The marriage is to be at eleven. It will not be in the church, but when the ring has wedded bride and bridegroom, and the sacred words that bind them have been spoken by the priest in the priest’s own house, then Caterina and her husband will come before the great altar for benediction, and that is the only part of a wedding which the congregation may see in Italy. The villagers are nevertheless assembled on the piazza just in front of the church, that they may see the bridal pass, because the priest’s house is just behind the church, and even Caterina, in all her glory, must pass under the arch of the belfry, and up between the two trimmed box-hedges to-day, just as she has passed up many a time before with the tithes in kind or the priest’s best linen from the wash.
All the village children cry aloud, for the bride is in sight. ‘See! the dress is really of woollen stuff,’ whisper the women, and the men make comment on her comely person, for truly Caterina is a pretty girl. Her white stockings and clean bright shoes are neat (small are the dainty feet they clothe, say the village swains); her dress is costly for a peasant bride, the gold about her neck—gold that is no vanity here, because it is the bride’s invariable marriage portion—the gold in her ears and hair is of good quality, the muslin veil is fresh and fine, that drapes head and figure, after her country’s costume; but best of all is Caterina’s proud and merry face, best are her deep, brown eyes, her strong, lithe frame, and the healthy blood that flows beneath her olive skin. Caterina is a handsome girl, but, more precious in the sight of her bridegroom, she is a sound woman, fit to be a peasant’s wife.
Laughing—half with shyness, half with pleasure—the bride and the bride’s mother pass first through the little archway: the wedding party follows after. In the kitchen of the priest’s house—which is the entrance to his oratory and to all the rest of his abode—more admiration, more talk and wonderment from the old housekeeper, delay the couple awhile on their road. Caterina must be examined from top to toe while the men stand impatient at such female frivolity, and the guests are gathered, waiting, beneath the wide-spreading vine-trellis of the priest’s garden, or beside the trickling fountain in its midst. Everybody is glad when the ring has been put on—(Caterina has already twenty-three gold rings on different fingers, all part of her only dowry)—everybody sighs a little sigh of relief when the last Latin words have been spoken, of that ceremony which is about the same in all lands and in all religions. Nothing of importance occurs—only once a candle on the altar goes out unaccountably, and Caterina is frightened at the evil omen—a woman and an Italian peasant, she must needs be superstitious! But all the same, it serves for conversation at the wedding feast. The priest has had his comfit-box with the gold coins hidden within it; the old housekeeper has not been forgotten, since this bridegroom is not of the poorest; the wedding party descend into the church.
And, when the exhortations are said and the benediction has been given, Caterina is quite a married woman. The neighbours may have their fill of comment and admiration now, and the children their portion of comfits which Caterina scatters among them. Good words and bad words—ejaculations and laughter—fly to and fro, and resound under the trees of the cherry orchard, where they eat the marriage feast. Everybody is contented. Even the girls who have no husbands, and the fathers who have more mouths to feed than money withal to feed them, are glad to-day; for the sun shines and the harvests are all yet to come, and the winter is a long way off, and the bells ring merrily, for it is the Feast of St. John. And when they have done ringing for morning ceremonies and the marriage, they begin again for afternoon ceremonies and the procession. There, Caterina walks with her husband, and sees Bianca in her own old place, carrying the great cross in front. The pop-guns are fired, the procession has been round the meadows by the well, and is near home again. And the bells’ ringing dies away slowly, as banners and crosses are lowered beneath the porch. The lads and lasses have their simple dance on the green by the river, and the day of St. John sinks away into night.
Cherry trees still bloom and bear fruit in that North Apennine valley. Walking in and out amid the little frail trees, brushing the quaker’s grass and ragged robin, and treading down the buttercups and daisies, you might look up to see the ripe and ruddy fruit overhead, and listening, hear just such joyous voices as I have written of—voices of laughing maidens stripping the orchards’ cherry-trees. But Caterina would not be there, nor Virginia nor Bianca, nor any of the girls that I know, even though upon the stillness of the waning day there might come to you a sound of bells—joyful pealing bells—such as those that ring in the Feast of St. John.
