by Ouida
Prisca knew enough of death to know that the dead could not be hurt by solitude or neglect; but still she could not bear the thought of leaving that corpse all by itself in the lonely hut, with the torpid flies creeping at will over it, and the dull grey and black hues of corruption stealing farther and farther upon it. But she was hungry, and Petronilla was more hungry still, and there was nothing in the hut — not a crust, not a crumb.
“We must go,” she said; and she took the osier baskets, and the knives, and gave one of each to her sister. She looked back at their mother as she lay on the bed of leaves; some idea that she must be put in the earth, somehow, somewhere, crossed her mind, but it was vague, indefinite, she did not pursue the thought. No one would touch the body until they returned, for none knew that the hut was inhabited. No one had ever been there, except those huntsmen; and, sometimes, black against the light, the distant form of a shepherd or a mounted buffalo driver.
“Come,” she said to Petronilla; “if we wait, the sun will fade the flowers.”
It was earliest morning, and cold. The deep rose and crimson of a November sunrise glowed in the south-east. Heavy white dews soaked the grass. Far away on the hills church bells were ringing; they sounded sweet, faint, unearthly.
They noticed none of these things: their eyes were blind with tears as they closed the rickety wooden door of the hut.
“We must make haste,” said Prisca. “It is late.”
“It is late,” said Petronilla.
They knew all the places where flowers dwelt in the greatest numbers. The hut stood amongst thickets of oleanders and cistus, a little stream ran through it; the hellebores were already plentiful, both black and green; there were still some saffron-coloured dragon’s-mouth, some ox-eyed daisies, some pale rosy cyclamen along the mossy course of the spring. There were still also many fronds of maiden’s-hair and hart’s tongue. Perhaps the spot had been some great Roman’s garden twenty centuries earlier, for there were some bushes of autumn roses, still in flower, such roses as Horace gathered and loved.
They selected and cut the blooms with judgment, for they had been taught by their mother to do so, and not to waste or take more than they needed at one time; then they sorted them into little bunches, with a fringe of ferns to each, and tied them up with dry blades of the longest grass. That done, they arranged them in their baskets, and looked towards Rome.
“It is a long, long way,” said Prisca.
“A long way,” echoed Petronilla; her mouth quivered, her tears rolled down her thin brown cheeks. She was the younger: her mother and Prisca had always spared her as much as was possible, and filled her little stomach if their own had gone empty.
“It is a long way, but we must go,” said Prisca, and she turned and looked wistfully at the hut beyond the oleander and cistus thicket.
Her heart was heavy, and her fears were great. The plain before her looked so wide, the city seemed so far distant. It hurt her, too, so much to leave that poor corpse there all alone. If a fox or a wild hog should break in and gnaw it? A wolf, too, might come down from the hills; she had never seen one, but her mother had, once, as she had returned home in a snowstorm.
But there is no help for it, she said to herself; hunger was gnawing her like a hundred wolves, and her mother would have told her to get food for Petronilla before all things; so she set her face towards Rome, taking the child’s hand in hers; their naked feet were blue and half frozen as they trod on the turf so cold and drenched with its frosty dews.
But they had both of them known only hardship from their birth, and were used to the extremes alike of heat and of cold, and every mile they covered brought the sun higher above the mountains, and diminished the pinching chill of the air, although snow was lying deep on the summits of the Sabines.
Once, when they passed by a flock of sheep which was beginning to graze, one of the shepherds, who had left children of his own under the clouds on the breast of Soracte, gave them some skim milk and bread, and let them warm themselves by a fire he had made on a slab of nenfro, from broken boughs and dead reeds and rushes.
“You are taking these weeds into Rome,” he said to them. “You may get into trouble. In the old time we sold anything we chose; anything we found; coins, stones, chips of carvings, skins, whatever we liked. But nowadays, — one of my boys went yonder with a pair of our buffalo horns, and he was taken up for hawking without a licence in the streets. Take care they do not pull you up for your little flowers.”
But Prisca did not understand what he meant.
“Mother always sold them,” she said.
“And where is your mother now?” asked the shepherd.
“She is dead in the hut,” said Prisca.
“Poor soul!” said the shepherd.
They dared not stay long in the pleasant heat from the blazing boughs, for it was already nearly noon. They measured the time by the sun. They went on their way, bolder, and less wretched, now that their hunger was appeased and the air less biting in its cold.
In another hour and a half they had passed the Nomentano bridge, and were at the Porta Pia, where the guards were so busy with the traffic that the children slipped through the bustle and pressure unseen, and entered the city without being questioned.
They had not been there very often with their mother, not often enough to know the streets well; and the rush of the pedallists and the automobilists, the whizz and shriek of the electric trams, the shouts of the vendors of newspapers and programmes, the many vile, ear-splitting sounds which rage in every city, where the bark of a dog or the shout of children at play is thought terrible, frightened them, for they had no longer their mother’s skirt to cling to, and their mother’s voice to reassure them with its smiling chiding of their cowardice, “Vieni vieni! C’e niente!”
“She would never speak any more!” thought Prisca; and she saw the colours and movement of the streets through heavy tears, ever renewing as she brushed them from her lashes.
