The Waters of Edera

XX

Don Silverio rose with the dawn of day, and entered his church at five of the clock. There were but a few women gathered in the gaunt, dark vastness of the nave. The morning was hot, and the scent of buds and blossoms and fresh-cut grass came in from the fields over the broken walls and into the ancient houses.

When Mass was over, old Alaida crept over the mouldy mosaics timidly to his side, and kneeled down on the stones.

"Most reverend," she whispered, "'twas not my fault. I slept heavily; she must have unlocked the door, for it was undone at dawn; her bed is empty, she has not returned."

"You speak of Nerina?"

"Of Nerina, reverence. I did all I could. It was not my fault. She was like a hawk in a cage."

"I am grieved," he said; and he thought: "Is it Adone?"

He feared so.

"Is she not at the Terra Vergine?" he asked. Alaida shook her head.

"No, reverend sir. I sent my grandchild to ask there. Gianna has not seen her, and says the girl would never dare to go near Clelia Alba."

"I am grieved," said Don Silverio again.

He did not blame the old woman, as who, he thought, blames one who could not tame an eaglet?

He went back to the presbytery and broke his fast on a glass of water, some bread, and some cresses from the river.

He had sent for Gianna. In half an hour she came, distressed and frightened.

"Sir, I know not of her; I should not dare to harbour her, even in the cattle-stall. Madonna Clelia would turn me adrift. When Madonna Clelia has once spoken —"

"Adone is at home?"

"Alas! No, sir. He went out at nightfall; we have not seen him since. He told me he went to a meeting of men at the Three Pines, at what they call the Tomb of the Barbarian."

Don Silverio was silent.

"It is very grave," he said at last.

"Aye, sir, grave indeed," said Gianna. "Would that it were love between them, sir. Love is sweet and wholesome and kind, but there is no such thing in Adone's heart. There it is only, alas! Blackness and fire and hatred, sir; bloodlust against those who mean ill to the river."

"And his mother has lost all influence over him?"

"All, sir. She is no more to him now than a bent stick. Yet, months ago, she gave him her pearls and her bracelets, and he sold them in a distant town to buy weapons."

"Indeed? What madness!"

"How else could the men have been armed, sir?"

"Armed!" he repeated. "And of what use is it to arm? What use is it for two hundred peasants to struggle against the whole forces of the State? They will rot in prison; that is all that they will do."

"Maybe yes, sir. Maybe no," said the old woman, with the obstinacy of ignorance. "Some one must begin. They have no right to take the water away, sir; no more right than to take the breast from the babe."

Then, afraid of having said so much, she dropped her curtsey and went out into the street. But in another moment she came back into the study with a scared, blanched face, in which the wrinkles were scarred deep like furrows in a field.

"Sir – sir!" she gasped, "there are the soldiery amongst us."

Don Silverio rose in haste, put the little dog on his armchair, closed the door of his study, and went down the narrow stone passage which parted his bookroom from the entrance. The lofty doorway showed him the stones of the familiar street, a buttress of his church, a great branch of one of the self-sown ilex-trees, the glitter of the arms and the white leather of the cross belts of a sentinel. The shrill lamentations of the women seemed to rend the sunny air. He shuddered as he heard. Coming up the street farther off were half a troop of carabineers and a score of dragoons; the swords of the latter were drawn, the former had their carbines levelled. The villagers, screaming with terror, were closing their doors and shutters in frantic haste; the door of the presbytery alone remained open. Don Silverio went into the middle of the road and addressed the officer who headed the carabineers.

"May I ask to what my parish owes this visit?"

"We owe no answer to you, reverend sir," said the lieutenant.

The people were sobbing hysterically, catching their children in their arms, calling to the Holy Mother to save them, kneeling down on the sharp stones in the dust. Their priest felt ashamed of them.

"My people," he called to them, "do not be afraid. Do not hide yourselves. Do not kneel to these troopers. You have done no wrong."

"I forbid you to address the crowd," said the officer. "Get you back into your house."

"What is my offence?"

"You will learn in good time," said the commandant. "Get you into your presbytery."

"My place is with my people."

The officer, impatient, struck him on the chest with the pommel of his sword.

