“Take these to the reverend mother for me, and ask that mass may be said in the chapel to-morrow for the repose of the soul of him whose name is written here.”
And I gave her Guido Ferrari’s visiting-card, adding in lower and more solemn tones:
“He met with a sudden and unprepared death. Of your charity, pray also for the man who killed him!”
The old woman looked startled, and crossed herself devoutly; but she promised that my wishes should be fulfilled, and I bade her farewell and passed out, the convent gates closing with a dull clang behind me. I walked on a few yards, and then paused, looking back. What a peaceful home it seemed; how calm and sure a retreat, with the white Noisette roses crowning its ancient gray walls! Yet what embodied curses were pent up in there in the shape of girls growing to be women; women for whom all the care, stern training and anxious solicitude of the nuns would be unavailing; women who would come forth from even that abode of sanctity with vile natures and animal impulses, and who would hereafter, while leading a life of vice and hypocrisy, hold up this very strictness of their early education as proof of their unimpeachable innocence and virtue! To such, what lesson is learned by the daily example of the nuns who mortify their flesh, fast, pray and weep? No lesson at all—nothing save mockery and contempt. To a girl in the heyday of youth and beauty the life of a religieuse seems ridiculous. “The poor nuns!” she says, with a laugh; “they are so ignorant. Their time is over—mine has not yet begun.” Few, very few, among the thousands of young women who leave the scene of their quiet schooldays for the social whirligig of the world, ever learn to take life in earnest, love in earnest, sorrow in earnest. To most of them life is a large dressmaking and millinery establishment; love a question of money and diamonds; sorrow a solemn calculation as to how much or how little mourning is considered becoming or fashionable. And for creatures such as these we men work—work till our hairs are gray and our backs bent with toil—work till all the joy and zest of living has gone from us, and our reward is—what? Happiness?—seldom. Infidelity?—often. Ridicule? Truly we ought to be glad if we are only ridiculed and thrust back to occupy the second place in our own houses; our lady-wives call that “kind treatment.” Is there a married woman living who does not now and then throw a small stone of insolent satire at her husband when his back is turned? What, madame? You, who read these words—you say with indignation: “Certainly there is, and I am that woman!” Ah, truly? I salute you profoundly!—you are, no doubt, the one exception!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Avellino is one of those dreamy, quiet and picturesque towns which have not as yet been desecrated by the Vandal tourist. Persons holding “through tickets” from Messrs. Cook or Gaze do not stop there—there are no “sights” save the old sanctuary called Monte Virgine standing aloft on its rugged hill, with all the memories of its ancient days clinging to it like a wizard’s cloak, and wrapping it in a sort of mysterious meditative silence. It can look back through a vista of eventful years to the eleventh century, when it was erected, so the people say, on the ruins of a temple of Cybele. But what do the sheep and geese that are whipped abroad in herds by the drovers Cook and Gaze know of Monte Virgine or Cybele? Nothing—and they care less; and quiet Avellino escapes from their depredations, thankful that it is not marked on the business map of the drovers’ “Runs.” Shut in by the lofty Apennines, built on the slope of the hill that winds gently down into a green and fruitful valley through which the river Sabato rushes and gleams white against cleft rocks that look like war-worn and deserted castles, a drowsy peace encircles it, and a sort of stateliness, which, compared with the riotous fun and folly of Naples only thirty miles away, is as though the statue of a nude Egeria were placed in rivalry with the painted waxen image of a half-dressed ballet-dancer. Few lovelier sights are to be seen in nature than a sunset from one of the smaller hills round Avellino—when the peaks of the Apennines seem to catch fire from the flaming clouds, and below them, the valleys are full of those tender purple and gray shadows that one sees on the canvases of Salvator Rosa, while the town itself looks like a bronzed carving on an old shield, outlined clearly against the dazzling luster of the sky. To this retired spot I came—glad to rest for a time from my work of vengeance—glad to lay down my burden of bitterness for a brief space, and become, as it were, human again, in the sight of the near mountains. For within their close proximity, things common, things mean seem to slip from the soul—a sort of largeness pervades the thoughts, the cramping prosiness of daily life has no room to assert its sway—a grand hush falls on the stormy waters of passion, and like a chidden babe the strong man stands, dwarfed to an infinite littleness in his own sight, before those majestic monarchs of the landscape whose large brows are crowned with the blue circlet of heaven.
I took up my abode in a quiet, almost humble lodging, living simply, and attended only by Vincenzo. I was tired of the ostentation I had been forced to practice in Naples in order to attain my ends—and it was a relief to me to be for a time as though I were a poor man. The house in which I found rooms that suited me was a ramblingly built, picturesque little place, situated on the outskirts of the town, and the woman who owned it, was, in her way, a character. She was a Roman, she told me, with pride flashing in her black eyes—I could guess that at once by her strongly marked features, her magnificently molded figure, and her free, firm tread—that step which is swift without being hasty, which is the manner born of Rome. She told me her history in a few words, with such eloquent gestures that she seemed to live through it again as she spoke: her husband had been a worker in a marble quarry—one of his fellows had let a huge piece of the rock fall on him, and he was crushed to death.
“And well do I know,” she said, “that he killed my Toni purposely, for he would have loved me had he dared. But I am a common woman, see you—and it seems to me one cannot lie. And when my love’s poor body was scarce covered in the earth, that miserable one—the murderer—came to me—he offered marriage. I accused him of his crime—he denied it—he said the rock slipped from his hands, he knew not how. I struck him on the mouth, and bade him leave my sight and take my curse with him! He is dead now—and surely if the saints have heard me, his soul is not in heaven!”
Thus she spoke with flashing eyes and purposeful energy, while with her strong brown arms she threw open the wide casement of the sitting-room I had taken, and bade me view her orchard. It was a fresh green strip of verdure and foliage—about eight acres of good land, planted entirely with apple-trees.
“Yes, truly!” she said, showing her white teeth in a pleased smile as I made the admiring remark she expected. “Avellino has long had a name for its apples—but, thanks to the Holy Mother, I think in the season there is no fruit in all the neighborhood finer than mine. The produce of it brings me almost enough to live upon—that and the house, when I can find signori willing to dwell with me. But few strangers come hither; sometimes an artist, sometimes a poet—such as these are soon tired of gayety, and are glad to rest. To common persons I would not open my door—not for pride, ah, no! but when one has a girl, one cannot be too careful.”