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A RAINY JUNE 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 OUIDA 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'PUCK,' 'tRICOTRIN,' ' THE MASSARENES,' ETC. 
 
 A NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 CHATTO & WINDUS 
 
 x 905 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Rainy June x 
 
 Don Gesualdo - - - - 89 
 
 The Silver Christ - 
 A Lemon-Tree 
 
 215 
 
 3°5 
 
 818 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 From the Principe di San Zenone, Claridge's, London, 
 to the Duchessa delV Aquila Fulva, Monterone y near 
 Val d'Aosta, Italy. 
 
 1 Carissima Teresa — I received your letter, 
 which is delightful to me because it is yours, 
 and terrible to me because it scolds me, abuses 
 me, flies at me, makes me feel like a schoolboy 
 who has had a scolding. Yes ; it is quite true. 
 I cannot help it. She has bewitched me. She 
 is a lily made into a woman. I feared you 
 would be angry, especially angry because she is 
 a foreigner ; but the hour of fate has struck. 
 You will not wonder when you see her. She is 
 as blonde as the dawn and as pure as a pearl. 
 It seems to me that I have never loved any 
 woman at all in my life before. To love her 
 is like plunging one's hand in cool spring water 
 on a midsummer noon. She is such repose ; 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 such innocence ; such holiness ! In the midst 
 of this crowded, over-coloured, vulgar London 
 life — for it is very vulgar at its highest — she 
 seems like some angel of purity. I saw her 
 first standing with a knot of roses in her hand 
 under a cedar tree, at one of their afternoon 
 clubs on the river. She was drinking a cup of 
 tea ; they are always drinking tea. And she 
 is so white. I never saw anything so white 
 except the snow on the Leonessa. She is not 
 in the least like the fast young ladies of Eng- 
 land, of whom one sees so much in the winter 
 at Rome. I do not like their fast young 
 women. If you want a woman who is fast, 
 a Parisienne is best, or even an American. 
 Englishwomen overdo it. She is just like a 
 primrose ; like a piece of porcelain ; like a soft, 
 pale star shining in the morning. I write all 
 kinds of poetry when I think of her. And 
 then, there is something Sainte Nitouche about 
 her which is delicious, because it is so real. 
 The only thing which was wanting in her was 
 that she ought to have been shut up in a con- 
 vent, and I ought to have had to imperil my 
 soul for all eternity by getting her over a stone 
 wall with a silken ladder. But it is a prosaic 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 age, and this is a very prosaic country. 
 London amuses me, but it is such a crowd, 
 and it is frightfully ugly. I cannot think how 
 people who are so enormously rich as the 
 English can put up with such ugliness. The 
 houses are all too small, even the big ones. I 
 have not seen a good ballroom ; they say there 
 are good ones in the country houses. The 
 clubs are admirable, but life in general seems to 
 me hurried, costly, ungraceful, very noisy, and 
 almost entirely consecrated to eating. It is 
 made up of a scramble and a mass of food. 
 People engage themselves for dinners a month 
 in advance. Everybody's engagement book is 
 so full that it is the burden of their days. 
 They accept everything, and, at the eleventh 
 hour, pick out what they prefer, and, to use 
 their own language, " throw over " the rest. 
 I do not think it is pretty behaviour, but 
 nobody seems to object to it. I wonder that 
 the women do not do so, but they seem to be 
 afraid of losing their men altogether if they 
 exact good manners from them. People here 
 are not at all well-mannered, to my taste ; 
 neither the men nor the women. They are 
 brusque and negligent, and have few petit s soins. 
 
 3 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 You should have come over for my marriage to 
 show them all what an exquisite creature a 
 Venetian patrician beauty can be. Why would 
 you marry that Piedmontese ? Only two 
 things seem to be of any importance in Eng- 
 land — they are, eating and politics. They eat 
 all day long, and are always talking of their 
 politics. Half of them say some person I never 
 heard of is the destruction of England, the 
 other half say the same person is the salvation 
 of England. Myself, I don't care the least 
 which he is ; only I know they cannot keep 
 him out of their conversation, one way or 
 another, for five minutes ; which, to an un- 
 prejudiced foreigner, is a seccatura. But to- 
 morrow I go down into the country with my 
 primrose — all alone ; to-morrow she will be 
 mine altogether and unalterably, and I shall 
 hear nothing about their detestable politics or 
 anything that is tiresome. Of course, you are 
 wondering that I should take this momentous 
 step. I wonder myself, but then if I did not 
 marry I should be compelled to say an eternal 
 farewell to the Lenten Lily. She has such a 
 spiked wall around her of male relatives and 
 family greatness ! It is not the convent wall ; 
 
 4 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 there is no ladder that will go over it ; one 
 must enter by the big front door, or not at all. 
 Felicitate me, and yet compassionate me ! I 
 am going to Paradise, no doubt ; but I have the 
 uncomfortable doubt as to whether it will suit 
 me, which all people who are going to Paradise 
 always do feel. Why ? Because we are 
 mortal or because we are sinners? A 
 reverderci, cara mia Teresina ! Write to me 
 at my future Eden : it is called Coombe Bysset, 
 near Luton, Bedfordshire. We are to be there 
 a month. It is the choice of my primrose.' 
 
From the Lady Mary Bruton, Belgrave Square, London, 
 to Airs d'Arcy, British Embassy, Berlin. 
 
 ' The season has been horribly dull ; 
 quantities of marriages — people always will 
 marry, however dull it is. The one most 
 talked about is that of the Cowes' second 
 daughter, Lady Gladys, with the Prince of 
 San Zenone. She is one of the beauties, 
 but a very simple girl, quite old-fashioned, 
 indeed. She has refused Lord Hampshire, 
 and a good many other people, and then 
 fallen in love in a week with this Roman, 
 who is certainly as handsome as a picture. 
 But Cowes didn't like it at all ; he gave 
 in because he couldn't help it, but he was 
 dreadfully vexed that the Hampshire affair 
 did not come off instead. Hampshire is 
 such a good creature, and his estates are 
 close to theirs. It is certainly very provok- 
 ing for them that this Italian must take it 
 into his head to spend a season in London, 
 and lead the cotillon so beautifully that all 
 the young women talked of nothing else 
 
 but his charms.' 
 
 6 
 
From the Lady Mona St Glair, Grosvenor Square, 
 London, to Miss Burns, Schooner-yacht Persephone, 
 off Cherbourg. 
 
 'The wedding was very pretty yesterday. 
 We had frocks of tussore silk, with bouquets 
 of orchids and Penelope Boothby caps. She 
 looked as white as her gown — such a goose ! 
 — it was ivory satin, with point de Venise. 
 He is quite too handsome, and I cannot 
 think what he could see in her ! He gave 
 us each a locket with her portrait inside. I 
 wished it had been his ! I daresay Hamp- 
 shire would have been better for her, and worn 
 longer than Romeo. Lord Cowes is furious 
 about Romeo. He detests the religion and all 
 that, and he could hardly make himself look 
 pleasant even at church. Of course, there were 
 two ceremonies. The Cardinal had consented 
 at last, though I believe he had made all kinds 
 of fuss first. Lady Gladys, you know, is 
 very, very High Church, and I suppose that re- 
 conciled a little the very irreconcilable Prelate. 
 She thinks of nothing but the Church and her 
 
 7 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 missions and her poor people. I am afraid 
 the Roman Prince will get dreadfully bored. 
 And they are going down into Bedfordshire, 
 of all places, to be shut up for a month ! It 
 is very stupid of her, and such a wet season 
 as it is ! They are going to Coombe Bysset, 
 her aunt, Lady Caroline's place. I fancy 
 Romeo will soon be bored, and I don't think 
 Coombe Bysset at all judicious. I would have 
 gone to Homburg, or Deauville, or Japan.' 
 
From the Principessa dl San Zenone, Coo?nbe Bysset, 
 Luton, Beds., to the Countess of Cowes, London. 
 
 1 Dearest Mother, — I am too, too, too 
 happy. It is no use writing about it. I would 
 if I could, but I cant. He is delighted with 
 Coombe, and says the verdure is something 
 wonderful. We got here just as the sun was 
 setting. There were all Aunt Carrie's school 
 children out to meet us, with baskets of roses. 
 Piero said they looked like bigger roses them- 
 selves. He is enchanted with our rural 
 England. It is very fine to-day, and I do 
 so hope it won't rain, but the glass is falling. 
 Forgive a hurried word like this. I am going 
 to take Piero on the lake. I know you haven't 
 liked it, dear ; but I am sure when you see how 
 happy I am you will say there was never anyone 
 like him on earth. 
 
 * He is an angel. We ride in the morning, 
 we sing and play in the evening. We adore 
 each other all the twenty-four hours through. 
 
 9 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 1 wonder however I could have lived without 
 him. I am longing to see all he tells me about 
 his great marble palaces, and his immense 
 dreamlike villas, and his gardens with their 
 multitude of statues, and the wonderful light 
 that is over it all. He protests it is always 
 twilight with us in England. It seems so 
 absurd, when nowadays everybody knows 
 everything about everywhere, that I should 
 never have been to Italy. But we were such 
 country mice down at dear, old, dull, green, 
 muddy Ditchworth. Lanciano, the biggest of 
 all their big places, must be like a poem. It is 
 a great house, all of different coloured marbles, 
 set amidst ilex groves on the mountain side, 
 with cascades like Terni, and gardens that 
 were planned by Giulio Romano, and temples 
 that were there in the days of Horace. I long 
 to see it all, and yet I hope he will not want 
 to leave Coombe yet. There is no place like 
 the place where one is first happy. And some- 
 how, I fancy I look better in these homely, low 
 rooms of Aunt Carrie's, with their Chippendale 
 furniture and their smell of dry rose leaves, than 
 I shall do in those enormous palaces which want 
 a Semiramis or a Cleopatra. They were kind 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 enough to make a fuss about me in London, 
 but I never thought much of myself, and I 
 am afraid I must feel rather dull to Piero, 
 who is so brilliant himself, and has all kinds 
 of talents/ 
 
 u 
 
From the Countess of Cowes, Cowes House, London, to 
 the Duchess of Dunne, Wavernake, Worcestershire. 
 
 1 No, I confess I do not approve of the 
 marriage ; it will take her away from us, and 
 I am afraid she won't be happy. She has 
 always had such very exaggerated ideas. She 
 is not in the least the girl of the period. Of 
 course, she was taken by his picturesque face 
 and his admirable manners. His manners are 
 really wonderful in these days, when our men 
 have none at all ; and he has charmingly 
 caressing and deferential ways which even win 
 me. I cannot wonder at her, poor child, but 
 I am afraid ; candidly, I am afraid ! He 
 makes all our men look like ploughboys. And 
 it was all done in such tremendous haste that 
 she had no time to reason or reflect ; and I 
 don't think they have said two serious words 
 to each other. If only it had been dear old 
 Hampshire, whom we have known all our lives, 
 and whose lands march with ours ! But that 
 was too good to be, I suppose, and there was no 
 positive objection we could raise to San Zenone. 
 We could not refuse his proposals merely 
 
 12 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 because he is too good-looking, isn't an 
 Englishman, and has a mother who is reputed 
 maitresse femme ! Gladys writes from Coombe 
 as from the seventh heaven. They have been 
 married three days ! But I fear she will have 
 trouble before her. I fear he is weak and un- 
 stable, and will not back her up amongst his 
 own people when she goes amongst them ; 
 and though, now-a-days, a man and woman, 
 once wedded, see so little of each other, Gladys 
 is not quite of the time in her notions. She 
 will take it all very seriously, poor child, and 
 expect the idyl to be prolonged over the 
 honeymoon. And she is very English in her 
 tastes, and has been so very little out of 
 England. However, every girl in London is 
 envying her ; it is only her father and I who 
 see these little black specks on the fruit she has 
 plucked. They are gone to Coombe by her 
 wish. I think it would have been wiser not 
 to subject an Italian to such an ordeal as a wet 
 English June in an utterly lonely country 
 house. You know, even Englishmen, who can 
 always find such refuge and comfort in prize 
 pigs and strawyards, and unusually big man- 
 golds, get bored if they are in the country 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 when there is nothing to shoot, and English- 
 men are used to being drenched to the skin 
 every time they move out. He is not. Lord 
 Cowes says love is like a cotton frock — very 
 pretty as long as the sun shines, but it won't 
 stand a wetting. I wish you had been here ; 
 Gladys looked quite lovely. The Cardinal 
 most kindly relented, and the whole thing 
 went off very well. Of the San Zenone family, 
 there was only present Don Fabrizio, the 
 younger son, a very good-looking young man. 
 The terrible Duchess didn't come, on account, 
 I think, of her sulks. She hates the marriage 
 on her side as much as we do on ours, I am 
 sure. Really, one must believe a little bit 
 in fate. I do think that Gladys would soon 
 have resigned herself to accepting Hampshire, 
 out of sheer fatigue at saying " No," and, besides, 
 she knew that we are so fond of him, and to 
 live in the same county was such an attraction. 
 But this irresistible young Roman must take 
 it into his head that he wished to see a London 
 season, and when once they had met (it was one 
 afternoon at Ranelagh) there was no more chance 
 for our poor, dear, good, stupid neighbour. 
 Well, we must hope for the best ! ' 
 
 14 
 
From the Principe Piero dl San Zenone, Coombe Bysset^ to 
 the Duchessa deW Aquila Fulva^ Palazzo Fulva, 
 Rome. 
 
 'Carissima Mia, — There are quantities 
 of birds in little green nests at this season. I 
 am in a green nest. I never saw anything so 
 green as this Paradise of mine. It is certainly 
 Paradise. If I feel a little like a fish out of 
 water instead of a happy bird in it, it is only 
 because I have been such a sinner. No doubt 
 it is only that. Paradise is chilly ; this is its 
 only fault. It is the sixth of June and we 
 have fires. Fires in the dressing-rooms, fires 
 in the drawing-rooms, fires at both ends of 
 the library, fires on both sides of the hall, fires 
 everywhere ; and with all of them I shiver. 
 I cannot help shivering, and I feel convinced 
 that in my rapture I have mistaken the month 
 — it must be December ! It is all extra- 
 ordinarily trim and neat here ; the whole 
 place looks in such perfect order that it 
 
 15 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 might have been taken out of a box of 
 German toys last night. I have a little the 
 sensation of being always at church. That, no 
 doubt, is the effect of the first step towards 
 virtue that I have ever made. Pray do not 
 think that I am not perfectly happy. I should 
 be more sensible of my happiness, no doubt, 
 if I had not quite such a feeling, due to the 
 dampness of the air, of having been put into 
 an aquarium, like a jelly-fish. But Gladys is 
 adorable in every way ; and if she were not quite 
 so easily scared, would be perfection. It was 
 that little air of hers, like that of some 
 irresistible Alpine flower, which bewitched 
 me. But when one has got the Alpine 
 flower, one cannot live for ever on it ! — how- 
 ever ma basta ! I was curious to know what 
 a northern woman was like ; I know now. 
 She is exquisite, but a little monotonous, and 
 a little prudish. Certainly she will never com- 
 promise me ; but then, perhaps, she will never 
 let me compromise myself, and that will be 
 terrible ! I am ungrateful ; all men are un- 
 grateful ; but, then, is it not a little the 
 women's fault? They do keep so very close 
 to one. Now, an angel, you know, becomes 
 
 16 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 tiresome if one never gets out of the shadow of 
 its wings — here, at Coombe Bysset, the angel 
 fills the horizon, and one's distance is a 
 Botticelli picture ! ' 
 
 17 
 
From the Duchessa del? Aquila Fulva, Palazzo Fulva, 
 Rome, to the Principe Piero di San Zenone, Coombe 
 By s set , Luton, Beds., England. 
 
 'Caro mio Pierino, — Are you sure you 
 have an angel ? People have a trick of always 
 calling very commonplace women angels. " She 
 is an angel " is a polite way of saying " she is a 
 bore." I am not sure either that I should care 
 to live with a veritable angel. One would see 
 too much of the wings, as you say ; and even a 
 guardian angel must be the terzo incommodo 
 sometimes. Why would you marry an English 
 girl? I daresay she is so good-tempered that 
 she never contradicts you, and you grow peevish 
 out of sheer weariness at having everything your 
 own way. If you had married Nicoletta, as I 
 wanted you to do, she would have flown at you, 
 like a little tigress, a dozen times a week, and 
 kept you on the qui vive to please her. We 
 know what our own men want. I have half a 
 mind to write to your wife and tell her that 
 no Italian is comfortable unless he has his ears 
 
 18 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 boxed twice a day. If your wife would be a little 
 disagreeable, probably you would adore her. 
 But it is a great mistake, Pierino mio, to confuse 
 marriage and love. In reality, they have no 
 more to do with one another than a horse chest- 
 nut and a chestnut horse ; than the zuccone that 
 means a vegetable, and the zuccone that means a 
 simpleton. I should imagine that your wet 
 English bird's-nest will force you to realise this 
 truth with lamentable rapidity.' 
 
