestead?”
Clelia Alba leaned her elbows on her knees and bowed her face upon her hands. She felt as women of her race had felt on some fair morn when they had seen the skies redden with baleful fires, and the glitter of steel corslets shine under the foliage, and had heard the ripe corn crackle under the horses’ hoofs, and had heard the shrieking children scream, “The lances are coming, mother! Mother! save us!”
Those women had had no power to save homestead or child; they had seen the pikes twist in the curling locks, and the daggers thrust in the white young throats, and the flames soar to heaven, burning rooftree and clearing stackyard, and they had possessed no power to stay the steel or quench the torch. She was like them.
She lifted her face up to the light.
“He will kill them.”
“He may kill one man — two men — he will have blood on his hands. What will that serve? I have told you again and again. This thing is inevitable — frightful, but inevitable, like war. In war do not millions of innocent and helpless creatures suffer through no fault of their own, no cause of their own, on account of some king’s caprice or statesman’s blunder? You are just such victims here. Nothing will preserve to you the Terra Vergine. My dear old friend, have courage.”
“I cannot believe it, sir; I cannot credit it. The land is ours; this little bit of the good and solid earth is ours; God will not let us be robbed of it.”
“My friend! no miracles are wrought now. I have told you again and again and again you must lose this place.”
“I will not believe it!”
“Alas! I pray hat you may not be forced to believe; but I know that I pray in vain. Tell me, you are certain that Adone
will not answer that summons?”
“I am certain.”
“He is mad.”
“No, sir he is not mad. No more than I, his mother. We have faith in Heaven.”
Don Silverio was silent. It was not for him to tell them that such faith was a feeble staff.
“I must not tarry,” he said, and rose. “The night is near at hand. Tell your son what I have said. My dear friend, I would almost as soon stab you in the throat as say these things to you; but as you value your son’s sanity and safety make him realise this fact, which you and he deny: the law will take your home from you, as it will take the river from the province.”
“No, sir!” said Clelia Alba fiercely. “No, no, no! There is a God above us!”
Don Silverio bade her sadly farewell, and insisted no more. He went through the odorous grasslands, where the primrose and wild hyacinth grew so thickly and the olive branches were already laden with small green berries, and his soul was uneasy, seeing how closed is the mind of the peasant to argument or to persuasion. Often had he seen a poor beetle pushing its ball of dirt up the side of a sandhill only to fall back, and begin again, and again fall; for any truth to endeavour to penetrate the brain of the rustic is as hard as for the beetle to climb the sand. He was disinclined to seek the discomfiture of another useless argument, but neither could he be content in his conscience to let this matter wholly alone.
Long and dreary as the journey was to San Beda, he undertook it again, saying nothing to any one of his purpose. He hoped to be able to put Adone’s contumacy in a pardonable light before the Syndic, and perhaps to plea his cause better than the boy could plead it for himself. To Don Silverio he always seemed a boy still, and therefore excusable in all his violence and extravagances.
The day was fine and cool, and walking was easier and less exhausting than it had been at the season of his first visit; moreover, his journey to Rome had braced his nerves and sinews to exertion, and restored to him the energy and self-possession which the long, tedious, monotonous years of solitude in Ruscino had weakened. There was a buoyant wind coming from the sea with rain in its track, and a deep blue sky with grand clouds drifting past the ultramarine hues of the Abruzzo range. The bare brown rocks grew dark as bronze, and the forest-clothed hills were almost black in the shadows, as the clustered towers and roofs of the little city came in sight. He went, fatigued as he was, straight to the old ducal palace, which was now used as the municipality, without even shaking the dust off his feet.
“Say that I come for the affair of Adone Alba,” he said to the first persons he saw in the ante-room on the first floor. In the little ecclesiastical town his calling commanded respect. They begged him to sit own and rest, and in a few minutes returned to say that the most illustrious the Count Corradini would receive him at once in his private room; it was a day of general council, but the council would not meet for an hour. The Syndic was a tall, spare, frail man, with a patrician’s face and an affable manner. He expressed himself in courteous terms as flattered by the visit of the Vicar Ruscino, and inquired if in any way he could be of the slightest service.
“Of the very greatest, your Excellency,” said Don Silverio. “I have ventured to come hither on behalf of a young parishioner of mine, Adone Alba, who, having received the summons of your Excellency only yesterday, may, I trust, be excused for not having obeyed it on the date named. He is unable to come to-day. May I offer myself for his substitute as amicus curie!”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Corradini, relieved to meet an educated man instead of the boor he had expected. “If the summons were delayed by any fault of my officials, the delay must be inquired into. Meanwhile, most reverend, have you instructions to conclude the affair?”
“As yet, I venture to remind your Excellency, we do not even know what is the affair of which you speak.”
“Oh no; quite true. The matter is the sale of the land known under the title of the Terra Vergine.”
“Thank Heaven I am here, and not Adone,” thought Don Silverio.
Aloud he answered, “What sale? The proprietor has heard of none.”
“He must have heard. It can be no news to you that the works about to be made upon the river Edera will necessitate the purchase of the land known as the Terra Vergine.”
Here the Syndic put on gold spectacles, drew towards him a black portfolio filled by plans and papers, and began to move them about, muttering, as he searched, little scraps of phrases out of each of them. At last he turned over the sheets which concerned the land of the Alba.
