Then the bystanders all broke into loud laughter, and cried to each other:
"The padre is always right The Evoluccio is an old fellow--older than any of us can think--and one must be considerate with age."
"Carmela! Carmela!" suddenly sounded from the midst of the confused throng descending the side of the cliff toward the little town; and from his higher point of observation the padre saw Don Cesare"s short figure powerfully fighting against the stream of people, and remarked with edification how he stretched his neck, how he jumped off his little legs, and stood on his little toes, making strenuous efforts to climb the hill again, or, at least to look over the heads of his fellow citizens. "Carmela," he cried, "where are you?" But Carmela appeared to have just reached a highly interesting clause of her conversation with the smart and enterprising Nino, who was pushing his suit gaily with the listening girl.
"See," he said, pointing to where, close at the foot of the promontory a country house lay hidden among the groves of lemon trees, "yonder is my Casina. Last year I inherited it, and now in a few days it will be all ready to live in. How pretty it looks! Everything new, and ready for daily life. And it is so cool and pleasant sitting there on a hot summer evening, with the fresh, silvery spring that trickles out of the rock into an old Greek marble basin; it is a stone from the temple, you know, that used to stand here, with images of G.o.ds, and wonderful animals. Only come there with me, and see how much pleasanter it is than in the dark street under your window."
The pretty girl"s look followed his gesture. She shaded her eyes with her hand, and a rosy smile rested on her delicately cut mouth.
"Oh, yes," she said, half aloud, to herself, "it may well be cool and pleasant there."
Then she heard her brother"s voice.
"I am coming," she cried; and, hastily turning to Nino, "shall I see you this evening at the usual hour?"
"Yes, if you will promise to come out here with me."
"Yes, yes," she cried, hastily, and ran away toward the others, who were descending the hill. Nino stroked his slender moustache, and a mocking little smile shot from his eyes after the pretty girl who had so thoughtlessly thrown him this momentous promise.
When Padre Atanasio found himself alone by the chapel under the olive trees he walked with much deliberation to the edge of the cliff and looked over; a most peculiar, condoling, bantering smile hovered on his lips, as his glance fell on the rope, and glided down to the place where it plunged into the sea. Down there, several feet deep under water, dashed over by the foaming waves, floated something heavy, that looked like a human body--a helpless lump, which the waves tossed hither and thither, and across which the fish, like silver arrows, shot back and forth in lightning darts. Occasionally the thing would bounce against a rock, roll back on itself, and then resume its regular motion in the water. If the dashing of the waves ceased for a little, and a sunbeam fell upon the clear flood, one could have sworn that a corpse was floating there--the corpse of an old man with snow-white hair and beard, in a faded red-brown mantle; the rope was knotted strongly around his hips, and his arms were closely bound by it also. He lay there, the poor old man, stretched out stiffly, and let the waves drive him, and Padre Atanasio looked down at him so queerly, and queer sounded the words which the holy man threw him over his shoulder at parting:
"Serves you rights Evoluccio! What? You wanted to keep up a sinful compet.i.tion with the blessed Mother of G.o.d? You must have the finest presents, the handsomest wax candles, the gayest festivals! And what is there so extraordinary about you, then? You"re nothing but a half-converted old heathen!"
But the poor old man with the snow-white beard and hair, and the red-brown mantle, over whom the jolly fishes were swimming, was not a murderer"s victim; he was not even a corpse; he was not even a poor old man. He was nothing more nor less than the especial patron saint of the little town and surrounding country. Holy Saint Pancras of Evolo--the Evolino, as the people were accustomed, after their familiar fashion, to call him for short--the Evoluccio, as they injuriously named him when his conduct didn"t please them.
The good saint might well have wondered what had happened to him on that fine spring morning, when the entire population of Roccastretta broke into his sanctuary on the Promontory of Evolo, tore him from his pedestal, carried him out from the cool twilight of his chapel into the glaring day, tied a rope around his body, dragged him, amid the most intolerable cursing and abuse, to the edge of the rocks, and pitched him over, like a dead cat, into the sea.
Hardly two days before, all Roccastretta had a.s.sembled in his chapel, and words of the most pa.s.sionate devotion had risen like a cloud of grateful incense to the niche in whose depths he had made his dwelling for more years than any one there could count.
