Chapter III: Part I: I (3)

The company which used to meet at the mill now assembled in the courtyard; Uncle Pera with his cudgel, Efès and Nanna generally drunk, the handsome shoemaker, Bustianeddu and his father, as well as other persons from the neighbourhood. Maestro Pane had set up a workshop in a cellar opposite the courtyard. All day long was a coming and going of people, who laughed, talked, quarrelled, and swore.

Little Anania spent his days among these folk; from them he learned rude words and actions, and they accustomed him to the sight of drunkenness, and careless misery. In another smoke-blackened and cobwebby cellar beside Maestro Pane's workship, a poor, sick girl was withering. Years ago her father had gone away to work in an African mine, and he had never been heard of again. The girl, Rebecca, lived alone, diseased and abandoned, in her squalid den, swarming with flies and other insects. A little further on lived a widow, whose five children were supported by begging. Maestro Pane sometimes begged himself. But one and all they were merry. The five beggar children never stopped laughing. Maestro Pane talked to himself and related long pleasant tales of the jolly days when he was young. Only in the long luminous afternoons, when the streets were silent and the wasps buzzed over the elder flowers, inducing sleep to the little Anania stretched at the threshold, then in the hot stillness could be heard the sharp cry of Rebecca. It rose, it grew, it broke off; it recommenced, it hurled itself on high, it dashed itself to earth. It seemed, so to speak, to pierce the silence with a shower of sibilant arrows. In this cry was all the grief, all the evil, the poverty, the forlornness, the unseen wretchedness of the place and its dwellers; it was the voice even of things, the lament of the stones which dropped one by one from the blackened walls of the prehistoric houses, of the crumbling roof, of the broken stairs and worm-eaten balconies which menaced ruin; of the spurge which grew on the pathway, of the wild olive which shadowed the walls, of the children who had no food, of the women who had no clothes, of the men who drank to stupefy themselves, and beat their wives and their children and their beasts because they could not strike at their destiny; it was the voice of all sickness uncured, of all the misery ineluctably accepted like life itself. But who heeded?

Little Anania, stretched across the threshold flapping away the flies and the wasps with a branch of elder, thought sleepily--

"Whew! Why is that girl screaming? What makes her scream? Why are there any sick people in the world?"

He himself had grown plump, fattened by the abundant food, by idleness, by sleep. He slept a great deal. In the silent afternoons not even Rebecca's cry kept him awake. He slept, the branch of elder in his hand, flies settling on his face. He slept, and he dreamed he was there, far away, in the house of the widow, in the kitchen watched by the long black cloak which was like a gibbeted phantom. But Olì his mother was no longer there. She had fled far away, far away to an unknown land. And a monk had come out of the convent and was teaching the little lonely one to read. He wanted to learn, to learn things that he might be wise and able to journey to find his mother. The monk talked and talked but Anania could not hear him, because from the long black cloak came an acute, a lacerating, deafening lament! Ah God! he was afraid! It was the voice of the ghost of the dead bandit.

And, besides the fear of the ghost, Anania was troubled by a strange feeling round his nose. That was the flies!

[Footnote 10: Large enclosed pastures.]

[Footnote 11: An insulting nickname equivalent to "witch."]

V

At last came part fulfilment of his dream. One October morning he got up very early, Aunt Tatàna washed him and brushed him, and dressed him in his best suit, that one of yellow fustian which was as stiff as the skin of the devil. Big Anania was at breakfast, eating roast liver. When he saw his boy dressed for school, he laughed with satisfaction, and said, threatening with his finger--

"Ho! ho! If you aren't a good boy. I'll send you to Maestro Pane to make coffins."

Bustianeddu came for Anania and somewhat contemptuously took him under his wing. It was a splendid morning. The fresh breeze carried pleasant odours of new made wine, of coffee, of refuse grape-skins. Hens clucked in the street. Peasants came in from the country their long carts decked with vine branches, attended by frisking and noisy dogs.

Anania was happy, though his companion reviled the school and the schoolmaster and the teachers.

"Yours is like a cock," he said, "he has a red cap and a great hoarse voice. I had to put up with him for a year. May the devil bite his heels!"

The school was at the far side of Nuoro, in a convent surrounded by dreary gardens. Anania's class-room was on the ground floor, its windows facing the deserted street. The walls were flecked with dust; the master's desk had been gnawed by rats; the benches were adorned with spots of ink, with carvings, with names scribbled like hieroglyphics.

Anania felt defrauded when instead of the master like a cock he saw a mistress, dressed in the costume of the place, a pale, small woman with a little moustache just like Aunt Tatàna's.

Forty idle children made the room lively. Anania was the tallest of them all. Perhaps for this reason the little mistress turned oftenest to him. Besides the moustache she had two terrible, fierce, dark eyes, and she addressed Anania by his surname, speaking partly in Italian, partly in Sardinian. He was honoured by her persistent attention, though he found it a little tedious. At the end of three hours he was actually able to read and to write two letters. One of them was a mere round O, but that did not detract from the importance of his attainment. At eleven o'clock he was dead sick of the school and the mistress and his stiff, smart clothes. He thought longingly of the courtyard, the elder tree, the basket of fruit into which he was in the habit of thrusting predatory fingers. He yawned. Was the going away hour never coming? Many of the children were in tears, and the mistress wasted her breath preaching about order and the love of lessons.