 19 
 
From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coomb e Bysset, 
 Luton, Beds,, to Lady Gwendoline Dormer, British 
 Embassy, Vienna. 
 
 1 Dearest Gwen, — I did promise, I know, 
 to write to you at once, and tell you every- 
 thing ; and a whole week is gone and I 
 couldn't do it, I really couldn't ; and even 
 now I don't know where to begin. I 
 suppose I am dreadfully vieuxjeu. I suppose 
 you will only laugh at me, and say " spoons." 
 How glad I am Piero cannot say a word 
 of English, and so I never hear that dread- 
 ful jargon which I do think so ugly and so 
 vulgar, though you are all so fond of it. I 
 ought not to have come to Coombe Bysset ; 
 at least, they all said it was silly. Nessie 
 Fitzgerald was back in London before the 
 week was out, and doing a play. To be sure 
 she was married in October, and she didn't 
 care a bit about him, and I suppose that 
 made all the difference. To me, it seems 
 so much more natural to shut one's self 
 
 20 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 up, and Piero thought so too ; but I am 
 half afraid he finds it a little dull now. You 
 see, we knew very little of one another. He 
 came for a month of the London season, and 
 he met me at Ranelagh, and he danced the 
 cotillon with me at a good many houses, and 
 we cared for one another in a week, and 
 were married in a month, as you know. 
 Papa hated it because it wasn't Lord 
 Burlington or Lord Hampshire. But he 
 couldn't really object, because the San Zenone 
 are such a great Roman family, and all the 
 world knows them ; and they are Spanish 
 dukes as well as Italian princes. And Piero 
 is such a grand gentleman, and made quite 
 superb settlements ; much more, Papa said, 
 than he could have expected, so poor as 
 we are. But what I meant was, meeting 
 like that in the rush of the season, at balls 
 and dinners and garden parties, and luncheons 
 at Hurlingham, and being married to one 
 another just before Ascot, we really knew 
 nothing at all of each other's tastes or habits 
 or character. And when, on the first morning 
 at Coombe, we realised that we were together 
 for life, I think we both felt very odd. We 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 adored one another, but we didn't know what 
 to talk about ; we never had talked to each 
 other ; we never had time. And I am afraid 
 there is something of this feeling with him. 
 I am afraid he is dreadfully bored, and I told 
 him so, and he answered, " My dear little 
 angel, your admirable countrymen are not bored 
 in the country because they are always eating. 
 They eat a big breakfast, they eat a big 
 luncheon, they eat a big dinner, they are 
 always eating. Myself, I have not that 
 resource. Give me a little coffee and a little 
 wine, and let me eat only once a day. You 
 never told me I was expected to absorb con- 
 tinually food like the crocodiles." What would 
 he say if he saw a hunting breakfast in the 
 shires? I suppose life is very material in 
 England. I think it is why there is so much 
 typhoid fever. Do you know, he wasn't 
 going to dress for dinner because we were 
 alone. As if that was any reason ! I told 
 him it would look so odd to the servants if 
 he didn't dress, so he has done so since. But 
 he says it was a seccatura (this means, I believe, 
 a bore), and he told me we English sacrifice 
 our whole lives to fuss, form and the outside 
 
 22 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 of things. There is a good deal of truth 
 in this. What numbers of people one knows 
 who are ever so poor, and who yet, for the 
 sake of the look of the thing, get into debt 
 over their ears ! And then, quantities of them 
 go to church for the form of the thing, when 
 they don't believe one atom ; they will tell 
 you at luncheon that they don't. I fancy 
 Italians are much more honest than we are 
 in this sort of way. Piero says if they are 
 poor, they don't mind saying so, and if they 
 have no religion, they don't pretend to have 
 any. He declares we English spoil all our 
 lives because we fancy it is our duty to pretend 
 to be something we are not. Now, isn't that 
 really very true ? I am sure you would 
 delight in all he says. He is .so original, 
 so unconventional ; our people think him 
 ignorant, because he doesn't read, and doesn't 
 care a straw about politics. But I assure 
 you he is as clever as anything can be ; and 
 he doesn't get his ideas out of newspapers; 
 nor repeat like a parrot what his chief of 
 party tells him. I do wish you could have 
 come over and could have seen him. It was 
 so unkind of you to be ill just at the very 
 
 23 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 time of my marriage. You know that it is 
 only to you that I ever say quite what I feel 
 about things. The girls are too young, and 
 Mamma doesn't understand. She never could 
 see why I would not marry poor Hampshire. 
 She always said that I should care for him 
 in time. I don't think Mamma can ever 
 have been in love with anybody. I wonder 
 what she married for — don't you ? * 
 
From the Principe Piero di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset y 
 to the Count Zazzari, Italian Legation, London. 
 
 ' Caro Gigi, — Pray send me all the 
 French novels you can find, and a case of 
 Turkish cigarettes. I am in Paradise, but 
 Paradise is a little dull, and exceedingly damp, 
 at least in England. Does it always rain in 
 this country? It has rained here without 
 stopping for seventeen days and a half. I 
 produce upon myself the impression of being 
 one of those larks who sit behind wires on a 
 little square of wet grass. I should like to 
 run up to London. I see you have Sarah and 
 Coquelin and the others ; but I suppose it 
 would be against all the unwritten canons of a 
 honeymoon. What a strange institution. A 
 honeymoon ! Who first invented it ? ' 
 
 25 
 
From the Principe di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, Luton^ 
 Beds., to the Duchessa deW Jquila Fulva y Palazzo 
 Fulva, Milano. 
 
 1 Cara Teresina, — I ought to have 
 written to you long since, but you know I 
 am not fond of writing. I really, also, have 
 nothing to say. Happy the people who have 
 no history ! I am like that people. I was 
 made happy two weeks ago ; I have been 
 happy ever since. It is slightly monotonous. 
 How can you vary happiness, except by 
 quarrelling a little? And then it would not 
 be happiness any longer. It seems to me 
 that happiness is like an omelette, best im- 
 promptu. 
 
 ' Do not think that I am ungrateful, however, 
 either to fate or to the charming innocent who 
 has become my companion. We have not 
 two ideas in common. She is lovely to look 
 at, to caress, to adore ; but what to say to 
 her I confess I have no notion. Love ought 
 never to have to find dinner-table conversation. 
 
 26 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 He ought to climb up by a ladder, and get over 
 a balcony, and, when his ecstasies are ended, 
 he ought to go the same way. I fancy she 
 is much better educated than I am, but, as 
 that would be a discovery fatal to our comfort, 
 I endeavour not to make it. She is extra- 
 ordinarily sweet-tempered : indeed, so much 
 so, that it makes me angry ; it gives one no 
 excuse for being impatient. She is divine, 
 exquisite, nymph-like ; but, alas, she is a 
 prude ! 
 
 1 Never was any creature on earth so ex- 
 quisitely sensitive, so easily shocked. To live 
 with her is to walk upon eggshells. Of 
 course, it is very nice in a wife ; very " proper," 
 as the English say ; but it is not amusing. 
 It amused me at first, but now it seems to me 
 a defect. She has brought me down to this 
 terribly damp and very green place, where it 
 rains every day and night. There is a 
 library without novels ; there is a cellar 
 without absinthe ; there is a cuisine without 
 tomatoes, or garlic, or any oil at all ; there 
 is an admirably-ordered establishment, so quiet 
 that I fancy I am in a penitentiary. There 
 are some adorably fine horses, and there are 
 
 27 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 acres of glasshouses used to grow fruits that 
 we throw in Italy to the pigs. By the way, 
 there are also several of our field flowers in 
 the conservatories. We eat pretty nearly all 
 day ; there is nothing else to do. Outside, 
 the scenery is oppressively green, the green 
 of spinach ; there is no variety, there are no 
 ilexes and there are no olives. I understand 
 now why the English painters give such 
 staring colours ; unless the colours scream, 
 you don't see them in this aqueous, dim 
 atmosphere. That is why a benign Provi- 
 dence has made the landscape a puree aux 
 epinards. 
 
 ' I think the air here, inside and out, 
 must weigh heavily ; it lies on one's lungs 
 like a sponge. I once went down in a 
 diving-bell when I was a boy ; I have the 
 sensation in this country of being always down 
 in a diving-bell. The scamp Toniello, whom 
 you may remember as having played Leporello 
 to my Don Giovanno ever since we were lads, 
 amuses himself with making love to all the 
 pretty maidens in the village ; but, then, I 
 must not do that — now. They are not very 
 pretty either. They have very big teeth, and 
 
 28 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 very long upper lips. Their skins, however, 
 are admirable. For a horse's skin and a 
 woman's, there is no land comparable to 
 England. It is the country of grooming.' 
 
 
From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to Lady 
 Gwendolen Chichester, British Embassy, S. Peters- 
 burg. 
 
 ' He laughed at me because I went to church 
 yesterday, and really I only went because I 
 thought it right. We have been here a fort- 
 night, and I have never been to church at all 
 till yesterday, and you know how very serious 
 dear Aunt Carrie is. To-day, as it is the 
 second Sunday I have been here, I thought I 
 ought to go just once, and I did go ; but it 
 was dreadfully pompous and lonely in the big 
 red pew, and the villagers stared so, and all the 
 little girls of the village giggled, and looked 
 at me from under their sun-bonnets. Dear Mr 
 Coate preached a sermon on Marriage. It was 
 very kind of him ; but, oh, how I wished he 
 hadn't ! When I got back, Piero was playing 
 billiards with his servant. I wondered what Mr 
 Coate would have thought of him. To be sure, 
 English clergymen have to get used to fast 
 Sundays now, when the country houses are 
 
 30 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 full. It is such a dear little yew walk to the 
 church from the house here, not twenty yards 
 long, and all lined with fuchsia. Do you 
 remember it ? Even Piero admits that it is 
 very pretty, only he says it is a vignette 
 prettiness, which, I suppose, is true. " You can 
 see no horizon, only a green wall," he keeps 
 complaining ; and his beautiful, lustrous eyes 
 look as if they were made to gaze through 
 endless fields of light. When I asked him 
 yesterday what he really thought of England, 
 what do you suppose he said ? He said, " Mia 
 cara, I think it would be a most delightful 
 country if it had one-fifth of its population, 
 one-half of its houses, a tithe of its dinners, a 
 quarter of its machinery, none of its factories, 
 none of its tramways, and a wholly different 
 atmosphere ! " I suppose this means that he 
 dislikes it. I think him handsomer than ever. 
 I sent you his photograph, but that can give 
 you no idea of him. He is like one of his own 
 marble statues. We came to Coombe Bysset 
 directly after the ceremony, and we are here 
 still. I could stay on for ever. It is so lovely 
 in these Bedfordshire woods in mid-June. But 
 I am afraid— just the very least bit afraid — that 
 
 31 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 Piero may get bored with me — me — me-— 
 nothing but me. 
 
 * You know I never was clever, and really — 
 rea lly — I haven't an idea what to talk to him 
 about when we don't talk about ourselves. And 
 then the weather provokes him. We have 
 hardly had one fine day since we came ; and 
 no doubt it seems very grey and chilly to an 
 Italian. " It cannot be June ! " he says a dozen 
 times a week. And when the whole day is 
 rainy, as it is very often, for our Junes are such 
 wet ones nowadays, I can see he gets im- 
 patient. He doesn't care for reading ; he is 
 fond of billiards, but I don't play a good 
 enough game to be any amusement to him. 
 And though he sings divinely, as I told you, he 
 sings as the birds do ; only just when the 
 mood is on him. He does not care about 
 music as a science in the least. He laughed 
 when I said so. He declared it was no more 
 a science than love is. Perhaps love ought to 
 be a science too, in a way, or else it won't last ? 
 There has been a scandal in the village, caused 
 by his servant, Toniello. An infuriated father 
 came up to the house this morning about it. He 
 is named John Best ; he has one of Aunt 
 
 32 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 Carrie's biggest farms. He was in such a 
 dreadful rage, and I had to talk to him, because, 
 of course, Piero couldn't understand him. Only 
 when I translated what he said, Piero laughed 
 till he cried, and offered him a cigarette, and 
 called him "figlio mio" which only made Mr 
 John Best purple with fury, and he went away 
 in a greater rage than he had been in when he 
 came, swearing he " would do for the Papist." 
 I have sent for the steward. I am afraid Aunt 
 Carrie will be terribly annoyed. It has always 
 been such a model village. Not a public-house 
 near for six miles, and all the girls such demure, 
 quiet little maidens. This terrible Roman 
 valet, with his starry eyes and his mandoline, 
 and his audacities, has been like Mephistopheles 
 in the opera to this secluded and innocent little 
 hamlet. I beg Piero to send him away, but he 
 looks unutterably reproachful, and declares he 
 really cannot live without Toniello ; and what 
 can I say ? ' 
 
 33 
 
From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to 
 the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset. 
 
 ' You are quite in the wrong, my poor pet. 
 If you were only a little older, and ever so 
 much wiser, you would have telegraphed to the 
 libraries yourself for the French books ; you 
 would have laughed at them when he laughed, 
 and instead of taking Mr John Best as a 
 tragedy, you would have made him into a 
 little burlesque, which would have amused your 
 husband for five minutes, as much as Gyp or 
 Jean Richepin. I begin to think I should have 
 married your Roman prince, and you should 
 have married my good, dull George, whom a 
 perverse destiny has shoved into diplomacy. 
 Your Roman scandalises you, and my George 
 bores me. Such is marriage, my dear, all the 
 world over. What is the old story? That 
 Jove split all the walnuts in two, and each 
 half is always uselessly seeking its fellow. ' 
 
 34 
 
From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coomb e By s set, 
 Luton, Beds., to the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, 
 British Embassy, S. Petersburg. 
 
 'But, surely, if he loved me, he would be as 
 perfectly happy with me alone as I am with him 
 alone ? I want no other companion — no other 
 interest — no other thought.' 
 
 From the Lady Giuendolen Chichester, Briti h Embassy 
 S. Petersburg, to the Principessa di San Zenone, 
 Coomb e By s set, Luton, Beds. 
 
 1 Of course you do not, because you are a 
 woman. San Zenone is your god, your idol, 
 your ideal, your universe. But you are only 
 one out of the many women who have pleased 
 him, and attached to the pleasure you afford 
 him is the very uncomfortable conviction that 
 he will never be able to get away from you. 
 My dear child, I have no patience with any 
 woman when she says, " He does not love me." 
 
 35 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 If he does not, it is probably the woman's fault. 
 Probably she has worried him. Love dies 
 directly it is worried, quite naturally. Poor 
 Gladys ! You were always such a good child ; 
 you were always devoted to your old women, 
 and your queer little orphans, and your pet 
 cripples, and your East-End missions. It cer- 
 tainly is hard that you should have fallen into 
 the hands of a soulless Italian, who reads naughty 
 novels all day long and sighs for the flesh-pots 
 of Egypt ! But, my child, in reason's name, 
 what did you expect ? Did you think that all 
 in a moment he would sigh to hear Canon 
 Farrar ; the excellent vicar's sermons ; take 
 his guitar to a village concert, and teach Italian 
 to the lodge-keeper's children ? Be reasonable, 
 and let your poor caged bird fly out of Coombe 
 Bysset ; which will certainly be your worst 
 enemy if you shut him up in it much longer.' 
 
From the Principe di San Zenone, Coo?nbe Bysset, to the 
 Duchessa DeW Aquila Fulva^ Monterone^ Val 
 d'Josta. 
 