"Holy Pancrazio of Evolo, dear good Saint Pancras," prayed this pious people, "you love us like children and we love you like a father. Every Sunday we bring you fragrant nosegays, and when, as at present, the burning drought kills our flowers, then we bring bunches of gold and silver tinsel, and thick yellow wax candles to light before your image.
Father Atanasio, who never honored you as he ought, and always calls you a half-converted heathen, he is of opinion that we give his Madonna nothing but miserable tallow dips, and keep the best of everything for you. So, you see, best, dearest Evolino, that we don"t grudge you anything, and our children shall be just like us; for you are our own, only honored patron saint. Only, now, bethink you of your office, dearest, kindest Evolino. For three months not a drop of rain has fallen on our fields, trees, vines. Look around you! The figs are drying up, the olives will not swell, the wheat fields look like a desert. If you don"t send rain, Evolino, it is all over with our harvest, and nothing will be left for your people but to save themselves from starvation by catching fishes and crabs. Be good, then, holy Saint Pancras, and send rain. You know very well it is not a tempest we want, but a good, long, mild, soaking rain, such as you know how to send when you will. To-morrow, or next day, at the latest. Do this for us, dear Saint Pancras, and you know how we will deck your image beautifully, and honor you above all the other saints; yes, even before the blessed Madonna herself, who is such a busy Queen of Heaven and Earth that she has no time to think about our little place. But you, Evolino, belong to us alone, and have no one else to look after!
Care for us then, dearest Evolino, and we will bless you to all eternity."
Thus they prayed and besought him, and the ancient Evolino in his niche listened without stirring an eye or a hand, as became a saint that was cut out of wood, and plastered over with paint; and presently they all trooped out and locked the door, leaving the honest old fellow to his dreams in the cool, cozy chapel. Long and many were the Christian years that he had stood up here in the sanctuary of Evolo; but his dim confused remembrance looked wistfully back into the twilight of a still older time. There was a shrine here then, too--not a chapel, but a temple; other priests came and went before his image, other songs were sung and other G.o.ds were honored. The ancient sculpture had hewn him out of stout knotty wood, and beneath the various crusts deposited by the lapse of centuries, the old image was still hidden, as it came from that hand, now long moldering in dust; defaced, however, by strange gaudy daubs of color, with a red mantle, over a blue tunic, silver-white beard and hair, cherry-red lips, black brows in two even arches above the neatly painted eyes, and a round saintly nimbus, behind his head, that glistened as if he had a pure gold sailor"s hat on the nape of his neck. Truly he didn"t look like that in the old times, yet they honored him then much as he was honored now, not like one of the high mighty ones, who are only to be addressed with fear and trembling; like a dear old friend rather, with whom a man can exchange the familiar "thee and thou"--older, certainly, and doubtless of higher degree, but who has dwelled so long in our midst that he seems like one of our own people. This feeling increased with the lapse of years, and a most confidential relation had sprung up between the patron saint and his flock--a relation of mutual service and mutual indulgence, as of friendly neighbors who like to do each other a brotherly good turn when they can.
It was Saint Pancras" duty to take care of the little town, and its surrounding country; but the honest patron was so old and brittle, that no one could blame him if his head was not always in the right place, and his thoughts sometimes went wool gathering, so the weakness of age was helped for Evolino by various friendly hints; if that had no effect, the duties of a patron saint were set before him seriously but kindly; if this did not serve, then the standpoint was made clear in coa.r.s.e but unmistakable fashion,--and thus it happened that on this fine spring morning, after he had failed to supply the longed-for rain, in spite of prayers and entreaties, he was lowered at the end of a rope into the sea, like a common malefactor, for his punishment and his reformation.
