I.
It was a warm afternoon in April, and the sun was blazing hotly down upon the wooded heights of the Abruzzi and upon the marble cliff against which nestles the little village of Palenella.
The blue-green aloes were unfurling their sharp-pointed leaves in the clefts and crannies of the rocks above, and every now and then the wild roses sent a pink shower fluttering down to the flat roofs below, where maize and wheat were spread out to dry in the sun.
Lucia Ceprano was sitting at the door of her gray stone cottage this hot afternoon, busily engaged in peeling and splitting willow rods preparatory to mending a certain dilapidated old basket which lay on the ground beside her.
The stony village street was silent, and not a creature was visible but herself, except, indeed, a few fowls which were promenading in the sun, and some little black pigs which lay sleeping with outstretched legs in sundry dusty hollows.
The fact was, that the whole population of Palenella was gone to take part in a procession in the little town of Palene. Not a creature had stayed at home but Lucia Ceprano; and no one now was surprised at this or anything else she took it into her head to do, for the villagers had made up their minds that she was “cracked.”
Lucia had refused the wealthiest young men in the district; Lucia owned property, yet she worked as hard as if she were poor; Lucia did not dance the tarantella, was not merry, would not have a lover, and never beat her mule, even when he was as obstinate as only a mule can be!
Such was the indictment against her; and in an out-of-the-way village like Palenella, where every one was about five hundred years behind the outside world, any one of these eccentricities would have been quite enough to make people call her crazy.
Then again, though she certainly was beautiful, it was in a very different style from her neighbors; indeed, she was of quite a different type from what one usually sees anywhere in the whole district, as far South as Naples.
The women in these parts are small, agile, and graceful, with pretty little dark brown faces, small, sharp noses, pouting lips, and wild curly hair, almost entirely covering their low foreheads. They are light-hearted creatures, laughing and chattering the whole day long; and in character they are an odd mixture of carelessness, shrewdness, passion, cunning, and narrow-mindedness.
Lucia, on the other hand, was well grown and stately-looking; her face was oval, and she had smooth black hair and wonderful deep brown, tranquil eyes, which seemed to look thoughtfully at everything; and her mouth, though well-formed and full-lipped, was firmly closed; she moved about in a dignified, deliberate way, and she was reckoned the most unsociable girl in the village, for she never spoke a word more than was actually necessary.
The very fact of her being so unlike other village girls, however, caused Lucia to be quite the rage at one time. All the young men for miles round were crazy about her, and she had as many offers as there were Sundays in the year; for she had other attractions besides her beauty. Every one knew that besides the very tolerable property in Palenella, which was all her own and quite unencumbered, Lucia also possessed 10,000 lire, or something over 400l., in the national bank of Rome, so that for these parts she was a considerable heiress.
Lucia allowed her suitors to say their say without interruption, and then raising those calm, wonderful eyes, and looking steadily at them for the space of a second, she announced that she had no intention of marrying.
Things had gone on in this way from Lucia’s fifteenth birthday for five years; every Sunday and holiday some one made her an offer, and every Sunday and holiday some one was refused, until she gave up answering at all, and merely waved her lovers off with a gesture of her hand, neither more nor less than contemptuous.
The young men had taken offence at her behavior at last, and now revenged themselves by pronouncing her cracked, and leaving her to herself. All but one of them at least did so, and he was the son of a wealthy farmer, Pietro Antonio by name, who lived higher up among the mountains. Pietro was not so easily to be got rid of as the rest, and, do what she would, he followed her everywhere, lying in wait for her at the fêtes and processions, watching for her at church and market, and persecuting her to such an extent, now with pretty speeches and entreaties, and now with angry threats, that at last Lucia gave up going to the fêtes, and did not even venture to church except in the late evening, when she could do so unobserved.
For Pietro was a wild, passionate youth, with something of the savage about him, and as Lucia disliked him even more than her other suitors, she had determined to stay at home this afternoon for fear she should meet him at Palene and be exposed to his vehement importunities.
She had therefore been alone for some hours; but now she heard a distant sound of voices, laughing and chattering. The villagers were coming back, and were climbing the rocky pathway which led to their homes, and soon the little street was all alive again.
At the first sound of their approach, Lucia had retreated into the cottage, and set about warming up the polenta for her mother; and as she stood in the large kitchen, with the blaze from the fire lighting up her grave, madonna-like face, this personage came in.
