Earthwork out of Tuscany Part 6

In comes the metal-worker, Sor Matteo, burly but watchful in a greasy ap.r.o.n, eyes the lad up and down with much burdensome pondering of hand to scrubby chin, as to say to Mariota "I'm no fool." With never a blush, nor a quailing of the eyes' level beam, Mariota begs cousin Luca to become conscious of her master.

There were the makings of a piece of right Boccacesque in all this, and the _padrone_ showed manifest disinclination for his accustomed part: but Luca's candid face disclaimed all dark-entry work. Mariota hurried to her task. A modeller in clay, a statuary, _via_, an admirer of the choicer contrivings of Mother Nature! What and if he should find his cousin, his scarce-remembered gossip Mariota, worth an artist's half- closed eye! And the _bambinaccio_ (with a side-look and face averted as she spoke)--_ecco_!--many a Gesulino showed a leaner thigh and cheeks less peachy than he. Had Papa seen the new dimple in Beppino's chin? And more soft piping to the same tune. Master Matteo was appeased; but Luca was far adrift with other matters. Love, for him, lay not in flesh and blood alone; rather, in what flesh and blood signified in another clay, not Messer Domeneddio's, but his own chosen task-stuff. He had come hither to Prato on the commission of the Opera, to work a _Madonna col Bambino_ for the great door of the Duomo. Well! he had his Madonna to hand, it would seem:--Mariota at the door of the smith's house, confident, lissom and fresh, and the l.u.s.ty child groping for his breakfast. The light had been upon her, gleamed upon her skin, her br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes, her glossy brown hair. What a bravery was hers! What a glorified presentment of young life, new-budded, was here! The town gaped, the husband admired; but Mariota, with her square chin and high carriage, looked as straightly before her, when in pale blue and silver-white, Madonna with the Babe and the holy deacons Stephen and Laurence stood, four months afterwards, within the shadow of the great church, and shone out to the day.

I pay silent respect to strapping Mariota and her baby-boy In the country of Boccace. Then, when I am in Florence again, under the spell of the city life, I lounge in the Borg' Ognissanti, or across Arno in the _quartiere_ San Niccolo, or out by San Frediano where Botticelli in his green old age pruned his vines, or in the pent streets between the Via della Pergola and Santa Croce, and watch the townsfolk lead their lives of patchwork and easy laughter, I fear I have a taste for such company. I am fond of verdure; I like trees as well as men: every oak for me has its hamadryad informing it, I like flowers better than men; and the most beautiful flower I know is a girl, I have a sweetheart in the Bargello, as you shall hear. I believe she is one of Donatello's sowing; but the critics are divided, I cannot trace Verocchio's bluntened lineaments in her, nor Mino's peaksomeness, nor anything of Desiderio. She's not very pretty, but she's like a summer flower, say, a campanula; and that is why I love to watch her and talk to her in this grandfatherly fas.h.i.+on.

Bettina, I say to her, are you, I wonder, twelve years old yet? You cannot be much more I think, for you have let your bodice-strap slip off one of your shoulders and betray you to the sun. You are but a round rose-bud now and no one thinks any harm; but some day the sun will look at you in an odd way, and then, suddenly, you will be ashamed, and draw your frock right up to your neck.

And your hair strays where it likes at present. I know you have a golden fillet of box-leaves round your brow: that is because you are only a little girl still, not more than twelve. And you have tied the ends up in a sort of knot. But you romp so much and laugh so--I know you have two bright rows of little teeth--that you can never expect to keep tidy. Why, even now, while I am scolding you, you are itching to laugh and run away.

I see a wavy lock trailing down your neck, _ragazza_, and those heavy tresses on your temples, instead of being drawn meekly back, droop down over your temples, and cover up your little ears. Don't you know that Florentine, ladies are proud of their foreheads, and when they have pretty ears, always show them? Some day, my dear, you will go out into the world; and your hair will be twisted up into coils with gold braid; perhaps you will have on it a flowery garland of Messer Domenico's making, and a string of Venice beads round your throat. And when that time comes, you won't let the sun play with your neck any more; he won't know his romp when he sees her in stiff velvet of Genoa and a high collar edged with seed-pearls.

