After the Divorce Part 8

Meanwhile, word came from Nuoro that, while waiting to hear from the appeal, Costantino had been removed to the jurisdiction of Cagliari.

Then came a short, sad, little letter from the prisoner himself. The journey had gone well, but there, at Cagliari, the heat was suffocating, and certain red insects, and others of different colours, tormented him night and day. He sent a kiss to the child, and urged Giovanna to bring him up in the fear of G.o.d. He also asked to be remembered to his friend Isidoro. On this Sunday, therefore, at the close of the Ma.s.s, Aunt Bachissia waited till the fisherman should have finished singing the sacred lauds in his ringing voice, in order to deliver Costantino's message.

Priest Elias remained kneeling on the steps of the high altar, with white ecstatic face, and Isidoro still sang on, but the people began to leave, filing past Aunt Bachissia, as she stood waiting.

Aunt Martina pa.s.sed, with the fiery bearing of a blooded steed, old but indomitable still; Brontu pa.s.sed, dressed in a new suit of clothes, his hair s.h.i.+ning with oil; he railed at the priests, but on Sunday he went to Ma.s.s; and Giacobbe pa.s.sed, in a pair of new linen trousers, smelling strong of the shop. Still Isidoro sang on.

The church, at last, became almost empty; the fisherman's sonorous voice resounded among the dusty, white rafters; the boards and beams of the roof; the side altars, covered with coa.r.s.e cloths, adorned with paper flowers, and presided over by melancholy saints of painted wood.

When Uncle Isidoro stopped at length, there were only the priest, a boy who was extinguis.h.i.+ng the candles, Aunt Bachissia, and an old blind man left.

Isidoro had to repeat the final response to the lauds himself; then he got up, put away the little bell used to mark the Stations of the Rosary, and moved towards Aunt Bachissia, who stood waiting for him near the door. They went out together, and she gave him Costantino's message; then she begged him to do her a favour; it was to ask Priest Elias to go to see Giovanna and try to reason her out of the condition she had allowed herself to fall into. He promised to do so, and they separated.

On the way home Aunt Bachissia was joined by Giacobbe Dejas, who had been standing on the open square before the church, looking down at the village and the yellow fields, all bathed in sunlight.

"How are you?" asked the herdsman.

"Ah, good Lord! bad enough, without being actually ill. And you, how do you like your new place?"

"Oh! I told you how it would be. I'm out of the frying-pan into the fire! The old woman is as close as the devil; she expects me to work till I fall to pieces, and will hardly let me come in to Ma.s.s once a fortnight."

"And the master?"

"Oh! the master? Well, he's just a little beast, that's all."

"What do you mean by saying such a thing as that, Giacobbe?"

"Well, it's the simple truth, little spring bird. He growls and snarls over every trifle, and gets drunk, and lies like time. I suppose Isidoro Pane told you----" He paused, and Aunt Bachissia, fixing her small green eyes upon him, reflected that, if he talked like that about his master, he must have some object.

"Well," he resumed, "Isidoro Pane must have told you--of course he told you, about Brontu being drunk that evening; it was just here, where we are now, Brontu yelled out: 'Tell Giovanna Era that if she gets a divorce I'll marry her!' The beast, that's just what he is, a beast! He drinks brandy by the cask."

Of the last clause of this speech, however, Aunt Bachissia took in not one word. The fact that Brontu had said he would marry Giovanna if she got a divorce was all she comprehended. Her green eyes flashed as she asked haughtily: "And you wish him not to, Giacobbe?"

"I? What difference would it make to me, little spring bird? But you ought to be ashamed of yourself to think of such a thing, Aunt Kite, hardly two weeks after----"

"I'm not a kite," snapped the old woman angrily; and though the other laughed, she could see that he too was furious.

"You might, at least, wait to hear from the appeal," said he. "And then you can devour Costantino as you would a lamb without spot. Yes, devour him if you want to, but I can tell you that Giovanna will get a brandy-bottle for a husband, and just as long as Martina Dejas is alive you will starve worse than ever."

"Ah! you bald-pate----" began Aunt Bachissia. But Giacobbe walked rapidly away, and she had only the satisfaction of hurling abuse at his retreating back. Not that she proposed to have Giovanna apply for a divorce. Heaven forbid! With poor Costantino still under appeal, and waiting there in that fiery furnace, devoured by horrible insects! No, indeed, but,--what right had that vile servant to talk of his master so?

What business was it of his to meddle in his master's concerns? And Aunt Bachissia decided then and there that that "bald raven" had himself taken a fancy to Giovanna; and, filled with this new idea, she reached the cottage.