“Terra Vergine — Commune of Ruscino — owners Alba from 1620 — family of good report — regular taxpayers — sixty hectares — land productive; value — just so — humph, humph, humph!”
Then he laid down the documents and looked at Don Silverio from over his spectacles.
“I conclude, most reverend, that you come empowered by this young man to treat with us?”
“I venture, sir,” replied Don Silverio respectfully, “to remind you again that it is impossible I should be so empowered, since Adone Alba was ignorant of the reason for which he was summoned here.”
Corradini shuffled his documents nervously with some irritation.
“This conference, then, is a mere waste of time? I hold council to-day—”
“Pardon me, your Excellency,” said Don Silverio blandly. “It will not be a waste of time if you will allow me to lay before you certain facts, and, first, to ask you one question: Who is, or are, the buyer or buyers of this land?”
The question was evidently unwelcome to the Syndic; it was direct, which every Italian considers ill-bred, and it was awkward to answer. He was troubled for personal reasons, and the calm and searching gaze of the priest’s dark eyes embarrassed him. After all, he thought, it would have been better to deal with the boor himself.
“Why do you ask that?” he said irritably. “You are aware that the National Society for the Improvement of Land and the foreign company of the Teramo-Tronto Electric Railway combine in these projected works?”
“To which of these two societies, then, is Adone Alba, or am I, as his locum tenens, to address ourselves?”
“To neither. This commune deals with you.”
“Why?”
Count Corradini took off his glasses, put them on again, shifted the papers and plans in his imposing portfolio.
“May I ask again — why?” said Don Silverio in the gentlest tones of his beautiful voice.
“Because, because,” answered the Syndic irritably, “because the whole affair is in treaty between our delegates and the companies. Public societies do not deal with private individuals directly, but by proxy.”
“Pardon my ignorance,” said Don Silverio, “but why does the commune desire to substitute itself for the owner?”
“It is usual.”
“Ah! It is usual.”
Corradini did not like the repetition of his phrase, which would not perhaps bear very close examination. He looked at his watch.
“Excuse me, Reverend Father, but time presses.”
“Allow me to crave of your bounty a little more time, nevertheless. I am not habituated to business, but I believe, if I understand your worshipful self aright, the commune contemplates purchasing from the individuals, with power and intent to sell to the companies.”
What an unmannerly ecclesiastic! thought Corradini; for indeed, put thus bluntly and crudely what the commune, as represented by himself, was doing did not look as entirely correct as could be desired.
“I was in Rome, most illustrious,” said Don Silverio, “in connection with this matter some months ago?”
“In Rome?”
To hear this was unpleasant to the Syndic; it ha never occurred to him that his rural, illiterate, and sparsely populated district would have contained any person educated enough to think of inquiring in Rome about this local matter.
“To Rome! Why did you go to Rome?”
“To acquire information concerning this s
cheme.”
“You are an owner of land?”
“No, sir. I am a poor, very poor, priest.”
“It cannot concern you, then.”
“It concerns my people. Nothing which concerns them is alien to me.”
“Humph, humph! Most proper, most praiseworthy. But we have no time for generalities. You came to treat of the Terra Vergine?”
“Pardon me, sir; I came to hear why you summoned Adone Alba, one of my flock.”
“Could he not have come himself? It had been but his duty.”
“He could not, sir; and, to say truth, he would not. He does not intend to sell his land.”
“What!”
Corradini half rose from his chair, leaning both hands on the table, and staring though his glasses across the mass of portfolios and papers at the priest.
“He will have no choice allowed him,” he said with great anger. “To the interests of the State all minor interests must bend. What! a mere peasant stand in the way of a great enterprise?”
“You intend expropriation then?”
The voice of Don Silverio was very calm and sweet, but his countenance was stern.
Corradini was irritated beyond measure. He did not desire to play that great card so early in the game.
“I do not say that,” he muttered. “There must be parliamentary sanction for any forced sale. I spoke in general terms. Private interest must cede to public”
“There is parliamentary sanction already given to the project for the Valley of Edera,” said Don Silverio, “expropriation included.”
Count Corradini threw himself back in his chair with an action expressive at once of wrath and of impotence. He had an irritating sense that this priest was master of the position, and knew much more than he said. In reality Don Silverio knew very little, but he had skill and tact enough to give a contrary impression to his auditor. He followed up his advantage.
“Expropriation is to be permitted to enforce sales on recalcitrant landowners,” he continued. “But that measure, even though conceded in theory, will take time to translate into practice. I fear, sir, that if it be ever put into execution we shall have trouble in your commune. Your council has been over hasty in allying itself with these speculators. You and they have not taken into account the immense injury which will be done to the valley and to my own village or town, call it as you will, of Ruscino. The people are quiet, patient, meek, but they will not be so if they are robbed of the water of the Edera. It is the source of all the little — the very little — good which comes to them. So it is with Adone Alba. He has been God-fearing, law-abiding, a good son, excellent in all relations; but he will not recognise as law the seizure of his land. Sir, you are the elected chief of this district; all these people look to you for support in their emergency. What are these foreign speculators to you that you should side with them? You say this commune will purchase from its peasant proprietors in the interests of these foreigners. Was it to do this that they elected you? Why should the interests of the foreigners be upheld by you to the injury of those of your own people? Speaking for my own parish, I can affirm to you that, simple souls as they are, poor in the extreme, and resigned to poverty, you will have trouble with them all if you take it on you to enforce the usurpation of the Edera water.”