 * I am still in my box of wet moss. I have 
 been in it two weeks, four days, and eleven 
 hours, by the calendar and the clocks. I have 
 read all my novels. I have spelled through my 
 Figaro, from the title to the printer's address, 
 every morning. I have smoked twenty 
 cigarettes every twenty minutes, and I have 
 yawned as many times. This is Paradise, I 
 know it ; I tell myself so ; but still I cannot 
 help it — I yawn. There is a pale, watery sun, 
 which shines fitfully. There is a quantity of 
 soaked hay, which they are going to dry by 
 machinery. There is a great variety of muddy 
 lanes in which to ride. There is a post-office 
 seven miles off, and a telegraph station fifteen 
 miles further off. The ensemble is not 
 animated. When you go out you see very 
 sleek cattle, very white sheep, very fat children. 
 You may meet, at intervals, labouring people, 
 very round shouldered and very sulky. You 
 
 37 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 also meet, if you are in luck's way, with a 
 traction engine ; and wherever you look you 
 perceive a church steeple. It is all very harm- 
 less, except the traction engine ; but it is not 
 animated or enlivening. You will not wonder 
 that I soon came to the end of my French 
 novels. The French novels have enabled me to 
 discover that my angel is very easily ruffled. In 
 fact, she is that touchy thing — a saint. I had 
 no idea that she was a saint when I saw her 
 drinking her cup of tea in that garden on the 
 Thames. True, she had her lovely little serene, 
 holy, noli me tangere air, but I thought that 
 would pass ; it does not pass. And when I 
 wanted her to laugh with me at Gyp's ' Autour 
 du Mariage* she blushed up to the eyes, and 
 was offended. What am I to do? 1 am no 
 saint. I cannot pretend to be one. I am not 
 worse than other men, but I like to amuse 
 myself. I cannot go through life singing a 
 miserere. I am afraid we shall quarrel. You 
 think that very wholesome. But there are 
 quarrels and quarrels. Some clear the air like 
 thunderstorms. Ours are little irritating 
 differences which end in her bursting into 
 tears, and in myself looking ridiculous and 
 
 38 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 feeling a brute. She has cried quite a number 
 of times in the last fortnight. I daresay if she 
 went into a rage, as you justly say Nicoletta 
 would do, and you might have added you 
 have done, it would rouse me, and I should 
 be ready to strike her, and should end in 
 covering her with kisses. But she only turns 
 her eyes on me like a dying fawn, bursts into 
 tears, and goes out of the room. Then she 
 comes in again— to dinner, perhaps, or to that 
 odd ceremony, five o'clock tea — with her little 
 sad, stiff, reproachful air as of a martyr ; 
 answers meekly, and makes me again feel a 
 brute. The English sulk a long time, I think. 
 We are at daggers drawn one moment, but then 
 we kiss and forget the next. We are more 
 passionate, but we are more amiable. I want 
 to get away, to go to Paris, Homburg, 
 Trouville, anywhere ; but I dare not propose 
 it. I only drop adroit hints. If I should die 
 of ennui> and be buried under the wet moss 
 for ever, weep for me.' 
 
 39 
 
 
From the Principessa dl San Xenone i Coombe Bysset } to 
 Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg. 
 
 ' Coombe is quite too lovely now. It does 
 rain sometimes, certainly, but between the 
 showers it is so delicious. I asked Piero to 
 come out and hear the nightingale ; there really 
 is one in the home wood, and he laughed at the 
 idea. He said, " We have hundreds of nightin- 
 gales shouting all day and all night at Lanciano. 
 We don't think about them, we eat them in 
 pasta; they are very good." Fancy eating a 
 nightingale ! You might as well eat Romeo 
 and Juliet. Piero has got a number of French 
 books from London, and he lies about on the 
 couches and reads them. He wants me to 
 listen to naughty bits of fun out of them, but 
 I will not, and then he calls me a prude, and 
 gets angry. I don't see why he shouldn't 
 laugh as much as he likes himself without 
 telling me why he laughed. I dislike that 
 sort of thing. I am horribly afraid I shall 
 care for nothing but him all my life, while 
 
 he — he yawned yesterday ! Papa said to me, 
 
 40 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 before we were married, " My dear little girl, 
 San Zenone put on such a lot of steam at first, 
 he'll be obliged to ease his pace after a bit. 
 Don't be vexed if you find the thing cooling ! " 
 Now, Papa speaks so oddly ; always that sort 
 of floundering, bald metaphor, you remember 
 it ; but I knew what he meant. Nobody 
 could go on being such a lover as Piero was. 
 Ah, dear, is it in the past already ? No, I 
 don't quite mean that. He is Romeo still very 
 often, and he sings me the divinest love songs, 
 lying at my feet on cushions in the moonlight. 
 But it is not quite the same thing as it was at 
 first. He found fault with one of my gowns 
 this morning, and said I don't know how de 
 me faire valoir, I am terribly frightened lest 
 Coombe has bored him too much. I would 
 come here. I wanted to be utterly out of the 
 world, and so did he ; and I'm sure there isn't 
 a lover's nest anywhere comparable to Coombe 
 in midsummer. You remember the rose 
 garden, and the lime avenues, and the chapel 
 ruins by the little lake ? When Aunt Carrie 
 offered it to us for this June I was so delighted, 
 but now I am half afraid the choice of it was 
 a mistake, and that he does not know what to 
 
 41 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 do with himself. He is ddpaysd. I cried a 
 little yesterday ; it was too silly, but I couldn't 
 help it. He laughed at me, but he got a little 
 angry. " Enfin que veux tu ? " he said im- 
 patiently ; "je suis a toi, bien a toi, beaucoup 
 trop a toi ! " He seemed to me to regret being 
 mine. I told him so ; he was more angry. 
 It was, I suppose, what you would call a scene. 
 In five minutes he was penitent, and caressed 
 me as only he can do ; and the sun came out, 
 and we went into the woods and heard the 
 nightingale ; but the remembrance of it alarms 
 me. If he can say as much as this in a month, 
 what can he say in a year ? I do not think I 
 am silly. I had two London seasons, and all 
 those country houses show one the world. I 
 know people, when they are married, are 
 always glad to get away from one another — 
 they are always flirting with other people. 
 But I should be miserable if I thought it 
 would ever be like that with Piero and me. 
 I worship his very shadow, and he does — or he 
 did — worship mine. Why should that change ? 
 Why should it not go on for ever, as it does 
 in poems ? If it can't, why doesn't one die ? ' 
 
 ■^ 
 
From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to 
 the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset. 
 
 4 What a goose you are, you dearest Gladys ! 
 You were always like that. To all you have 
 said I can only reply, connu. When girls are 
 romantic (and you always were, though it was 
 quite gone out ages before our time), they 
 always expect husbands to remain lovers. 
 Now, my pet, you might just as well expect 
 hay to remain grass. Papa was quite right. 
 When there is such a lot of steam on, it must 
 go off by degrees. I am afraid, too, you have 
 begun with the passion, and the rapture, and 
 the mutual adoration, and all the rest of it, 
 which is quite, quite gone out. People don't 
 feel in that sort of way nowadays. Nobody 
 cares much ; a sort of good-humoured liking 
 is the utmost one sees. But you were always 
 such a goose ! And now you must marry an 
 Italian, and expect it all to be balconies and 
 guitars and moonlight for ever and ever. I 
 think it quite natural he should want to get 
 to Paris. You should never have taken him 
 
 43 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 to Coombe. I do remember the rose gardens, 
 and the lime avenues, and the ruins ; and I 
 remember being sent down there when I had 
 too strong a flirtation with Philip Rous, who 
 was in F. O., and had nothing a year. You 
 were a baby then, and I remember that I was 
 bored to the very brink of suicide ; that I have 
 detested the smell of a lime tree ever since. I 
 can sympathise with the Prince, if he longs to 
 get away. There can't be anything for him to 
 do, all day long, except smoke. The photo 
 of him is wonderfully handsome, but can you 
 live all your life, my dear, on a profile ? ' 
 
 44 
 
From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Byssel, to the 
 Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg. 
 
 'Because almost all Englishmen have snub 
 noses, Englishwomen always think there is 
 something immoral and delusive about a good 
 profile. At all events, you will admit that 
 the latter is the more agreeable object of con- 
 templation. It still rains, rains dreadfully. 
 The meadows are soaked, and they can't get 
 the hay in, and we can't get out of the house. 
 Piero does smoke, and he does yawn. He has 
 been looking in the library for a French novel, 
 but there is nothing except Mrs Craven's 
 goody-goody books, and a boy's tale by Jules 
 Verne. I am afraid you and Mamma are right. 
 Coombe, in a wet June, is not the place for a 
 Roman who knows his Paris by heart, and 
 doesn't like the country anywhere. We seem 
 to do nothing but eat. I put on an ulster and 
 high boots, and I don't mind the rain a bit ; 
 but he screams when he sees me in an ulster. 
 " You have no more figure in that thing than 
 if you were a Bologna sausage," he says to me ; 
 
 45 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 and certainly ulsters are very ugly. But I had 
 a delicious fortnight with the Duchess in a 
 driving tour in Westmeath. We only took 
 our ulsters with us, and it poured all the time, 
 and we stayed in bed in the little inns while our 
 things dried, and it was immense fun ; the 
 Duke drove us. But Piero would not like 
 that sort of thing. He is like a cat about 
 rain. He likes to shut the house up early, 
 and have the electric light lit, and forget that 
 it is all slop and mist outside. He declares 
 that we have made a mistake in the calendar, 
 and that it is November, not June. I change 
 my gowns three times a day, just as if there 
 were a large house party, but I feel I look 
 awfully monotonous to him. I am afraid I 
 never was amusing. I always envy those 
 women who are all chic and " go," who can 
 make men laugh so at rubbish. They seem 
 to carry about with them a sort of exhilarating 
 ether. I don't think they are the best sort 
 of women, but they do so amuse the men. I 
 would give twenty years of my life if I could 
 amuse Piero. He adores me, but that is 
 another thing. That does not prevent him 
 shaking the barometer and yawning. He 
 
 4 6 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 seems happiest when he is talking Italian with 
 his servant, Toniello. Toniello is allowed 
 to play billiards with him sometimes. He is 
 a very gay, merry, saucy, brown-eyed Roman. 
 He has made all the maids in the house, and 
 all the farmers' daughters round Coombe, 
 in love with him, and I told you how he had 
 scandalised one of the best tenants, Mr John 
 Best. The Bedford rustics all vow vengeance 
 against him, but he twangs his mandoline, and 
 sings away at the top of his voice, and doesn't 
 care a straw that the butler loathes him, the 
 house steward abhors him, the grooms would 
 horsewhip him if they dare, and the young 
 farmers audibly threaten to duck him in the 
 pond. Toniello is very fond of his master, but 
 he does not extend his allegiance to me. Do 
 you remember Mrs Stevens, Aunt Caroline's 
 model housekeeper ? You should see her face 
 when she chances to hear Piero laughing and 
 talking with Toniello. I think she believes 
 that the end of the world has come. Piero 
 calls Toniello " figliolo mio " and " caromio" just 
 as if they were cousins or brothers. It appears 
 this is the Italian way. They are very proud 
 in their own fashion, but it isn't our fashion. 
 
 47 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 However, I am glad the man is there when I 
 hear the click of the billiard balls, and the 
 splash of the raindrops on the window panes. 
 " We have been here just three weeks. Dio ! 
 It seems three years/' Piero said, when I 
 reminded him of it this morning. For me, 
 I don't know whether it is like a single day's 
 dream or a whole eternity. You know what I 
 mean. But I wish — I wish — it seemed either 
 the day's dream or the eternity of Paradise to 
 him ! I daresay it is all my fault in coming to 
 these quiet, bay-windowed, Queen Anne rooms, 
 and the old-fashioned servants, and the dreary 
 look-out over the drenched hay-fields. But the 
 sun does come out sometimes, and then the wet 
 roses smell so sweet, and the wet lime blossoms 
 glisten in the light, and the larks sing overhead, 
 and the woods are so green and so fresh. Still, 
 I don't think he likes it even then, it is all too 
 moist, too windy, too dim for him. When I 
 put a rose in his button-hole this morning, it 
 shook the drops over him, and he said, "Mais 
 quel pays ! — mime une fleur c'est une douche cTeau 
 froide / " Last month, if I had put a dandelion 
 in his coat, he would have sworn it had the 
 
 odour of the magnolia and the beauty of the 
 
 4 8 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 orchid ! It is just twenty-two days ago since 
 we came here, and for the first four or five days, 
 he never cared whether it rained or not ; he 
 only cared to lie at my feet, really, literally. 
 We were all in all to each other, just like 
 Cupid and Psyche. And now — he will play 
 billiards with Toniello to pass the time, and 
 he is longing for his petits theatres ! Is it my 
 fault ? I torment myself with a thousand self- 
 accusations. Is it possible I can have been 
 tiresome, dull, over-exacting ? Is it possible 
 he can be disappointed in me ? ' 
 
 P 49 
 
From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to 
 .the Principessa dl San Zenone, Coombe Bysset. 
 
 4 No, it isn't your fault, you dear little 
 donkey ; it is only the natural sequence of 
 things. Men are always like that when the 
 woman loves them ; when she don't, they 
 behave much better. My dear, this is just 
 what is so annoying about love ; the man's is 
 always going slower and slower towards a dead 
 stop, as the woman's is " coaling " and getting 
 steam up. I borrow Papa's admirably ac- 
 curate metaphor, nothing can be truer. It is 
 a great pity, but I suppose the fault is Nature's. 
 Entre nous, I don't think Nature ever con- 
 templated marriage, any more than she did 
 crinolettes, pearl powder, or the electric light. 
 There is no doubt that Nature intended to ad- 
 just the thing on the butterfly and buttercup 
 system ; on the je reste, tu fen vas, principle. 
 And nothing would be easier or nicer, only 
 there are children and poverty. So the butter- 
 fly has to be pinned down by the buttercup. 
 That is why the Communists and Anarchists 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 always abolish Property and Marriage together. 
 The one is evolved out of the other, just as 
 the dear scientists say the horse was evolved out 
 of a bird, which I never can see makes the 
 matter any easier of comprehension ; but, still — 
 what was I saying ? Oh, I meant to say this : 
 you are only lamenting, as a special defalcation 
 and disloyalty in San Zenone, what is merely 
 his unconscious and involuntary and perfectly 
 natural alteration from a lover into a husband. 
 The butterfly is beginning to feel the pin, 
 which has been run through him to stick him 
 down. It is nci your fault, my sweet little 
 girl ; it is the fault, if at all, of the world, 
 which has decreed that the butterfly, to flirt 
 legitimately with the buttercup, must suffer the 
 corking pin. Now, take my advice : the pin is 
 in, don't worry if he writhe on it a little bit ! 
 It is only what the beloved scientists again call 
 automatic action. And do try and beat into 
 your little head the fact that a man may love 
 you very dearly, and yet yearn a little for the 
 petits theatres in the silent recesses of his manly 
 breast. Of course, I know this sort of rough 
 awakening from delightful dreams is harder for 
 you than it is for most, because you began at 
 
 51 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 such tremendous altitudes. You had your Ruy 
 Bias and Petrarca, and the mandoline and the 
 moonlight, and the love-philtres, all mixed up 
 in an intoxicating draught. You have naturally 
 a great deal more disillusion to go through than 
 if you had married a country squire, or a 
 Scotch laird, who would never have suggested 
 any romantic delights. One cannot go near 
 Heaven without coming down with a crash, 
 like the poor men in the balloons. You have 
 been up in your balloon, and you are now 
 coming down. Ah, my dear, everything de- 
 pends on how you come down. You will think 
 me a monster for saying so, but it will rest so 
 much in your own hands. You won't believe 
 it, but it will. If you come down with tact and 
 good-humour, it will all be right afterwards ; 
 but if you show temper, as men say of their 
 horses, why, then, the balloon will lie prone, a 
 torn, empty, useless bag, that will never again 
 get off the ground. To speak plainly, dear, if 
 you will receive with resignation and sweetness 
 the unpleasant discovery that San Zenone is 
 mortal, you won't be unhappy, and you will 
 soon get used to it ; but if you perpetually fret 
 about it, you won't alter him, and you will 
 
 52 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 both be miserable ; or, if not miserable, you 
 will do something worse ; you will each find 
 your amusement in somebody else. I know 
 you so well, my poor, pretty Gladys ; you want 
 such an immense quantity of sympathy and 
 affection, but you won't get it, my dear child. 
 I quite understand that the Prince looks like 
 a picture, and he has made life an erotic poem 
 for you for a month, and the inevitable reaction 
 which follows seems dull as ditch water, you 
 would even say as cruel as the grave. But it 
 is twilling new. Do try and get that well in 
 your mind. Try, too, and be as light-hearted 
 as you can. Men hate an unamusable woman. 
 Make believe to laugh at the French novels, 
 if you can't really do it ; if you don't, dear, 
 he will go to somebody else who will. Why 
 do those demi-monde women get such preference 
 over us? Only because they don't bore their 
 men. A man would sooner we flung a 
 champagne glass at his head than cried for 
 five minutes. We can't fling champagne 
 glasses ; the prejudices of our education are 
 against it. It is an immense loss to us ; we 
 must make up for it as much as we can by 
 being as agreeable as we know how to be. 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 We shall always be a dozen lengths behind 
 
 those others who do fling the glasses. By the 
 
 way, you said in one of your earliest notes 
 
 that you wondered why our mother ever 
 
 married. I am not sufficiently au courant 
 
 with pre-historic times to be able to tell you 
 
 why, but I can see what she has done since she 
 
 did marry. She has always effaced herself 
 
 in the very wisest and most prudent manner. 
 