She was an old, grey-haired woman, but there was an almost wild glare in her small, sharp eyes, as she glanced angrily at the girl.
“What a shame it is!” she cried, pulling off her red silk neck-kerchief and kicking away a chair. “The idea of my being the only woman to have an unmarried daughter! Here I am pointed at by every one! I’m the mother of the ‘crazy girl,’ forsooth, and I can’t show my face anywhere!”
“Bah!”said Lucia, without looking up from the fire; “where can’t you show your face?”
“Why, neither in the village nor in the whole country round,”returned the old woman, passionately.
“Don’t you trouble yourself about any of their gossip, mother; and don’t force me to marry, for I can’t take any of the young men about here,” said Lucia, calmly.
“Forced you will be, sooner or later,” returned her mother. “One of them will cut off your hair, and then you know you must marry him, whether you like it or not,” she added dolefully.
“Shame on the men here, then!” exclaimed Lucia, with flaming eyes. “Shame on any man who forces a woman to marry him by such means! lying in wait to cut off her hair, and then making a show of it in the village until the poor thing is obliged to marry the thief, or she will be forever disgraced and never get another husband! Shame on men who win their wives in this fashion!”
“Ah, well! it has been the taming of a good many obstinate girls for all that, and they are happy enough now. Look at Emilia Mantori and Teresina,”continued the mother; “they held out for a couple of years, and then one fine day they lost their plaits! They came back from the fields with their hair cut short; the boys hooted them down the street, and three weeks later there were two merry weddings, and now it is all as right as can be!”
“I hope that will never be my fate, mother,”said Lucia; “never!” and she clenched her brown hand with its long, shapely fingers, while all the blood left her lips. “If people behave like brigands, they may expect to be treated like brigands. Any one who lays a finger on my hair will have to look out for himself, as all the ruffians about here know full well, and so they keep their distance.”
“Our lads are not ruffians; they may be a little wild, but there are some good fellows among them.”
“I don’t know a single one, then, and I won’t marry a soul here. If ever I am married, it shall not be to a man who will beat me and make me work just as if I were a mule; and you know very well that is what all the men do here in the Abruzzi, so why do you go on complaining and fault-finding? I tell you what will be the end of it, if you go on scolding and worrying, you will drive me away, and I shall go to Rome and open some sort of little shop—”
“And leave your mother here in poverty and misery!”
“You are not poor, mother, for you can stay here as long as you live, and there is quite enough to keep you well, without your having to work hard. Besides, I don’t want to leave you at all, as long as you don’t want to force me into a marriage I hate!”
“Very well, I won’t, then,”said the old woman. “Stay as you are, since you will have your own way.”
By this time the sun was almost setting, and a flood of red-gold light was pouring in through the open door; the mountains were all bathed in purple vapor, and the still warm evening air was fragrant with the scent of roses, geraniums, and lavender.
The mother and daughter had eaten their supper in silence, and Lucia had just risen to take away the things, when a shadow fell across the threshold, and on Lucia’s looking up, a bold voice said, “Good evening, signorina.”
The speaker was a fine young man wearing a blue velvet jacket, high-crowned hat, and a large woollen scarf, which was knotted round his waist, and he was looking passionately at Lucia with his piercing, coal-black eyes.
“Do you want to see my mother?” asked Lucia, in anything but an encouraging manner.
“No; I want to see you, signorina,” answered the young man, with much polite suavity, taking off his hat as he spoke.
“If you are come to say the same as before, Pietro Antonio, you may spare yourself the trouble,” said Lucia, clearly and firmly.
“Then you won’t let me come into your house, Lucia Ceprano?” asked the young man, with a sudden contraction of his thin-lipped mouth, and a look in his eyes not unlike that of an enraged tiger.
“The door is open, you can come in,” said Lucia, calmly, “and you can talk to my mother if you like;” and with that she left the room by the back-door, and went out into the little garden which was fenced round with aloe bushes.
Meantime Pietro stepped into the cottage, and throwing his hat upon the table, sat down opposite the old woman, saying, “You don’t seem to have made much progress, Mother Ceprano.”
“You can see for yourself,”said she, in a low voice.
“Then she will soon be off to Rome, and you will have to work like the rest,” said the young man, without any apparent malice, “for everything here belongs to her. It was her father’s property, I know, and settled on her.”