And you won't look me in the eyes as you are doing now, saucy girl, with your chin pushed forward and your mouth all in a pucker--who's to know whether you are going to pout or giggle?--and your pert green eyes wide open, as if to say "Who's this old thickhead staring at me so hard?" No, Bettina, you will drop them instead; you will blush all over your neck and cheeks, and hang your round head. You have chestnuts in your two fists now, I know; there's some of the flour sticking to the corners of your mouth, little s.l.u.t. But then you will have a fan perhaps, or a spygla.s.s, or at least a ma.s.s-book in the mornings; and when I am looking at you, your ringers will tie themselves in knots and be very interesting. In two years' time, Bettina!

But though I shan't love you half as much as I do now, I shall always come to see you, I think; and, as I shall be a very old man by that time, perhaps you will still sit on a stool at my knee and give me a kiss now and then--oh, a mere bird's peck, just for kindness.... The Via de' Bardi is grey, and you are there in yellow. You are like a young daffodil dancing in the winter gra.s.s. But soon you will have strained to your full flower-time, and I see you in your summering, lithe and rather languid, with heavy-lidded eyes, and a slow smile.

Then you will not dance; but, instead, you will stoop gravely like a tall garden lily, and give your white hand to the lover kneeling below.

And all in two years, my little Bettina!

X

CATS

There was once a man in Italy--so the story runs--who said that animals were sacred because G.o.d had made them. People didn't believe him for a long time; they came, you see, of a race which had found it amusing to kill such things, and killed a great many of them too, until it struck them one fine day that killing men was better sport still, and watching men kill each other the best sport of all because it was the least trouble. Animals! said they, why, how can they be sacred; things that you call beef and mutton when they have left off being oxen and sheep, and sell for so much a pound? They scoffed at this mad neighbour, looked at each other waggishly, and shrugged their shoulders as he pa.s.sed along the street. Well! then, all of a sudden, as you may say, one morning he walked into the town--Gubbio it was--with a wolf pacing at his heels--a certain wolf which had been the terror of the country-side and eaten I don't know how many children and goats. He walked up the main street till he got to the open Piazza in front of the great church. And the long grey wolf padded beside him with a limp tongue lolling out between the ragged palings which stood him for teeth. In the middle of the Piazza was a fountain, and above the fountain a tall stone crucifix. Our friend mounted the steps of the cross in the alert way he had (like a little bird, the story says), and the wolf, after lapping apologetically in the basin, followed him up three steps at a time. Then with one arm round the shaft to steady himself, he made a fine sermon to the neighbours crowding in the Square, and the wolf stood with his forepaws on the edge of the fountain and helped him. The sermon was all about wolves (naturally) and the best way of treating them. I fancy the people came to agree with it in time; anyhow when the man died they made a saint of him and built three churches, one over another, to contain his body. And I believe it is entirely his fault that there are a hundred-and-three cats in the convent- garden of San Lorenzo in Florence. For what are you to do? Animals are sacred, says Saint Francis. Animals are sacred, but cats have kittens; and so it comes about that the people who agree with Saint Francis have to suffer for the people who don't.

The Canons of San Lorenzo agree with Saint Francis, and it seems to me that they must suffer a good deal. The convent is large; it has a great mildewed cloister with a covered-in walk all round it built on arches. In the middle is a green garth with cypresses and yews dotted about; and when you look up you see the blue sky cut square, and the hot tiles of a huge dome staring up into it. Round the cloister walk are discreet brown doors, and by the side of each door a bra.s.s plate tells you the name and t.i.tles of the Canon who lives behind it. It is on the principle of Dean's Yard at Westminster; only here there are more Canons--and more cats.

