Nino faltered. The image of San Pancrazio stood before his own eyes, and he could not shut it out. He, too, felt a tremor in his very soul, for, however secure and sceptical he might represent himself, in the depths of his consciousness there always remained the inherited fear of the unknown--the secret dread of heaven and h.e.l.l. In his heightened pulse-beats, which he could distinctly hear, this feeling knocked loudly at his heart.
A close, sultry air filled the chapel. Through the one little round window over the altar a dusky glimmer fell, scarce brighter than the surrounding darkness. Nino reached up and tried the door. He wanted to open it, to let in the fresh night air, to scare away the fantasies which were slowly surrounding his senses. But the door lay fast in bolt and hinge and would not yield to his straining. He sought the latch with groping fingers, and found that the key had been turned and drawn out.
"Santo Diavolo!" he cried, ice-cold shivers running through every limb.
"The door is locked!"
"Locked, yes, locked," cried Carmela, springing from her knees, and throwing herself on the threshold. "I saw him, how he followed at our heels, and how he raised his hand with threatening gesture. Yes, I heard him, and I saw him, and it is he who has locked us in his sanctuary, that our deed may be expiated."
Thus the poor child raved in feverish terror. Nino listened without a word. What should he do? What would come of all this? It was no use to think of flight. The old stones lay fast one upon another, and fast lay the old oaken doors on their hinges. In the morning all Roccastretta would come to replace the saint on his pedestal, for he had sent the rain without a doubt. Nino could hear the big drops pattering against the window-panes. And they would find him here with Carmela. Alone with Carmela in the chapel! And then? When Don Cesare stepped across the threshold? Nino knew Don Cesare and what he had to expect from him. It would be a battle for life and death, and all the men and women, Father Atanasio and the Syndic--every one would be on the side of Carmela"s injured brother. Verily this was not the ending he had imagined for his love adventure when he tempted Carmela to follow him to his quiet Casina.
Ever blacker lowered the night, heavier and closer hung the clouds, thicker poured the rain. And as Nino heard the rush of heavy drops on the roof, and felt the moist breath of the drinking earth which came in through the little window, it seemed as if something broke within his heart, and a voice cried from the depths: "Every drop of rain that falls from heaven proclaims the power of the saint, and can you doubt the miracle which he has worked on you?"
Next morning, when the procession, led by Father Atanasio, stopped, with the mutilated image of the patron saint, before his chapel, and when the key entered in the lock, and the lock creaked, and the door, swollen by moisture, turned slowly and heavily on its hinges, there was one there whose heart beat violently, and whose blood boiled at fever heat, one whose hand lay carelessly as if toying but none the less fast and grimly on the handle of his knife--for who could foresee what was going to happen? But Don Cesare breathed more freely, and let his knife go, and with difficulty retained composure enough to play out the _role_ he had a.s.sumed, when the padre stood still on the threshold with a cry of astonishment, while out of the dusk from the foot of the altar two figures advanced, kneeled with clasped hands before the good father, and amid the astounded silence that fell upon them all, Nino"s voice was heard saying humbly:
"Saint Pancras has wrought a miracle not on our fields and gardens alone; upon me and upon Carmela in the last night another has fallen.
How it happened, ask me not. The saint led us into this chapel with his own hand, with his own hand closed the door and took away the key. At the foot of his altar we have pledged each other our wedded troth, and at the foot of his altar we beg you, Father Atanasio, to bless the banns."
Then the little Don Cesare exulted aloud:
"Ha!" he cried, waving his little hands in the air, "that was what I prayed yesterday of the good, dear Evolino for myself. That was it.
Father Atanasio! He gave you rain, and me he gave a brother-in-law.
Long live Evolino!"
And in his heart he added something more, which he did not think it necessary to say aloud:
"Evolino," thought he, "you were wiser than I, and led me to a kingdom, when I only looked for a she a.s.s. The ships will come to the harbor of themselves, but of himself never would this rascal Nino have taken my little sister for his wife."
A few weeks later, when the wedding of Carmela and Nino was celebrated with great pomp in the chapel of Evolo, a new image of the saint stood on the altar, a gay, brand new image, which Don Cesare, with divers other matters, had brought from a foreign ship that lay at anchor in the harbor of Roccastretta, and had placed in the chapel in remembrance of this day of miracles. The old Evolino, however, he claimed for himself, and no one grudged him that worm-eaten and broken relic.
At the foot of the rocks of Evolo, in a cool arbor, searched through by sun, and moonbeams, at the Casina, where Nino and Carmela were to make their home, Don Cesare had set up the image--mended, and decently restored by his own hand. It stood in a niche of stone under a roof of fragrant orange trees, beside the ivy-wreathed Greek marble basin into which the crystal spring of Evolo poured; and almost it seemed as if the Evolino felt himself far more at ease amid these surroundings, near the finely-cut bas-reliefs from his ancient temple, with the free winds sighing around him, than above in his musty chapel. A singular peacefulness seemed to have settled down upon his old head, stripped of beard, and hair, and halo; he looked with Olympian smile upon the youthful pair, gaily pursuing a frolicsome existence at his feet, on this their wedding evening, and a faint spark gleamed in his painted eyes, as Nino, who must have learned some lore of the ancient G.o.ds, poured a goblet of fragrant Muscatel upon the ground before him, and laughingly cried:
"To the G.o.ds belong the first drops; honor and glory to the G.o.ds and the saints!"
When they had all departed, and even Don Cesare had taken leave of him with a friendly, confidential nod, and when at last the Evolino stood alone in the silent moonlight, a soft whisper fell from his lips:
"In spite of all, you feel yourselves drawn back again to the ancient heathen G.o.ds, you dear gay heathen folk; and though new names have taken the place of the old ones, in you, my cheerful, good-natured, grown-up children, I recognize my early worshippers once more. In spite of time and change you are they who used to lay fragrant wreaths on the old G.o.d"s altar, in the pillared temple on the cliff, and singing, and laughing, and shouting, pa.s.sed their shouting, singing, laughing life away!"
Silently gleaming, the eternal stars beckoned, softly splashing, the rippling spring murmured a kindly, comforting answer to the poor forgotten G.o.d of the Winds.