 She has never begrudged Papa his Norway 
 
 fishing, or his August yachting, though she 
 
 knew he could ill afford them. She has never 
 
 bored him with herself, or about us. She has 
 
 constantly urged him to go away and enjoy 
 
 himself, and when he is down with her in the 
 
 country she always takes care that all the 
 
 women he admires, and all the men who best 
 
 amuse him, shall be invited in relays, to 
 
 prevent his being dull or feeling teased for 
 
 a moment. I am quite sure she has never 
 
 cared the least about her own wishes, but has 
 
 only studied his. This is what I call being a 
 
 clever woman and a good woman. But I fear 
 
 such women are as rare as blue roses. Try and 
 
 be like her, my dear. She was quite as young 
 
 as you are now when she married. But un- 
 
 54 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 fortunately, in truth, you are a terrible little 
 egotist. You want to shut up this beautiful 
 Roman all alone with you in a kind of attitude 
 of perpetual adoration — of yourself. That is 
 what women call affection ; you are not alone 
 in your ideas. Some men submit to this sort 
 of demand, and go about for ever held tight 
 in a leash, like unslippei pointers. The 
 majority — well, the majority bolt. And I am 
 sure I should if I were one of them. I do not 
 think you could complain if your beautiful 
 Romeo did. I can see you so exactly, with 
 your pretty, little, grave face, and your eyes 
 that have such a fatal aptitude for tears, and 
 your solemn little views about matrimony and 
 its responsibilities, making yourself quite odious 
 to this mirthful Apollo of yours, and innocently 
 believing all the while that you are pleasing 
 Heaven and saving your own dignity by being 
 so remarkably unpleasant ! Are you very 
 angry with me ? I am afraid so. Myself, I 
 would much sooner have an unfaithful man 
 than a dull one ; the one may be bored by you, 
 but the other bores you, which is immeasurably 
 worse.' 
 
 55 
 
From the Principessa di San Zenone y Coombe Bysset, to the 
 Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg. 
 
 4 Dear Gwen, — How can you possibly tell 
 what Mamma did when she was young ? I dare- 
 say she fretted dreadfully. Now, of course, she 
 has got used to it — like all other miserable 
 women. If people marry only to long to be with 
 other people, what is the use of being married at 
 all ? I said so to Piero, and he answered, very 
 insolently, " II riy a point ! Si on le savait ! " 
 He sent for some more dreadful French books, 
 Gyp's and Richepin's and Gui de Maupassant's, 
 and he lies about reading them all day long 
 when he isn't asleep. He is very often asleep 
 in the daytime. He apologises when he is 
 found out, but he yawns as he does so. You 
 say I should amuse him, but I cant amuse him. 
 He doesn't care for any English news, and he 
 is beginning to get irritable because I cannot 
 talk to him in Italian, and he declares my 
 French detestable, and there is always some- 
 thing dreadful happening. There has been 
 such a terrible scene in the village. Four of 
 
 56 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 the Coombe Bysset men, two blacksmiths, a 
 carpenter, and a labourer, have ducked Toniello 
 in the village pond on account of his attention 
 to their womenkind ; and Toniello, when he 
 staggered out of the weeds and the slime, drew 
 his knife on them and stabbed two very badly. 
 Of course, he has been taken up by the con- 
 stables, and the men he hurt moved to the 
 county hospital. The magistrates are furious 
 and scandalised ; and Piero ! — Piero has no- 
 body to play billiards with him. When the 
 magistrates interrogated him about Toniello, 
 as, of course, they were obliged to do, he got 
 into a dreadful passion because one of them said 
 that it was just like a cowardly Italian to carry 
 a knife and make use of it. Piero absolutely 
 hissed at the solemn old gentleman who 
 mumbled this. "And your people," he cried, 
 " are they so very courageous ? Is it better 
 to beat a man into a jelly, or kick a woman 
 with nailed boots, as your English mob does ? 
 Where is there anything cowardly? He was 
 one against four. In my country there is not a 
 night that goes by without a rissa of that sort, 
 but nobody takes any notice. The jealous 
 persons are left to fight it out as best they 
 
 57 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 may ; after all, it is the women's fault." And 
 then he said some things that really I cannot 
 repeat, and it was a mercy that, as he spoke in 
 the most rapid and furious French, the old 
 gentleman did not, I think; understand a 
 syllable. But they saw he was in a passion, 
 and that scandalised them, because, you know, 
 English people always think that you should 
 keep your bad temper for your own people 
 at home. Meantime, of course, Toniello is 
 in prison, and I am afraid they won't let us 
 take him out on bail, because he has hurt one 
 of the blacksmiths dreadfully. Aunt Carrie's 
 solicitors are doing what they can for him, 
 to please me, but I can see they consider it all 
 peines perdues for a rogue who ought to be 
 hanged. "And to think," cries Toniello, 
 " that in my own country I should have all the 
 populace with me. The very carabineers them- 
 selves would have been with me ! Accidente a 
 tutti quel gridli" which means, " may apoplexy 
 seize these fools." <c They were only the 
 women's husbands," he adds, with scorn ; 
 " they are well worth making a fuss about, 
 certainly ! " Then Piero consoles him, and 
 gives him cigarettes, and is obliged to leave 
 
 53 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 him sobbing and tearing his hair, and lying 
 face downward on his bed of sacking. I 
 thought Piero would not leave the poor fellow 
 alone in prison, and so I supposed he would 
 give up all idea of going from here, and so 
 I began to say to myself, u A que/que chose 
 malheur est bon" But to-day, at luncheon, 
 Piero said " Sai carina ! It was bad enough 
 with Toniello, but without him, I tell you 
 frankly, I cannot stand any more of it. With 
 Toniello one could laugh and forget a little. 
 But now — anima mia^ if you do not wish me 
 to kill somebody, and be lodged beside Toniello 
 by your worthy law-givers, you must really let 
 me go to Trouville." " Alone ! " I said ; and 
 I believe it is what he did mean, only the horror 
 in my voice frightened him from confessing it. 
 He sighed and got up. " I suppose I shall 
 never be alone any more," he said impatiently. 
 " If only men knew what they do when they 
 marry — on ne nous prendrait jamais. No — no. 
 Of course, I meant that you will, I hope, 
 consent to come away with me somewhere out 
 of this intolerable place, which is made up of 
 fog and green leaves. Let us go to Paris to 
 begin with ; there is not a soul there, and the 
 
 59 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 theatres are en rdiaclie, but it is always 
 delightful, and then in a week or so we will 
 go down to Trouville, all the world is there." 
 I couldn't answer him for crying. Perhaps 
 that was best, for I am sure I should have 
 said something wicked, which might have 
 divided us for ever. And then what would 
 people have thought ? ' 
 
 60 
 
From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to 
 the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset. 
 
 ' My poor little Dear, — Are you already 
 beginning to be miserable about what people 
 will think? Then, indeed, your days of joy 
 are numbered. If I were to write to you 
 fifty times I could only repeat what I have 
 always written. You are not wise, and you are 
 doing everything you ought not to do. Of two 
 people who are married, there is always one who 
 has the delusion that he or she is necessary and 
 delightful to the life of the other. 'The other 
 generally thinks just the contrary. The result is 
 not peace. This gay, charming, handsome son 
 of Rome has become your entire world, but 
 don't suppose for a moment, my child, that you 
 will ever be his. It is not in reason, not in 
 Nature, that you should be. If you have the 
 intelligence, the tact, and the forbearance 
 required, you may become his friend and 
 counsellor, but I fear you never will have these. 
 You fret, you weep, and you understand 
 nothing of the masculine temperament. " I see 
 
 61 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 snakes," as the Americans observe ; and you 
 will not have either the coolness or the wisdom 
 required to scotch a snake, much less to kill 
 it. Once for all, my poor pet, go cheerfully to 
 Paris, Trouville, and all the pleasure places 
 in the world. Affect enjoyment if you feel 
 it not, and try to remember, beyond every- 
 thing, that affection is not to be retained or 
 revived by either coercion or lamentation. Once 
 dead, it is not to be awakened by all the 
 " crooning " of its mourner. It is a corpse, for 
 ever and aye. Myself, I fail to see how you 
 could expect a young Italian, who has all the 
 habits of the great world, and the memories of 
 his vie de garfon, to be cheerful or contented in 
 a wet June in an isolated English country 
 house, with nobody to look at but yourself. 
 Believe me, my dear child, it is the inordinate 
 vanity of a woman which makes her imagine 
 that she can be sufficient for her husband. 
 Nothing but vanity. The cleverer a woman is, 
 the more fully she recognises her own insuffi- 
 ciency for the amusement of a man, and the 
 more carefully (if she be wise) does she take 
 care that this deficiency in her shall never be 
 forced upon his observation. Now, if you shut 
 
 62 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 a man up with you in a country house, with 
 the rain raining every day, as in Longfellow's 
 poem, you do force it upon him most con- 
 spicuously. If you were not his wife, I dare- 
 say he would not tire of you, and he might 
 even prefer a grey sky to a blue one. But as 
 his wife ! — oh, my dear, why, why don't you 
 try and understand what a terrible penalty- 
 weight you carry in the race ? Write and tell 
 me all about it. I shall be anxious. I am so 
 afraid, my sweet little sister, that you think 
 love is all moonlight and kisses, and forget that 
 there are clouds in the sky and quarrels on 
 earth. May Heaven save you from both. 
 P t S. — Do remember that this same love requires 
 just as delicate handling as a cobweb does. 
 If a rough touch break the cobweb, all the 
 artists in the world can't mend it. There is a 
 wholesome truth for you. If you prevent his 
 going to Paris now, he will go in six months' 
 time, and perhaps, then, he v/ill go without you. 
 You are not wise, my poor pet ; you should 
 make him feel that you sympathise with his 
 pleasures, not that you and his pleasures are 
 enemies. But it is no use to instil 
 wisdom into you ; you are very young, 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 and very much in love. You look on all 
 the natural distractions which he inclines to, 
 as on so many rivals. So they may be, but 
 we dont beat our rivals by abusing them. The 
 really wise way is to tacitly show that we can be 
 more attractive than they ; if we cannot be so, 
 we may sulk or sigh as we will, we shall be 
 vanquished by them. You will think me very 
 preachy-preachy, and, perhaps, you will throw 
 me in the fire unread ; but I must say just one 
 word more. Dear, you are in love with Love, 
 but underneath Love there is a real man, and 
 real men are far from ideal creatures. Now, it 
 is the real man that you want to consider, to 
 humour, to study. If the real man be pleased, 
 Love will take care of himself ; whereas if you 
 bore the real man, Love will fly away. If you 
 had been wise, my poor pet, I repeat, you 
 would have found nothing so delightful as Gyp 
 and Octave de Mirbeau, and you would have 
 declared that the Paris asphalte excelled all the 
 English lawns in the world. He does not love 
 you the less because he wants to be dans le 
 mouvement, to hear what other men are saying, 
 and to smoke his cigar amongst his fellow- 
 creatures.' 
 
 6 4 
 
From the Duchessa deW Aquila Fulva, Hotel des Roches 
 N aires, Trouville, France, to the Principe di San 
 Zenone y Coombe Bysset, Luton, Beds., England. 
 
 'Poor flower, in your box of wet moss, 
 what has become of you ? Are you dead, and 
 dried in your wife's hortus siccus? She would 
 be quite sure of you then, and I daresay much 
 happier than if you were set forth in anybody 
 else's bouquet. I try in vain to imagine you 
 in that " perfectly proper" atmosphere (is not 
 that correct English, ''perfectly proper "? ) 
 Will you be dreadfully changed when one sees 
 you again ? There is a French proverb which 
 says that " the years of joy count double." The 
 days of ennui certainly count for years, and 
 give us grey hairs before we are five-and- 
 twenty. But you know I cannot pity you. 
 You would marry an English girl because she 
 looked pretty sipping her tea. I told you 
 beforehand that you would be miserable with 
 her, once shut up in the country. The episode 
 of Toniello is enchanting. What people ! — 
 to put him in prison for a little bit of chiasm 
 
 E 65 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 like that ! You should never have taken his 
 bright eyes and his mandoline to that doleful 
 and damp land of precisians. What will they 
 do with him? And what can you do with- 
 out him? The weather here is admirable. 
 There are numbers of people one knows. It 
 is really very amusing. I go and dance every 
 night, and then we play — usually "bac" or 
 roulette. Everybody is very merry. We all 
 talk often of you, and say the De Profundis 
 over you, my poor Piero. Why did your 
 cruel destiny make you see a Sainte Nitouche 
 drinking tea under a lime tree? I suppose 
 Sainte Nitouche would not permit it, else, why 
 not exchange the humid greenness of your 
 matrimonial prison for the Rue des Planches 
 and the Casino ? ' 
 
 66 
 
From the Principe di San Zemne, Coombe Bysset, to 
 the Duchessa deW Aquila Fnlva, Trouville. 
 
 ' Carissima Mja, — I have set light to the 
 fuse ! I have frankly declared that if I do 
 not get out of this damp and verdant Bastile, 
 I shall perish of sheer inanition and exhaus- 
 tion. The effect of the declaration was 
 for the moment such, that I hoped, actually 
 hoped, that she was going to get into a 
 passion ! It would have been so refreshing ! 
 After twenty-six days of dumb acquiescence 
 and silent tears, it would have been positively 
 delightful to have had a storm. But, no ! For 
 an instant she looked at me with unspeakable 
 reproach ; the next her dove's eyes filled, she 
 sighed, she left the room ! Do they not say 
 that feather beds offer an admirable defence 
 against bullets? I feel like the bullet which 
 has been fired into the feather bed. The 
 feather bed is victorious. I see the Rue des 
 Planches through the perspective of the watery 
 atmosphere ; the Casino seems to smile at me 
 
 67 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 from the end of the interminable lime tree 
 avenue, which is one of the chief beauties of 
 this house ; bat, alas ! they are both as far 
 off as if Trouville were in the moon. What 
 could they do to me if I came alone? Do 
 you know what they could do ? I have not 
 the remotest idea, but I imagine something 
 frightful. They shut up their public-houses 
 by force, and their dancing places. Perhaps 
 they would shut up me. In England, they 
 have a great belief in creating virtue by Act 
 of Parliament. In myself, this enforced virtue 
 creates such a revolt that I shall tirer sur le 
 mors, and fly before very long. The admired 
 excellence of this beautiful estate is that it 
 lies in a ring-fence. I feel that I shall take 
 
 o 
 
 a leap over that ring-fence. Do not mistake 
 me, car a mia Teresina, I am exceedingly fond 
 of my wife. I think her quite lovely, simple, 
 saintly, and truly womanlike. She is ex- 
 quisitely pretty, and entirely without vanity, 
 and I am certain she is immeasurably my 
 superior morally, and possibly mentally too. 
 But — there is always such a long and melan- 
 choly " but " attached to marriage — she does 
 not amuse me in the least. She is always the 
 
 68 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 same. She is shocked at nearly everything 
 that is natural or diverting. She thinks me 
 unmanly because I dislike rain. She buttons 
 about her a hideous, straight, waterproof gar- 
 ment, and walks out in a deluge. She blushes 
 if I try to make her laugh at Figaro, and she 
 goes out of the room when I mention 
 Trouville. What am I to do with a woman 
 like this ? It is an admirable type, no doubt. 
 Possibly if she had not shut me up in a 
 country - house in a wet June, with the 
 thermometer at 10 R., and the barometer 
 fixedly at the word Rainy, I might have been 
 always charmed with this S. Dorothea- like 
 attitude, and never have found out the 
 monotony of it. But, as it is — I yawn till I 
 dislocate my neck. She thinks me a heathen 
 already. I am convinced that very soon she 
 will think me a brute. And I am neither. 
 I only want to get out, like the bird in the 
 cage. It is a worn simile, but it is such a 
 true one ! * 
 
 69 
 
From the Duchessa del? Aquila Fulva, Roches Noires, 
 Trouvilky to the Principe di San Zenone, Coomb e 
 Bysset. 
 