At last the door burst open. The school officer--also dressed in costume--showed his shaven face for a single instant and shouted, "Time!" The children made one simultaneous rush to the door, tumbling over each other and shouting. Anania was left to the last, and the mistress began to pat his head with her scraggy fingers.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Bravo! Remember me to your mother."

That, of course, referred to Aunt Tatàna. He suddenly felt quite fond of his teacher, who now hurried after the rest of the noisy children.

"What style of going out is that?" she cried, capturing as many as she could. "Come now! Two and two! In a proper line!"

She placed them in order, and they filed down the corridor through the door, out into the street. There they were set free and they scattered like birds escaped from a net, screaming and jumping. Older and more serious scholars issued from the other class-rooms, all in their rows. Bustianeddu fell upon Anania, slamming his copy books on the child's head and seizing his arm.

"Did you like it?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Anania, "but I'm so awfully hungry. I thought it was never going to stop."

"Did you imagine it would only last a minute?" said the other in his superior voice. "Just you wait a bit. You'll know something of hunger in a little while! Look! there's Margherita Carboni!"

The little girl with the violet stockings, the rosy handkerchief, the green woollen sleeves, appeared among the female pupils, who were dismissed after the boys. She passed in front of Anania and Bustianeddu without noticing them, followed by other girls, rich and poor, young ladies and peasants, some nearly grown up, and in training as coquettes. The older boys stopped to laugh with and admire them.

"They're spooning," said Bustianeddu, "if the master were to catch them----"

Anania did not answer. Boys and girls of that dignity seemed to him quite old enough for love-making.

"They even write to each other!" said Bustianeddu importantly.

"I suppose we shall do that when we're in the fourth form," said Anania simply.

"Oh, indeed, will you, Ninny? Better wash your face first," said Bustianeddu; then he pulled the little boy's hand and they ran.

After that day, followed many similar ones. Winter came back, the olive mill was reopened, the scenes of the previous year were re-enacted. Anania was top of his class. No one doubted that he was to be a doctor or a lawyer--possibly a judge. All knew that Signor Carboni had promised to assist his education. He knew it himself, but as yet had no idea of the worth of that promise. Gratitude began in him later. For the present he was overpowered by shyness augmented by delight whenever he encountered his florid and affable godfather. He was often invited to dinner at Signor Carboni's, but in the kitchen with the servants and the cats. This was no annoyance to him, as at table with the gentry he could not have opened his lips for pride and alarm.

After dinner Margherita used to come to the kitchen and entertain him. She asked questions about the people at the mill, then took him to the courtyard, to the granaries, to the cellar. She was delighted when, aping Bustianeddu's grand manner, he said, "Good Lord! What a lot of things you have!"

She never condescended to play with him, but Anania cared little for play. He was timid and grave; without understanding its significance he was already conscious of his position's irregularity.

Years rolled on.

After the mistress with the moustache came the master like a cock: then an old man, much addicted to snuff, who wept when he pointed to Spitzbergen and said, "Here Silvio Pellico was imprisoned." Then came a master with a round face, who was very pale and very lively, and who presently committed suicide. This lamentable event was morbidly impressive to the whole school, and for a long time the children neither spoke nor thought of anything else. Anania could not explain to himself why a man of such great cheerfulness should have cut his throat; but he declared before the whole school that he was ready to follow the example at the earliest opportunity. Fortunately the opportunity was lacking. At this time he had no sorrows. He was loved at home, he did well at school. His life unfolded evenly without change in its events, without change in the faces which surrounded him. One day was like another, one year was like another, resembling an interminable roll of stuff printed all over on the same pattern.

In winter the same people assembled round the olive press. In spring the elder flowered in the courtyard, the flies and the bees buzzed in the luminous air. The same figures moved in the streets. Uncle Barchitto, the madman, with his staring blue eyes, his long beard, and flowing hair, like a Jesus become old and a beggar, continued his harmless extravagances. Maestro Pane rapped on the table and talked to himself in a loud voice. Efès and Nanna reeled and stuttered. The ragged children played with the dogs, and the cats, and the chickens, and the baby pigs. The women squabbled. The young men sang melancholy love songs in the serene moonlit nights. Rebecca's lament shook the air like the cry of the cuckoo across the sadness of a barren landscape. As the sun sometimes shines out from an unexpected quarter of a cloudy sky, so the florid figure of Signor Carboni sometimes appeared in this district of dismal poverty. Then the women came to their doors smiling and saluting; the men who did no work, and passed their time stretched out indolently in the sunshine, sprang to their feet and blushed; the children ran after him and kissed his hand which he carried carelessly behind his back. In hard winters he gave _polenta_ (maize) and oil to the whole neighbourhood. People came to him for small loans which they never repaid. Everywhere in the dirty wind-swept lanes he met boys and girls who called him Godfather, and men and women whom he addressed as Gossip. He could not keep count of his god-children, and Uncle Pera declared that many called him Gossip merely to get his money.

"They all hope he'll educate their sons," said the old gardener, warming himself at the olive press furnace, his cudgel across his knees.

"Well, there's one he's going to educate," said the miller, looking proudly at Anania who was gazing out of the window.

"Not even one. The _padrone_ is vain, but he isn't going to ruin himself."

"Oh, shut up, you old grasshopper," said the miller; "you're just like the devil--the older you get the more disagreeable you are!"

"Why doesn't the _padrone_ educate his own bastards?" said the old man, hawking and coughing. Anania, who was looking out of the window felt a shudder run through him as if he had been struck.

The miller coughed in his turn and wished Anania would go away, but he could not restrain himself from reply.

