Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Concetta had no consciousness of the passing of time, as she stood at the gate, nor for a long while afterwards, when she had sat down upon the curbstone in her accustomed attitude, with her shawl drawn down over her face, shielding it from the low rays of the sinking sun, and from the sight of the world that was so desolate for her. As spring warmed to summer, no one passed that way who could help it, for the road was dusty and hot.

  Two of the foot-carabineers passed her, returning to Santa Vittoria from their regular patrol of the high-road, their carbines slung over their shoulders and their pipeclayed cross-belts gleaming white in the sun. They knew her, too, and barely glanced at her as they went by. She did not even raise her head, though she remembered, now, that she had come to wait for Francesco Pagliuca, and she was glad that the patrol had marched up again, for he must be following them, and could thus not be met by them. She knew that he would come on horseback. As she strained her ears to catch the distant sound of hoofs, the savage longing for revenge began to burn again in her heart. Surely he must have come for that, and not really for love of Aliandra Basili. If he reached the cemetery in time, he could kill Ippolito, the priest, as he came down from the church. She would show him just where to stand with his gun, at the corner of the wall, and she would stand beside him; and then, if he were quick, he could get down half-way to Camadoli, near the cross-roads and kill Orsino too, when he came up hastily to see his dead brother. The vision of much blood reddened before her aching eyes, as she listened for the horse’s hoofs. If only he could come before Ippolito, she thought, and she listened also for the priest’s light step behind her.

  Francesco came first. She saw him far down the road before the first sound reached her. He was riding leisurely up the steep way, a broad hat drawn over his eyes, against the level sun, that gleamed like fire on the barrel of his rifle. She could see that from time to time he looked behind him quickly. He was warned already, she thought. So much the better. If only he would quicken his speed a little. Ippolito almost always passed the graveyard before the sun was quite down. Her heart beat very fast as she heard the clink of the horse’s iron shoes against the stones, and then the rattle of the tiny pebbles that flew up and fell to right and left at every step.

  She rose when he was within fifty yards of her, and threw the black shawl back from her splendid black hair. He knew her face and would stop when he recognised her. She remembered the sound of his voice, and how he had said in her hearing that she was very beautiful, and once when she had been alone in her father’s shop, he had come in and had talked strangely, and she had been a little frightened, but Ferdinando had entered just then. She remembered it all distinctly. It did not matter, now, for he had come to avenge Ferdinando. The bullets that should do justice were already in the Winchester that gleamed so red in the setting sun.

  She stood upright, with her head thrown back, that he might recognise her. He stopped beside her.

  ‘Concetta!’ he exclaimed, smiling, as he smiled at every pretty woman. ‘What brings you here? What are you doing out here in the road alone?’

  She hardly saw that he smiled, in her own earnestness.

  ‘That brings me here,’ she said, pointing through the iron gate. ‘Do you see? It is the last one on the left, with the black cross.’

  Francesco looked.

  ‘I see a grave,’ he said indifferently.

  ‘It is your brother’s grave,’ said the girl. ‘Ferdinando lies there.’

  ‘Oh — I understand.’

  The young man glanced up and down the road, and dismounted from his horse, passing his arm through the bridle. He advanced close to the gate, and looked through it in silence for several seconds.

  ‘Poor fellow!’ he exclaimed, turning away again, but without any very strong feeling in his tone.

  Concetta grasped his arm roughly, to draw him after her, and spoke rapidly into his ear.

  ‘The priest Saracinesca will be coming down the road from the village at any moment. Come quickly, come with me. Behind the corner of the wall. You can shoot him from there, and I will hold your horse.’ She dragged him along and the horse followed, led by his arm. ‘No one will come. When he is dead, mount quickly and ride down to the cross roads above Camaldoli, by the fields, and wait behind the shrine. I will run all the way and tell the other Saracinesca that his brother is dead in the road. He will run out, — from behind the shrine you can kill him easily. Then ride for the woods of Noto. The brigands are there, and you will be safe.’

  Almost before he knew where she was leading him, he found himself behind the corner of the cemetery, on the side away from the village. In digging the foundations of the wall, the dark tufo had been broken out of the earth and piled high up at a short distance, so that there was a sort of deep trench between the wall and the heap of stones, out of which the poisonous yellow spurge grew in great bunches. It would have been impossible to select a better spot for an ambush in what was really an open country.

