Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  San Giacinto had his pocket full of letters for the post office, and wished to see the lieutenant in command of the soldiers; but Orsino had nothing to do, and Ippolito had made up his mind not to return to Camaldoli without having seen the organ in the church. The two brothers went off in search of the sacristan, for the church was closed.

  They found him, after some enquiry, helping to pack oranges in a great vaulted room that opened upon the street. He was a fat man, cross-eyed, with a sort of clerical expression.

  ‘You wish to see the organ,’ he said, coming out into the street. ‘Truly you will see a fine thing! If you only do not hear it! It makes boom, boom, and wee, wee — and that is all it makes. I wager that not even ten cats could make a noise like our organ. Do you know that it is very aged? Surely, it remembers the ark of Noah, and Saint Paul must have brought it with him. But then, you shall see; and if you wish to hear it, I take no responsibility.’

  Ippolito was not greatly encouraged by such a prospect.

  ‘But when you have a festival, what do you do?’ he enquired.

  ‘We help it, of course. How should one do? Don Atanasio, the apothecary, plays the clarinet. He is a professor! Him, indeed, you should hear when he plays at the elevation. You would think you heard the little angels whistling in Paradise! I, to serve you, play the double bass a little, and Don Ciccio, the carpenter, plays the drum. Being used to the hammer, he does it not badly. And all the time the organ makes boom, boom, and wee, wee. It is a fine concert, but there is much sentiment of devotion, and the women sing. It seems that thus it pleases the saints.’

  ‘Do not the men sing too?’ asked Orsino, idly.

  ‘Men? How could men sing in church? A man can sing a ‘cantilena’ in the fields, but in church it is the women who sing. They know all the words. God has made them so. There is that girl of the notary in Randazzo, for instance — you should hear her sing!’

  ‘I have heard her in Rome,’ said Orsino. But she sings in a theatre.’

  ‘A theatre? Who knows how a theatre is made? See how many things men have invented!’

  They reached the door of the church.

  ‘Signori, do you really wish to see this organ?’ asked the sacristan. ‘There is a much better one in the little church outside the gate. But the day is hot, and if you only wish to see an organ, this one is nearer.’

  ‘Let me see the good one, by all means,’ said Ippolito. ‘I wish to play on it — not to see it! I have seen hundreds of organs.’

  ‘Hundreds of organs!’ exclaimed the man to himself. ‘Capers! This stranger has travelled much! But if it is indeed not too hot for you,’ he said, addressing Ippolito, ‘we will go to Santa Vittoria.’

  ‘It is not hot at this hour,’ laughed Orsino. ‘We have walked up from Camaldoli.’

  ‘On foot!’ The fat sacristan either was, or pretended to be, amazed. ‘Great signori like you to come all that distance on foot!’

  ‘What is there surprising in that?’ enquired Ippolito. ‘We have legs.’

  ‘Birds also have legs,’ observed the man. ‘But they fly. It is only the chickens that walk, like poor people. I say that money is wings. If I were a great signore, like you, I would not even walk upstairs. I would be carried. Why should I walk? In order to be tired? It would be a folly, if I were rich. I, if you ask me, I like to eat well, to drink well, and then to sleep well. A man who could do these three things should be always happy. But the poor are always in thought.’

  ‘So are the rich,’ observed Ippolito.

  ‘Yes, signore, for their souls, for we are all sinners; but not for their bodies, because they have always something to eat. What do I say? They eat meat every day, and so they are strong and have no thought for their bodies. But one of us, what does he eat? A little bread, a little salad, an onion, and with this in our bodies we have to move the earth. The world is thus made. Patience!’

  Thus philosophising, the fat man rolled unwieldily along beside the two gentlemen, swinging his keys in his hand.

  ‘If I had made the world, it should be another thing,’ he continued, for he was a loquacious man. ‘In the first place, I would have made wine clear, like water, and I would have made water black, like wine. Thus if the wine-seller put water into his wine, we should all see it. Another thing I would have done. I would have made corn grow on trees, like olives. In that way, we should have planted it once in two hundred years, as we do the olive trees, and there would have been less fatigue. Is not that a good thought?’