"Dead, dirty, malignant rat!" he exclaimed, "how dare you speak of the master so?"

"Do you suppose it's not known?" said the old man taking up his cudgel as if to defend himself; "that boy who works for Franziscu Carchide--he's a son of Jesus Christ, is he? What I say is why doesn't the _padrone_ educate that boy?"

"He's the son of a priest," said the miller in a loud voice.

"He isn't. He's the _padrone_'s son. Look at him! He's the image of Margherita."

"Well," said the miller, defeated, "that boy's as bad as the devil. What's the good of educating him? You can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear."

"Have it your own way!" murmured Uncle Pera, relapsing into his cough.

Anania stood at the window beside the heap of husks, oppressed by mysterious sadness. He knew the boy at Carchide's; he was wild, but not more so than Bustianeddu and many of the schoolboys. Why did not Signor Carboni take him into his house and give him a home, as the olive miller had done for his son? Then he thought--

"Has that boy a mother, I wonder?"

Ah! the mother! the mother! As Anania grew and his mind opened, its ideas and perceptions taking form unobserved like the petals of a wild flower, so the thought of his mother became ever clearer in the haze of his new found conscience. He belonged now to the Fifth Elementary Form, and was associated with boys of every condition and of every character. He began to have knowledge of the science of good and evil. He was now intelligently ashamed if any one alluded to his mother, and remembered that he had always felt ashamed instinctively. Yet he was consumed by the desire to know where she was, to see her again, and reproach her with having deserted him. The unknown land, mysterious and far, to which she had fled, was taking to Anania's eyes clear outline and appearance, like that land discerned amid the mists of dawn to which the voyaging ship draws ever nearer. He studied geography with interest; and knew exactly how he should go from the island to that continent which concealed his mother. As once in the mountain village he had dreamed of the town where his father lived, so now he pondered upon the great cities described by his teachers and his books, and in one of them, and in all, he saw the figure of his mother. Her physical image, like an old photograph, was growing fainter and fainter in his memory; but he always thought of her as dressed in the Sardinian costume, barefoot, slender, and very sorrowful.

That year an event occurred which was deeply impressive to his imagination. This was the return of Bustianeddu's mother.

Anania was a pupil at the Gymnasium, secretly enamoured of Margherita Carboni, and believing himself quite grown up. The woman's reappearance moved the whole neighbourhood, and Anania wondered over it by day and by night. Ostensibly, however, he took no interest in the event.

Some time passed before he saw the woman who had hidden herself in the house of a relative. Bustianeddu, however, who had become grave and astute beyond his years, spoke frequently of her to Anania.

Uncle Pera was growing old and the olive-miller assisted him in the cultivation of his beans and teazles. Anania had free ingress to the garden, and often carried his books to a grassy bank beside the streamlet, whence under the shadow of the prickly pears he could see the wild panorama of mountains and valleys. Here Bustianeddu would find him when he wanted to pour out his confidences. Bustianeddu spoke sceptically and coldly, unaware of the tumults of emotion working in the soul of his friend.

"It would have been better for her to stay away," said Bustianeddu, lying on his face, his legs in the air. "My father was ready to kill her; but he takes it more quietly now."

"Have you seen her?"

"Of course I have. My father doesn't like me to visit her, but, of course, I go. She's grown stout. She's dressed like a lady: I didn't recognize her. The devil!"

"You didn't recognize her?" exclaimed Anania, surprised and thinking of his own mother. Ah, he would know _her_ at once!

Then he thought--

"She will be dressed like that too, and her hair in the fashion. Oh God--oh God--what will she be like?"

Her face eluded him, he was bewildered, confused, then tried to console himself trusting to his instinct.

"I should know her--I'm sure I should," he thought passionately.

"Why has your mother come back?" he asked Bustianeddu once.

"Why? Because this is her own town. She was working at a dressmaker's in Turin. She got tired of it and came home."

There was a pause. Neither of the lads believed in the dressmaker at Turin, but they accepted the story. Anania even said--

"Then your father aught to make it up with her."

"No," said Bustianeddu, defending his father, "he's quite right. You see there was no necessity for her to go away, and work for her living!"

"Your father works himself. What's the shame of working?"

"My father keeps a shop," corrected the other.

"Well, what's she going to do now? And which of them will you live with?"

"Don't know," said Bustianeddu.

Daily, however, the stories became more interesting.

"No end of people come to my father to beg him to forgive her. Even our member of parliament! Grand-mother came yesterday. She said, 'Jesus forgave the Magdalen; remember, my son, that we are all born to die, and it's only our good deeds we can carry over there. Look at the condition of your house! Only the rats are at home in it.'"

"What did your father say?"

"He went away," said Bustianeddu with great indignation; "of course he went away!--for shame!"

Next day he related. "Even Aunt Tatàna has begun to meddle. She preaches long sermons. She said to my father, 'Fancy you are taking a friend as a guest. Oh, do take her! She's penitent. She will reform. If you won't take her back, who knows what will become of her! King Solomon had seventy women in his house, and he was the wisest man in the world!'"

"What did your father say."

"Hard as a stone. He said it was the women who made King Solomon foolish."

The skin-dealer never relented. His wife lived at the far side of the town near the school. She wore the costume again; but slightly altered, slightly embellished with tags and ribbons. Her dress proclaimed her a woman of equivocal character. The husband did not forgive, and she continued her own life.