  With the unconscious ease of a country-bred woman, Concetta, taking the bridle, backed the horse into the trench so as to leave room in front of him for herself and Francesco to be under cover of the wall. She had scarcely done speaking when they were already in position.

  ‘Get your rifle ready!’ she said in a whisper, at the same time taking hold of the leathern belt by which the Winchester was slung. ‘He may be here at any moment. Be quick!’

  ‘But I do not wish to kill anybody,’ said Francesco, at last, with an uneasy laugh.

  Concetta started and stared at him, too much astonished to despise him yet.

  ‘You do not wish to kill the Saracinesca!’ Her face expressed blank amazement. ‘But then, why have you come?’

  ‘Not to murder anyone, at all events. You are quite mad.’

  ‘Mad? I? Mad? Is not the body of your murdered brother lying there, on the other side of that wall? Does not his blood cry out for the blood of those who killed him? Have you not come to do justice? Have I not brought you to a safe place? And you call me mad!’

  ‘Quite mad,’ reiterated Francesco, coolly.

  She stared at him a moment longer, and an immense contempt rose in her eyes.

  ‘Give me your rifle,’ she said in a different tone. ‘I will kill him, since you are afraid.’

  ‘I am not in the least afraid,’ answered Francesco, with the too ready resentment against a woman’s accusation of cowardice, which a real coward always shows. ‘Not that I see why I should risk being sent to penal servitude because my brother got himself killed in a foolish affair—’

  ‘Foolish?’ Concetta’s black eyes blazed suddenly from contempt to anger.

  ‘Foolish, yes! Ferdinando — I am sorry for him, of course — but he was a fool.’

  The back of one little white hand had struck him across the mouth, almost before the word was out.

  ‘Infame!’ she cried, using the strongest word in her language.

  He did not care for the light blow, still less for the word. She was matchlessly beautiful in her anger, as the blood rose a little in her white cheeks, and her nostrils dilated with wrath. The shawl had fallen almost to the ground, and revealed her perfect throat and exquisitely graceful figure as she faced him. The colour rose in his face, and his lips reddened, and his eyes sparkled badly. Almost before the hand that had struck him had fallen to her side, he had caught her in his arms, and his lips were on hers, smothering her, hurting her, and he was forcing her backwards against the heap of stones — not twenty yards from his brother’s grave.

  She was lithe and strong, but she was no match for him. Yet, defending herself as she could, like a wild animal, she bit his lip half through, and as he started under the pain she wrenched her head aside and screamed with all her might, once, before he got one of his hands over her mouth.

  But her scream had been heard. She had judged rightly that Ippolito Saracinesca would be coming along the road in a few moments, to meet his death, as she had hoped. Instead, he saved her, for at her
cry, being but a few yards from the corner of the wall, he sprang forward, saw a woman struggling against a man, recognising neither, leapt into the trench and had Francesco by the back of the collar in a moment, twisting the tough starched linen with all the might of his by no means weak white hands. As Orsino had always said, Ippolito was more of a man than anybody suspected, and there was the good blood of his good race in him, and all the fearlessness.

  In an instant he had dragged Francesco backwards, half strangled, up the little declivity of the trench, and out into the middle of the road. So far he had done nothing more, perhaps, than was necessary to save the girl. But having got him out, the man’s instinct against the wretch that does violence to a woman took possession of him, and holding Francesco by the back of the collar in front of him with his right hand, he struck him half a dozen times quickly and violently on the side of the head with his left fist, till Francesco, stunned and choked, suddenly fell in a heap in the road.

  Concetta had struggled to her feet at once, and stood leaning against the corner of the wall. With a mad horror she saw that she had been saved by the man she had wished to kill. The horse leisurely picked its way up through the stones and stood waiting in the road.

  At that moment, four peasants coming home from the hill farm came down into the road from behind the other end of the long wall of the cemetery. They naturally glanced downwards before going up towards the village, and seeing the priest standing over a fallen man, they hurried to the spot. Francesco was already beginning to get to his feet. Ippolito drew back a little to be ready if he should be attacked, as he naturally expected. But a moment later the peasants had recognised Francesco, had helped him up, and were dusting his clothes, while they scowled at Ippolito.