And so he lay down there at the end of his rope, and saw how the crowd, when their work was accomplished, took the way to the town, and saw how Padre Atanasio, who hated him for a dangerous rival, in the bottom of his heart, wept crocodile tears over him, and then he saw how his chapel stood above among the olive trees, lonely and forsaken, and how the open door swung to and fro in the wind,--and he may have turned back in his dim memory to that fair, long past time when the warm sea-winds blew through the breezy colonnades, when the bright sunbeams played over his youthful G.o.dlike figure, when he looked down from his pedestal upon the coast, the purple sea, and the high-beaked ships with their great oars. Then, when he was a young G.o.d, when they brought grapes and figs, and pomegranates to lay at his feet! Gayer than now sounded the songs of the priests, and l.u.s.tily streamed up the clouds of incense from the golden vessels. He was not Saint Pancras of Evolo then, yet it was under a very similar sounding name that he was honored by the believing crowd, and none then would have dared to s.n.a.t.c.h from his pedestal the beautiful G.o.d of the Winds, and throw him down among the fibrous polyps, a mock for women and children.
In dull, humming tones sang these ancient, half-smothered memories through his drowsy thoughts, and duller, and still further off, were the voices of the noisy folk, who had just left him, and in crisp softly-splashing wavelets the eternal sea, like a tender mother with her sleeping child, rocked holy Saint Pancras of Evolo.
II
Father Atanasio could not explain satisfactorily to his own mind why Don Cesare had been able to work himself into such a violent rage against the poor Saint Pancras, and with every one whom he came across on the way home, and with every one whom he encountered during the day on the street, or in the wine-shop, he began the subject over again.
"I can understand very well," said the father, to his devoutly-attentive listeners--"I understand perfectly--that you, Don Ciccio, and you, Don Pasquale, and you, Don Geronimo, and many others, are angry in your hearts with our patron saint. You need rain, you need it as mankind needs air, and fishes water. That is to say, your fields need it, your lemon trees, figs, pomegranates, olives, and almond plantations. You are landed people, you cultivate your acres, and wet them with the sweat of your brows. But the sweat of your brows, ha-ha-ha! That is only a dewdrop or two, and won"t answer instead of rain." Here the father laughed, and all the others laughed at their priest"s joke.
"Well, then, if your patron forgets his duty, and neglects to send the rain"--
"He doesn"t want to send it!" cried one.
"Whether he doesn"t want to, or whether he forgets it, that I don"t know--I am not at liberty to discuss the question since you credit me with an evil-disposed jealousy toward the good old St. Pancras. Well, then, never mind that; I know what I know. But what was I going to say? Oh, yes, if you, being injured in your property through your patron saint"s--let us say, carelessness--if you show him in your way--which--well--your way is--I don"t know exactly what to call it."
"It"s the way to deal with him," they shouted from every side. "We know him. Praying is no good unless we discipline him too. This isn"t the first time. Fifty years ago our fathers had to do the same thing, and he had not been three days under water before it rained. It"s his old heathenish obstinacy that must be broken now and then."
Father Atanasio turned right and left, behind, before, defending himself from the pelting of angry words, with hands and feet, his head wagging from side to side, hands and shoulders raised protestingly; after a while, when they let him speak once more, he was quite breathless, as if it were he who had been raging and shouting.
"Be peaceable, I beg," he gasped. "I know well that you understand this matter better than I. It is nothing to me. I only have to read ma.s.s in church before the blessed Madonna, and your Saint Pancras and his chapel do not belong to my parish. But this is not what I wanted to talk about. What I would say is: Don Cesare owns neither a tree nor a blade of gra.s.s. It is all one to him if it rains or shines. He is a ship-trader. What has he to do with rain? And yet it was Don Cesare who took the saint from his pedestal and carried him down to the rocks. He it was who slung the rope over the olive tree, and let Evolino down into the water. And Don Cesare is a wise man, the wisest of us--of you all. He knows what he does, and why he does it; and therefore I, Father Atanasio, say something is wrong--something is hidden that must be revealed."
In vain did the bystanders, charmed by Don Censure"s heroic deed, seek to make the father understand that the little ship-trader had simply shared the feelings of his fellow tradesmen; that he had not acted from personal motives, and it was exactly this unselfishness which deserved to be admired and respected. All these explanations and a.s.surances rebounded from the father"s sceptical smile without effect.
"My dear friends," said the stout, smiling father, "I know you and all your kin. You were all hatched out of the same sh.e.l.l. Unselfishness? We will seek that elsewhere. When it comes into your heads to praise a fellow creature for his unselfishness it is because you somehow find it to your own advantage. And Don Cesare, above all others, is far too wise to be unselfish. He had his sufficient reasons for letting himself be compromised with Saint Pancras, like the rest of you. Yes, Don Ciccio, compromised you are, thoroughly, and if I were the Evolino, Santo Diav--that is, I would say. Holy Madonna--I know what I would do.