Anania saw her whenever he went to the Gymnasium. She lived in a black house, the windows of which were outlined with white, the white lines ending in a large cross. There were four steps to the door, and the woman often sat on these steps sewing or embroidering. She was large and handsome, very dark, no longer young. In summer her head was bare, her raven locks raised high on a cushion above her low forehead. Round her long full throat she wore a handkerchief of grey silk.

When he saw her, Anania grew red. He felt a morbid kindness for her, yet often thought he hated her. He would have liked to go to his school another way so as to avoid the sight of her; but an occult and malignant force drew his steps always to that street.

VI

It was the Easter holiday time.

Anania, studying his Greek grammar as he paced the little path which divided the expanse of ashy green teazles, heard a rap at the gate. He had not the garden to himself. His father was there, hoeing and singing love songs of the poet Luca Cubeddu. Nanna was weeding, helped by Uncle Pera. Efès, in his usual condition, lay on the grass. The weather was almost hot. Rosy clouds chased each other over the milky heaven, disappearing behind the Cerulean summits of Monte Aliena. From the valley, as from an immense verdure-clad shell, indefinite sounds and perfumes rose into the sunny air.

Now and then Nanna raised herself upright putting her hand to her back. She blew kisses to the student. "Bless him!" she said tenderly. "There he is studying away like a little bishop! Who knows what he mayn't turn out! He'll be a judge, or an examining Inspector. All the girls of the place will be picking him up like a sugar plum! Ah, my poor back!"

"Get on with the weeds!" growled Uncle Pera, "or I'll break your back in good earnest. Get on with the weeds and let the boy alone."

"Bad luck to you, old tyrant! If I were a lass of fifteen, you wouldn't be talking like that!" she said, bending over the weeds; but after a minute she looked up again, blowing more kisses to Anania.

When the miller heard the knock he called out--

"Who's there?"

Anania and Efès, one from his book, the other from the grass, looked up with the same look of faint anxiety. Suppose it were Signor Carboni? Efès felt all the weight of his degradation when the benevolent _padrone_, who never worried him with useless reproaches, sat down and talked to him: Anania thought of his mother and remembered the incongruity between his position and that of Margherita whom he was yet daring to love. The knock was repeated.

"I'll go and see who it is," said Anania, running and tossing his book in the air to encourage himself.

"If it's the master," said Uncle Pera, "Efès must get up and pretend he's doing something. It's abominable to see him sprawling about like a dead dog."

Nanna emitted a growl and kilted her ragged petticoat round her red bare legs.

"Get up, you old blunderbuss!" continued Uncle Pera, attacking the sot, "get up and pretend you're some use!"

But the alarm subsided when Anania returned bringing a thin, pale, young man with a face like a scarecrow, dressed in the Fonni costume.

"I suppose you don't know him," said the student to his father; "I didn't! It's Zuanne Atonzu. What a big fellow he is!"

"Greetings, cousin!" said the miller. "Welcome! How's your mother?"

"She is well," said the young man laughing shyly.

"Why have you come?"

"I'm witness in a case at the Tribunal."

"What have you done with your horse? At the tavern? Why you've forgotten we're kin. Well? Are we too poor for you to lodge with us?"

"I wish I was as rich," smiled the youth.

"We'll send for the horse," said Anania, hiding his grammar in his pocket.

They went off together. Anania was childishly pleased at seeing this humble shepherd in his rough clothes which recalled to him a whole wild and far off world. Zuanne was overcome by shyness beholding this handsome young gentleman, fair and fresh with his white collar and splendid necktie.

"Mother, we want some coffee," called Anania from the street.

Then he took the guest to his own room and began to exhibit his possessions. Quaint furniture filled the long narrow room. The ceiling was of cane, whitewashed; there were two wooden chests like antique Venetian coffers, roughly carved with griffons, eagles, and fantastic flowers; a pyramidal chest of drawers, baskets suspended from the walls, and pictures in cork frames: in one corner a vessel of oil, in the other his bed covered with a quilt knitted by Aunt Tatàna. The window looked out on the courtyard elder; between the window and the bed was a little table with a green cover, and a white wood book-case, the corners of which had been carved by Maestro Pane in imitation of the chests. On the table were sundry books and much manuscript written by Anania; a few boxes strangely tied up, almanacs and a packet of Sardinian newspapers. All was tidy and very dean; sweet odours and waves of light entered by the window. The tiled floor was cracked in places, and a couple of elder leaves fluttered over it, chasing each other as if in play. A volume of _Les Misérables_ lay open on the desk. Anania had intended to show everything to the visitor as to a long missed brother; but Zuanne's stupid expression as he opened and shut the mysterious boxes, damped his friend's enthusiasm.

Why had he brought this bumpkin into his little room? It was fragrant not only with the scent of honey, of fruit, of lavender which Aunt Tatàna hoarded in the chests, but also with the perfume of his lonely dreams. From its windows opening on the elder flower and the moss-grown roofs of neighbouring cottages, the world was opening for him, virgin and flowery like the untrodden mountains of the horizon. His pleasure had changed into disappointment.

Something had detached itself and fallen away from him, as a stone sometimes detaches itself from the rock, never to return. His native village, the past, the first years of his life, the homesick memories, the poetic affection for the brother of his adoption--all seemed to vanish in a flash.

"Let's go out," he said brusquely; and led the shepherd through the Nuoro streets, avoiding his schoolfellows lest they should ask who was this peasant walking awkwardly at his side. They passed before Signor Carboni's house. Suddenly appeared at the door a plump and rosy face, illuminated, it seemed, by reflection from a blouse of republican scarlet.