  ‘Very original,’ said Orsino. ‘It had never struck me.’

  ‘I would also have made men so that their hair should stand on end when they are telling lies, as the donkey lifts his tail when he brays. That would also have been good. But the Creator did not think of it in time. Patience! They say it will be different in Paradise. Hope costs little, but you cannot cook it.’

  ‘You are a philosopher,’ observed Ippolito.

  ‘No, signore,’ answered the sacristan. ‘You have been misinformed. I am a grocer, or, to say it better, I am the brother of the grocer. When it is the season, after Santa Teresa’s day, I kill the pigs and salt the hams and make the sausages. I am also the sacristan, but that yields me little; for although there is much devotion in our town at festivals, there is little of it among private persons. Sometimes an old woman brings a candle to the Madonna, and she gives a soldo to have it lighted. What is that? Can one live with a soldo now and then? But my brother, thanks be to Heaven, is well-to-do, and a widower. He makes me live with him. He had a son once, but, health to you, Christ and the sea took the boy when he was not yet twenty. Therefore I live with him, to divert him a little, and I kill the pigs, speaking with respect of your face.’

  ‘And what do you do during the rest of the year?’ enquired Orsino, as they neared the gate.

  ‘Eh, I live so. According to the season, I pack oranges, I trim vines, I make the wine for my brother, and the oil, I take the honey and the wax from the bees, I graft good fruit upon the wild pear trees — what should I do? A little of everything, in order of eat.’

  ‘But your brother seems to be rich. Have you nothing?’

  ‘Signore, to me money comes like a freshet in spring and runs away, and immediately I am dry. But to my brother it comes like water into a well, and it stays there. Men are thus made. The one gives, the other takes; the one shuts his hand, the other opens his. My mother, blessed soul, used to say to me, “Take care, my son, for when you are old, you will go in rags!” But thanks be to Heaven, I have my brother, and I am as you see me.’

  They came to the little church with its freshly whitewashed walls and tiled roof.

  ‘This is the chapel of Santa Vittoria,’ said the fat sacristan. ‘The church in the town is dedicated to Our Lady of Victories, but this is the chapel of the saint, and there is more devotion here, though it is small, and at the great feast of Santa Vittoria the procession starts from here and goes to the church, and returns here.’

  ‘It looks new,’ observed Ippolito.

  ‘Eh, if all things were what they seem!’ The man chuckled as he turned the key in the lock. ‘You shall see inside whether it is new. It is older than Saint Peter’s in Rome.’

  And so it was, by two or three centuries. It was a dark little building, of the Norman period, with low arches and solid little pillars terminating in curiously-carved capitals. It had a little nave with intercommunicating side chapels, like aisles. Over the door was a small loft containing the organ, the object of Ippolito’s visit. In the uneven floor there were slabs with deep-cut but much-worn figures of knights and prelates in stiff armour or long and equally stiff-looking robes, their heads surrounded by almost illegible inscriptions. Over the principal altar there was a bad painting of Saint Vittoria, half covered with ex-voto offerings of silver hearts, while on each side of the picture were hung up scores of hollow wax models of arms, legs, and other parts of the human body, realistically coloured, all remembrances of recoveries from illness, accident, a
nd disease, attributed to the beneficent intervention of the saint. But above, in the little vault of the apse, there were some very ancient and well-preserved mosaics, magnificently rich in tone. There was, of course, no dome, and the dim light came in through low windows high up in the nave, above the lower side chapels. The church was clean and well kept, and on each side there were half a dozen benches painted with a vivid sky-blue colour.

  The two brothers looked about, with some curiosity, while the fat sacristan slowly jingled his bunch of keys against his leg.

  ‘Here the dead walk at night,’ he observed, cheerfully, as the two young men came up to him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Orsino, who had been much amused by the man’s conversation.

