In Maremma/Volume 3/Chapter 56

by Marie Louise de la Ramée

 

CHAPTER LVI.

 

NE day they told her a friend asked to see her. All the dying courage sprang up in her, and the passion of longing made her face

rosy as the day-dawn. It was he!

She leaped on her feet and ran to the grated door, and put out both her hands, and cried, with laughter and with tears, in strange abandonment and delirium for her grave nature:

‘Oh, my love! oh, my love! you have remembered———'

The words died on her lips, the blood seemed to ebb away from her heart and brain, she turned sick and cold.

It was not Este; it was the Sicilian mariner.

He stood on the threshold of her cell, and the tears were coursing down his cheeks; he was very pale, and he was silent; words came to his throat, but seemed to choke him and were mute.

She shrank back in unspeakable revulsion of feeling; the blood seemed to turn to ice in her veins under the disappointment.

She sat down and turned her face from him.

The action smote him to the quick and unloosed his tongue.

'Let me help you! Let me help you!' he said piteously; and could think of nothing more or better to say.

She shook her head in sign of refusal.

Help her! how could he help her? How could Heaven itself help her, since her lover had forgotten, and her child was dead?

'If I had only known! If I had only known!' he said stupidly. 'Oh, the beast—the fool———'

She turned her face towards him, and looked up from under her lowering brows.

'Go away,' she said sternly, and in a low steady voice. 'I do not want you. I did not send for you. I told you I never should for twenty years, Go, go!'

Almost weeping as women do, he came nearer to her.

'I cannot go!' he said passionately. 'Oh, I know you do not care. I know I cannot comfort you, but something I may do. I am better than no one, though I am only a rude foolish seaman. Do not think I will talk of myself, of anything I feel; I only want to speak of you, I only want to defend you against these devils———'

'If they would let me go back———'

The one great longing that was in her heart escaped her despite herself. If only they would let her go back! She wanted nothing more from the mercy of men.

'They must let you go back!' he said vehemently. 'They must; they shall! What harm have you done, poor innocent?'

'I have done none,' she said wearily. 'But they do not believe that. As if I would have hurt his child!'

The infinite tenderness that was in her voice stung cruelly the man who heard her. But he controlled his own pain; he only said gently:

'You could hurt nothing. You loved all the little birds and the poor hunted beasts—oh, my dear! oh, my dear!'

His strength failed him, and a low sob quivered in his strong throat.

The horror of it, and the pity of it, conquered his fiery temper and broke down his bold spirit into utter weakness.

She was silent.

His sorrow did not touch her any more than his passion had ever done. She had no place in her thoughts left for him.

'And where is he?' muttered the sailor. 'Where is he, the white-livered coward, the false faithless wretch you loved? Where is he? May the curse———'

She sprang to her feet, and looked at him with the fire of other days in her eyes.

'Do not dare to speak of him. What is it to you? You are a stranger to me. Get you gone; get you gone.'

'But he has been false to you!'

'What is that to you? You are not my brother. You are a strange seaman of whom I know nothing, of whom I wish never to know aught. Go your way, and leave me to mine—whatever it be.'

Then, exhausted by the momentary violence, she sat down once more in the same attitude, leaning her head wearily against the wall of the cell. He could not see her face. 'I only wish to serve you, if I can,' he said humbly, and trembling as no danger of the deep seas had ever made him tremble.

'You cannot,' she said, with her face still hidden from him. 'But go, go. It hurts me to speak and being spoken to; I am best alone.'

He lingered, torn in two by his grief and his love for her. It had been wild love, born of a glance, of a word, of a glimpse of dark eyes on a summer morning that shed its light on a beautiful face that had been fixed on his heart for evermore; but it was faithful love, ready to do and to dare all things.

He only hesitated here because he knew not what to do.

'I will go since you wish it,' he said at last. But I shall be always in Orbetello, and I will do what I can. I think they must soon set you free. You have harmed no one. You have offended the law, perhaps, but so innocently, and no law of God or nature, but only the trumpery vexatious rule of man. I am sure soon they must set you free; but if they do not, bars have been sawn through ere now, and stouter ones than these, and there is the sea at hand—and—and I want you to believe, if I should help you to escape, if there should be no other means, never, never will I presume on any service I may have done to you. Once free you shall never see me again. I am not a cur, I would never plead to you by what I might have done———'

His eyes were glistening, his voice was feeble with haste and emotion, and eagerness to assure her that no self-seeking thoughts or selfish hopes were stirring him; the strength of love that was in his soul lifted him out of common egotistic passion; he in truth forgot himself in her.