 ' Piero Mio, — In marriage, the male bird is 
 always wanting to get out when the female 
 bird does not want him to get out ; also, she is 
 for ever tightening the wires over his head, and 
 declaring that nothing can be more delightful 
 than the perch which she sits on herself. Come 
 to us here. There are any quantities of birds 
 here who ought to be in their cages, but are not, 
 and manage to enjoy themselves quandrneme. If 
 only you had married Nicoletta! She might 
 have torn your hair occasionally, but she would 
 never have bored you. There is only one 
 supreme art necessary for a woman : it is to 
 thoroughly understand that she must never be 
 a seccatura. A woman may be beautiful, 
 admirable, a paragon of virtue, a marvel of 
 intellect, but if she be a seccatura — addiol 
 Whereas, she may be plain, small, nothing to 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 look at in any way, and a very monster of sins, 
 big and little, but if she know how to amuse 
 your dull sex, she is mistress of you all. It 
 is evident that this great art is not studied at 
 Coombe Bysset.' 
 
 7' 
 
From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Byssct, to 
 the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg. 
 
 'Oh, my dear Gwen, — It is too dreadful, 
 and I am so utterly wretched. I cannot tell 
 you what I feel. He is quite determined to 
 go to Trouville by Paris at once, and just 
 now it is such exquisite weather. It has only 
 rained three times this week, and the whole 
 place is literally a bower of roses of every kind. 
 He has been very restless the last few days, and 
 at last, yesterday, after dinner, he said straight 
 out, that he had had enough of Coombe, and 
 he thought we might be seen at Homburg or 
 Trouville next week. And he pretended to 
 want every kind of thing that is to be bought 
 at Paris and nowhere else. Paris — when we 
 have been together just twenty-nine days to- 
 day S Paris — I don't know why, but I feel as if 
 it would be the end of everything ! Paris — we 
 shall dine at restaurants ; we shall stay at the 
 Bristol ; we shall go to theatres ; he will be at 
 his club, he belongs to the Petit Cercle and 
 the Mirliton ; we shall be just like anybody 
 
 72 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 else ; just like all the million and one married 
 people who are always in a crowd ! To take 
 one's new-born happiness to an hotel ! It is 
 as profane as it would be to say your prayers on 
 the top of a drag. To me, it is quite horrible. 
 And it will be put in Galignani directly, of 
 course, that the " Prince and Princess San 
 Zenone have arrived at the Hotel Bristol. " 
 And then, all the pretty women who tried to 
 flirt with him before will laugh, and say : 
 " There, you see, she has bored him already." 
 Everybody will say so, for they all know I 
 wished to spend the whole summer at Coombe. 
 If he would only go to his own country I would 
 not say a word. I am really longing to see his 
 people, and his palaces, and the wonderful 
 gardens with their statues and their ilex 
 woods, and the temples that are as old as the 
 days of Augustus, and the fire-flies and the 
 magnolia groves, and the peasants who are 
 always singing. But he won't go there. He 
 says it is a seccatura. Everything is a seccatura. 
 He only likes places where he can meet all 
 the world. "Paris will be a solitude, too, 
 never fear," he said, very petulantly ; " but there 
 will be all the petits theatres and the open-air 
 
 73 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 concerts, and we can dine in the Eois and down 
 the river, and we can run to Trouville. It will 
 be better than rain, rain, rain, and nothing to 
 look at except your amiable aunt's big horses 
 and big trees. I adore horses, and trees are not 
 bad if they are planted away from the house, but, 
 viewed as eternal companions, one may have 
 too much of them." And I am his eternal 
 companion, but it seems already I don't count ! 
 I have not said anything. I know one oughtn't. 
 But Piero saw how it vexed me, and it made him 
 cross. " Car a mia" he said, " why did you 
 not tell me before we married that you intended 
 me to be buried for ever in a box under wet leaves 
 like a rose that is being sent to the market? 
 I should have known what to expect, and I do 
 not like wet leaves." I could not help remind- 
 ing him that he had been ever, ever so anxious 
 to come to Coombe. Then he laughed, but 
 he was very cross too. " Could I tell, anima 
 mia" he cried, " that Coombe was situated in a 
 succession of lagoons, contains not one single 
 French novel, is seven miles asunder from its 
 own railway station, and is blessed with a 
 population of sulky labourers? What man 
 have I seen since I have been here except your 
 
 74 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 parish priest, who mumbles, wears spectacles, 
 and tries to give me a tract against the Holy 
 Father? In this country you do not know 
 what it is to be warm. You do not know 
 what sunshine is like. You take an umbrella 
 when you go in the garden. You put on a 
 waterproof to go and hear one little, shivering 
 nightingale sing in a wet elder bush. I tell you 
 I am tired of your country, absolutely tired. 
 You are an angel. No doubt you are an 
 angel ; but you cannot console me for the 
 intolerable emptiness of this intolerable life, 
 where there is nothing on earth to do but to 
 eat, drink, and sleep, and drive in a dog-cart." 
 All this he said in one breath, in a flash of 
 forked lightning, as it were. Now that I 
 write it down, it does not seem so very dread- 
 ful ; but as he, with the most fiery scorn, 
 the most contemptuous passion, said it, I assure 
 you it was terrible. It revealed, just as the 
 flash of lightning would show a gravel pit, 
 how fearfully bored he has been all the time 
 I thought he was happy ! ' 
 
 73 
 
From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to 
 the Principessa di San Zenone, C combe Bysset. 
 
 * Men are very easily bored, my dear, if 
 they have any brains. It is only the dull ones 
 who are not.* 
 
 From the Principessa di San Zenone to the Lady 
 Gwendolen Chichester. 
 
 ' If I believed what your cynical letter says, 
 I should leave him to-morrow. I would never 
 live through a succession of disillusions and of 
 insults/ 
 
 7 6 
 
From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester to the Principessa 
 di San Zenone. 
 
 4 Where are your principles ? Where are 
 your duties? My dear little girl, you have 
 married him ; you must submit to him as he 
 is. Marriages wouldn't last two days if, just 
 because the man yawned, the woman ran away. 
 Men always yawn when they are alone with 
 their wives. Hitherto, all San Zenone's faults 
 appear to consist in the very pardonable fact 
 that, being an Italian, he is not alive to the 
 charms of bucolic England in rainy weather, 
 and that, being a young man, he wants to see 
 his Paris again. Neither of these seem to me 
 irreparable crimes. Go to Paris and try to 
 enjoy yourself. After all, if his profile be so 
 beautiful, you ought to be sufficiently happy 
 in gazing at it from the back of a baigfioir. I 
 grant that it is not the highest amatory ideal 
 — to rush about the boulevards in a daument, 
 and eat delicious little dinners in the cafes, 
 and laugh at naughty little plays afterwards ; 
 but f amour pent se nicher anywhere. And 
 
 77 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 Love won't be any the worse for having his 
 digestion studied by good cooks, and his 
 possible ennui exorcised by good players. You 
 see for yourself that the great passion yawns 
 after a time. Turn back to what you call my 
 cynical letter, and re-read my remarks upon 
 Nature. By the way, I entirely deny that 
 they are cynical. On the contrary, I inculcate 
 on you patience, sweetness of temper, and 
 adaptability to circumstances ; three most 
 amiable qualities. If I were a cynic, I should 
 say to you that Marriage is a Mistake, and 
 two capital letters could hardly emphasise this 
 melancholy truth sufficiently. But, as there 
 are men and women, and, as I before observed, 
 property in the world, nothing better for the 
 consolidation of rents and freeholds has, as 
 yet, been discovered. I daresay some Anarchist 
 in his prison could devise something better, but 
 they are afraid of trying Anarchism. So we 
 all jog on in the old routine, vaguely conscious 
 that we are all blunderers, but indisposed for 
 such a drastic remedy as would alone cure us. 
 Just you remark to any lawyer that marriage 
 is a mistake, as I have said before, and see 
 what answer you will get. He will certainly 
 
 78 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 reply to you that there is no other way of 
 securing the transmission of property safely. 
 I confess that this view of wealth makes me, 
 for one, a most desperate Radical. Only think, 
 if there were no property we should all be 
 frisking about in our happy valleys as free and 
 as merry as littl kids. I shouldn't now be 
 obliged to put on all my war-paint and beads, 
 like a savage, and go out to a dreadful Court 
 dinner, four hours long, because George has 
 a "career," and thinks my suffering advances 
 it. Oh, you happy child, to have nothing 
 worse to do than to rattle down the Bois in 
 a milord, and sup off a matelote by the lake 
 with your Romeo ! ' 
 
 79 
 
From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to 
 the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg. 
 
 ' We are to leave for Paris and Trouville 
 to-morrow. I have yielded — as you and 
 Mamma seemed to think it was my duty to 
 do. But my life is over. I shall say farewell 
 to all happiness when the gates of Coombe 
 Bysset close upon me. Henceforth we shall 
 be like everybody else. However, you cannot 
 reproach me any longer with being selfish, 
 nor can he. There is a great friend of his, 
 the Duchess of Aquila Fulva, at Trouville. 
 She writes to him very often, I know. He 
 never offers to show me her letters, I believe 
 the choice of "Trouville is her doing. Write to 
 me at Paris, at the Windsor.' 
 
 80 
 
From the Lady Gtuendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to 
 the P 
 Paris. 
 
 the Princibessa di San Zenorie, Hotel Windsor, 
 
 4 My poor Child, — Has the green-eyed 
 monster already invaded your gentle soul because 
 he doesn't show you his own letters ? My dear, 
 no man who was not born a cur would show a 
 woman's letters to his wife. Surely you wish 
 your hero to know the A B C of gentle 
 manners ? I am delighted you are going into 
 the world ; but if you only go as " a duty," I am 
 afraid the results won't be sunshiny. " Duty " 
 is such a very disagreeable thing. It always 
 rolls itself up like a hedgehog with all its 
 prickles out, turning for ever round and round 
 on the axle of its own self-admiration. Jf you 
 go to Trouville (and wherever else you do go) 
 as a martyr, my dear, you will give the mis- 
 chievous Duchess, if she be mischievous, a 
 terrible advantage over you at starting. If you 
 mean to be silent, unpleasant, and enwrapped 
 in a gloomy contemplation of your own merits 
 and wrongs, don't blame him if he spend his 
 
 F Si 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 time at the Casino with his friend, or somebody 
 worse. I am quite sure you ?nean to be unselfish, 
 and you fancy you are so, and all the rest of it, 
 quite honestly ; but, in real truth, as I told you 
 before, you are only an egotist. You would 
 rather keep this unhappy Piero on thorns beside 
 you, than see him enjoy himself with other 
 people. Now, I call that shockingly selfish, 
 and if you go in that spirit to Trouville, he will 
 soon begin to wish, my dear child, that he had 
 never had a fancy to come over to a London 
 season. I can see you so exactly ! Too 
 dignified to be cross, too offended to be 
 companionable ; silent, reproachful, terrible ! ' 
 
 $2 
 
From the Lady Mary Bruton, Roches Noires, Trouville y 
 to Mrs cPArcy^ British Embassy, Berlin. 
 
 ' I 5/// July. 
 
 6 . . . Amongst the new arrivals here 
 are the San Zenone. You remember my 
 telling you of their marriage some six weeks 
 ago. It was quite the marriage of the season. 
 They really were immensely in love with each 
 other, but that stupid month down in the 
 country has done its usual work. In a rainy 
 June, too ! Of course, any poor Cupid would 
 emerge from his captivity bedraggled, dripping 
 and disenchanted. She is really very pretty, 
 quite lovely, indeed ; but she looks fretful and 
 dull ; her handsome husband, on the contrary, 
 is as gay as a lark which has found the door 
 of its cage wide open one morning. There is 
 here a great friend of his, a Duchessa dell' 
 Aquila Fulva. She is very gay, too ; she is 
 always perfectly dressed, and chattering from 
 morning to night in shrill Italian or voluble 
 French. She is the cynosure of all eyes as she 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 goes to swim in a rose-coloured maillot, with an 
 orange and gold eastern burnous flung about her 
 artistically. She has that wonderful Venetian 
 colouring, which can stand a contrast and glow 
 of colour which would simply kill any other 
 woman. She is very tall, and magnificently 
 made, and yet uncommonly graceful. Last 
 night she was persuaded to dance a s alter ello 
 with San Zenone at the Maison Persane, and it 
 was marvellous. They are both such handsome 
 people, and threw such wonderful brio, as they 
 would call it, into the affair. The poor, little, 
 pretty Princess, looking as fair and as dull as a 
 primrose in a shower, sat looking on dismally. 
 Stupid little thing ! — as if that would do her 
 any good ! A few days ago Lord Hampshire 
 arrived off here in his yacht. He was present 
 at the Salter ello, and as I saw him out in the 
 gardens afterwards with the neglected one, 
 sitting beside her in the moonlight, I presume 
 he was offering her sympathy and consolation. 
 He is a heavy young fellow, but exceedingly 
 good-humoured and kind-hearted. He would 
 have been in Heaven in the wet June at 
 Coombe Bysset — but she refused him, silly 
 little thing ! I am quite angry with her ; she 
 
 84 
 
A RAINY JUNE 
 
 has had her own way and she won't make the 
 best of that. I met her, and her rejected 
 admirer, riding together this morning towards 
 Villerville, while the beautiful Prinee was 
 splashing about in the water with his Venetian 
 friend. I see a great many eventual complica- 
 tions ahead. Well, they will all be the fault 
 of that Rainy June ! ' 
 
 85 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 i 
 
 It was a day in June. 
 
 The crickets were chirping, the lizards were 
 gliding, the butterflies were flying above the 
 ripe corn, the reapers were out amongst the 
 wheat, and the tall stalks were swaying and 
 falling under the sickle. Through the little 
 windows of his sacristy, Don Gesualdo, the 
 young vicar of San Bartolo, in the village of 
 Marca, looked with wistful eyes at the hill- 
 side which rose up in front of him, seen 
 through a frame of cherry-boughs in full fruit. 
 The hill - side was covered with corn, with 
 vines, with mulberry trees ; the men and 
 women were at work amongst the trees (it 
 was the first day of harvest) ; there was a 
 blue, happy sky above them all ; their voices, 
 chattering and calling to one another over the 
 
 89 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 sea of grain, came to his ears gaily and 
 softened by air and distance. He sighed as 
 he looked and as he heard. Yet, interrogated, 
 he would have said that he was happy and 
 wanted for nothing. 
 
 He was a slight, pale man, still almost a 
 youth, with a delicate face, without colour and 
 beardless, his eyes were brown and tender and 
 serious, his mouth was sensitive and sweet. 
 He was the son of a fisherman away by Bocca 
 d'Arno, where the river meets the sea, amidst 
 the cane and cactus brakes which Costa loves 
 to paint. But who could say what fine, time- 
 filtered, pure Etruscan, or Latin, blood might 
 not run in his veins ? There is so much of the 
 classic features and the classic forms amongst the 
 peasants of Tyrrhene seashores, of Cimbrian 
 oak woods, of Roman grass plains, of Mare- 
 mana marshes. 
 
 It was the last day of peace which he was 
 destined to know in Marca. 
 
 He turned from the window with reluct- 
 ance and regret, as the old woman, who 
 served him as housekeeper and church-cleaner 
 in one, summoned him to his frugal supper. 
 He could have supped at any hour he had 
 
 90 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 chosen ; there were none to say him nay, 
 but it was the custom at Marca to sup at 
 the twenty - third hour, and he was not a 
 person to violate custom ; he would as soon 
 have thought of spitting on the blessed bread 
 itself. Habit is a masterful ruler in all 
 Italian communities. It has always been so. 
 It is a formula which excuses all things and 
 sanctifies all things, and to none did it do 
 so more than to Don Gesualdo. Often he 
 was not in the least hungry at sunset, often 
 he grudged sorely the hours spent in breaking 
 black bread, and eating poor soup, when 
 Nature was at her fairest, and the skies giv- 
 ing their finest spectacle to a thankless earth. 
 Yet never did he fail to meekly answer old 
 Candida's summons to the humble repast. 
 To have altered the hour of eating would 
 have seemed to him irreligious, revolutionary, 
 altogether impossible. 
 
 Candida was a little old woman, burnt 
 black by the sun, with a whisp of grey 
 hair fastened on the crown of her head, and 
 a neater look about her kerchief and her 
 gown than was usual in Marca, for she was 
 a woman originally from a northern city. 
 