  ‘The old Pagliuca walk. I have seen their souls running about the floor in the dark, like little candle flames. A little more, and I should have seen their bodies too, but I ran away. Soul of my mother! I was frightened. It was on the eve of Santa Vittoria, five years ago. The candles for the festival had not come, though we had waited all day for the carrier from Piedimonte. Then he came at dark, for he had met a friend in Linguaglossa, and he was a drunkard, and the wine was new, so he slept on his cart all the way, and it was by the grace of the Madonna that he did not roll off into the ditch. But I considered that it was late, and that the office began early in the morning, and that many strangers came from Bronte and the hill village to our festa, and that it would be a scandal if they found us still dressing the church in the morning. So I took the box of candles on my back and came here, not thinking to bring a lantern, because there is always the lamp before the altar where the saint’s bones are. Do you understand?’

  ‘Perfectly. But what about the Pagliuca?’

  ‘My brother said, “You will see the Pagliuca” — for everyone says it. But I had a laugh at him, for I thought that a dead man in his grave must be as quiet as a handkerchief in a drawer. So I came, and I unlocked the door, thinking about the festival, and I came in, meaning to take a candle from the box and light it at the altar lamp, so that I might see well to stick the others into the candlesticks. But there was the flame of a candle burning on the floor. It ran away from me as I came in, and others ran after it, and round and round it. Then I knew that I saw the souls of the old Pagliuca, and I said to myself that presently I should see also their bodies — an evil thing, for they have been long dead. Then I made a movement — who knows how I did? I dropped the box and I heard it break, and all the candles rolled out upon the floor as though the dead Pagliuca were rattling their bones. But I counted neither one nor two, but jumped out into the road with one jump. Santa Vittoria helped me; and it was a bright moonlight night, but as I shut the door, I could see the souls of the Pagliuca jumping up and down on the pavement. I said within me, when the dead dance, the living go home. And my face was white. When I came home, my brother said, “You have seen the Pagliuca.” And I said, “I have seen them.” Then he gave me some rum, and I lay in a cold sweat till morning. From that time I will not come here at night. But in the daytime it is different.’

  Orsino and Ippolito knew well enough that in old Italian churches, where many dead are buried under the pavement, it is not an uncommon thing to see a will-o’-the-wisp at night. But in the dim little church, with the dead Pagliuca lying under their feet, there was something gruesome about the man’s graphic story, and they did not laugh.

  ‘Let us hope that we may not see any ghosts,’ said Orsino.

  ‘Amen,’ answered the sacristan, devoutly. ‘That is the organ,’ he said, pointing to the loft.

  He led the way. On one side of the entrance a small arched door gave access to a narrow winding staircase in the thickness of the wall, lighted by narrow slits opening to the air. Though the loft had not appeared to be very high above the pavement, the staircase seemed very long. At last the three emerged upon the boarded floor, at the back of the instrument, where four greasy, knotted ropes hung out of worn holes in the cracked wood. The rose window over the door of the church threw a bright light into the little forest of dusty wooden and metal pipes above. The ropes were for working the old-fashioned bellows.

  Ippolito went round and took the thin deal cover from the keyboard. He was surprised to find a double bank of keys, and an octave and a half of pedals, which is very uncommon in country organs. He was further unprepared to see the name of a once famous maker in Naples just above the keys, but when he looked up he understood, for on a gilded scroll, supported by two rickety cherubs above his head, he read the name of the donor.

  ‘Ferdinandus Paliuca Princeps Corleonis

  Comes Sanctae Victoriae Siculus donavit

  a.d. mdcccxxi.’

  The instrument was, therefore, the gift of a Ferdinando Pagliuca, Prince of Corleone, Count of Santa Vittoria, probably of one of those Pagliuca whose souls the fat sacristan believed he had seen ‘jumping up and down the pavement.’

  The sacristan tugged at the ropes that moved the bellows. Ippolito dusted the bench over which he had leaned to uncover the keys, slipped in, swinging his feet over the pedals, pulled out two or three stops, and struck a chord.

  The tone was not bad, and had in it some of that richness which only old organs are supposed to possess, like old violins. He began to prelude softly, and then, one by one, he tried the other stops. Some were fair, but some were badly out of tune. The cornopean brayed hideously, and the hautboy made curious buzzing sounds. Ippolito promised himself that he would set the whole instrument in order in the course of a fortnight, and was delighted with his discovery. When he had finished, the fat sacristan came out from behind, mopping his forehead with a blue cotton handkerchief.