She did not answer; she scarcely heard him; after he had spoken she thought over his words but dully, and with little faith in them. To escape; yes; that would be blessed indeed; but she did not wish to owe him anything. She thought Este would sooner choose that she should suffer here than become free by the aid of any hand not his.

The love of the Sicilian, even in its simplicity, honesty, and generosity, had always struck a chord of anger in her. She had always wondered if she had been too familiar with a stranger that morning on the sands that he had thus been led to fasten his fancy on her.

He waited a little while in hope that she might answer him, that the hint of escape might at the least rouse some flutter of the old bold spirit in her. But he waited in vain. She was ready, indeed, to escape by any means of her own, in any way, at any hour of the night or day, but she did not accept his help. It seemed to her, without her reasoning out her instinct, that to take any benefit from any man was in a measure to be false to her lover.

He waited with beating heart and longing ear; but she said nothing.

'It is best to see what one can do, without, with all these brutes,' he thought, and turned to go.

'You will know I am always ready,' he said softly; and then the gaoler repeated his summons, and the door unclosed and he passed through it and was gone.

She did not even look up once.

Daniello Villamagna went out of the gloomy place into the intense light of the noonday that was shining on the salt lagoon till it glistened like a mirror of steel.

His shrewd sense told him that his first care should be to find a good advocate; his next, as he had little faith in those land sharks who live by the adversity of other men, was to study all ways and means by which, in case of any condemnation of her, her rescue might be compassed.

These two things he did, and put all his soul and his might into them, and praised Heaven that he had made enough gains out of his latest voyage to be able to throw money about in her cause without much prudence.

All the hot listless day in the dull sea-town he spent his whole time in pondering over that which he might do, and to the advocate he had hired he said again and again: 'Let her think the judge has appointed you; if she knew I had spoken to you, she would be angered: she is very proud, pray let her never know.'

And when the man of law pressed for his reasons in having this great anxiety for her, he answered once for all: 'I have seen her but thrice—out of doors, by the edge of the sea—and she thinks nothing of me, and never will think anything; but she is as innocent as the rock-doves yonder, and I love her well, though never, I tell you—oh never!—shall I be more to her than yon weeds that grow in the stagno.'

There was that accent of passionate truth in him which carries conviction to its hearers whenever it can obtain a hearing.

He was well known along all the seaboard of Maremma; even her accusers began to think better of her since the dauntless sailor of Palermo loved her.

As the people of the Orbetellano sat about by the sea-wall, and spread out their nets to dry in the sun, they began to say, after all, her story might be true—why not? And the tide of opinion turned in her favour.

All through the hottest weather he stayed there, and was thankful that he had leisure and time to serve her.

Once, in each two weeks, they let him see her in the presence of the guards or gaoler; and he persuaded her to speak a little, very little, enough to give him some clue by which to do something for her. The name of Este, of course, she never spoke. They might have kept her there all the years of her life, but she would never have disclosed it.

He only saw her thus in cruel fleeting moments which wrung is inmost soul, but he stayed on, glad to be able to feel himself her only friend, glad to be able to watch for hours together the little grated window of her cell.

He and the advocate he employed, and on whom he spent all the gains of his latest voyages, hunted the Apennines for the shepherd's wife of whom Musa spoke once, when the lawyer retained by Daniello Villamagna asked her if there was no one who could testify that her little child had died of a newborn child's mere feebleness. Musa knew only that the woman was called Pomfilia, and that her husband's name was Nerone, and on that slender help they had to rely, and did at length trace the shepherd and his family from Maremma up to those chestnut woods on the sides of the Pistoiese hills where their summer home was made.

They also called on the priest of Santa Tarsilla, who, although when he heard of the coffin of Joconda having been taken away without his sexton even missing it was deeply incensed and terrified, yet was too tender-hearted a man to refuse his testimony that the girl reared by Joconda Romanelli, in his parish, had been always of innocent life and noble, if of strange and wayward temper.

Who she was by birth he could not tell. That secret had died with his predecessor.

Daniello knew, but he shut it in his own heart as she shut her lover's name.

The hot months went by, and she lived through them in her misery as the caged lark lives beating his breast against his bars. The greatest terror to her was that of which she never spoke: lest Este should return to the tombs in her absence, and, angered at what would seem her faithlessness, go without knowing the truth.

On the other hand, there was always the faint hope in her that he might hear, and come to Orbetello.

The months passed, and the law court opened earlier than the custom of it was, because there was a great case of fraud, in which public names were involved, for which it was desirable to clear the way by getting through all trials of lesser interest.

