It seemed to poor Mena that twenty years had fallen suddenly on her shoulders. She watched Lia now, as La Longa had watched her, and kept her always close at her side, and had all the cares of the house on her mind. She had grown into a habit of remaining alone in the house with her sister while the men were at sea, looking from time to time at that empty bed. When she had nothing to do she sat, with her hands in her lap, looking at the empty bed, and then she felt, indeed, that her mother had left her; and when she heard them say in the street such an one is dead, or such another, she thought so they heard “La Longa is dead”—La Longa, who had left her alone with that poor little orphan, with her black neckerchief.
Nunziata or their Cousin Anna came now and then, stepping softly, and with sad looks, and saying nothing, would sit down with her on the door-step, with hands under their aprons. The men coming back from the fishing stepped quickly along, looking carefully from side to side, with the nets on their shoulders. And no one stopped anywhere, not even the carts at the tavern.
Who could tell where Cousin Alfio’s cart was now? or if at this moment he might not lie dying of cholera behind a hedge, that poor fellow, who had no one belonging to him. Sometimes Goosefoot passed, looking half starved, glanced about him, as if he were afraid of his shadow; or Uncle Crucifix, whose riches were scattered here and there, and who went to see if his debtors were likely to die and to cheat him out of his money. The sacrament went by, too, quickly, in the hands of Don Giammaria, with his tunic fastened up, and a barefooted boy ringing the bell before him, for Don Cirino was nowhere to be seen. That bell, in the deserted streets, where no one passed, not a dog, and even Don Franco kept his door half shut, was heart-rending. The only person to be seen, day or night, was La Locca, with her tangled white hair, who went to sit before the house by the medlar-tree, or watched for the boats on the shore. Even the cholera would have none of her, poor old thing.
The strangers had flown as birds do at the approach of winter, and no one came to buy the fish. So that every one said, “After the cholera comes the famine.” Padron ’Ntoni had once more to dip into the money put away for the house, and day by day it melted before his eyes. But he thought of nothing, save that Maruzza had died away from her own house; he could not get that out of his head. ’Ntoni, too, shook his head every time it was necessary to use up the money. Finally, when the cholera was at an end, and there only remained about half of the money put together with such pains and trouble, he began to complain that such a life as that he could not bear—eternally saving and sparing, and then having to spend for bare life; that it was better to risk something, once for all, to get out of this eternal worry, and that there, at least, where his mother had died in the midst of that hideous misery, he would stay no longer.
“Don’t you remember that your mother recommended Mena to you?” said Padron ’Ntoni.
“What good can I do to Mena by staying here?—tell me that.”
Mena looked at him timidly, but with eyes like her mother’s, where one could read her heart, but she dared not speak. Only once, clinging to the jamb of the door, she found courage to say: “I don’t ask for help, if only you’ll stay with us. Now that I haven’t my mother, I feel like a fish out of water; I don’t care about anything. But I can’t bear the idea of that orphan, Lia, who will be left without anybody if you go away; like Nunziata when her father left her.”
“No,” said ’Ntoni, “no, I can do nothing for you if I stay here; the proverb says ‘Help yourself and you’ll be helped.’ When I have made something worth while I’ll come back, and we’ll all be happy together.”
Lia and Alessio opened their large round eyes, and seemed quite dazzled by this prospect, but the old man let his head fall on his breast. “Now you have neither father nor mother, and can do as it seems best to you,” he said at last. “While I live I will care for these children, and when I die the Lord must do the rest.”
Mena, seeing that ’Ntoni would go, whether or not, put his clothes in order, as his mother would have done, and thought how “over there,” in strange lands, her brother would be like Alfio Mosca, with no one to look after him. And while she sewed at his shirts, and pieced his coats, her head ran upon days gone by, and she thought of all that had passed away with them with a swelling heart.