Beppe was the eldest son in a little farm-house hidden among the chestnut woods that clothe the Tuscan Apennines above Pistoia. His younger brother, Sandro, was already married, and it was decided that Beppe, too, must take a wife. Another daughter-in-law was wanted in the house. There really were not enough hands, now that wood must be stacked, fields dug, and fodder prepared ready for the winter. Moreover the chestnut harvest was approaching, and too many girls must be hired unless there were someone else in the family to help with the work. So Beppe, resigning himself to his fate with all the stolidity that breathed from his broad, square-cut shoulders and short bull-neck, set to work to find someone to court. His choice fell on a highly-coloured, energetic woman, well known through all the country-side as an indefatigable worker. He bought her a fairing, had the banns published, and married her in three weeks.
I had been passing a few days in the farm-house, and now received most pressing invitations to be present at the wedding. The guests were first to assemble, at about eight o’clock, in the bride’s house; then after a slight refreshment, rinfresco, to go all together to the church in the village hard by, and thence to return to the Cavi, Beppe’s home, to dinner at about midday.
The bride lived some miles away, in a little hamlet perched nearly on the top of the mountain-ridge. The roads were in many places mere mule-tracks through the wood, and it was doubtful if I could get a donkey.
“Come to the Cavi, Signorina,” said Beppe; “sleep there, and come out with us next morning. I’m sure my bride won’t be jealous.”
I hardly supposed she would; still, I did not accept the invitation.
At five o’clock, therefore, on the eventful morning, a donkey, which had been with some difficulty procured for the occasion, was led round to our door by a boy who boasted the romantic name of Poeta, and off we set: my landlord with his gun across his shoulder; his son, in all the glory of black clothes, bright tie, and heavy watch-chain; a peasant woman who had constituted herself my companion, and myself.
We wound higher and higher in the ever-freshening morning air, between hedges gay with autumn berries, until, just below the Cavi, we halted to await the arrival of the bridegroom and his family. First of all they were not dressed—their new clothes tried them, it appeared—and then the bridegroom had forgotten the ring, and must go back across the fields to get it.
We waited for him by a little lonely shrine under a chestnut-tree. The woods which clothed the slopes of the opposite mountains were still hushed in the cold grey-blue of early dawn. Suddenly the scarped precipices and lonely peaks above them were illuminated, as though from within, by wondrous rose-coloured fire, and hung there like some great glowing amethyst between the cold sky above and the cold woods below. Then, as we continued to gaze, the glorious hope was transformed, and merged into the common life of the new day.
Joined at last by the bridegroom, we had a long but most picturesque expedition up a torrent bed, through rocks and woods of infinite variety. The jokes that enlivened it were hearty, if not too refined. They were the sort of jokes Shakespeare’s clowns might have made; and, indeed, it often seemed as if the characters of some old play were come to life, and were moving and talking around me.
The bride’s house was reached a few minutes after eight o’clock. It was a small one-storied cottage at the farther end of a higgledy-piggledy hamlet. At the foot of the steps which led up to the door stood a man with a remarkably fine white beard, holding a thick stick in his hand. This was the Guardian of the Bride, and he resolutely refused to let anyone enter. A loud altercation arose; Beppe opened his big green umbrella, and, spinning it round above his head, tried to push by; my landlord tried to force his way with his gun; but it was not till pantomime and dialogue had grown fast and furious that the guardian gave the word, and the bride appeared framed in the dark doorway above us. Her rosy face was shadowed by her white bridal kerchief, and in her hands she carried bunches of flowers, which she smilingly distributed by way of welcome.