The Canons live under the cloister; the cats live on the green garth, and sometimes die there, I did not see much of the Canons; but the cats seemed to me very sad-depressed, nostalgic even, I might describe them, if there had not been something more languid, something faded and spiritless about their habit. It was not that they quarrelled. I heard none of those long- drawn wails, gloomy yet mellow soliloquies, with which our cats usher in the crescent moon or hymn her when she swims at the full: there lacked even that comely resignation we may see on any sunny window-ledge at home;--the rounded back and neatly ordered tail, the immaculate fore-paws peering sedately below the snowy chest, the squeezed-up eyes which so resolutely shut off a bleak and (so to say) unenlightened world. That is pensiveness, sedate chastened melancholy; but it is soothing, it speaks a philosophy, and a certain balancing of pleasures and pains. In San Lorenzo cloister, when I looked in one hot noon seeking a refuge from the glare and white dust of the city, I was conscious of a something sinister that forbade such an even existence for the smoothest tempered cat. There were too many of them for companions.h.i.+p, and perhaps too few for the humour of the thing to strike them: in and out the chilly shades they stalked gloomily, hither and thither like lank and unquiet ghosts of starved cats.

They were of all colours--gay orange-tawny, tortoisesh.e.l.l with the becoming white patch over one eye, delicate tints of grey and fawn and lavender, brindle, glossy sable; and yet the gloom and dampness of the place seemed to mildew them all so that their brightness was glaring and their softest gradations took on a shade as of rusty mourning. No cat could be expected to do herself justice.

To and fro they paced, balancing sometimes with hysterical precision on the ledge of the parapet, pa.s.sing each other at whisker's length, but _cutting each other dead_! Not a cat had a look or a sniff for his fellow; not a cat so much as guessed at another's existence. Among those hundred-and-three restless spirits there was not a cat but did not affect to believe that a hundred-and-two were away! It was horrible, the _inhumanity_ of it. Here were these shreds and waifs, these "unnecessary litters" of Florentine households, herded together in the only asylum (short of the Arno) open to them, driven in like dead leaves in November, flitting dismally round and round for a span, and watching each other die without a mew or a lick! Saint Francis was not the wise man I had thought him.

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. I had watched these beasts at their feverish exercises for nearly an hour before I perceived that they were gradually hemming me in. They seemed to be forming up, in ranks, on the garth. Only a ditch separated us--I was in the cloister-walk, a hundred-and-three gaunt, expectant, desperate cats facing me. Their famished pale eyes pierced me through and through; and two-hundred-and-two hungry eyes (four cats supported life in one apiece) is more than I can stand, though I am a married man with a family. These brutes thought I was going to feed them! I was preparing weakly for flight when I heard steps in the gateway; a woman came in with a black bag. She must be going to deposit a cat on Jean-Jacques' ingenious plan of avoiding domestic trouble; it was surely impossible she wanted to borrow one! Neither: she came confidently in, beaming on our mad fellows.h.i.+p with a pleasant smile of preparation. The cats knew her better than I did. Their suspense was really shocking to witness. While she was rolling her sleeves up and tying on her ap.r.o.n--she was poor, evidently, but very neat and wholesome in her black dress and the decent cap which crowned her grey hair--while she unpacked the contents of the bag--two newspaper parcels full of rather distressing viands, scissors, and a pair of gloves which had done duty more than once--while all these preparations were soberly fulfilling, the agitation of the hundred-and-three was desperate indeed. The air grew thick, it quivered with the las.h.i.+ng of tails; hoa.r.s.e mews echoed along the stone walls, paws were raised and let fall with the rhythmical patter of raindrops. A furtive beast played the thief: he was one of the one-eyed fraternity, red with mange. Somehow he slipped in between us; we discovered him crouched by the newspaper raking over the contents. This was no time for ceremony; he got a prompt cuff over the head and slunk away s.h.i.+vering and shaking his ears. And then the distribution began. Now, your cat, at the best of times, is squeamish about his food; he stands no tricks. He is a slow eater, though he can secure his dinner with the best of us. A vicious s.n.a.t.c.h, like a snake, and he has it. Then he spreads himself out to dispose of the prey-feet tucked well in, head low, tail laid close along, eyes shut fast. That is how a cat of breeding loves to dine, Alas! many a day of intolerable prowling, many a black vigil, had taken the polish off the hundred-and-three. As a matter of fact they behaved abominably: they leaped at the sc.r.a.ps, they clawed at them in the air, they bolted them whole with starting eyes and portentous gulpings, they growled all the while with the smothered ferocity of thunder in the hills. No waiting of turns, no licking of lips and moustaches to get the lingering flavours, no dalliance. They were as restless and suspicious here as everywhere; their feast was the horrid hasty orgy of ghouls in a churchyard.