She would never speak any more. Oh, cruel problem of arrested life, too hard for such young scholars, too brutal for even those who are aged in life’s study!
They had entered Rome by the Porta Pia, walking onward by instinct rather than by sight. They had passed through the modern quarter of Macao, with its wretched imitations of South Kensington and Bayswater, and had wandered towards the centre of the city and the Corso. The sky was cloudy; there was fog, due to the factories and railways, in the city, and an icy, drizzling rain had fallen an hour earlier, so that the granite flags were moist and muddy, and horses slipped and fell under men’s lashes and curses.
They were two poor little tatter-demalions with their petticoats up to their knees, and their thick auburn hair curling rough and tangled over their shoulders, and their bare wet feet, growing colder on the stones of the pavement than on the frosty grass of the Campagna. But they were not conscious of their own unlikeness to the people around them; they had been too used to misery to feel any strangeness in it. Nor did the city daunt them in any way; their minds were too empty for comparison, too innocent for envy. The noise alone intimidated and bewildered them; at their hut, under the tufa blocks and the oleander shrubs, there had been no noise, except the ripple of the water spring, and the cries of birds and of field mice.
Petronilla wanted to look at the wonderful shops, so full of glitter and riches; she had already forgotten her mother; she was still sorely frightened; but the magical colour and glitter of the long, narrow, rich, thronged street fascinated her.
“O bello!” she murmured at every step, “O bello!”
Prisca dragged her angrily onward.
“We shall never get back to-night,” she said in anguish, for to leave her mother alone all the night was more appalling to her than were any terrors or needs for herself.
As yet they had sold nothing; had not even had the courage to arrest and accost even one of these people so different to themselves, so wholly unlike the poor shepherds and peasants, who were all they had
ever seen. Their mother had always stopped, and lifted up her basket, and said some imploring words whenever she had seen a person who had a kind face, or a carriage with children in it, stopping before a shop door. But, without her, Prisca felt as if she should never have the courage to ask for a centiéme; the great rush and babble and pressure of the long street bewildered her. Yet, if they sold nothing, what use was it to have come there?
What would they have to take back with them to keep them for a few days?
She, who was sensible of the danger in which they now were, of dying of hunger, pressed Petronilla close to her, clutching the child’s arm, and dragged her towards a shop filled with flowers, such flowers as she had never seen; orchids, scarlet and gold and white, roses of every hue and size, snowy sceptres of tube-roses, and all the forced blossoms of hot-house and palm-house, with lotus and lilies, and small fountains playing over beds of moss.
“Would you buy them?” she said, timidly, and she uncovered her basket.
One of the men in the shop pushed her out on to the pavement.
“Do not come here with your dead weeds, dirtying and dripping on our floor,” he said, angrily. What were the humble, wild things to him, either the children or the flowers?
Were the wild flowers dead? wondered Prisca: she looked at them in fear. They were faded, for the sun had been strong on the Campagna, and here in the streets it was cold and dark, and she had forgotten to cover them. The grief on her face as she saw this and stumbled out from the florist’s doorway, was so extreme and pitiful that a lady, descending from a carriage, was touched by it.
“Poor little girls!” she said softly, and she opened her purse and gave Prisca a franc, and then entered the flower-shops without looking longer at them. The eyes of both the children glowed with wonder and rapture; they knew the worth of money from its appearance, and a franc to them was wealth!
“Begging?” said a rough voice in their rear, and a hard hand clutched hold of Prisca’s shoulder, whilst the fingers of another hand snatched the little paper note. Two communal guards were passing down the Corso.
“I did not beg, she gave it me!” screamed Prisca; and instinctively she clasped her sister in her arms, and the basket rolled down on the pavement.
“You have no licence!” said the guard, holding her tight. They did not even know what he meant.
“Take them to the Questura,” said the elder guard. “They are little filthy brats. I saw them yesterday on the Pincio, importuning strangers.”
“Mother died yesterday!” shrieked Prisca. “We were with her. Give me the money. I will go back — —”
But the guards did not even listen to her, and the lady, who might perhaps have interfered and rescued them, did not notice the scene; she was busied in ordering the floral decorations for a ball which she was about to give. Several persons passing at the time saw, and were sorry, as they felt when they saw a dog snared by the dog snatchers, but no one of them dared to intervene; to stop the police in their holy missions is apt to bring the rash and meddlesome citizen who does so into equal misery with those he pities.
Their capture was the work of a moment, and their hands were tied, and their helpless bodies were pushed and kicked into, a bye-street.
“Mother! mother! mother!” they screamed together, as though the poor discoloured body lying on its bed of leaves could hear and rise.
An aged priest, with white hair and a thin frayed cossack, coming out of a doorway, asked shyly and with hesitation what they had done.
“Begging, and annoying carriage people,” said their captor, shortly and sullenly.
“They are very young and very poor,” said the old priest wistfully.
“Your reverence had better not get into trouble,” said the guard with significance, and he pushed the children on before him. “The streets must be cleared of these vermin,” he added, arrogantly. “Our orders are positive.”