Two carabineers thrust him back into the passage.

"No law justifies your conduct," he said coldly, "or authorises you to sever me from my flock."

"The sabre is law here," said the lieutenant in command.

"It is the only law known anywhere in this kingdom," said Don Silverio.

"Arrest him," said the officer. "He is creating disorder."

The carabineers drove him into his study, and a brigadier began to ransack his papers and drawers.

He said nothing; the seizure of his manuscripts and documents was indifferent to him, for there was nothing he had ever written which would not bear the fullest light. But the insolent and arbitrary act moved him to keen anxiety, because it showed that the military men had licence to do their worst, at their will, and his anguish of apprehension was for Adone. He could only hope and pray that Adone had returned, and might be found tranquilly at work in the fields of the Terra Vergine. But his fears were great. Unless more soldiery were patrolling the district in all directions it was little likely, he thought, that these men would conduct themselves thus in Ruscino; he had no doubt that it was a concerted movement, directed by the Prefect, and the General commanding the garrisons of the province, and intended to net in one haul the malcontents of the Valdedera.

From his study there was no view upon the street; he could hear the wailing of women and screaming of children from the now closed houses: that was all.

"What is it your men do to my people?" he said sternly.

The brigadier did not reply; he went on throwing papers into a trunk.

"Where is your warrant for this search? We are not in a state of siege?" asked Don Silverio.

The man, with a significant gesture, drew his sabre up half way out of its sheath; then let it fall again with a clash. He vouchsafed no other answer.

Some women's faces pressed in at the grating of the window which looked on the little garden, scared, blanched, horrified, the white head, and sunburnt features of Gianna foremost.

"Reverendissimo!" they screamed as with one voice. "They are bringing the lads in from the moors."

And Gianna shrieked, "Adone! They have got Adone!"

Don Silverio sprang to his feet.

"Adone! Have you taken Adone Alba?"

"The ringleader! By Bacchus! Yes," cried the brigadier, with a laugh. "He will get thirty years at the galleys. Your flock does you honour, Reverendissimo!"

"Let me go to my flock," said Don Silverio; and some tone in his voice, some gesture of his hand, had an authority in them which compelled the carabineer to let him pass unopposed.

He went down the stone passage to the archway of the open door. A soldier stood sentinel there. The street was crowded with armed men. The air was full of clangour and clamour; above all rose the shrill screams of the women.

"No one passes," said the sentinel, and he levelled the mouth of his musket at Don Silverio's breast.

"I pass," said the priest, and with his bare hand he grasped the barrel of the musket and forced it upward.

"I rule here, in the name of God," he said in a voice which rolled down the street with majestic melody, dominating the screams, the oaths, the hell of evil sound; and he went down the steps of his house, and no man dared lay a hand on him.

He could hear the trampling of horses and the jingling of spears and scabbards; some lancers who had beaten the moors that night were coming up the street. Half a company of soldiers of the line, escorted by carabineers, came in from the country, climbing the steep street, driving before them a rabble of young men, disarmed, wounded, lame, with their hands tied behind them, the remnant of those who had met at the tomb of Asdrubal in the night just passed. They had been surprised, seized, surrounded by a wall of steel; some had answered to their leader's call and had defended themselves, but these had been few; most of them had thrown down their weapons and begged for mercy when the cold steel of the soldiers was at their throats. Adone had fought as though the shade of Asdrubal had passed into him; but his friends had failed him; his enemies had outnumbered him a score to one; he had been overpowered, disarmed, bound, dragged through his native heather backward and upward to Ruscino, reaching the shadow of the walls as the sun rose.

The child lay dead by the stagnant pond, and the men she had led to their death lay choked with the weeds and the slime; but of that he knew naught.

All he knew was that his cause was lost, his life forfeit, his last hope dead.

Only by his stature and his bearing could he be recognised. His features were black from powder and gore; his right arm hung broken by a shot; his clothing had been torn off him to his waist; he was lame; but he alone still bore himself erect as he came on up the village street. The others were huddled together in a fainting, tottering, crazed mob; all were sick and swooning from the long march, beaten when they paused by the buckles of belts and the flat of sabres.