Anania snatched off his hat and the reflection of the blouse flamed on his face also. Margherita smiled, and never were the round cheeks of any maiden marked with more adorable dimples.

"Who's that woman!" asked Zuanne, the lout, when they had moved on.

"Woman? Why, she's a young girl! only nine months older than I am!" cried Anania.

Zuanne was much confused and said no more; but a most strange thing happened to Anania. His will became unable to keep his mouth shut; and he lied, knowing that he lied, but overwhelmed by felicity at the notion that what he said might have been true.

"That's my sweetheart," he said deliberately.

That evening, the olive-miller lounging in his kitchen, made Zuanne describe the ruins of Serrabile, an ancient city discovered near Fonni, and he asked whether there was any chance of treasure being found there. But Anania stood at the window of his little room, watching the slow rising of the moon between the black teeth of Orthobene.

At last he was alone! Night reigned, passionate and sweet. Already the cuckoo was filling the lonely valley with her palpitating cries. Ah! thus sadly did Anania feel his heart palpitate and cry, out of an infinite solitude.

Why had he told that lie? And why had the stupid shepherd said not a word on hearing the stupendous falsehood? Clearly he knew nothing of love--love for a superior creature, love without limit and without hope. But why had Anania stooped to a lie? For shame! He had calumniated Margherita, put himself further than ever from her. It must be the same spirit of vanity, the same desire of the marvellous, which once upon a time had made him tell Zuanne of an imaginary encounter with robbers. Ah! God!

He pressed his cold hands upon his burning cheeks; he fixed his eyes on the melancholy visage of the moon. He shuddered. Then he remembered a bright cold winter moon, the theft of the hundred _lire_, the figure of Margherita appearing before him like the shadow of a flower against the golden disc of the moon. Ah! his love must have dated from that night; only now after years and years had it burst forth breaking the stone beneath which it had lain buried, like a spring which can no longer keep its course below ground.

These similes of the flower against the moon, of the rising spring, came ready made to Anania. He was pleased with his poetic fancies, but they could not lay the remorse which tormented him. "How vile I am!" he thought; "vile enough to lie, and about her. Well, I may be successful at my books, I may become a great lawyer; but morally I shall never be anything but the son of that lost woman!"

He stood a long time at the window. Some one passed down the street singing, and somehow the song reawakened his memories of infancy and of Fonni, Fonni with its crimson sunsets! He fell into a dream, luminous and melancholy like the moon he was watching. He imagined himself still at Fonni. He had never gone to school, had never felt the shame of his birth. He was a shepherd, simple like Zuanne. And he saw himself standing at the extremity of the village, in a rosy summer twilight; and behold Margherita passed, Margherita she also poor and an exile in the mountain village, wearing that narrow skirt characteristic of the place, the amphora on her head, as if she were a woman out of the Bible. He called to her and she turned, radiant in the sunset dazzle, and she smiled to him rapturously.

"Where are you going, beauty?" he asked.

"I am going to the fountain."

"May I come with you?"

"Come, Nania."

He went. They walked together by the road high up on the shoulder of the valley in whose depth night was waiting, waiting till the purple should fade in the heavens and veils of shadow should fall upon all things. Together they descended to the fountain. Margherita set the amphora under the silver stream of gurgling water, and immediately it changed its tone to one of merriment, as if the descent into the jug had agreeably interrupted the eternal tedium. The two young things sat on a stone bench before the fountain, and they talked of love. The amphora filled, the water overflowed, and for some moments was quite silent as if listening to the lovers. And now the sky was grey and the veils of shadow had fallen on the higher peaks, the more luminous folds of the mountains. And as night enwrapped the valleys, the desire of Anania waxed bolder. He put his arm round the girl's waist, she laid her head on his shoulder, and he kissed her.

At this time Anania was seventeen. He had no friends and mixed little with his schoolfellows. He was painfully conscious of the stain upon his birth. Once overhearing the remark, "If I were he, I would not stay with my father," he fancied the words must refer to himself.

"That's it!" he thought; "why am I here with this man who betrayed my mother and flung her into a bad life? I don't exactly love him, and I certainly don't hate him, but what I ought is to despise him. He is not wicked; he's not completely trivial like the majority of our neighbours. Sometimes I feel quite fond of him, when I hear his simple talk about treasure hunting, when I see his respectful affection for his elderly wife, his unchanging fidelity to his master. But I ought to despise him! I wish to despise him! What claim has he on me? Did I ask him to bring me into the world? I ought certainly to leave him now I understand----"

But gratitude, affection, much confidence, bound him to Aunt Tatàna. She lived almost exclusively for him. She adored him, though she had not succeeded in making him what she would have liked, a pious and obedient boy, reverent of God and the king and the priests. She saw, alas I that he was wrong-headed and self-sufficient, but she loved him none the less. She laughed and jested with him; she taught him to dance; she amused him with all the gossip of the place. Every morning before he was up she brought him a cup of coffee. Every Sunday she promised him money if he would go to mass.

"I'm too sleepy," he would say. "I worked so hard last night."

"Go later," she would insist. Anania did not go, but Aunt Tatàna gave him the money all the same.

The day after his idyllic dream, woven of the moonlight which streamed in at his little window, Anania took Zuanne for a walk, starting with the intention of treating his friend to a cup of aniseed at the tavern.