But an even distribution was made: I don't think any one got more than his share. Of course there were underhand attempts in plenty, and, at least once, open violence--a sudden rush from opposite sides, a growling and spitting like sparks from a smithy; and then, with ears laid flat, two ill-favoured beasts clawed blindly at each other, and a sly and tigerish brindle made away with the morsel. My woman took the thing very coolly I thought, served them all alike, and didn't resent (as I should have done) the unfortunate want of delicacy there was about these vagrants. A cat that takes your food and growls at you for the favour, a cat that would eat _you_ if he dared, is a pretty revelation. _ca donne furieus.e.m.e.nt a penser_. It gives you a suspicion of just how far the polish we most of us smirk over will go. My cats at San Lorenzo knew some few moments of peace between two and three in the afternoon. That would have been the time to get up a testimonial to the kind soul who fed them.

Try them at five and they would ignore you. But try them next morning!

My knowledge of the Italian tongue, in those days, was severely limited to the necessaries of existence; to take me on a fancy subject, like cats, was to strike me dumb. But at this stage of our intercourse (hitherto confined to smiles and eye-service) it became so evident my companion had something to say that I must perforce take my hat off and stand attentive.

She pointed to the middle of the garth, and there, under the boughs of a shrub, I saw the hundred-and-fourth cat, sorriest of them all. It was a new-comer, she told me, and shy. Shy it certainly was, poor wretch; it glowered upon me from under the branches like a bad conscience. Shyness could not hide hunger--I never saw hungrier eyes than hers--but it could hold it in check: the silkiest speech could not tempt her out, and when we threw pieces she only winced! What was to be done next was my work. Plain duty called me to scale the ditch with some of those dripping, slippery, nameless cates in my fingers and to approach the stranger where she lurked bodeful under her tree. My pa.s.sage towards her lay over the rank vegetation of the garth, in whose coa.r.s.e herbage here and there I stumbled upon a limp white form stretched out--a waif the less in the world! I don't say it was a happy pa.s.sage for me: it was made to the visible consternation of her I wish to befriend. Her piteous yellow eyes searched mine for sympathy; she wanted to tell me something and wouldn't understand! As I neared her she s.h.i.+vered and mewed twice. Then she limped painfully off--poor soul, she had but three feet!--to another tree, leaving behind her, unwillingly enough, a much-licked dead kitten. That was what she wanted to tell me then. As I was there, I deposited the garbage by the side of the little corpse, knowing she would resume her watch, and retired. My friend who had put up her parcels was prepared to go. She thanked me with a smile as she went out, looking carefully round lest she had missed out some other night-birds. One of the Canons had come out of his door and was leaning against the lintel, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. He was a spare dry man who seemed to have measured life and found it a childish business. He jerked his head towards the gateway as he glanced at me. "That is a good woman," he said in French, "she lendeth unto the Lord.... Yes," he went on, nodding his head slowly backwards and forwards, "lends Him something every day." The cats were sitting in the shady cloister-garth licking their whiskers: one was actually cleaning his paw. I went out into the sun thinking of Saint Francis and his wolf.