Don Silverio saw that sight in front of his church, in the white, clear light of early morning, and on the air there was a sickly stench of sweat, of powder, of wounds, of dust.

He went straight to the side of Adone.

"My son, my son! I will come with you. They cannot refuse me that."

But the soul of Adone was as a pit in which a thousand devils strove for mastery. There was no light in it, no conscience, no gratitude, no remorse.

"Judas!" he cried aloud; and there was foam on his lips and there was red blood in his eyes. "Judas! You betrayed us!"

Then, as a young bull lowers his horns, he bent his head and bit through and through to the bone the wrist of the soldier who held him; in terror and pain the man shrieked and let go his hold; Adone's arms remained bound behind him, but his limbs, though they dripped blood, were free.

He fronted the church, and that breach in the blocks of the Etruscan wall through which Nerina had taken her path to the river a few hours before. He knew every inch of the descent. Hundreds of times in his boyhood had he run along the ruined wall and leaped in sport over the huge stones, to spring with joyous shouts into the river below.

As the soldier with a scream of agony let go his hold, he broke away like a young lion released from the den. Before they could seize him he had sprung over the wall, and was tearing down the slope; the linesmen, rushing in swift pursuit behind him, stumbled, rolled down the slippery grass, fell over the blocks of granite. He, sure of foot, knowing the way from childhood, ran down the hill safely, though blood poured from his wounds and blinded his sight, and a sickness like the swooning of death dulled his brain. Beyond him and below him was the river. He dashed into it like a hunted beast swimming to sanctuary; he ran along in it, with its brightness and coolness rippling against his parched throat. He stooped and kissed it for the last time.

"Take me! – save me! – comrade, brother, friend!" he cried aloud to it with his last breath of life; and he plunged where it was deepest.

Then the sky grew dark, and only the sound of the water was heard in his ears. By the bridge its depth was great, and the current was strong under the shade of the ruined keep. It swept his body onward to the sea.

XXI

It was the beginning of winter when Don Silverio Frascara, having been put upon his trial and no evidence of any sort having been adduced against him, was declared innocent and set free, no compensation or apology being offered to him.

"Were it only military law it had been easy enough to find him guilty," said Senator Giovacchino Gallo to the Syndic of San Beda, and the Count Corradini warmly agreed with his Excellency that for the sake of law, order, and public peace it would be well could the military tribunals be always substituted for the civil; but alas! the monarchy was not yet absolute!

He had been detained many weeks and months at the city by the sea, where the trial of the young men of the Valdedera had been held with all the prolonged, tedious, and cruel delays common to the national laws. Great efforts had been made to implicate him in the criminal charges; but it had been found impossible to verify such suspicions; every witness by others, and every action of his own, proved the wisdom, the purity, and the excellence in counsel and example of his whole life at Ruscino. The unhappy youths who had been taken with arms in their hands were condemned for overt rebellion and conspiracy against authority, and were sentenced, some to four, some to seven, some to ten, and, a few who were considered the ringleaders, to twenty-five years of cellular confinement. But against Don Silverio it was found impossible even to make out the semblance of an accusation, the testimony event of those hostile to him being irresistibly in his favour in all ways. He had done his utmost to defend the poor peasantry who had been misled by Adone to their own undoing, and he had defended also the motives and the character of the dead with an eloquence which moved to tears the public who heard him, and touched even the hearts of stone of president and advocates; and he had done this at his own imminent risk; for men of law can never be brought to understand that comprehension is not collusion, or that pity is not fellowship.

But all his efforts failed to save the young men from the utmost rigour of the law. The judge, agreeing with the State prosecutor, declared that the most severe example was necessary to check once for all by its terrors the tendency of the common people to resist the State and its public works and decrees. Useful and patriotic enterprises must not be impeded or wrecked because ignorance was opposed to progress: thus said the King's advocate in an impassioned oration which gained for him eventually emolument and preferment. The rustics were sent in a body to the penitentiaries; and Don Silverio was permitted to go home.