 91 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 She had always been a servant in priests' 
 houses, and, if the sacristan were ill or away, 
 knew as well as he where every book, bell, 
 and candle were kept, and could have said 
 the offices herself had her sex allowed her. 
 In tongue she was very sharp, and in secret 
 was proud of the power she possessed of 
 making the Vice-Regent of God afraid of her. 
 The priest was the first man in this parish 
 of poor folks, and the priest would shrink 
 like a chidden child if she found out that he 
 had given his best shirt to a beggar, or had 
 inadvertently come in with wet boots over the 
 brick floor, which she had just washed and 
 sanded. It was the old story of so many 
 sovereignties. He had power, no doubt, to 
 bind and loose, to bless and curse, to cleanse, 
 or refuse to cleanse, the sinful souls of men ; 
 but for all that he was only a stupid, forgetful 
 baby of a man in his servant's eyes, and she 
 made him feel the scorn she had for him, 
 mixed up with a half-motherly, half-scolding 
 admiration, which saw in him half a child, 
 half a fool, and maybe she would add in her 
 own thoughts, a kind of angel. 
 
 Don Gesualdo was not wise or learned in 
 92 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 any way ; he had barely been able to acquire 
 enough knowledge to pass through the ex- 
 aminations necessary for entrance into the 
 priesthood. That slender amount of scholar- 
 ship was his all ; but he was clever enough 
 for Marca, which had very little brains of its 
 own, and he did his duty most faithfully, as 
 far as he saw it, at all times. As for doubts 
 of any sort as to what that duty was, such 
 scepticism never could possibly assail him. 
 His creed appeared as plain and sure to him 
 as the sun which shone in the heavens, and 
 his faith was as single-hearted and unswerving 
 as the devoted soul of a docile sheep dog. 
 
 He was of a poetic and retiring nature ; 
 religion had taken entire possession of his life, 
 and he was as unworldly, as visionary, and as 
 simple as anyone of the peccareik di Dio who 
 dwelt around Francesco d'Assissi. His mother 
 had been a German servant girl, married out 
 of a small inn in Pisa, and some qualities of 
 the dreamy, slow, and serious Teutonic tempera- 
 ment were in him, all Italian of the western 
 coast as he was. On such a dual mind the 
 spiritual side of his creed had obtained intense 
 power, and the office he filled was to him a 
 
 93 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 Heaven-given mission which compelled him 
 to incessant sacrifice of every earthly appetite 
 and every selfish thought. 
 
 * He is too good to live,' said his old house- 
 keeper. 
 
 It was a very simple and monotonous ex- 
 istence which was led by him in his charge. 
 There was no kind of change in it for any- 
 body, unless they went away, and few people 
 born in Marca ever did that. They were not 
 forced by climate to be nomads, like the 
 mountaineers of the Apennines, nor like the 
 men of the sea-coast and ague-haunted plains. 
 Marca was a healthy, homely place on the 
 slope of a hill in a pastoral country, where its 
 sons and daughters could stay and work all the 
 year round, if they chose, without risk of 
 fever worse than such as might be brought 
 on by too much new wine at close of autumn. 
 
 Marca was not pretty, or historical, or 
 picturesque, or uncommon in any way ; there 
 are five hundred, five thousand villages like 
 it, standing amongst corn lands and maize 
 fields and mulberry trees, with its little dark 
 church, and its white-washed presbytery, and 
 its dusky, red-tiled houses, and its one great, 
 
 94 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 silent, empty villa that used to be a fortified 
 and stately palace, and now is given over to 
 the rats and the spiders and the scorpions. A 
 very quiet, little place, far away from cities 
 and railways, dusty and uncomely in itself, but 
 blessed in the abundant light and the divine 
 landscape which are around it, and of which 
 no one in it ever thought, except this simple 
 young priest, Don Gesualdo Brasailo. 
 
 Of all natural gifts, a love of natural beauty 
 surely brings most happiness to the possessor 
 of it ; happiness altogether unalloyed and un- 
 purchasable, and created by the mere rustle 
 of green leaves, the mere ripple of brown 
 waters. It is not an Italian gift at all, nor an 
 Italian feeling. To an Italian, gas is more 
 beautiful than sunshine, and a cambric flower 
 more beautiful than a real one ; he usually 
 thinks the mountains hateful and a city divine ; 
 he detests trees and adores crowds. But there 
 are exceptions to all rules ; there are poetic 
 natures everywhere, though everywhere they 
 are rare. Don Gesualdo was the exception in 
 Marca and its neighbourhood, and evening after 
 evening saw him in the summer weather 
 strolling through the fields, his breviary in 
 
 95 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 his hand, but his heart with the dancing fire- 
 flies, the quivering poplar leaves, the tall green 
 canes, the little silvery fish darting over the 
 white stones of the shallow river-waters. He 
 could not have told why he loved to watch 
 these things ; he thought it was because they 
 reminded him of Bocca d'Arno and the sand- 
 beach and the cane-brakes ; but he did love 
 them, and they filled him with a vague 
 emotion ; half pleasure and half pain. 
 
 His supper over, he went into his church ; 
 a little red-bricked, white-washed passage con- 
 nected it with his parlour. The church was 
 small, and dark, and old ; it had an altar- 
 piece, said to be old, and by a Sienese master, 
 and of some value, but Gesualdo knew nothing 
 of these matters. A Raphael might have hung 
 there and he would have been none the wiser. 
 He loved the church, ugly and simple as it 
 was, as a mother loves a plain child or a dull 
 one because it is hers ; and now and then he 
 preached strange, passionate, pathetic sermons 
 in it, which none of his people understood, 
 and which he barely understood himself. He 
 had a sw r eet, full, far-reaching voice, with an 
 accent of singular melancholy in it, and as his 
 
 96 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 mystical, romantic, involved phrases passed far 
 over the heads of his hearers, like a flight of 
 birds flying high up against the clouds, the 
 pathos and music in his tones stirred their 
 hearts vaguely. He was certainly, they thought, 
 a man whom the saints loved. Candida, sitting 
 near the altar with her head bowed and her 
 hands feeling her rosary, would think as she 
 heard the unintelligible eloquence : * Dear 
 Lord, all that power of words, all that skill 
 of the tongue, and he would put his shirt on 
 bottom upwards were it not for me ! ' 
 
 There was no office in his church that 
 evening, but he lingered about it, touching 
 this thing and the other with tender fingers. 
 There was always a sweet scent in the little 
 place ; its door usually stood open to the 
 fields amidst which it was planted, and the 
 smell of the incense, which century after century 
 had been burned in it, blended with the 
 fragrance from primroses, or dog-roses, or new- 
 mown hay, or crushed ripe grapes, which, 
 according to the season, came into it from 
 without. Candida kept it very clean, and the 
 scorpions and spiders were left so little peace 
 there by her ever-active broom, that they 
 
 G 97 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 betook themselves elsewhere, dear as the wooden 
 benches and the crannied stones had been to 
 them for ages. 
 
 Since he had come to Marca, nothing of any 
 kind had happened in it. There had been 
 some marriages, a great many births, not a 
 few burials ; but that was all. The people who 
 came to confession at Easter confessed very 
 common sins ; they had stolen this or that, 
 cheated here, there, and everywhere ; got drunk 
 and quarrelled, nothing more. He would give 
 them clean bills of spiritual health, and bid 
 them go in peace and sin no more, quite sure, 
 as they were sure themselves, that they would 
 have the self-same sins to tell of the next time 
 that they should come there. 
 
 Everybody in Marca thought a great deal 
 of their religion, that is, they trusted to it in 
 a helpless but confident kind of way as a fetish, 
 which, being duly and carefully propitiated, 
 would make things all right for them after 
 death. They would not have missed a mass 
 to save their lives ; that they dozed through 
 it, and cracked nuts, or took a suck at their 
 pipe stems when they woke, did not affect 
 their awed and unchangeable belief in its 
 
 9S 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 miraculous and saving powers. If they had 
 been asked what they believed, or why they 
 believed, they would have scratched their heads 
 and felt puzzled. Their minds dwelt in a twi- 
 light in which nothing had any distinct form. 
 The clearest idea ever presented to them was 
 that of the Madonna : they thought of her 
 as of some universal mother who wanted to do 
 them good in the present and future if they 
 only observed her ceremonials : just as in the 
 ages gone by, upon these same hill-sides, the 
 Latin peasant had thought of the great Demeter. 
 Don Gesualdo himself, despite all the doctrine 
 which had been instilled into him in his 
 novitiate, did not know much more than they ; 
 he repeated the words of his offices without any 
 distinct notion of all that they meant ; he had 
 a vague feeling that all self-denial and self- 
 sacrifice were thrice blessed, and he tried his 
 best to save his own soul and the souls of 
 others ; but there he ceased to think ; outside 
 that, speculation lay, and speculation was a 
 thrice damnable offence. Yet he, being im- 
 aginative and intelligent in a humble and dog- 
 like way, was at times infinitely distressed to 
 see how little effect this religion, which he 
 
 99 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 taught and which they professed, had upon the 
 lives of his people. His own life was altogether 
 guided by it. Why could not theirs be the 
 same ? Why did they go on, all through the 
 year, swearing, cursing, drinking, quarrelling, 
 lying, stealing? He could not but perceive 
 that they came to him to confess their pecca- 
 dilloes, only that they might pursue them more 
 completely at their ease. He could not flatter 
 himself that his ministrations in Marca, which 
 were now of six years' duration, had made the 
 village a whit different to what it had been 
 when he had entered it. 
 
 Thinking of this, as he did think of it 
 continually night and day, being a man of 
 singularly sensitive conscience, he sat down on 
 a marble bench near the door and opened his 
 breviary. The sun was setting behind the 
 pines on the crest of the hills ; the warm orange 
 light poured across the paved way in front of 
 the church, through the stems of the cypresses, 
 which stood before the door, and found its 
 way over the uneven slates of the stone floor to 
 his feet. Nightingales were singing somewhere 
 in the dog-rose hedge beyond the cypress trees. 
 Lizards ran from crack to crack in the pave- 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 ment. A tendril of honeysuckle came through 
 a hole in the wall, thrusting its delicate curled 
 horns of perfume towards him. The whole 
 entrance was bathed in golden warmth and 
 light ; the body of the church behind him was 
 quite dark. i 
 
 He had opened his breviary from habit, but he 
 did not read ; he sat and gazed at the evening 
 clouds, at the blue hills, at the radiant air, and 
 listened to the songs of the nightingales in that 
 dreamy trance which made him look so stupid 
 in the eyes of his housekeeper and his par- 
 ishioners, but which were only the meditations 
 of a poetic temper, cramped and cooped up in 
 a narrow and uncongenial existence, and not 
 educated or free enough to be able even to 
 analyse what it felt. 
 
 * The nightingale's song in June is altogether 
 unlike its songs of April and May,' thought 
 this poor priest, whom Nature had made a 
 poet, and to whom she had given the eyes 
 which see and the ears which hear. * The very 
 phrases are wholly different ; the very accent is 
 not the same ; in spring it is all a canticle, like 
 the songs of Solomon ; in midsummer — what 
 is it he is singing ? Is he lamenting the 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 summer ? or is it he is only teaching his 
 young ones how they should sing next year ? ' 
 
 And he fell again to listening to the sweetest 
 bird that gladdens earth. One nightingale was 
 patiently repeating his song again and again, 
 sometimes more slowly, sometimes more 
 quickly, seeming to lay stress on some 
 phrases more than on others, and another 
 voice, fainter and feebler than his own, re- 
 peated the trills and roulades after him fit- 
 fully, and often breaking down altogether. 
 It was plain that there in the wild-rose hedge 
 he was teaching his son. Anyone who will 
 may hear these sweet lessons given under bays 
 and myrtle, under arbutus and pomegranate, 
 through all the month of June. 
 
 Nightingales in Marca were only regarded as 
 creatures to be trapped, shot, caged, eaten, sold 
 for a centime like any other small bird ; but 
 about the church no one touched them ; the 
 people knew that their parocco cared to hear 
 their songs coming sweetly through the pauses 
 in the recitatives of the office. Absorbed, as 
 he was now, in hearkening to the music lesson 
 amongst the white dog-roses, he started 
 violently as a shadow fell across the threshold, 
 
 102 
 
BON GESUALDO 
 
 and a voice called to him, ' Good evening, Don 
 Gesualdo ! ' 
 
 He looked up and saw a woman whom he 
 knew well, a young woman scarcely indeed 
 eighteen years old ; very handsome, with a 
 face full of warmth, and colour, and fire, and 
 tenderness, great flashing eyes which could at 
 times be as soft as a dog's, and a beautiful 
 ruddy mouth with teeth as white as a dog's 
 are also. She was by name Generosa Fe ; she 
 was the wife of Tasso Tassilo, the miller. 
 
 In Marca, most of the women by toil and sun 
 were black as berries by the time they were 
 twenty, and looked old almost before they 
 were young ; with rough hair and loose forms 
 and wrinkled skins, and children dragging at 
 their breasts all the year through. Generosa 
 was not like them ; she did little work ; she 
 had the form of a goddess ; she took care of 
 her beauty, and she had no children, though 
 she had married at fifteen. She was friends 
 with Don Gesualdo ; they had both come from 
 the Bocca d'Arno, and it was a link of common 
 memory and mutual attachment. They liked 
 to recall how they had each run through the 
 tall canes and cactus, and waded in the surf, 
 103 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 and slept in the hot sand, and hidden them- 
 selves for fright when the king's camels had 
 come towards them, throwing their huge 
 mis-shapen shadows over the seas of flowering 
 reeds and rushes and grey spiked aloes. 
 
 He remembered her a small child, jumping 
 about on the sand and laughing at him, a 
 youth, when he was going to college to study 
 for entrance into the Church. ' Gesualdino ! 
 Gesualdino ! ' she had cried. ' A fine priest he 
 will make for us all to confess to ! ' And she 
 had screamed with mirth, her handsome little 
 face rippling all over with gaiety, like the 
 waves of the sea with the sunshine. 
 
 He had remembered her and had been glad 
 when Tasso Tassilo, the miller, had gone sixty 
 miles away for a wife, and had brought her 
 from Bocca d'Arno to live at the mill on the 
 small river, which was the sole water which 
 ran through the village of Marca. 
 
 Tasso Tassilo, going on business once to 
 
 the sea coast, had chanced to see that handsome 
 
 face of hers, and had wooed and won her 
 
 without great difficulty ; for her people were 
 
 poor folk, living by carting sand, and she 
 
 herself was tired of her bare legs and face, 
 104 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 her robust hunger, which made her glad to eat 
 the fruit off the cactus plants, and her great 
 beauty, which nobody ever saw except the 
 seagulls, and carters, and fishers, and cane- 
 cutters, who were all as poor as she was 
 herself. 
 
 Tasso Tassilo, in his own person, she hated ; 
 an ugly, dry, elderly man, with his soul 
 wrapped up in his flour-bags and his money- 
 bags ; but he adored her, and let her spend 
 as she chose on her attire and her ornaments ; 
 and the mill-house was a pleasant place enough, 
 with its walls painted on the outside with 
 scriptural subjects, and the willows drooping 
 over its eaves, and the young men and the 
 mules loitering about on the land side of it, 
 and the peasants coming up with corn to 
 be ground whenever there had been rain in 
 summer, and so water enough in the river 
 bed to turn the mill wheels. In drought, 
 the stream was low and its stones dry, and 
 no work could be done by the grindstones. 
 There was then only water enough for the 
 ducks to paddle in, and the pretty teal to 
 float in, which they v/ould always do at 
 sunrise unless the miller let fly a charge of 
 
 J°5 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 small shot amongst them from the window9 
 under the roof. 
 
 'Good evening, Don Gesualdo,' said the 
 miller's wife now, in the midst of the night- 
 ingale's song and the orange glow from the 
 sunset. 
 
 Gesualdo rose with a smile. He v/as 
 always glad to see her ; she had something 
 about her for him of boyhood, of home, of 
 the sea, and of the careless days before he 
 became a seminarist. He did not positively 
 regret that he had entered the priesthood, 
 but he remembered the earlier life wistfully, 
 and with wonder that he could ever have 
 been that light-hearted lad who had run 
 through the cane-brakes to plunge into the 
 rolling waters, with all the wide, gay, 
 sunlit world of sea and sky and river and 
 shore before him, behind him, and above 
 him. 
 
 ' What is wrong, Generosa ? ' he asked her, 
 seeing as he looked up that her handsome 
 face was clouded. Her days were not often 
 tranquil ; her husband v/as jealous, and she 
 gave him cause for jealousy. The mill was 
 a favourite resort of all young men for thirty 
 
 106 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 miles around, and unless Tasso Tassilo had 
 ceased to grind corn he could not have shut 
 his doors to them. 
 
 ' It is the old story, Don Gesualdo,' she 
 answered, leaning against the church porch. 
 'You know what Tasso is, and what a dog's 
 life he leads me/ 
 
 ' You are not always prudent, my daughter,' 
 said Gesualdo, with a faint smile. 
 
 * Who could be always prudent at my 
 years ? ' said the miller's young wife. c Tasso 
 is a brute, and a fool too. One day he will 
 drive me out of myself; I tell him so.' 
 