By persuasion and some free use of his good money, Daniello's advocate procured the early hearing of her case whilst it was still warm, radiant October weather.

The woman Pomfilia came down from the mountains, and when Musa was allowed to see her once, the sight of a familiar face did her some little good. It did not occur to her to ask how, or by whom, the shepherd's wife had been summoned; her thoughts were too absorbed, her mind was too much distraught.

Yet she had no fear of any sentence they might pass on her.

'I did no harm' was all that ever she said.

Her old pride, her old courage, her old antagonism to the tyranny of law, gave her strength to hold it at arm's length still.

Her father's spirit awoke in her.

They might capture, they should not subdue her, they should not humiliate her.

There were other days in the stifling, thronged audience-chamber; other long discourses, now from this speaker, now from that; other terrible weary hours filled with the buzz of tongues, the stench of the crowd, the wordy vapourings of petty pompous people. She was brought in and set in their midst, and she understood nothing of it; no more than the trapped hawk understands why he is caught in the cruel wires.

It all went past her ear like a confused noise without sense or meaning.

She vaguely comprehended that some one whom she did not know was pleading in her favour, and trying to set her free.

But she was always thinking, 'In Mantua they condemned him, all innocent as he was; men pleaded in his favour too, he said, but they condemned him; so will they me.'

She had no hope that they would understand her and let her go.

The woman Pomfilia gave simple, straightforward testimony as to the exceeding love she had borne the little child, and the despair its death had caused her. The woman added that she herself did not know that it was wrong to have said nothing, and made the little grave there; had the child lived it would have been carried to Telamone and baptised there. That she knew would have been done.

The evidence of the woman, timid before the law, but honest, went far with the judge and with the listening audience of seafaring folk and peasants.

Then they brought forth the little traitor Zefferino, who grew white and shook as with a palsy when he looked across the hall and saw her face.

'Thou also!' said the scorn and sorrow of her grand calm eyes.

When he recovered a little from that trepidation of terror, he swore glibly enough that on the first day when she had taken him down into the tombs there had been much gold, much; it lay in heaps and heaps, so he affirmed; and when he had returned thither the next day by himself—not meaning to touch it, oh no! only to look if it were safe—he saw none there, none at all; it must have been carried away in the night. He declared that she had the mal' oechio, and that she had threatened his life because he took two travellers to see the buche delle fate, and that he had gone to dwell at Populonia because he went in perpetual peril from her vengeance. He told his tale very convincingly, and with pretty childish innocence of bearing.

When he had quite ended, her voice rang out like a clarion in defiance of him, of her accusers, of her judges, of all the listening people.

'You are a miserable traitor,' she cried to him. 'I sheltered you from the storm; I fed you often; I was attached to you; I dealt honestly and well with you always; and you betrayed my sanctuary for two silver pieces. You are a son of Iscariot, go! For the gold, you know well that the galley-slave Saturnino Mastarna robbed the dead and took it. It was his own undoing here in the Orbetellano. You know that. You are a son of Iscariot; you stole my old mule in his days of weakness to sell him away into misery. You are vile as a viper that stings the hand that has spared its life. Go! Away from my sight, go!'

He slunk between the guards; and there was that in her glance, in her voice, in her attitude, which thrilled the hearts of the people, who before were steeled against her.

These days in the public court were very terrible to her.

She had dwelt in her moorland solitudes till she was shy of every human glance, till every sound, save the dreamy sounds of the hills and woods, was harsh and jarring to her. As the arum-leaves lie hidden in the shadow of deep dells, so had she been shrouded underneath the greenness of the earth.

Torn from her shelter, and dragged into the crude light of noon, with hundreds of hard eager eyes fastened upon her, and the buzz and bray of human voices deafening her ears, she was bewildered as an animal is, dragged from his jungle or his desert into the glare and hooting crowds of a menagerie to make the sport of fools. The natural courage in her, and that instinctive dignity, so common in classic ages and so little seen in ours, mace her hide all the alarm she suffered; but she suffered all the more that she stood there like any statue made of bronze, and never winced, and let her eyes rest in cold disdain upon the faces of her accusers and her judge.

She had said the truth once.

She opened her lips no more.

The Pretore at length, after long preamble, and an examination lasting three days, censured her in a long discourse with severity, but pronounced her free; the accusation being dismissed as non-proven.

She heard the sentence of deliverance without any movement of gratitude or joy. Her proud serenity of repose remained unbroken.

'Why not have found me guiltless before you punished me with these long frightful months?' she thought; but aloud she said only: 'I may go back—now?'

That was the one desire panting, like a netted bird, at her heart.

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