XI

THE SOUL OF A CITY

He hated Marco first of all because one day he undersold him in the Campo, put him to shame in open market. Figs were going cheap that October in spite of the waning year; but there was no earthly reason why he should give the English ladies more than four for two _soldi_. What were _soldi_ to English people? The scratch of a flea! He would have given them a handful, taken as they came, for their piece of _cinquanta_, and reaped a tidy little profit for himself. Who would have been the worse? G.o.d knew he needed it. Mariola crumpled with the ague like a dried leaf, and that long girl of his growing up so fast, and still running wild with goat-herds and marble quarrymen. How could he send her to the nuns for a place unless he bought her some shoes and a rosary? And then that pig Marco--thieving old miser--peered forward with his mock candour and silver-rimmed goggles and offered _ten_ for two _soldi_--ten!

with the market price, _Dio mio_, at twelve! And _fichi totati_ too! Do you wonder that the ladies in striped blankets gave the cheek to Maso Cecci and turned to Marco Zoppa?

That wasn't all, but it was an accentuation of a long series of spiteful injuries wrought him by the wrinkled old villain. Maso endured, hating the old man daily more and more; tried little tricks, little revenges, upon him, upset his baskets, hid his pipe; but they generally failed or recoiled with a nasty swiftness upon himself. He only got deeper and deeper into the bad odour of the neighbours who traded in the Piazza with fruit and indifferent photographs. Nothing went very well--thanks to that unspeakable old Marco! His girl grew longer and lazier and handsomer, with a shapelier bust and a pair of arms like that snaky Bacchante in the _Opera_. Maso had to quail more than he liked to admit before the proud stare of her eyes; and when she dropped the heavy lids upon them and sauntered away, arms akimbo under her shawl, he could only swear. And he always cursed Marco Zoppa who gave her chestnuts and sage counsel for nothing. G.o.d only knew what devilry he might be whispering to her in the shady corner where the sun never came and the gra.s.s sprouted between the flags--she leaning against the wall, looking down at her toes, and he peering keen-eyed into her face and muttering in his beard, sometimes laying an old brown hand on her shoulder--Lord! he _did_ hate the man.

Then came the August races.

Maso had brought his Isotta into the city to see the fun and she had disappeared in the press just before the procession stayed by the Palazzo and the trumpets sounded for the first race. Maso shrugged his shoulders and cursed his luck, but didn't budge. The girl must look after herself.

He was on the upper rim of the great fountain craning his neck over the pack of people: then he got a dig under the ribs enough to take the breath of an ox. It was the spout of old Marco's green umbrella. "Hey! silly fool," spluttered the old liar, "dost want that loose-legged s.l.u.t of thine in trouble? I tell thee she's playing in a corner with Carlo Formaggia.

Already he's pinched her cheek twice, and who knows what the end may be?

Mud-coloured a.s.s, wilt thou let thy child slip to the devil while thou standest gaping at a horse-race?" And this before all the neighbours! What to say to such a man? Maso babbled with rage; but he had to go, for Carlo Formaggia was well known. He had ruined more girls than enough; he was in league with vile houses, gambling dens, thieves' h.e.l.ls; Captain of an infamous secret society; the police were only waiting for a pretext to get him s.h.i.+pped off to the hulks. He must go of course. No thanks to Marco though: in fact he hated him worse than ever, partly because he had drawn all eyes and a fair share of sn.i.g.g.e.ring and tongues thrust in the cheek upon his account; but most because he knew he had been trapped into losing a good place. For, as he mounted the narrow stair cut between old houses steep as rocks, he turned and saw Zoppa placidly smoking his pipe in the very spot he had held, squatted on the fountain-rim with his green umbrella between his knees. He was beaming through his spectacles, in a fatherly, indulgent sort of way, upon the shouting people; following the race too, like one who had paid for his box. Maso, when he heard the shatter of hoofs and the wild roar from thousands of throats down below him in the Campo, cursed old Zoppa with a grey face, and went muttering round the blinding sides of the Duomo to find his daughter. And when he did find her she was eating chestnuts at the open door of her aunt's shop in the Via Ghibellina! Bacchus! she was sick of all those folk in their _festa_ clothes, was all the explanation she would give him from between fine white teeth all clogged with chestnut-meal. If he chose to dress his daughter like a beggar's brat he had better not take her to the races. Maso's feeling of relief at finding her alone and looking her usual sulky impa.s.sive self, gave way very rapidly to a sort of righteous wrath against his triumphant enemy. So, by foul slanders of honest G.o.d-fearing people that old Jew had not scrupled to rob him of his place! His place and his day's fun. By Heaven, he was tricked, duped by a scaly-eyed Jew pedlar, a vile old dog tottering down to h.e.l.l with lies in his beard.