 ' That is not the way to make him better,' 
 said Gesualdo. ' I am sorry you do not see 
 it. The man loves you, and he feels he is 
 old, and he knows that you do not care ; 
 that knowledge is always like a thorn in his 
 flesh ; he feels you do not care.' 
 
 4 How should he suppose that I care ? ' said 
 Generosa, passionately. ' I hated him always ; 
 he is as old as my father ; he expects me to 
 be shut up like a nun ; if he had his own 
 way I should never stir out of the house. 
 Does one marry for that ? ' 
 
 ' One should marry to do one's duty,' said 
 107 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 Gesualdo, timidly ; for he felt the feebleness 
 of his counsels and arguments against the 
 force and the warmth and the self-will of a 
 woman, conscious of her beauty, and her 
 power, and her lovers, and moved by all 
 the instincts of vanity and passion. 
 
 ' We had a terrible scene an hour ago,' 
 said Generosa, passing over what she did 
 not choose to answer. * It cost me much 
 not to put a knife into him. It was about 
 Falko. There was nothing new, but he 
 thought there was. I fear he will do Falko 
 mischief one day ; he threatened it ; it is not 
 the first time/ 
 
 1 That is very grave,' said Gesualdo, grow- 
 ing paler as he heard. ' My daughter, you 
 are more in error than Tassilo. After all, 
 he has his rights. Why do you not send 
 the young man away? He would obey you/ 
 
 * He would obey me in anything else, not 
 in that/ said the woman, with the little 
 conscious smile of one who knows her own 
 power. c He would not go away. Indeed, 
 why should he go away ? He has his employ- 
 ment here. Why should he go away because 
 Tasso is a jealous fool ? ' 
 
 ioS 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 * Is he such a fool ? ' said Gesualdo, and 
 he raised his eyes suddenly and looked 
 straight into hers. 
 
 Generosa coloured through her warm, tanned 
 skin. She was silent. 
 
 4 It has not gone as far as you think/ she 
 muttered, after a pause. 
 
 ' But I will not be accused for nothing,' 
 she added. ' Tasso shall have what he thinks 
 he has had. Why would he marry me ? He 
 knew I hated him. We were all very poor 
 down there by Bocca d'Arno, but we were 
 gay and happy. Why did he take me 
 away ? ' 
 
 The tears started to her eyes and rolled 
 down her hot cheeks. It was the hundredth 
 time that she had told her sorrows to Gesualdo, 
 in the confessional and out of it ; it was an 
 old story of which she never tired of the 
 telling. Her own people were far away by 
 the seashore, and she had no friends in 
 Marca, for she was thought a ' foreigner,' 
 not being of that country - side, and the 
 women were jealous of her beauty, and of 
 the idle life which she led in comparison to 
 theirs, and of the cared-for look of her person. 
 109 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 Gesualdo seemed a countryman, and a relative 
 and a friend. She took all her woes to him. 
 A priest was like a woman, she thought ; 
 only a far safer confidant. 
 
 ' You are ungrateful, my daughter,' he 
 said, now, with an effort to be severe in 
 reprimand. ' You know that you were glad 
 to marry so rich a man as Tassilo. You 
 know that your father and mother were glad, 
 and you yourself likewise. No doubt, the 
 man is not all that you could wish, but you 
 owe him something ; indeed, you owe him 
 much. I speak to you now out of my 
 office, only as a friend. I would entreat you 
 to send your lover away. If not, there will 
 be crime, perhaps bloodshed, and the fault 
 of all that may happen will be yours/ 
 
 She gave a gesture, which said that she 
 cared nothing, whatever might happen. She 
 was in a headstrong and desperate mood. She 
 had had a violent quarrel with her husband, 
 and she loved Falko Melegari, the steward of 
 the absent noble who owned the empty, half- 
 ruined palace which stood on the banks of 
 the river. He was a fair and handsome 
 young man, with Lombard blood in him ; 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 tall, slender, vigorous, amorous and light- 
 hearted ; the strongest of contrasts in all 
 ways to Tasso Tassilo, taciturn, feeble, sullen, 
 and unlovely, and thrice the years of his 
 wife. 
 
 There was not more than a mile between 
 the mill-house and the deserted villa. Tassilo 
 might as well have tried to arrest the sirocco, 
 or the sea winds when they blew, as prevent 
 an intercourse so favoured and so facilitated 
 by circumstances. The steward had a million 
 reasons in the year to visit the mill, and when 
 the miller insulted him and forbade him his 
 doors, the jealous husband had no power to 
 prevent him from fishing in the waters, from 
 walking on the bank, from making signals 
 from the villa terraces, and appointments in 
 the cane-brakes and the vine-fields. Nothing 
 could have broken off the intrigue except the 
 departure of one or other of the lovers from 
 Marca. 
 
 But Falko Melegari would not go away from 
 a place where his interests and his passions 
 both combined to hold him ; and it never 
 entered the mind of the miller to take his 
 wife elsewhere. He had dwelt at the mill all 
 in 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 the years of his life, and his forefathers for 
 five generations before him. To change their 
 residence never occurs to such people as these ; 
 they are fixed, like the cypress trees, in the 
 ground, and dream no more than they of new 
 homes. Like the tree, they never change till 
 the heeder, Death, fells them. 
 
 Generosa continued to pour out her woes, 
 leaning against the pillar of the porch, and 
 playing with a twig of pomegranate, whose 
 buds were not more scarlet than her own lips ; 
 and Gesualdo continued to press on her his 
 good counsels, knowing all the while that he 
 might as well speak to the swallows under the 
 church eaves for any benefit that he could 
 effect. In sole answer to the arguments of 
 Gesualdo, she retorted in scornful words. 
 
 ' You may find that duty is enough for you, 
 because you are a saint,' she added with less 
 of reverence than of disdain, ' but I am no 
 saint, and I will not spend all my best days 
 tied to the side of a sickly and sullen old 
 man.' 
 
 ' You are wrong, my daughter/ said Gesu- 
 aldo, sternly. 
 
 He coloured ; he knew not why. 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 * J know nothing of these passions/ he 
 added, with some embarrassment, * but I know 
 what duty is, and yours is clear.' 
 
 He did not know much of human nature, 
 and of woman nature nothing ; yet he dimly 
 comprehended that Generosa was now at that 
 crisis of her life when all the ardours of her 
 youth, and all the delight in her own power, 
 combined to render her passionately rebellious 
 against the cruelties of her fate ; when it was 
 impossible to make duty look other than hate- 
 ful to her, and when the very peril and 
 difficulty which surrounded her love-story 
 made it the sweeter and more irresistible to 
 her. She was of a passionate, ardent, careless, 
 daring temperament, and the dangers of the 
 intrigue which she pursued had no terrors for 
 her, whilst the indifference which she had felt 
 for years for her husband had deepened of late 
 into hatred. 
 
 * One is not a stick nor a stone, nor a 
 beam of timber nor a block of granite, that 
 one should be able to live without love all 
 one's days ! ' she cried, with passion and con- 
 tempt. 
 
 She threw the blossoms of pomegranate over 
 H 113 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 the hedge ; she gave him a glance half-con- 
 temptuous and half - compassionate, and left 
 the church door. 
 
 ' After all, what should he understand ! ' she 
 thought. ' He is a saint, but he is not a man.* 
 
 Gesualdo looked after her a moment as she 
 went over the court -yard, and between the 
 stems of the cypresses out towards the open 
 hill-side. The sun had set ; there was a rosy 
 after-glow which bathed her elastic figure in 
 a carmine light ; she had that beautiful walk 
 which some Italian women have who have 
 never worn shoes in the first fifteen years of 
 their lives. The light shone on her dusky 
 auburn hair, her gold earrings, the slender 
 column of her throat, her vigorous and volup- 
 tuous form. Gesualdo looked after her, and a 
 subtle warmth and pain passed through him, 
 bringing with it a sharp sense of guilt. He 
 looked away from her, and went within his 
 church and prayed. 
 
 That night Falko Melegari had just alighted 
 
 from the saddle of his good grey horse, when 
 
 he was told that the Parocco of San Bartolo 
 
 was waiting to see him. 
 
 The villa had been famous and splendid in 
 114 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 other days, but it formed now only one of the 
 many neglected possessions of a gay young 
 noble, called Ser Baldo by his dependants, who 
 spent what little money he had in pleasure- 
 places out of Italy, seldom or never came near 
 his estates, and accepted, without investigation, 
 all such statements of accounts as his various 
 men of business were disposed to send to him. 
 His steward lived on the ground floor of 
 the great villa, in the vast frescoed chambers, 
 with their domed and gilded ceilings, their 
 sculptured cornices, their carved doors, their 
 stately couches, with the satin dropping in 
 shreds, and the pale tapestries wearing away 
 with the moths and the mice at work in them. 
 His narrow camp-bed, his deal table and chairs, 
 were sadly out of place in those once splendid 
 halls, but he did not think about it ; he 
 vaguely liked the space and the ruined grandeur 
 about him, and all the thoughts he had were 
 given to his love, Generosa, the wife of Tasso 
 Tassilo. From the terraces of the villa he 
 could see the mill a mile further down the 
 stream, and he would pass half the short nights 
 of the summer looking at the distant lights 
 in it. 
 
 "5 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 He was only five-and-twenty, and he was 
 passionately in love, with all the increased 
 ardour of a forbidden passion. 
 
 He was fair-haired and blue-eyed, was well 
 made, and very tall. In character he was 
 neither better nor worse than most men of his 
 age ; but as a steward he was tolerably honest, 
 and as a lover he was thoroughly sincere. He 
 went with a quick step into the central hall 
 to meet his visitor. He supposed that the 
 vicar had come about flowers for the feast of 
 SS. Peter and Paul, which was on the morrow. 
 Though the villa gardens were wholly 
 neglected, they were still rich in flowers which 
 wanted no care — lilies, lavender, old-fashioned 
 roses, oleanders red and white, and magnolia 
 trees. 
 
 'Good evening, Reverend Father, you do 
 me honour,' he said, as he saw Gesualdo. ' Is 
 there anything that I can do for you? I am 
 your humble servant.' 
 
 Gesualdo looked at him curiously. He had 
 never noticed the young man before. He had 
 seen him ride past ; he had seen him at mass ; 
 he had spoken to him of the feasts of the 
 Church ; but he had never noticed him. Now 
 
 116 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 he looked at him curiously as he answered, 
 without any preface whatever, — 
 
 * I am come to speak to you of Generosa Fe, 
 the wife of Tasso Tassilo.' 
 
 The young steward coloured violently. He 
 was astonished and silent. 
 
 4 She loves you,' said Gesualdo, simply. 
 
 Falko Melegari made a gesture as though 
 he implied that it was not his place either to 
 deny or to affirm. 
 
 1 She loves you/ said Gesualdo again. 
 
 The young man had that fatuous smile 
 which unconsciously expresses the consciousness 
 of conquest. But he was honest in his passion 
 and ardent in it. 
 
 ' Not so much as I love her,' he said, raptur- 
 ously, forgetful of his hearer. 
 
 Gesualdo frowned. 
 
 ' She is the wife of another man/ he said 
 with reproof. 
 
 Falko Melegari shugged his shoulders ; 
 that did not seem any reason against it to 
 him. 
 
 * How will it end? said the priest. The 
 lover smiled. 
 
 'These things always end in one way.' 
 
 117 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 Gesualdo winced, as though someone had 
 wounded him. 
 
 'I am come to bid you go out of Marca,' 
 he said simply. 
 
 The young man stared at him ; then he 
 laughed angrily. 
 
 * Reverend Vicar/ he said impatiently ; 
 ' you are the keeper of our souls, no doubt ; 
 but not quite to such a point as that. Has 
 Tassilo sent you to me, or she ? ' he added, 
 with a gleam of suspicion in his eyes. 
 
 * No one has sent me.' 
 1 Why then— ' 
 
 'Because, if you do not go, there will be 
 tragedy and misery. Tasso Tassilo is not a 
 man to make you welcome to his couch. I 
 have known Generosa since she was a little 
 child ; we were both born on the Bocca d'Arno. 
 She is of a warm nature, but not a deep one ; 
 and if you go away she will forget. Tassilo 
 is a rude man and a hard one ; he gives her all 
 she has ; he has many claims on her, for in 
 his way he has been generous and tender. You 
 are a stranger ; you can only ruin her life ; 
 you can with ease find another stewardship far 
 away in another province ; why will you not 
 118 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 go? If you really loved her you would 
 
 go-' 
 
 Falko laughed. 
 
 'Dear Don Gesualdo, you are a holy man, 
 but you know nothing of love/ 
 
 Gesualdo winced a little again. It was the 
 second time this had been said to him this 
 evening. 
 
 1 Is it love,' he said, after a pause, ' to risk 
 her murder by her husband ? I tell you Tassilo 
 is not a man to take his dishonour quietly/ 
 
 ' Who cares what Tassilo does ? ' said the 
 young steward, petulantly. ' If he touch a hair 
 of her head I will make him die a thousand 
 deaths.' 
 
 ' All those are mere words/ said Gesualdo. 
 ' You cannot mend one crime by another, and 
 you cannot protect a woman from her husband's 
 vengeance. There is only one way by which 
 to save her from the danger you have dragged 
 her into. It is for you to go away/ 
 
 ' 1 will go away when this house walks a 
 mile/ said Falko, ' not before. Go away ! ' he 
 echoed, in wrath. ' What ! run like a mongrel 
 dog before Tassilo's anger ? "What ! leave her 
 all alone to curse me as a faithless coward P 
 
 119 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 What ! go away when all my life and my soul, 
 and all the light of my eyes is in Marca ? Don 
 Gesualdo, you are a good man, but you are 
 mad. You must pardon me if I speak roughly. 
 Your words make me beside myself.' 
 
 1 Do you believe in no duty, then ? ' 
 
 1 I believe in the duty of every honest lover ! ' 
 said Falko, with vehemence, ' and that duty is 
 to do everything that the loved one wishes. 
 She is bound to a cur ; she is unhappy ; she 
 has not even any children to comfort her ; she 
 is like a beautiful flower shut up in a cellar, and 
 she loves me — me ! — and you bid me go away ! 
 Don Gesualdo, keep to your Church offices, and 
 leave the loves of others alone. What should 
 you know of them ? Forgive me, if I am 
 rude. You are a holy man, but you know 
 nothing at all of men and women/ 
 
 1 I do not know much/ said Gesualdo, 
 meekly. 
 
 He was depressed and intimidated. He 
 was sensible of his own utter ignorance of the 
 passions of life. This man, nigh his own age, 
 but so full of vigour, of ardour, of indignation, 
 of pride in his consciousness that he was be- 
 loved, and of resolve to stay where that love 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 was, be the cost what it would, daunted him 
 with a sense of power and of triumph such as 
 he himself could not even comprehend, and yet 
 wistfully envied. It was sin, no doubt, he said 
 to himself; and yet it was life, it was strength, 
 it was virility. 
 
 He had come to reprove, to censure, and to 
 persuade into repentance this headstrong lover, 
 and he could only stand before him feeble and 
 oppressed, with a sense of his own ignorance 
 and childishness. All the stock, trite arguments 
 which his religious belief supplied him seemed 
 to fall away and to be of no more use than 
 empty husks of rotten nuts before the urgency, 
 the fervour, and the self-will of real life. This 
 man and woman loved each other, and they 
 cared for no other fact than this on earth or in 
 heaven. He left the villa grounds in silence, 
 with only a gesture of salutation in farewell. 
 
 121 
 
II 
 
 4 Poor innocent, he meant well ! ' thought the 
 steward, as he watched the dark, slender form 
 of the priest pass away through the vines and 
 mulberry trees. The young man did not 
 greatly venerate the Church himself, though he 
 showed himself at mass and sent flowers for the 
 feast days because it was the custom to do so. 
 He was, like most young Italians who have 
 had a smattering of education, very indifferent 
 on such matters, and inclined to ridicule. He 
 left them for women and old men. But there 
 was something about his visitant which touched 
 him ; a simplicity, an unworldliness, a sincerity 
 which moved his respect ; and he knew in his 
 secret heart that the parocco, as he called him, 
 was right enough in everything that he had said. 
 Don Gesualdo himself went on his solitary 
 way, his buckled shoes dragging wearily over 
 the dusty grass of the wayside. He had done 
 no good, and he did not see what good he 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 could do. He felt helpless before the force and 
 speed of an unknown and guilty passion, as he 
 once felt before a forest fire which he had seen 
 in the Marches. All his Church books gave 
 him homilies enough on the sins of the flesh 
 and the temptings of the devil, but none of 
 these helped him before the facts of this lawless 
 and godless love, which seemed to pass high 
 above his head like a whirlwind. He went on 
 slowly and dully along the edge of the river- 
 bed ; a sense of something which he had always 
 missed, which he would miss eternally, was with 
 him. 
 