"Who knows when we shall meet again!" sighed the shepherd. "When are you coming to see us?"

"I can't" said Anania, seeking an excuse, "I have to work so hard. I ought to finish with the Gymnasium this year."

"And then where are you going? To the continent?"

"Yes! to Rome!"

"There are a great many convents at Rome, aren't there? And more than a hundred churches."

"A good many more than a hundred. Who told you?"

"Your father, last night. He said when he was a soldier----"

"Are you to be a soldier?"

"No; my brother. I----" He interrupted himself.

They entered the tavern. It was empty, smelling of tobacco and spirits, swarming with flies.

A girl was sitting on the bench. She was dark, and very handsome, though untidy and dirty.

"Good-morning. Agata."

"What do you want?" she asked, getting up and turning familiarly to Anania.

"What would you like?" Anania asked the shepherd.

"I don't mind," said Zuanne embarrassed.

The girl mimicked him, looking Anania in the face. He returned her look. Zuanne grew red, and looked at the floor. When they came out he asked shyly.

"Is that one your sweetheart too?"

Anania was half-flattered, half-angry. "What makes you think that? Because she looked at me? Good gracious, what are eyes for? You intend to be a monk, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Zuanne simply.

"You're going to be a monk!" repeated Anania astounded. "Come along, then! we'll visit the churchyard. That's what will suit you."

"We shall all go there some day," said Zuanne gravely.

It was soon after Zuanne's visit that the boys at the Gymnasium acted a comedy. They had wanted Anania to take the part of the heroine, but he had obstinately refused. Nor did he repent his resolution, for when the night of the performance came he had a place in the second row of the spectators immediately behind his godfather (now Syndic of Nuoro) by whose side sat Margherita in a white hat and a red dress which shone like a flame.

The Captain of the Carabinieri, the Secretary of the Sub-Prefecture, the Assessor and the Director of the Gymnasium, sat in the front row with the Syndic and his resplendent daughter; but the young lady did not seem pleased with her company; she kept turning her head, though haughtily, to look at the students.

The hall had once been a convent church; now it was the theatre, exhibition-room, centre of reunion for all Nuoro. A curtain, not innocent of patches, concealed the stage, but it blew about in the wind and gave visions of boyish legs jumping and dancing. At last it was drawn with much difficulty and the comedy began.

The time was that of the Crusades, the scene an ancient and much turreted castle, of which, however, nothing was visible but one room containing a round mahogany table and six Vienna chairs.

The faithful Hermengild (a diminutive school-boy, his face rouged with red paper, his legs awkwardly astraddle, his costume one of Signora Carboni's dresses) was embroidering a scarf for the no less faithful Godfrey, a warrior away on some distant expedition.

"Here she pricks her finger," whispered Anania leaning towards Margherita.

She leaned towards him, hiding her laughter with her handkerchief.

The Captain of the Carabinieri seated by her side, turned his head slowly, and glared at the student. But Anania was so happy he wanted to laugh, and wanted to impart to Margherita all the joy which her nearness had waked in him.

At the sixth mocking criticism whispered by the little student, the Captain could endure no more.

"Hold your stupid tongue, will you?" he shouted. Anania shivered, and drew back as a snail withdraws into its shell. He was so angry that for some minutes he could neither hear nor see.

_Hold your tongue._ Exactly; he was not to be allowed to make his harmless jokes, not to be allowed to speak. Oh yes! he quite understood! He must not lift his eyes, because he was poor and dependent and a foundling. What was he doing here among all these great folk, among all these rich and courted young people? How had he dared to lean towards Margherita Carboni to whisper with her, to make trivial jokes for her smile? He was quite conscious of the triviality of his conversation. How could the son of an olive-miller, the son of an Olì, be expected to talk otherwise? "Hold your tongue, do!" the Captain had said.

Presently Anania revived. He looked contemptuously at the fringe of red hair round the Captain's bald head. He saw deformed ears and the end of a waxed moustache. He felt a ferocious wish to box the deformed ears as many times as there remained hairs on his hideous head. Margherita presently turned round, surprised by Anania's silence. Their eyes met. Seeing him depressed, Margherita's eyes became shadowed. Anania saw it and he smiled. In a moment they were both merry again. Margherita tried to give her attention to the stage, but felt that Anania was smiling still, and that his long, half-closed eyes were still fixed on her.

A delicate intoxication overpowered them both. After the comedy there was a farce at which Signor Carboni laughed immoderately. Margherita was vexed to see her father laughing like a baby. She had read that fashionable persons never attend to the play, still less are amused by it. The Secretary of the Sub-Prefecture frequently turned his back on the stage, and Margherita would have liked her father to do the same.

It was near midnight when Anania accompanied the Carboni's to their home. The Assessor--old and a babbler--walked with the Syndic, telling of an American medical discovery: that microbes are essential to the human organism. The boy and girl walked in front, laughing when they slipped on the cobbles of the miry streets. Other persons went by, laughing and chattering. The night was dark, warm, velvety. Now and then a breeze from the east came, went, returned wafting a wild perfume from the woods outside the town. Stars, infinite like human tears, sparkled in the limitless heaven. Jupiter flamed over Orthobene.

Who does not remember in his early youth some such night, some such hour? Stars quivering in the depths of a night more luminous than twilight, stars not seen but felt--ready to descend upon our brow; the brilliant bear like a golden chariot waiting to carry us to the land of dreams; a dark pathway; felicity so near, she can be grasped and retained for ever and for ever.