Well! he would put this morning's work down to his score; some day there would be a choice little reckoning for Ser Marco.

Maso, green with impotent fury, poured out his flood of gutturals upon his _insouciante_ child. General reproaches were always a failure in cases of this sort. Some were sure to be wild guess-work and to drown the real ones: you could never tell when you had hit the mark. Had she not-- she fourteen, too!--slid astride down the railing into the Campo and been caught up in the arms of Carlo Formaggia waiting and laughing at the bottom? Had she not lain a whole minute in his arms, panting? And then, _Dio mio_, with the sweat still on her forehead, she had slipped off to San Domenico and confessed to coughing at ma.s.s the Sunday before! Pest!

he would give her the strap over her shoulders when he got her home. The long, brown girl leaned against the lintel kicking one heel idly against the other. She was smiling at him, smiling with her lazy, languid eyes and with her glistening teeth. Every now and then she inspected a chestnut critically--like an amateur!--and slipped it between her jaws. They split it like a banana. And then she squeezed the half skins and dropped the flour down her throat. She had a long sinewy throat, glossy as velvet, with its silvery lights and dusky brown shadows. Maso stood helpless before her as she drank down her flour; he chattered like a little pa.s.sionate ape. At last he lifted up both hands in a sudden frenzy of despair and went away.

Of course the races were over. The sober streets swarmed with people in their holiday clothes. They all seemed laughing and smoking, and talking fluently of something ridiculous. Maso, egoist, knew it must be about him-- or his daughter. Arms and heads went like mill-sails or tall trees in a gale of wind. Then, with a rattle and the sudden sliding of four hoofs on the flags, a cart would be in the thick of them, and the people scoured to the curb, still laughing, or spitting between the spasms of the interrupted jest. The boys tried to peep under the sagging hats of the girls, and the girls turned pettish shoulders to them and, as they turned, you caught the glint of fun in their great roes' eyes and saw the lips part before the quick breath. The streets were mere gullies, clefts hewn in zig-zag between grey houses that tottered up and up, and lay over them like cliffs. An ancient church with bleached stone saints under flowery canopies, a guttering candle before a tinsel shrine, and the hoa.r.s.e babel of the streets--whips that cracked and spluttered like squibs, a swarming coloured stream of men and maids, once the tw.a.n.g of a chance mandoline.

Siena was feasting, and the waiters furtively swept their foreheads with their coat-sleeves as they ran in and out of the _trattorie_.

In the _trattoria_ of the _Aquila Rossa_ old Marco Zoppa smoked his pipe and talked, between the spurts of smoke, to his neighbours. Fate brought him face to face with two enemies at once. Maso was battling his way up the street, white and strained as a grave-cloth; and Carlo Formaggia, the approved bravo--oiled and jaunty, with his brown felt fantastically rolled and stuck over one ear, with a long cigar which he alternately gnawed and sucked, Carlo the broad-chested, of the seared, evil face, came down with the stream on the arms of two other gilded youths. They met before the cafe, the man of intolerable wrongs and the Pilia-Borsa of Siena. Maso scowled till his thick eyebrows cut his face horizontally in two. He stood ostentatiously still, muttering with his lips as the trio went lightly by. Then he made to go on. But old Marco Zoppa stood up and made a speech. He had the wooden stem of his pipe 'twixt finger and thumb, and used it like a conductor's _baton_ to emphasise his points. As his voice shrilled and quavered, Carlo Formaggia caught his own name and turned back to listen, p.r.i.c.k-eared. He stood out of sight resting one foot on a doorstep, and leaned forward on to his leg.