However, that is not the question. I was talking of Don Cesare. He knows on which side his bread is b.u.t.tered, and how to squeeze in time out of a tight place. He will set himself right with Saint Pancras, take care of his own interests, and leave you all sitting in the mire, never doubt it. Cesare Agresta, the clever trader, will look after his own advantage."
The padre was not far wrong, for Don Cesare was a stirring, driving, scheming little man; and as to the present question, it was certainly true that, in the morning, when he took the saint down from his pedestal and carried him, like a baby, out of the chapel, he had whispered lightly, quite lightly, so that no one else could hear: "Don"t be angry, dear Pancrazio. What I do I must do. I will make it up to you." Certainly no one heard this, not even Father Atanasio, although he was standing close by, and looking on with silent, malicious delight, while they made life so hard for the Holy Madonna"s hated rival; and still less was it observed by the bystanders, for the face which Don Cesare made didn"t match his words at all, and whoever had seen him at that moment must have said to himself: "Poor St.
Pancras! it"s lucky you are made of wood; for if alive you were, alive you would never come out of the hands of this raving maniac, with the glaring eyes and bristling hair."
Quite another face, the most unconcerned face in the world, was that with which, toward evening of the same day, Don Cesare, in the gathering twilight, walked into the room where his sister sat sewing by the flickering, smoking tallow candle; and, with the most indifferent tone in the world, he said to the girl looking up at him with the most unconcerned as well as the handsomest and brightest of black eyes: "Close up the house with care, Carmela. I am going to Salvatore"s, and shall not return till late."
At the door he turned and added: "And, Carmela, I may as well say, take care of your eyes, little Mouse; they are remarkably bright these days.
And, you know, I would be well pleased with Nino, but he must take you before the altar. If he will not do that--tell him from me--then let him keep away from you, or it may be the worse for him. Good-night, little Mouse!"
Whereupon Carmela, demurely bending her head over her work, replied:
"Go on, Cesare, and be easy. Carmela comes from good stock."
She was from the same stock as her brother, at any rate, for she added, in exactly the same tone as that in which Don Cesare has whispered to the saint:
"That Nino shall marry Carmela and none other will scarcely be accomplished by your aid, Cesare. I must see to that."
Her eyes sparkled over her work, as if she knew very well indeed what she was thinking about. And she did, too, the pet.i.te witch, with the fine finger tips, and the raven black curly hair; for her brother was no sooner out of the house than she sprang up lightly, ran to the door, drew the bolt, and then stepped softly, softly, to a window that opened on the street, stuck her little head through a narrow opening, and looked quietly after Don Cesare for a while, then, when she had seen him disappear through the darkness in the direction of Salvatore"s house, she threw the window wide open, leaned out, laid her right hand above her eyes, and gazed steadily in the opposite direction, as if searching for something in the thick gloom. She found what she was looking for very soon. It appeared in the shape of a young, slender man, who kept himself in the shadow of the houses, cautiously and noiselessly approached the window, and suddenly stood before her, grasping her hands in his, and whispering:
"I have waited long. I have kept my word. Will you keep yours, Carmela?"
Cesare"s small house lay at the outermost end of a little street that led to the harbor. Whoever came up that way was certain not to be seen by any one, and that was exactly the way the young man had come. The night was dark. The moon was yet far below the horizon. It was easy to chat quietly and un.o.bserved between window and street, and this the two did. They were far past the rudimentary stage of love-making, for Carmela promptly resigned her hand to the caresses of Nino, who confidently pressed upon it a long, pa.s.sionate kiss.
"Only come this evening with me to my Casina," he whispered; "we can be alone there, and we can"t go on forever talking from window to street like this."
Carmela smiled under cover of the night.
"It is so far," said she; "if my brother should come back before I"--
"You will be home long before your brother. The way is very short along the sh.o.r.e, under the Promontory of Evolo."
"It is too far, Nino; the moon will rise soon, and then we shall be discovered."