More than once Anania felt the girl's hand touch his. The mere thought that he might take it and press it seemed sacrilege. He felt a sort of double consciousness. He spoke yet seemed silent, his thoughts far away. He walked and stumbled yet seemed scarce to touch the earth. He laughed yet was sad almost to tears. He saw Margherita by his side, so near, that he might touch her, yet she appeared far away, intangible like the breath of the wind which went and came. She laughed and jested with him. In her eyes he had seen the reflection of his own distress; yet he told himself she could only regard him as a faithful dog. He thought--

"Could she guess I was consumed with the desire to press her hand she would cry out with horror; she would regard me then as a rabid dog."

What did they say to each other that starlit night, in the dark streets swept by the odorous breeze? He never was able to remember; but, for a long, long time the dull talk between the old Assessor and Signor Carboni remained in his mind.

At last, however, the Assessor's high nasal voice became silent. Margherita and Anania stopped, bid him good-night, went on their way; but now the boy felt himself awakened from a dream, once more solitary, sad and shy, stumbling in the darkened street. The Syndic had interposed his portly person between the poor young creatures!

"Bravo! bravo!" said he, "how did you like the play?"

"It was rot!" replied Anania.

"Bra--a--vo!" repeated the godfather. "You're a cruel critic."

"What else could you expect? Our Director's a fossil--he couldn't choose better. Life's not like that--never has been! If the theatre isn't like life, its ridiculous. If they must have chosen something mediæval, still it might have been something less absurd--something true, human, touching. They might have had Eleonora d'Arborea dying because she had helped the plague-stricken----

"But," said Signor Carboni, astonished by the boy's eloquence, "I don't think our theatre's equal to such a grandiose subject."

"Then a modern comedy would be better--something moving. These stupid legends have had their day," said Margherita, catching up Anania's tone.

"What, Miss? you too? Well, I agree they might have had something more interesting. What's that you said about the Director?"

"I said he's a fossil."

"Good Lord! Suppose I tell him?"

"I don't care! I'm going away next year."

"And pray where may you be going?"

Anania grew red, remembering he couldn't go anywhere without Signor Carboni's assistance. What did the question mean? Had his godfather forgotten? Was he mocking him? Did he want to make the boy feel the weight of his obligation, keeping him on tenter hooks, exhibiting him as at his patron's mercy?

"I don't know," he murmured.

"Do you really want to go, my lad? Then you shall, you shall. You're shaking your wings like a young bird. Oh! you shall fly--you shall fly!"

He made the gesture of throwing a bird in the air; then slapped his godson's shoulder. Anania heaved a sigh of relief. He felt as light as if he had really been launched in flight. Margherita laughed. That laugh vibrating in the stillness of the night seemed to Anania the rose-bush's obscure desire for the bird which perches on it to sing.

VII

Autumn drew on.

These were Anania's last days at home, and heavy weight of sentiment oppressed him. He was still the young bird joyfully ready for flight; but he was sad and tormented by vague fears of the unknown. What was the world like, which had already usurped his thoughts? And the adieu was painful to that humble world in which his childhood had monotonously passed, unstained by active grief, brightened by his evolving love for Margherita. The languor and sweetness of early autumn contributed to render him sentimental. Light clouds veiled the sky. Behind the mountains a vaporous horizon concealed yet suggested worlds of ineffable dream. The pale green twilights were brightened by rosy cloudlets, meandering slowly and interruptedly over the glaucous heaven. In the garden was the rustle, the odour of burning weeds; it seemed to Anania that something of his soul vanished in the smoke of these melancholy fires.

Good-bye! good-bye! gardens and orchards, guardians of the valley! Good-bye! distant roar of the torrent which announced the winter! Good-bye, cuckoo, which foretold the return of spring! Good-bye! grey and savage Orthobene with his holm-oaks outlined against the clouds like upstanding hairs on a sleeping giant. Good-bye! distant cerulean mountains! and good-bye, tranquil and kindly hearth, little room scented with fruit, with honey, and with dreams! Good-bye, humble companions, unconscious of their own ill-fortune, wicked old Uncle Pera, miserable Nanna and Efès, suffering Rebecca, extravagant Maestro Pane, crazy beggars, girls careless of their beauty, children born to want--all of them mean and distressful persons whom Anania did not love, whom he was leaving gladly, yet with a wrench.

And good-bye, Margherita! Light and sweetness among shadows, a rainbow in the cloud, a frame of pearl glorifying the dingy painting of dull memory I Margherita, good-bye!

The day of departure drew near. Aunt Tatàna made endless preparations. She provided shirts and socks, fruit, and cakes white as ivory, cheese, a fowl, dozens of salted eggs, wine, honey, raisins, saddle-bags, and baskets filled to the brim.

"But these are stores for a whole army!" said Anania.

"Hush, my son! You will find it all necessary. _There_ you will have no one to care for you, poor child. Oh! what will become of you?"

"Never fear. I'll look after myself."

The miller and his wife had long, secret consultations and Anania guessed their tenor. One evening they went out together and he anxiously awaited their return.

Aunt Tatàna came in alone.

"Anania, where do you intend to go? To Cagliari or to Sassari?"

Till that moment he had expected to cross the sea: now he understood that some one had decided against that plan.

"Signor Carboni, I suppose?" he said, with ill-concealed bitterness and pride; "don't deny it. What's the good of keeping me in the dark? I see through you. Why won't he send me to the continent? I'll pay all his money back to him in the end."