He might have been dreaming of some night of love, but he held every word as it dropped.

"Maso," Marco went on, "thou art but a thin fool. I know what I know; but thou must needs stick dirt in thine ears and pa.s.s me by. Well, let be, let be; the end will come soon enough--this night even. And I have warned thee."

"Sp.a.w.n of a pig, wilt never have done irking me? See, I scratch thee off me!" Maso drove home his gibe with a dramatic performance. The _trattoria_ was agape. Every table held its three craning necks and six piercing, twinkling eyes atop.

"I grow old, my Maso, I grow very old, and thy monkey's tricks are nought.

'Tis thy slip of a girl and thy poor twisted Mariola I would save in spite of thee. Listen then once more, and for the last time. Ser Carlo intends to snare thy pigeon. He has limed his twigs; the bird flutters free for this noon, but by to-night she will be caged. For me, I have done my possible--but I am old. Life tingles fiercer in the blood of a young man.

Therefore beware. Wilt thou see that brawny a.s.sa.s.sin toying with thy girl; leaning over her where she crouches, poisoning her with fat words? That's how the snake licks the turtle before he gulps her--'tis to make her sleek, look you! Well, go thy way, dolt and blunderhead. For me--old as I am--I will shoot a last bolt for Mariola. This very night after supper I go to the Sbirro: and thy thanks will be a rounder oath and some more knave's tricks with my baskets."

"No thanks are owing, Marco Zoppa"; Maso was ashy with shame and rage at the old man's placid benevolence. "Marco Zoppa, thou hast been my enemy ever, and I have borne it"--the Cafe roared with laughter; a fat old Capuchin nearly had a fit. Maso looked round with fright in his eyes. He went on, "Now thou hast gone too far--insulting me grossly before these citizens. Thou hast brought thine end upon thyself." He ran away fighting through the delighted crowd. Everybody who could get at him slapped him on the back. A big carter stove his hat in.

Old Marco shrugged his patient shoulders and sat down to read the _Secolo_. He balanced his silver-rimmed spectacles on his nose and held the journal at arm's length with hand a thought more shaky, perhaps, than usual. Presently he looked up: "Mother of G.o.d! what a white-faced rogue it is! Eh, Giuseppe?" "By Mars, if looks could stab, thou hadst been riddled by the knife before this," said his friend. Marco shrugged and went on reading--he was an old man.

But when Carlo Formaggia had heard the debate, he turned a shade s.h.i.+nier, and his eyes harder and brighter. As he motioned his friends off with a look, he swallowed something hard in his throat. Then he turned down the first side street, doubled round to the right, turned to the left down a kind of black sewer-trap and let himself into a wine-shop, where he sat down, breathing short. He drank brandy--but he drank like a machine. The muscles of his jaw were working spasmodically as he sat rigid on a tub, leaning against the counter. And he fingered something at his belt. His eyes were in a cold stare: he saw nothing and didn't move. But he went on drinking brandy till late in the afternoon, till the _Hail Mary_ bells began to sound a tinkling chorus through the still air.