  ‘Capers!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are a professor. If Don Giacomo hears you, he will die of envy.’

  ‘Who is Don Giacomo?’

  ‘Eh, Don Giacomo? He is the postmaster and the telegrapher, and he plays the old organ in the big church on Sundays. But when there is a festival here, a professor comes to play this one, from Catania. But he cannot play as you do.’

  Orsino had gone down again into the church while Ippolito had been playing. They found him bending very low over an inscription on a slab near the altar steps.

  ‘There is a curious inscription here,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I cannot quite read it, but it seems to me that I see our name in it. It would be strange if one of our family had chanced to die and be buried here, ages ago.’

  Ippolito bent down, too, till his head touched his brother’s.

  ‘It is not Latin,’ he said presently. ‘It looks like Italian.’

  The fat sacristan jingled his keys rather impatiently, for it was growing late.

  ‘Without troubling yourselves to read it, you may know what it is,’ he said. ‘It is the old prophecy about the Pagliuca. When the dead walk here at night they read it. It says, ‘Esca Pagliuca pesca Saracen.’ But it goes round a circle like a disc, so that you can read it, ‘Saracen esca Pagliuca pesca’ — either, Let Pagliuca go out, the Saracen is fishing, or, Let the Saracen go out, Pagliuca is fishing.’

  ‘“Or Saracinesca Pagliuca pesca” — Saracinesca fishes for Pagliuca,’ said Ippolito to Orsino, with a laugh at his own ingenuity.

  ‘Who knows what it means!’ exclaimed the sacristan. ‘But they say that when it comes true, the last Corleone shall die and the Pagliuca d’Oriani shall end. But whether they end or not, they will walk here till the Last Judgment. Signori, the twilight descends. If you do not wish to see the Pagliuca, let us go. But if you wish to see them, here are the keys. You are the masters, but I go home. This is an evil place at night.’

  The man was growing nervous, and moved away towards the door. The two brothers followed him.

  ‘The place is consecrated,’ said Ippolito, as they reached the entrance. ‘What should you be afraid of?’

  ‘Santa Vittoria is all alone here,’ answered the man, ‘and the Pagliuca are more than fifty, when they come out and walk. What should a poor Christian do? He is bet
ter at home with a pipe of tobacco.’

  The sun had set when they all came out upon the road, and the afterglow was purple on the snow of Etna.

  CHAPTER XXI

  VITTORIA D’ORIANI HAD very few companions. Corona Saracinesca really liked her, for her own sake, and was sorry for her because she belonged to the family which was so often described as the worst blood in Italy. Corona and San Giacinto’s wife had together presented the Corleone tribe in Roman society, but they were both women of middle age, without daughters who might have been friends for Vittoria. On the other hand, though the Romans had accepted the family on the endorsement, as it were, of the whole Saracinesca family, there was a certain general disinclination to become intimate with them, due to the posthumous influence of their dead uncle, Corleone of evil fame. The Campodonico people were unwilling to have anything to do with them, even to the gentle and charitable Donna Francesca, who had been a Braccio, and might therefore, perhaps, have been expected to condone a great many shortcomings in other families. Pietro Ghisleri, who generally spent the winter in Rome, refused to know the d’Oriani, for poor dead Bianca Corleone’s sake; and his English wife, who knew the old story, thought he was right. The great majority of the Romans received them, however, very much as they would have received foreigners who had what is called a right to be in society, with civility, but not with enthusiasm.

  Vittoria had, therefore, met many Roman girls of her own age during the spring, but had not become intimate with any of them. It was natural that when her brother made the acquaintance of Mrs. and Miss Slayback, and when the young American took what is usually described in appalling English as a violent fancy to Vittoria, the latter should feel that sort of gratitude which sometimes expands into friendship.

  They saw much of each other. It is needless to say that they had not an idea in common, and it would have been very surprising if they had. But on the other hand they had that sort of community of feeling which is a better foundation for intimacy than a similarity of ideas.