"Bah!" said Aunt Tatàna alarmed by these symptoms of pride, "whatever have you taken into your head?"

Anania panted, bent his head over a book without seeing a word of it. The woman caressed him.

"Well, what do you wish, my son? Cagliari or Sassari? You mentioned them both yesterday. Why on earth should you go further? Jesus! Mary! The sea's a horrible thing! People get sick on the sea--so I have heard--sometimes they die. And the storms. Do you never think of the storms?"

"You don't understand," said Anania, turning his pages.

"You never said a word about it! You mustn't be so capricious. You can study just as well in Sardinia as on the continent? Why should you go to the continent?"

Ah yes, why? What did Aunt Tatàna know of his secret desires? It was not for the sake of his studies that he wanted to cross the sea. Had he not, since the first day, that sunny autumn day when Bustianeddu had led him to the Convent school, had he not been thinking of something very different from mere study?

However Aunt Tatàna's gentle talk calmed his annoyance.

"You are still a child, my son. At seventeen do you want to run about the world alone? Would you die at sea away from every one, or wither in a city which you tell me is as big as a forest? Go to Cagliari. Signor Carboni will give you introductions. He knows everybody at Cagliari, even a Marquis. Well, then, be reasonable. You shall go further when you are older. You are like a leveret just weaned. It leaves the form and runs away to the very wall of the _tanca_, then it comes back. Presently it goes further, and further still. It learns what it may do; it sees the path along which it will run. You must wait. Think how near we shall be, think how you can run back to us if anything goes wrong. At Christmas you'll be able to come back----"

"Very well. I'll go to Cagliari," said Anania.

Next day he began his leave-takings. He visited the Director of the Gymnasium, a priest who was a great friend of Aunt Tatàna's, the doctor, the Deputy; then the tailor, the grocer, and the shoemaker, Franziscu Carchide, the handsome young man who had been one of the _habitués_ of the olive-mill. Carchide had, however, made a fortune, no one knew how; he had a big shop with five or six workmen, he dressed like a gentleman, talked affectedly and flirted with the young ladies whose feet he measured.

"Have you any commissions for Cagliari?" said Anania entering his shop.

"Send him a diamond ring," said one of the workmen, "for he's engaged to the Syndic's daughter."

"Well, why not?" said Carchide, with conceit. "Sit down, Anania."

But Anania, irritated by the joke which he thought an insult to Margherita, would not sit down and hurried away. As he went out he met the lad whom rumour called the _padrone_'s son, a tall boy with blue eyes really very like Margherita's, but sadder.

"Good-bye, Antonino," said the student, and the other looked at him with flashes of hatred and envy in his melancholy pupils.

When he came in Anania told everything to Aunt Tatàna, who was preparing a sweetmeat, compounded of oranges, honey and almonds, for him to present to some great person at Cagliari.

"Look," said the boy, "your priest gave me a crown, and the doctor gave me two lire. I don't like to take it."

"Oh, bad child! It's the custom to give presents to a boy going away for the first time!" said the woman, shaking and stirring the slender strips of orange-peel in the shining copper saucepan. Strong smell of boiling honey perfumed the kitchen. Everywhere were little yellow baskets packed with the stores for the student. Anania sat down with the cat on his knee.

"I wonder where I shall be in a week? Stay quiet, Mussittu, put your tail down! Your priest read me such a long sermon."

"I suppose he told you to make your confession and take the Communion before starting?"

"That was necessary twenty years ago, when one went to Cagliari on a horse and took three days over it. It's not the fashion now!"

"You bad child! don't you believe in God? Holy Saint Catharine, what will become of you at Cagliari? I hope you'll anyhow go to La Sea (the cathedral), where there's a picture that does miracles. Cagliari's a very pious place. You won't speak against religion, I hope?"

"Never mind Cagliari! Every one believes what he can and what he likes. I venerate God more in my heart than all the hypocrites."

These words were somewhat consolatory to the good woman. She told him the Bible story of Eli, and then let him continue the description of his visits.

The kitten had climbed on his shoulder and was licking his ear, tickling him in a way that somehow reminded him of Margherita. He was telling the vulgar joke about Carchide's engagement when Nanna came in, Aunt Tatàna having sent her to buy comfits for her sweetmeat. Her skirt was torn, and she looked even worse than usual, as she stood unrolling her package and trying to listen to the conversation.

"Did you hear," said simple Aunt Tatàna, "that horrid Franziscu Carchide wants to marry Margherita Carboni?"

"No, that's not what I said!" cried Anania.

"Oh, I know Franziscu," said Nanna, "he's mad. He asked first for the doctor's daughter. They chased him out with the broom handle, and now he thinks he'll get Margherita because he made her shoes too small."

"He wants a kick in the face!" cried Anania jumping up, the cat round his neck.

Nanna looked at him, her little eyes shining shrewdly.

"That's what I say. But there's an officer, a general I think, who wants to marry Margherita. No, I say, she's a rose and she must marry a pink--fresh and sweet, both of them. Take it!" she went on offering a comfit to Anania. He drew back, while the kitten vainly stretched its paw to the little white object.

"Keep off! You smell like a wine barrel!" said the boy, and Nanna staggered and dropped all her comfits on the floor.

"My pink!" she said coaxingly. "You shall be Margherita's pink! Why are you going away? But I know! it's to become a judge----"

Anania laughed and picked up the comfits.

"And all the girls are to pick me up like a sugar plum, isn't that it?"