Cold northern blasts blew from the upper Apennines, and piled the snows upon the grey and yellow rocks of the Abruzzo heights, as he crossed the valley of the Edera towards Ruscino. It seemed to him as though a century had passed since he had left it. In the icy wind which blew form the hills he shivered, for he had only one poor, thin coat to cover him. His strength, naturally great, had given way under the mental and physical sufferings of the last six months, although no word of lament had ever escaped him. Like all generous natures he rebuked himself for the sins of others. Incessantly he asked himself – might he not have saved Adone?

As he came to the turn in the road which brought him within sight of the river, he sat down on a stone and covered his eyes with his hands.

The sacristan had come to meet him, bringing the little dog, grown thin, and sad, and old with sorrow.

"I did all I could for him, but he would not be consoled," murmured the old man.

From the point which they had reached the course of the Edera, and the lands of the Terra Vergine, were visible. With an effort, like one who forces his will to look on a dead face, he uncovered his eyes and looked downward. The olive-trees were still standing; where the house had stood there was a black, charred, roofless shell; the untilled fields lay bare beneath the frost.

"Reverend sir," said the old man below his breath, "when Clelia Alba knew that Adone was drowned she set fire to the house, and so perished. They say she had promised her son."

The wind from the north swept across the valley and drove the river in yellow foam and black eddies through the dead sedges. Above Ruscino the acacia thickets had been cut down, the herbage was crushed under timber and iron and stone, the heather was trampled and hacked, the sand and gravel were piled in heaps, the naked soil yawned in places like fresh-dug graves; along the southern bank were laid the metals of a light railway; on the lines of it were some trucks filled with bricks; the wooden huts of the workmen covered a dreary, dusty space; the water was still flowing, but on all the scene were the soil, the disorder, the destruction, the vulgar meanness and disfigurement which accompany modern labour, and affront like a coarse bruise the gracious face of Nature.

"There have been three hundred men from the Puglie at work," said the sacristan. "They have stopped awhile now on account of the frost, but as soon as the weather opens —"

"Enough, enough!" murmured Don Silverio; and he rose, and holding the little dog in his arms, went on down the familiar road.

"His body has never been found?" he asked under his breath.

The old man shook his head.

"Nay, sir; what Edera takes it keeps. He dropped where he knew it was deepest."

As the vicar returned up the village street there was not a soul to give him greeting except old Gianna, who kneeled weeping at his feet. The people poured out of their doorways, but they said not a word of welcome. The memory of Adone was an idolatry with them, and Adone had said that their priest had betrayed them. One woman threw a stone at Signorino. Don Silverio covered the little dog, and received the blow on his own arm.

"For twenty years I have had no thought but to serve these, my people!" he thought; but he neither rebuked nor reproached them.

The women as he passed them hissed at him; "Judas! Judas!"

One man alone said: "Nay, 'tis a shame. Have you forgot what he did in the cholera? 'Tis long ago, but still —"

But the women said: "He betrayed the poor lads. He brought the soldiers. He sold the water."

Under that outrage, his manhood and his dignity revived.

He drew his tall form erect, and passed through the reviling crowd, and gave them his blessing as he passed.

Then he went within his church; and remained there alone.

"He is gone to pray for the soul of Adone," said the sacristan.

When he came out of the church and entered his house, the street was empty; the people were afraid of what they had done and of their own ingratitude. He crossed the threshold of the presbytery. The sere vine veiled his study casement; in the silence he could hear the sound of the Edera water; he sat down at his familiar table, with the dog upon his knees. His eyes were wet, and his heart was sick; his courage was broken.

"How shall I bear my life here?" he thought. All which had made it of value and lightened its solitude was gone. Even his people had turned against him; suspicious, thankless, hostile.

The old sacristan, standing doubtful and timid at the entrance of the chamber, drew near and reverently touched his arm.

"Sir – here is a letter – it came three days ago."

Don Silverio stretched out his hand over the little dog's head, and took it.

He changed colour as he saw its seal and superscription.

Rome had at last remembered him, and awakened to his value.

At the latest Consistory he had been nominated to the Cardinalate.

NOTE

As it may appear strange to the English reader that the Porpora Romana should be given to a village priest, I may here say that, to my knowledge, a country vicar was himself sweeping out his rural church when he was informed of his nomination as Cardinal, and M. S. de Mérode was only deacon when raised to that elevation.