The Parish Priest.
It is the day of the Corpus Domini. As though to herald in the sun, bells began to ring this morning from every church throughout the valley. For this is a great feast. It does not belong more to San Matteo than to San Luca, nor can even la Madonna claim it for a special honour: it is the property of every village, of every saint, and of every parish. That little church niched in among the chestnuts has, therefore, just as good a right to sound her peal in the grey hours of the morning as has any other campanile throughout this valley of the Northern Apennines. We are among the mountains of the Polcevera—in one of the numerous indentures of the land, scarcely large enough to deserve a more important name, which serve to vary and make more beautiful this already richly gifted portion of the country.
Twenty miles away from us is the Mediterranean, and on the other side of us lie the plains of Lombardy, white with the sun’s heat as it rests on the rice plantations. But here there is not even a remembrance either of plains or of sea. We are in the depth of the country, where the view has no monotony as of the flat, or even as of the sea, when it is unruffled by wind, and dazzling beneath the sun’s power of this summer time. The horizon’s margin is broken by the outline—now gently undulating, now jagged—of hills against a limpid sky; the foreground is varied—hill and dale, rugged wildness and careful cultivation, subtly balancing each other as separate effects in the landscape’s picture.
The scenery is characteristic of the Northern Apennines: a river gently flowing, and many a little quiet spring, thickly-growing chestnut woods—where the trees are not always tall and spreading, but somehow always shady—mossy banks that are green for Italy, and the land divided into plots and terraces, where each man grows his own corn and beans and potato-crops, gathers his own maize, and trains his own vines. The strawberries are nearly over—little rough, red fruit, that grows wild and luscious among the grass and the turf in the spring-time: but the glory of the fruit season is all to come. Large yellow plums and little blue plums, peaches and apricots, medlars, figs, grapes, melons, blackberries that are as large as mulberries, all these will follow one another in time, and great handsome golden gourds, with every kind of vegetable: now it is the season of the cherries. There are tall trees whereon the fruit grows small and jet black, and others whose berries are large, and sweet according to the usual shape and savour of their kind; but the type of the Apennines at this season is the amarena. The little trees are small and graceful, growing over the hill-side, often so low that the fruit can be plucked by the mere outstretching of a strong arm from the strong and graceful figure of an Apennine damsel. The amarene are ripe for the Corpus Domini, and the bright red fruit, with the merriment of its ingathering, makes the brightest of all the bright colours in memory’s picture of these festivals of summer’s prime.
The long grass is not all yet mown, and among it the ragged robin, the buttercup, scabius, and ox-eyed daisy have woven a medley of merry colour; while, upon the river’s banks, meadow-sweet blooms, and higher up among the budding heather a golden field of yellow gorse. This forms the floral feature of the festivities. Yesternight, in the long June evening, after work was done, girls and boys wandered up the hill-sides, and, in their aprons, the maidens stored the golden bloomlike chaff. Then, when the bells awoke this morning at daybreak, the women rose to spread, along the highway before their dwellings, yards and yards of newly-bleached linen, spun with their own hands, and woven on the homely looms—a snow-white carpet on which to strew the gay blossoms. Upon the hedges, and hanging from the windows of the little cottages, bright crimson draperies and curious heirlooms are not wanting to honour the way where the sacred procession is to pass. Merrily the bells jangle—trills and triplets up and down—with the deep-toned first bell tumbling in now and then as bass, to add the necessary touch of solemnity. The ringers have been at work for hours. The first mass has been sung, and the second will soon be coming on, but the procession will not be till after vespers. The parroco (or parish priest) stands on the piazza in black gown and biretta. He has said his say in church, and has no further work till afternoon: he is a peasant again, among his peasant flock, as he is on week-days, with only the faint halo of skirts and head-gear to keep him from his pipe and the broadest of his jests.