As he spoke he struck the children on their shoulders with the flat of his scabbard, partly to show his contempt for the Church, partly to show the public the omnipotence of the police. The blows resounded harshly on their fleshless bones, and their screams woke the echoes of the bye street; but, although various faces showed themselves at the windows and doors of the poor houses of the alley, no one ventured openly to resist.
Ever and again a municipal guard is found, stabbed to the heart in a deserted lane; a carabineer is discovered, shot dead in a wood or a park; or the drowned body of one of the Questura is seen amongst the osiers of a swollen river, which has thrown it up with other flotsam and jetsam after an autumn or winter storm. That is the only vengeance open to the people for a lifelong tyranny. Is the blame theirs if they take it?
Prisca and Petronilla, under the grip of the guard’s hand, and the dread of his scabbard’s blows, stumbled along blindly, holding their breath, ceasing their shrieks, knowing no more whither they went, or what would be their fate, than a poor puppy knows of his destiny when he is hauled along by a cord round his neck. Rain began to fall, and wetted their uncovered heads, and made their ragged clothing cling to them damp and cold. The guard swore at them because the rain-drops soaked through his collar and tickled his throat, and he pushed them onward in greater haste until they reached the police-station; and there, without more explanation or any compassion, they were thrown into the lock-up where such offenders are consigned: harmless old vagrants, and young children, pell mell with thieves and felons of all kinds, cast down much as the dust of the streets is shot by scavengers on to a refuse-heap.
They were wet through, and trembled from head to foot, but they were dumb from sheer terror; no one noticed them; they were left in a corner on the flags, fierce, unknown faces, and haggard, repulsive figures around them.
Petronilla crept into her sister’s arms, and thus, with their hair tangled together, and their heads against the wall, they remained, scarcely daring to breathe, never daring to speak, even to one another.
The thoughts of Prisca, so far as she thought at all, were of the dead body lying all alone in the hut.
Petronilla could not think at all; her senses were all stupefied with fear. She clung to her elder by instinct alone: Prisca had always put her first, and saved her from all harm.
They were left in their corner undisturbed, but unsuccoured. There were many sounds around them, and from the corridor behind the cell; tramp of feet, clink of handcuffs, loud voices which commanded, stifled voices which cursed and protested; noises, too, from the street without, of traffic and cries, and now and then the shriek of a dog being lassoed, or the crash of a horse falling on the stones.
At various times the guards entered; one by one, most of those arrested were led out; the day passed; the night fell. There was no light except a glimmer from a gas jet in the passage beyond, which came through a square unglazed grating into the cell. Three persons alone remained there beside the children: one a very old woman taken up for begging, the second a youth who had been hawking wares without a licence, and the third a pickpocket. The old woman told her beads and muttered over them incessantly; the youth sobbed and swore; and cursed the parents who had given him birth, and the hawker who had tricked him into buying the wares; the pickpocket swore himself off to sleep, being familiar with his situation, and knowing that either resistance or repining was useless. No one spoke to the children, who, indeed, looked no more than a bundle of rags huddled up in their dark corner.
Once the youth got up and awakened the pickpocket, arousing a volley of dreadful oaths.
“Shall we be here all night?” he asked tremulously.
“Certain sure,” said the thief.
“With nothing to eat?”
The thief turned on his side, and resumed his slumbers, not answering so foolish a question
Prisca, whose ears had caught the word “eat,” listened where she lay in the torpor of her terror; if only she could get some bread for her sister! But when silence alone answered the youth’s question, she understood. There wa
s no hope of any food that night.
“Oh, mother, dear mother!” she wailed aloud. She could not believe that their mother could be deaf to their prayers. Her body was dead and cold — yes — but she must be somewhere.
The old woman looked towards the corner where the children lay, and stopped her aves for a moment; then shook her head and went on again, telling her beads She had enough to do to think of herself. She had a sick son, and seven grandchildren, at home in her cellar; they were all waiting for her, and for what they would expect her to take home to them. She could not busy her brains with others, though a meagre pang of fellow feeling ran through her slow veins for a moment. If she had had anything to give the children in the corner, yonder, she would have given it, but she had nothing.
The night grew darker; at times a key grated in the lock, and the bolts were pushed back, and guards entered, again and again, and held up over them a petroleum lamp to make sure that those detained were there. Their visit made, they withdrew, leaving the blackness of night behind them. There was not even a glimmer of the gas jet in the corridor, for that light had been put out early.
As the hours went on the youth sobbed himself to sleep, the pickpocket snored, the old woman ceased to mutter her prayers, and fell asleep with her head upon her breast; the children could not sleep; their clothes had dried on them, stiff and miserable; their bones ached in every joint; fever had come upon them, with its chills, its heats, its tremors, its aching throats; they thought they were only hungry and unhappy, but they were very ill. The time passed for them in a dull, stupid suffering, varied by paroxysms in which they screamed aloud. In one of these the pickpocket flung one of his boots at them, with a curse, through the dark, and then the other. The latter struck Prisca on the head. The old woman, awaking dimly to what was passing, thought she was at home in her cellar: “Don’t hit the babes, Beppo,” she murmured drowsily, believing that she spoke to her son.