The sky has become overcast. Banks and boulders of heavy cloud rest on the hills of Savignone down the valley. The mountains have caught the gloom, and look so dark that the ruined castle upon Monte Pilato’s side scarcely shows from off its background. A storm has been prophesied all day, because the air was so sultry; and now the walnuts overhead rustle ominously, and even the chestnuts far away seem to sway as though before a coming strength. Large drops of rain begin to fall.
‘Holy Madonna, and the tempest must come now when we want to keep the wheat upright!’
Marrina takes her huge person hastily away, limping over the stones, and calling with shrill voice to one niece to see to the linen, to the other to drive in the cows.
‘Ah, it’s become a strange parish since the days when I was a girl,’ she mutters. ‘Not a bell ringing yet for the Lord’s mercy against the storm, and it’s upon us, with the corn standing half a yard high, and the maize too!’
Most of the neighbours have disappeared to see after their property, but to the remaining Marrina addresses her complaint.
‘Why, when I was fifteen there wasn’t a stranger in the village—not even other country folk, let alone town folk! And now, because our valleys grow things better than theirs do, they must come and spoil our luck! It’s the strangers do it all. Not but that I admire the fine pink house over the river that Signor Mendicano built, as well as the blue front to the miller’s new cottage, but I say it’s the strangers spoil everything!’
‘You can’t have it both ways, dear heart,’ remarks a young man from beneath.
‘That’s all very well for you, Giannino. The strangers do you a great deal of good, I suppose, when they persuade you to play bowls all day and waste your time! When your land has gone to rack and ruin, and the disease has killed all your vines from want of a little care, they can set it all to-rights, I suppose, by just talking you over to go to America! It’s no fortune you’ll make there, but the fortune of pride and conceit, though you’ll have left your native land for it, and the girl who loves you well! But the young are all alike nowadays—no fear in them, and no fitting shame of things they know nothing about! And, to be sure, it’s not much there is in the girls of to-day that would keep a man to them! Yes, they’ll be all off to get their fortunes too, as if the poverty that did for their parents couldn’t do for them!
‘Ah, the bells have begun to ring at last,’ she puts in as the clashing chime breaks in on her speech.
‘It’s all the foreigners from the towns!’ she goes on again glibly. ‘Now, I remember when I first used to go and mend canonicals in the sacristy for the Prevosto! It was as fearful he was of these Signori as I am. They’ll ruin the village, Marrina, he said. And now doesn’t he go and eat their very minestra—I should even dare to say broth that’s made with meat on a Saturday, if it weren’t I’d be afraid for my soul at saying such a thing of the Lord’s priest! And no more delight does he take in walking under the canopy at procession than—Dio! And there he is with the lady of the Signor Perrino! And a real woollen dress she has on, with this rain down on us! Why it’s a sin!’