  ‘It is well that you come, friends,’ said Concetta’s clear, low voice. ‘A moment later and another Saracinesca would have killed another Pagliuca.’

  Ippolito stared at her, dumbfounded by her speech, and then looked at the grim and angry faces of the lean brown men who surrounded Francesco. He could not conceive that a woman whom he had saved from worse than death but a moment earlier should turn upon him instantly, as she was doing.

  But she could not help it, for she was half mad, and the idea of injuring the Saracinesca was always uppermost in her unsettled brain. She had come to warn Francesco of danger, because she had loved his brother, and loved the name; and she had done her best to make him do a murder then and there.

  ‘Help Don Francesco to his horse,’ she said to the peasants. ‘Take him round to the back of Don Taddeo’s house — not through the village — you will meet the carabineers, and he is bleeding. They would see; there would be questions. Go quickly — the patrol passed half an hour ago; the next will come out in half an hour more.’

  She foresaw everything. In a moment the men had helped Francesco to the saddle, and they were moving away. He had not uttered a word, surprised, bruised, and terrified as he was, and his lip was bleeding where Concetta had bitten it. His face was white with fear, and he held a handkerchief to his mouth, as he slowly rode away, leaving Concetta and Ippolito standing in the road together.

  Ippolito faced the girl quietly enough, but he meant to ask for an explanation of some sort.

  ‘Did you think that I should accuse him, though he is — what he is?’ she asked, speaking first. ‘You saved me from that infamous beast — yes. I thank you, though you are my enemy. But do not think that I value myself higher than the blood of my bridegroom whom you killed. I would rather lose body and soul together than not hurt a Saracinesca if I could, kill you, if I could, give your bodies to dogs, if I could, send you unconfessed to hell, if I could. And you thought that I would turn and accuse a Corleone when I could accuse a Saracinesca? You do not know us.’

  She turned from him scornfully before he could answer a word. She had found her little shawl, and she drew it about her face as she moved away. He stood still a moment, looking after her in mute surprise. Then he shook his head and turned towards Camaldoli, not yet understanding that the beautiful girl was not quite sane, but speculating upon women in general, as good priests sometimes do in total ignorance of the subject.

  Orsino looked grave when Ippolito told him at supper what had happened.

  ‘The girl is mad,’ he said sadly, for he was himself the cause of her madness. ‘And she is a Sicilian. We understand these people very little, after all. I sometimes think we never shall.’

  ‘Nobody could possibly understand that kind of woman,’ observed Ippolito.

  ‘No. Put such a scene as that on the stage, if it were possible, and the audience would hiss it, as a monstrous improbability. They would say that the girl would fall at the feet of her preserver, forget her hatred for ever, or possibly turn it all against the man from whom she had been saved. Unfortunately things are different in real life. Poor Concetta will hate us all the more because one of us has helped her in danger. It is true that she is mad. All the people say so.’

  ‘Because she sits half the day outside the cemetery? It is not a month since Ferdinando died. One need not be mad to feel a great sorrow for a whole month.’

  ‘No. Perhaps not. I should like to know what that fellow is here for. It means no good to anyone. I have no doubt that he is in communication with the outlaws, and she is quite capable of trying to help them to catch us.’

  ‘Then you really believe in the existence of the brigands, after all,’ said Ippolito, with a laugh, for Orsino did not often speak of the outlaws seriously.

  ‘We all know that they exist. But we have trouble in realising that they do. We know the names of many of them. Everybody does. But of course, with so many soldiers about, we feel safe. I wish you would carry a weapon, Ippolito.’

  ‘I? I am a priest. Nobody will touch me.’

  ‘Do not be too sure. There are even priests who wear a revolver under their cassocks down here.’

  ‘I could hardly carry a rifle,’ remarked Ippolito, laughing again. ‘And imagine carrying a knife in these days — one of us! It sounds like the last century.’

  ‘A knife is a very good weapon, nevertheless. The peasants say that a knife has more shots in it than a revolver, and does not miss fire.’

  ‘I hate the idea of carrying a weapon.’

  ‘Yes, no doubt. But suppose that matters had turned out a little differently to-day, and that Francesco Pagliuca, instead of being an abject coward, had turned upon you and fought you for his life. What could you have done with your hands?’