And Maso Cecci, he too, rushed away white and chattering. Rage had past definition with him, he saw things red, and they choked him. The air felt thick to him, full of flies. He brushed his hands before his face, struck out vaguely, and swore as the dazzling black things settled round him again in a swarm. Irritated, maddened as he was, he still heard the derisive yells of the crowd at the _birreria_ and saw Marco's calm wise old face smiling urbanely behind silver spectacles. _Cristo amore!_ how he loathed that old man. Siena could never hold the pair of them: there must be an end--there _should_ be an end. His heart gave a jerk under his vest as he thought of it. An end!--an end of his eternal fretting jealousy in the Campo, his continued sense of being worsted, of galling inferiority to that methodical old villain. An end of his worries about Isotta; an end--ah! but there would be something rarer than that? To a man like Maso, a small man, of immoderate self-esteem, and that self- esteem always on the smart, there is another satisfaction--that of seeing the better man totter and slip forward to his knees. This insufferable old Marco who was always so right, with his slow methods and accursed accuracy--to see him stumble and drop! That was what made Maso's heart flutter and thud against his skin. And then, as he thought of it, it seemed inevitable. It could be done in a minute, _via!_ The old man was alone--it would be dusk--he would peer forward through the gloom to open the door and--_Madre di Dio!_--and then! Maso was sweating; the back of his palate itched intolerably; something hot and sticky clogged his mouth and glued his tongue against the roof of it. His knees shook so that he could scarcely walk. Some little boys stood to stare at him as he lurched by, and laughed stealthily to see the hated Maso tipsy. But Maso was unconscious of all this: he staggered on homewards with scorching eyes....

Old Marco lived down beyond the Railway Station--a room in a crazy block of buildings that had been run up for the needs of the factory hands. It was like a great smooth cliff, this block, and was washed over a raw pink, but it glowed in the setting sun that evening, like the city herself and all the hills, the colour of bright blood. As Maso neared its blind face, stepping warily with outstretched neck like some obscene bird, and with one hand under his coat--the sun was going down into a purple bank of cloud. He gilded the edges as he sank and shot broad rays of crimson light up into the green sky. Here and there a star twinkled faint; the city lay over him like a cloudy, silent company of rocks; the tower of the Palazzo ran up into the pallor of the sky, a shaking spear.

There was but one glimmer of light in the whole ghostly wall of tenements and that, Maso knew, was Marco Zoppa's. Every soul else was crowded in the Campo waiting for the fireworks. And, as he thought, he heard a dull thud behind him, and turned; and there, far up, a single shaft of flame shot aloft, and stayed, and burst into a fan of lights; and a puff told him it was the first rocket. "_Ecco! Madre di Dio_, a sign! a sign! So will _I_ go up; and so shall my enemy come down." And Maso crept up the stairway breathing thick and short....

With a hand still under his cloak he rapped his knuckles on the door. No answer. An echo, only, fluttered and grew faint down the stone steps. He hoisted his cloak from the shoulder and swung his right arm free. Then he knocked again. Nothing. No sign. Heavy silence; only a distant murmur of voices, m.u.f.fled and infinitely far, from the Campo on the hill.

"The game has flown! Or the old dog sleeps." Maso sighed, for he wanted to see him drop gurgling to his knees. Still, it made his affair easier. He gave one fierce hoist to his cloak, twitched his right arm once or twice, and gently turned the handle. Then he stepped lightly and daintily into the room.

A candle guttered on a little table in the corner, and the Crucified showed white upon the black cross above. Marco Zoppa lay on his bed with his throat cut from ear to ear. The cut was so resolute that his head stuck out at an angle from his body--almost a right angle; and in some struggle he had got his nostril sliced. That gave him an odd, _mesquin_ expression, lying there with his mouth open and his yawning nostril, as if he wanted to sneeze. The room smelt stale and sour; the thick air gathered in a misty halo round the candle, and a fat shroud of tallow drooped over the edges of the candlestick.

Maso dropped his long, clean knife; dropped on to his knees and wailed like a chained dog. He could not take his eyes from the horrible black pit between the dead man's chin and trunk. Out of that pit a thin scarlet stream was still slipping lazily, and crawling down the white coverlet to the floor. Maso's wailing attracted a dog near by. He too set off howling from behind his door: and then another, and another. There was a chorus of howls, long-drawn, pitiful, desolate; and Maso, the only man in that woeful company, howled like any dog of the pack.