'You are not ill, my Lizinanina?' he said eagerly. 'The chemist told me it was nothing.'
'Oh no, it is nothing,' said the child; and she spoke cheerfully and tried to control the cough which shook her from head to foot.
Tears rolled down her father's cheeks and fell on to the smouldering heather, which he set all right. Wine! Meat! Nourishment! The three vain words rang through his head all night. They might as well have bade him set her on a golden throne and call the stars down from their spheres to circle round her.
'My poor little baby!' he thought; 'never did she have a finger ache, or a winter chill, or an hour's discomfort, or a moment's pain in mind or body until now!'
The child wasted and sickened visibly day by day. Her father looked to see the lemon-tree waste and sicken also; but it flourished still, a green, fresh, happy thing, though growing in a place so poor. A superstitious, silly notion took possession of him, begotten by his nervous terrors for his child, and by the mental weakness which came of physical want. He fancied the lemon-tree hurt the child, and drew nourishment and strength away from her. Perhaps in the night, in some mysterious way—who knew how? He grew stupid and feverish, working so hardly all day on hardly more than a crust, and not sleeping at night through his fears for Lizina. Everything seemed to him cruel, wicked, unintelligible. Why had the State taken away the boy who was so contented and useful where he was born? Why had the strange, confined, wearisome life amongst the marshlands killed him? Why was he himself without even means to get decent food? Why, after working hard all these years, could he have no peace? Must he even lose the one little creature he had? The harshness and injustice of it all disturbed his brain and weighed upon his soul. He sank into a sullen silence; he was in the mood when good men turn bad, and burn, pillage, slay—not because they are wicked or unkind by nature, but because they are mad from misery.
But she was so young, and had been always so strong, he thought; this would pass before long, and she would be herself again—brisk, brown, agile, mirthful, singing at the top of her voice as she ran through the lines of the cherry-trees. He denied himself everything to get her food, and left himself scarce enough to keep the spark of life in him. He sold even his one better suit of clothes and his one pair of boots; but she had no appetite, and perceiving his sacrifice, took it so piteously to heart that it made her worse.
The neighbours were good-natured and brought now an egg, now a fruit, now a loaf for Lizina; but they could not bring her appetite, and were offended and chilled by her lassitude, her apparent ignorance of their good intentions, and her indifference to their gifts.
Some suggested this nostrum, others that; some urged religious pilgrimages, and some herbs, and some charms, and some spoke of a wise woman, who, if you crossed her hand with silver, could relieve you of any evil if she would. But amidst the multitude of counsellors, Lizina only grew thinner and thinner, paler and paler, all her youth seeming slowly to wane and die out of her.
Her little sick heart was set obstinately on what her father had told her was impossible.
None of Cecco's own people thought of going to the place where he died. He was dead, and there was an end to it; even his mother, although she wept for him, did not dream of throwing away good money in a silly and useless journey to the place where he had been put in the ground.