Her immediate thought was to repeat the whole story to Giovanna, but finding her, for the first time in two weeks, bathed, and tranquilly engaged in combing out her long hair, which fell down in heavy, tumbled ma.s.ses, she was afraid to say a word.

CHAPTER VI

Time pa.s.sed by; the autumn came, and then the winter. Costantino's appeal had, of course, been rejected, as appeals always are. One night he was fastened by a chain to another convict, whom he had never seen, and the two took their places in a long file of others, all dressed in linen, all silent; like a drove of wild beasts controlled by some invisible power. They were going--where? They did not know. They were silent--why? They could not say. Presently they were all marched down to the water's edge, put on board a long, black steamer, and shut into a cage--still like wild beasts. All about them lay the crystal sea, across whose dark, green waters the ruby and emerald reflections from the s.h.i.+p's lights danced and sparkled like strings of glittering jewels; while above, engirdling the great ring of water, hung the deep blue sky, like an immense, silent vale dotted over with yellow, starry flowers. At first Costantino's sensations were not altogether unhappy. True, he was going into the unknown to fulfil a cruel destiny, but down in the bottom of his heart he firmly believed that before very long he would be liberated, and he never lost hope.

The bustle on deck, the rattle of the chains, and the first motion of the s.h.i.+p as it got under way, filled him with childish curiosity. He had never been to sea, but, as a boy, he had often stood scanning the horizon, and gazing at the grey stretch of the Mediterranean, sometimes dotted over with the white wings of sailing vessels. At such times, as he stood among the wild shrubs and undergrowth of his native mountains, he would dream of some day crossing that far-away sea to distant, unknown lands, and to the golden cities of the Continent. He could read and write, and had a book in which St. Peter's at Rome was depicted; and in the chapter on sacred history there was an engraving of ancient Jerusalem. Ah! Jerusalem. According to his ideas, Jerusalem must be the finest and largest city in the world; and, as he stood there dreaming among the bushes on Mount Bellu, and gazing off at the grey Mediterranean, it was to Jerusalem that he longed to go. And now, here he was crossing the sea; but how different from his dreams! Yet, so splendid was his conception of Jerusalem that if it had been thither that he was bound, even a chained and condemned prisoner on his way to expiate a crime, he would, nevertheless, have been content to go.

The pitching and rolling of the s.h.i.+p was accompanied by the ceaseless rush of the water from the bows. Some of the convicts chattered among themselves, laughing and cracking jokes. Costantino fell asleep and dreamed, as he always did, that he was at home again. He had been set free almost immediately,--he dreamed,--and had gone home without letting Giovanna know a word about it so as to give her the unutterable joy of the surprise. She kept saying: "But this is a dream, this is a dream----" The expenses of the trial had stripped the little house bare of everything, even the bed was gone; but nothing made any difference.

All the riches in the world could not compare with the bliss of being free and of living with Giovanna and Malthineddu. But he was terribly tired, so he curled himself up in the baby's cradle; the cradle rocked, harder and harder all the time. Giovanna laughed and called out: "Be careful not to fall out, Costantino, my dear, my lamb!" And the cradle rocked more than ever. At first he laughed as well, but all at once he found he was suffering, then he fell head foremost on the ground, and woke up.

There was a heavy sea on, and Costantino was sick. The s.h.i.+p struggled up to mountain-heights and then plunged swiftly into bottomless gulfs of water, the waves breaking even over the third deck.

All the convicts were ill; some still attempted to joke, while others swore, and one, with a yellow, cunning face,--he was Costantino's companion--moaned and lamented like a child.

"Oh!" he groaned, cowering down, gasping and frightened. "I was dreaming that I was at home, and now--now--oh! dear St. Francis, have pity on me!"

Notwithstanding his own misery, both physical and mental, Costantino felt sorry for him. "Patience, my brother, I was dreaming too about being at home."

"I feel," cried another, "as though my soul were melting away. What the devil is the matter with this s.h.i.+p! It seems to be trying to dance the Sardian dance!" Whereat some of the others still had sufficient spirit left to laugh.

The storm was increasing. At times Costantino thought he was dying, and was frightened; yet, on the other hand, he felt an unutterable weariness of life. His soul seemed to be steeped in the same bitter fluid that his stomach was casting up. Never, not even at the moment when the sentence of condemnation had been pa.s.sed upon him, had he experienced anything like his present condition of hopeless misery. He too began to swear and groan, doubling his fists, and twisting his chilled toes. "May you die just as I am dying now, you murderous dogs, who brought all this on me!"

he muttered, while tears as bitter as gall welled up into his eyes.