  ‘A priest has no business to be fighting,’ said Ippolito. ‘When he fights he must take the consequences.’

  ‘But you could not escape it to-day. The cause was just and urgent. As a man, you could not have done otherwise.’

  ‘Certainly not. I admit that, and the fellow was scared. He had a Winchester rifle across his back. It got into the way when I twisted his collar, I remember. Do you know that I never struck anyone before? It was rather a curious sensation.’

  ‘You have struck me often enough,’ laughed Orsino. ‘You used to fight like a wildcat when we were little boys. It is a pity that you turned priest.’

  ‘I am very glad I did,’ said Ippolito. ‘Besides, I do not like fighting. It was different when we were children and pummelled each other.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Orsino. ‘I shall feel anxious about you after this affair. Unless you will carry some weapon, I shall have you escorted to Santa Vittoria and back by a carabineer.’

  ‘How absurd!’

  ‘I will, I assure you. If you were like that miserable Francesco Pagliuca, I should send four men with you. But I know that you could make a pretty good defence alone, if you had anything to fight with.’

  ‘Of course if you insist in that way, I must. I utterly refuse to be followed about by soldiers. It is too ridiculous. Have you got a knife? Something that is easy to carry—’

  ‘Two or three,’ answered Orsino. ‘There is a very nice bowie knife — one of those American things made in En
gland. It is convenient, for it has a cross-hilt and a leathern sheath.’

  He rose from the table and opened a drawer in an old-fashioned press, from which he produced the weapon in question.

  ‘There is a saddler in Rome who gets these things,’ he observed, showing it to his brother. ‘You see it is really a dagger, for there is no spring. It is made solid and straight and would go through anything, I should think. Look at the thickness of the back of the blade, will you? And the point is extremely fine. You could engrave with it, and yet it is as strong as the rest.’

  Ippolito turned the knife over and over.

  ‘At all events it will be useful in cutting up the bits of leather I use for mending the old organ,’ he observed. ‘My pocket knife is of hardly any use.’

  He sheathed the knife-blade and dropped it into the deep side pocket of his cassock.

  ‘Imagine me carrying a bowie knife!’ he exclaimed, still inclined to laugh.

  ‘Imagine the feelings of Francesco Pagliuca this afternoon, if he had thought you had one in your pocket, when you were behind him and twisting his collar.’ Orsino smiled grimly.

  ‘My hands were good enough for such a beast,’ answered Ippolito in a tone of disgust.

  Thus it was that Ippolito began to go armed, much against his will, for he took his profession as a priest and a man of peace seriously. Orsino was not even then half satisfied, and intended before long to try and persuade him to carry a revolver instead of a knife.

  But up at Santa Vittoria there was much talk of another sort on that evening. As generally happens in such cases in Sicily, the carabineers and the soldiers, though on the lookout for Francesco Pagliuca, were in profound ignorance of the fact that he was now lodging for the second night at the house of Taddeo the grocer, though there was now hardly a man in the village who did not know it. The soldiers in Sicily are matched as one to a thousand against a whole population of the most reticent people in the world, bound together by that singular but half-defined force, which is the mafia. Knowing the country perfectly and well acquainted with the unchanging hours of the regular patrols in the neighbourhood, Francesco might have stayed ten days in Santa Vittoria in spite of the soldiers, even if he had been guilty of the crimes which he did not at all mean to commit. Not a human being would have informed against him, and if anyone had betrayed him, the betrayer’s own life would not have been worth much. They did not think any the better of him, nor any the worse, because he was innocent of any misdeed. He was a part of the idea of the mafia, a born Sicilian, who, somehow, had been obliged to give up his birthright to Romans, who were as much foreigners to the people of Santa Vittoria as Englishmen could have been. It was their duty, to a man, for Sicily’s sake and their own, to stand by him as a Sicilian against all authority whatever. Besides, they knew him, the Romans had killed his brother, whom they had also known, and both he and his had always helped the outlaws against the government. The peasants remembered and told their children how the Corleone brothers had once led a dozen carabineers about the hills for two days in search of the brigands, taking good care not to catch them. It was not probable that the soldiers should ever get any information against such popular persons, except by stratagem or accident.