“She will let me have it,”said the old woman, dejectedly.
“But she won’t go on doing all the work for you! She works for you both now; and then there’s the interest of her money; of course she will want that for herself when she is in Rome,” continued the young man, casting a sharp sidelong glance at the old woman as he spoke. “Yes, your comfortable, easy-going life will be quite at an end, mother, unless—but perhaps she is going to take you with her?” inquired Pietro, in a tone of much sympathy.
“I’m sure I don’t know; but she was saying only this very day again that go she would, and I believe she will.”
“Ah!”returned the young man, his lips working with suppressed passion, “then you will just have to hire a couple of strong women to do your field work—that’s all!”
“You know very well there’s not land enough to keep three people,”retorted the mother, angrily.
“Then keep the girl!” said Pietro, lightly.
“Keep her! keep her! it’s easy talking; pray, can you keep her, Pietro Antonio?”
“Yes, I can, if you will help me,” said the young man, softly.
He rose from his seat, and going to the back-door, peered out into the garden. But Lucia was not there. No doubt, thought he to himself, she had gone out somewhere to avoid the chance of encountering him again. At all events, she was safe out of the way; and closing the door again, he drew his chair nearer to the old woman, and said in a low tone, “Look here, mother, I can force her to stay here. She wouldn’t be the first girl who found herself obliged to marry the man who wanted her! You know what I mean; and though it would be a real pity to spoil her hair, such beautiful hair as it is, too—still—”
“And what if she were to stab you, Pietro? You don’t know what she is,” and the old woman looked uneasily at the floor.
“It will be your business to take care that she can’t do anything of the kind. Take her knife away when she is asleep, hide me in the garden and let me in when it is all safe. When she wakes up again the plait will be mine, and then we shall be all right.”
“She will turn me out of the house when she knows, and I shall be worse off than ever,”returned Mother Ceprano, anxiously.
“I shall be there to look after you, shan’t I? and won’t it all be for her own happiness? You know I am the richest fellow in the whole district, and there isn’t another girl who would refuse me. You know yourself she couldn’t make a better match, and her refusing me is nothing but a whim; and if you give way to her, she will end by being an old maid herself, and making you into a common working woman—so there!”
“Yes, I know that; it’s all true enough, and it would be a real blessing for us all—for you and me and herself—if she would have you; but I say you don’t know her, Pietro, you don’t know her, and I am certain some mischief will come of it.”
“Bah! that’s all talk—a woman indeed—that would be a new idea,” said Pietro, with a contemptuous laugh. “I’ll soon tame her! The prouder and wilder they are to begin with, the tamer and more gentle they are afterwards. When I carry her plait through the streets—and that’s what I will do if she makes any more fuss—she will follow me like a lamb, see if she won’t! There has never been a girl in these parts yet who has been disgraced in this way without being thankful to marry the only man who could give her back her good name.”
“Ay,”interposed the mother, in a frightened tone, “but then she is not like other girls. You are strong and clever, and thought a great deal of, and you are the chief man in the place for miles round; but where is the good of all that if she hates you, and perhaps does you some injury, and turns me out of doors?”
“She doesn’t hate me, it’s only her childish pride; I know all about that, and it does not trouble me a bit,”returned Pietro, coolly. “You know I have promised to settle so much a year upon you if she marries me, and I will engage that you shall stay here and have the use of the cottage and the land rent-free, and be able to keep a servant. There! So now, please to make up your mind at once, mother. Will you or won’t you? yes or no?”
“I can’t—I daren’t.”
“Then be poor, as poor as the poorest in the place! Work is wholesome; those who work long, live long! Good-bye, Mother Ceprano,” said the young man, scornfully, moving to the door as he spoke.
“Stay!” cried the old woman, hoarsely. “I’ll do it.”
“When?”asked Pietro, still standing in the doorway.
“I will send you a message when I think there is a good chance. I shall only say that I want you to come and speak to me, and then you can come about eleven o’clock that night.”
“Well, then, it’s settled, mind. Be careful, don’t gossip, and, above all, keep your word.”
“I shall keep my word,” said old Mother Ceprano, gloomily, as she accompanied Pietro to the door; and as she went back into the now dark kitchen, she muttered, “She can’t make a better match; he is rich, very rich, and he is looked up to, and he is handsome, and there are others worse than he. She will be all right, and what he says is quite true; it is only a whim.”