Towards dawn the wind subsided, but even when the sickness had pa.s.sed, Costantino found no relief; he felt as though he had been beaten to the point of death, and he was shaking with cold, and exhaustion, and dread.

The steamer relentlessly pursued its way. Oh, if it would only stop for just one moment! A single moment of quiet, it seemed to Costantino, would suffice to restore his strength; but this continuous forging ahead, the constant rolling, the never-ceasing roar of the waves as they lashed the sides of the vessel, kept him in a state of nervous tremor.

On, and on, and on; the long hours of agony dragged slowly by; night came again; and all the time his subtle-faced, yellow-visaged companion hardly ceased to sigh and lament, driving Costantino into a perfect frenzy of irritation. Sleep came at length, and then, strange to relate, he had the same dream as on the previous night, only this time it was Giovanna who was in the cradle, and the cradle was rocking quite gently.

When Costantino awoke, the boat seemed hardly to move; in the silence that precedes the dawn, he heard a voice say: "That is Procida."

He was shaking with cold, and wondered if they were to land there, where, he thought he remembered to have heard, the galleys were.

Presently his companion awoke, s.h.i.+vering and yawning prodigiously.

"Are we there?" asked Costantino. "How do you feel?"

"Pretty well. Are we there?"

"I don't know; we are near Procida; is that where the galleys are?"

"No; they're at Nisida," said the other. "But we are not galley-birds!"

he added, with a touch of pride, and then fell to yawning again. "Oh, how I was dreaming!" he said, and then stopped, overcome by the memory of his dream.

The prisoners were landed at Naples and immediately placed in a black-and-yellow van, something like a movable sepulchre. Costantino caught a brief glimpse of a wide expanse of smooth green water, a quant.i.ty of huge steamers, and innumerable small craft filled with gaily dressed men who shouted out all manner of incomprehensible things. All around the boats, on the surface of the green water, floated weeds, sc.r.a.ps of paper, refuse of all kinds. Enormous buildings were outlined against a sky of deepest blue. At Naples, the convicts were separated; Costantino was taken off to the prison at X---- and saw his yellow-visaged companion no more.

On reaching his destination, Costantino was at once consigned to a cell where he was to pa.s.s the first six months of his term in solitary confinement. This cell measured hardly two metres in length by six palms in breadth: it was furnished with a rude folding bed, which, during the day, was closed and fastened against the wall. From the tiny window nothing could be seen but a strip of sky.

Of the entire term of his imprisonment this was the dreariest period. He would sit immovable for hours with his legs crossed and his hands clasped about his knee--thinking; but strangely enough he never either lost hope or rebelled against his fate. He was persuaded that what he was enduring was in expiation of that mortal sin, as he regarded it, of having lived with a woman to whom he had not been married by religious ceremony, and he felt an absolute certainty that, this sin atoned for, his innocence would some day be established and he would be set free. At the same time, although he did not despair, he suffered acutely, and pa.s.sed the days, hours, minutes in a state of nervous expectation of some change that never came, and a prey to a devouring homesickness.

Thus day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, he lived in his thoughts close to Giovanna and the child, recalling with minute precision every little unimportant detail of the cottage life, his past existence, and the happiness that had once been his. In addition, moreover, to his own misery, he suffered at the thought of what Giovanna was enduring: now and again an access of pa.s.sionate tenderness, having her far more than the child for its object, would seize him and arouse him from his usual state of pensive melancholy; then, leaping to his feet, he would stride back and forth,--two, or at most three, steps bringing him to the opposite wall, where he would presently stop, and, throwing himself against it, would beat his head as though trying to dash out his brains. These were his moments of utmost desperation.

Hope always returned, however, and then he would begin to weave fantastic dreams of an immediate and romantic restoration to freedom, and the guard never entered his cell that his heart did not begin to beat violently, fancying that he was the bearer of some joyful tidings.

Sometimes he played _morra_ with himself, and he cared so much whether he lost or won that he would laugh aloud like a child. At other times he would sit for hours looking at his outstretched palm, imagining that it was a plain divided into _tancas_, with walls, rivers, trees, herds of cattle, and shepherds; and weaving stories about them all, full of exciting adventures. And sometimes he prayed, counting on his fingers, and repeating the lauds aloud, trying even to improvise new verses. In this way it came about that he actually did compose a laud of four strophes, dedicated to St. Costantino, in which the saint's aid was particularly invoked in behalf of all prisoners wrongfully condemned.