 It was now quite night. He liked to walk 
 late at night. All things were so peaceful, or 
 at the least seemed so. You did not see the 
 gashes in the lopped trees, the scars in the 
 burned hill-side, the wounds in the mule's loins, 
 the bloodshot eyes of the working ox, the 
 goitered throat of the child rolling in the dust. 
 Night, kindly friend of dreams, cast her soft 
 veil over all woes, and made the very dust 
 seem as a silvered highway to the throne of a 
 beneficent God. 
 
 He went now through the balmy air, the 
 rustling canes, the low-hanging boughs of the 
 123 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 fruit-laden peach trees, and the sheaves of 
 cut corn leaning one up against another under 
 the maples, or the walnut trunks. He 
 followed the course of the water, a shallow 
 thread at this season, glistening under the moon 
 in its bed of shingle and sand. He passed the 
 mill-house perforce on his homeward way ; he 
 saw the place of the weir, made visible even in 
 the dark by the lanterns which swung on a cord 
 stretched from one bank to another, to entice 
 any such fish as there might still be in the 
 shallows. The mill-walls stood down into the 
 water, a strong place built in olden days ; the 
 great black wheels were now perforce at rest ; 
 the mules champed and chafed in their stalls, 
 inactive, like the mill ; for the next three 
 months there would be nothing to do unless 
 a storm came and brought a freshet from the 
 hills. The miller would have the more leisure 
 to nurse his wrongs, thought Don Gesualdo ; 
 and his heart was troubled. He had never met 
 with these woes of the passions ; they oppressed 
 and alarmed him. 
 
 As he passed the low mill windows, protected 
 from thieves by their iron gratings, he could 
 see the interior, lighted as it was by the flame 
 124 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 of oil lamps, and through the open lattices he 
 heard voices, raised high in stormy quarrel, 
 which seemed to smite the holy stillness of the 
 night like a blow. The figure of Generosa 
 stood out against the light which shone behind 
 her. She was in a paroxysm of rage ; her eyes 
 flashed like the lightnings of the hills, and her 
 beautiful arms were tossed above her head 
 in impassioned imprecation. Tasso Tassilo 
 seemed for the moment to crouch beneath this 
 rain of flame-like words ; his face, on which the 
 light shone full, was deformed with malignant 
 and impotent fury, with covetous and jealous 
 desire ; there was no need to hear her words 
 to know that she was taunting him with her 
 love for Falko Melegari. Don Gesualdo was 
 a weak man and physically timid, but here he 
 hesitated not one instant. He lifted the latch 
 of the house door and walked straightway into 
 the mill kitchen. 
 
 * In the name of Christ, be silent ! ' he 
 said to them, and made the sign of the 
 cross. 
 
 The torrent of words stopped on the lips of 
 the young woman ; the miller scowled and 
 shrank from the light, and was mute. 
 125 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 ' Is this how you keep your vows to Heaven 
 and to each other ? ' said Gesualdo. 
 
 A flush of shame came over the face of the 
 woman ; the man drew his hat farther over his 
 eyes, and went out of the kitchen silently. The 
 victory had been easier than their monitor had 
 expected. ' And yet of what use was it ? ' he 
 thought. They were silent out of respect for 
 him. As soon as the restraint of his presence 
 should be removed they would begin afresh. 
 Unless he could change their souls it was of 
 little avail to bridle their lips for an hour. 
 
 There was a wild, chafing hatred on one 
 side, and a tyrannical, covetous, dissatisfied love 
 on the other. Out of such discordant elements 
 what peace could come ? 
 
 Gesualdo shut the wooden shutters of the 
 
 windows that others should not see, as he had 
 
 seen, into the interior ; then he strove to pacify 
 
 his old playmate, whose heaving breast and 
 
 burning cheeks, and eyes which scorched up in 
 
 fire their own tears, spoke of a tempest lulled, 
 
 not spent. He spoke with all the wisdom with 
 
 which study and the counsels of the Fathers 
 
 had supplied him, and with what was sweeter, 
 
 and more likely to be efficacious, a true and 
 126 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 yearning wish to save her from herself. She 
 was altogether wrong, and he strove to make 
 her see the danger and the error of her ways. 
 But he stove in vain. She had one of those 
 temperaments — reckless, vehement, pleasure- 
 loving, ardent, and profoundly selfish — which 
 see only their own immediate gain, their own 
 immediate desires. When he tried to stir her 
 conscience by speaking of the danger she drew 
 down on the head of the man she professed to 
 love, she almost laughed. 
 
 * He would be a poor creature,' she said 
 proudly, ' if all danger would not be dear 
 to him for me ! ' 
 
 Don Gesualdo looked her full in the eyes. 
 
 * You know that this matter must end in 
 the death of one man or of the other. Do 
 you mean that this troubles you not one whit ? ' 
 
 * It will not be my fault,' said Generosa, and 
 he saw in her the woman's lust of vanity 
 which finds food for its pride in the blood shed 
 for her, as the tigress does, and even the 
 gentle hind. 
 
 He remained an hour or more with her, 
 
 exhausting every argument which his creed 
 
 and his sympathy could suggest to him as 
 127 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 having any possible force in it to sway this 
 wayward and sin-bound soul ; but he knew 
 that his words were poured on her ear as 
 uselessly as water on a stone floor. She was 
 in a manner grateful to him as her friend, in 
 a manner afraid of that vague majesty of 
 some unknown power which he represented to 
 her ; but she hated her husband, she adored 
 her lover ; — he could not stir her from those 
 two extremes of passion. He left her with 
 apprehension and a pained sense of his own 
 impotence. She promised him that she would 
 provoke Tassilo no more that night, and 
 this poor promise was all that he could wring 
 from her. It was late when he left the mill- 
 house. He feared Candida would be alarmed 
 at his unusual absence ; and hastened, with 
 trouble on his soul, towards the village, lying 
 white and lonely underneath the midsummer 
 moon. He had so little influence, so slender 
 a power to persuade or warn, to counsel or 
 command ; he felt afraid that he was unworthy 
 of his calling. 
 
 ' 1 should have been better in the cloister,' 
 he thought sadly ; * I have not the key to 
 
 human hearts.' 
 
 128 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 He went on through a starry world of 
 fire-flies, making luminous the cut corn, the 
 long grass, the high hedges, and, entering his 
 presbytery, crept noiselessly up the stairs to 
 his chamber, thankful that the voice of his 
 housekeeper did not cry to him out of the 
 darkness to know why he had so long tarried. 
 He slept little that night, and was up, as was 
 his wont, by daybreak. 
 
 It was still dark when the church bell 
 was clanging above his head for the first 
 office. 
 
 It was the day of Peter and of Paul. Few 
 people came to the early mass ; some peasants 
 who wanted to have the rest of the day clear ; 
 some women, thrifty housewives who were up 
 betimes; Candida herself; no others. The 
 lovely morning light streamed in, cool and 
 roseate ; there were a few lilies and roses on 
 the altar ; some red draperies floated in the 
 doorway ; the nightingales in the wild-rose 
 hedge sang all the while, their sweet voices 
 crossing the monotonous Latin recitatives. 
 The mass was just over, when into the church 
 from without there arose a strange sound, 
 shrill and yet hoarse, inarticulate and yet 
 I 129 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 uproarious ; it came from the throats of many 
 people, all screaming, and shouting, and talk- 
 ing, and swearing together. The peasants 
 and the women, who were on their knees, 
 scrambled to their feet, and rushed to the 
 door, thinking the earth had opened and the 
 houses were falling. Gesualdo came down 
 from the altar and strove to calm them, but 
 they did not heed him, and he followed them 
 despite himself. The whole village seemed 
 out — man, woman, and child — the nightingales 
 grew dumb under their outcry. 
 
 'What is it?' asked Gesualdo. 
 
 Several voices shouted back to him, 'Tasso 
 Tassilo has been murdered ! ' 
 
 <Ah!' 
 
 Gesualdo gave a low cry, and leaned against 
 the stem of a cypress tree to save himself 
 from falling. What use had been his words 
 that night ? 
 
 The murdered man had been found lying 
 under the canes on the wayside not a rood 
 from the church. A dog smelling at it had 
 caused the body to be sought out and dis- 
 covered. He had been dead but a few 
 hours ; apparently killed by a knife, thrust 
 130 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 under his left shoulder, which had struck 
 straight under his heart. The agitation in 
 the people was great; the uproar deafening. 
 Someone had sent for the carabineers, but 
 their nearest picket was two miles off, and 
 they had not yet arrived. The dead man 
 still lay where he had fallen ; everyone was 
 afraid to touch him. 
 
 ' Does his wife know ? ' said Don Gesualdo, 
 in a strange, hoarse voice. 
 
 * His wife will not grieve,' said a man in the 
 crowd, and there was a laugh, subdued by awe, 
 and the presence of death and of the priest . 
 
 The vicar, with a strong shudder of disgust, 
 held up his hand in horror and reproof, then 
 bent over the dead body where it lay amongst 
 the reeds. 
 
 ' Bring him to the sacristy/ he said, to the 
 men nearest him. * He must not lie there like 
 a beast, unclean, by the roadside ; go, fetch a 
 hurdle, a sheet, anything.' 
 
 But no one of them would stir. 
 
 ' If we touch him they will take us up for 
 murdering him,' they muttered as one man. 
 
 * Cowards ! Stand off ; I will carry him in- 
 doors,' said the priest. 
 
 131 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 ' You are in full canonicals ! ' cried Candida, 
 twitching at his sleeve. 
 
 But Don Gesualdo did not heed her. He was 
 brushing off with a tender hand the flies which 
 had begun to buzz about the dead man's 
 mouth. The flies might have stung and eaten 
 him all the day through for what anyone of 
 the little crowd would have cared ; they would 
 not have stretched a hand even to drag him 
 into the shade. 
 
 Don Gesualdo was a weakly man ; he had 
 always fasted long and often, and had never 
 been strong from his birth ; but indignation, 
 compassion, and horror for the moment lent 
 him a strength not his own. He stooped down 
 and raised the dead body in his arms, and, 
 staggering under his burden, he bore it the 
 few roods which separated the place where it 
 had fallen from the church and the vicar's 
 house. 
 
 The people looked on open-mouthed with 
 wonder and awe. ' It is against the law,' they 
 muttered, but they did not offer active opposi- 
 tion. The priest, unmolested, save for the 
 cries of the old housekeeper, carried his load 
 into his own house and laid it reverently down 
 132 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 on the couch which stood in the sacristy. He 
 was exhausted with the great strain and effort ; 
 his limbs shook under him, the sweat poured 
 off his face, the white silk and golden 
 embroideries of his cope and stole were stained 
 with the clotted blood which had fallen from 
 the wound in the dead man's back. He did 
 not heed it, nor did he hear the cries of 
 Candida mourning the disfigured vestments, 
 nor the loud chattering of the crowd thrusting 
 itself into the sacristy. He stood looking 
 down on the poor, dusty, stiffening corpse 
 before him with blind eyes and thinking in 
 silent terror, ' Is it her work ? ' 
 
 In his own soul he had no doubt. 
 
 Candida plucked once more at his robes. 
 
 'The vestments, the vestments! You will 
 ruin them ; take them off — ' 
 
 He put her from him with a gesture of 
 dignity which she had never seen in him, and 
 motioned the throng back towards the open 
 door. 
 
 * I will watch with him till the guards come,' 
 he said ; * go, send his wife hither.' 
 
 Then he scattered holy water on the dead 
 body, and kneeled down beside it and prayed. 
 133 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 The crowd thought that he acted strangely. 
 Why was he so still and cold, and why did he 
 seem so stunned and stricken? If he had 
 screamed and raved, and run hither and thither 
 purposelessly, and let the corpse lie where it was 
 in the canes, he would have acted naturally in 
 their estimation. They hung about the door- 
 ways, half afraid, half angered ; some of them 
 went to the mill-house, eager to have the 
 honour of being the first bearer of such news. 
 
 No one was sorry for the dead man, except 
 some few who were in his debt, and knew that 
 now they would be obliged to pay, with heavy 
 interest, what they owed to his successors. 
 
 With the grim pathos and dignity which 
 death imparts to the commonest creature, the 
 murdered man lay on the bench of the sacristy, 
 amidst the hubbub and the uproar of the crowd- 
 ing people ; he and the priest the only mute 
 creatures in the place. 
 
 Don Gesualdo kneeled by the dead man in 
 his blood-stained, sand-stained canonicals ; he 
 was praying with all the soul there was in him, 
 not for the dead man, but the living woman. 
 
 The morning broadened into the warmth of 
 day. He rose from his knees, and bade his 
 134 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 sacristan bring linen, and spread it over the 
 corpse to cheat the flies and the gnats of their 
 ghastly repast. No men of law came. The 
 messengers returned. The picket-house had 
 been closed at dawn and the carabineers were 
 away. There was nothing to be done but to 
 wait. The villagers stood or sat about in the 
 paved court, and in the road under the cypresses. 
 They seldom had such an event as this in the 
 dulness of their lives. They brought hunches 
 of bread and ate as they discoursed of it. 
 
 ' Will you not break your fast ? ' said Candida 
 to Don Gesualdo. * You will not bring him to 
 life by starving yourself/ 
 
 He made a sign of refusal. 
 
 His mouth was parched, his throat felt closed ; 
 he was straining his eyes for the first sight of 
 Generosa on the white road. ' If she were 
 guilty she would never come/ he thought, * to 
 look on the dead man/ 
 
 Soon he saw her coming, with swift feet 
 and flying skirts and bare head, through the 
 boles of the cypresses. She was livid ; her 
 unbound hair was streaming behind her. 
 
 She had passed a feverish night, locking her 
 door against her husband, and spending the 
 
 135 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 whole weary hours at the casement where she 
 could see the old grey villa where her lover 
 dwelt, standing out against the moonlight 
 amongst its ilex and olive trees. She had had 
 no sense of the beauty of the night ; she had 
 been only concerned by the fret and fever of 
 a first love and of a guilty passion. 
 
 She was not callous at heart, though wholly 
 untrained and undisciplined in character, and 
 her conscience told her that she gave a bad 
 return to a man who had honestly and gener- 
 ously adored her, who had been lavish to her 
 poverty out of his riches, and had never been 
 unkind until a natural and justified jealousy 
 had embittered the whole current of his life. 
 She held the offence of infidelity lightly, yet 
 her candour compelled her to feel that she 
 was returning evil for good, and repaying in 
 a base manner an old man's unwise but 
 generous affection. She would have hesitated 
 at nothing that could have united her life to 
 her lover ; yet, in the corner of her soul she 
 was vaguely conscious that there was a degree 
 of unfairness and baseness in setting their youth 
 and their ardour to hoodwink and betray a 
 feeble and aged creature like Tasso Tassilo. 
 136 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 She hated him fiercely ; he was her jailer, her 
 tyrant, her keeper. She detested the sound of 
 his slow step, of his croaking voice, of his 
 harsh calls to his men and his horses and 
 mules ; the sight of his withered features, 
 flushed and hot with restless, jealous pains, 
 was at once absurd and loathsome to her. 
 Youth has no pity for such woes of age, and 
 she often mocked him openly and cruelly to his 
 face. Still, she knew that she did him wrong, 
 and her conscience had been more stirred 
 by the vicar's reproof than she had acknow- 
 ledged. She was in that wavering mood when 
 a woman may be saved from an unwise course 
 by change, travel, movement, and the distrac- 
 tions of the world ; but there were none of 
 these for the miller's young wife. So long as 
 her husband lived, so long would she be 
 doomed to live here, with the roar of the 
 mill-wheels and the foaming of the weir water 
 in her ear, and before her eyes the same 
 thickets of cane, the same fields with their 
 maples and vines, the same white, dusty road 
 winding away beyond the poplars, and with 
 nothing to distract her thoughts, or lull her 
 mind away from its idolatry of her fair-haired 
 *37 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 lover at the old grey palace on the hill above 
 her home. 
 
 She had spent the whole night gazing at 
 the place where he lived. He was not even 
 there at that moment ; he had gone away for 
 two days to a grain fair in the town of 
 Vendramino, but she recalled with ecstasy 
 their meetings by the side of the low green 
 river, their hours in the wild flowering gardens 
 of the palace, the lovely evenings when she 
 had stolen out to see him come through the 
 maize and canes, the fire-flies all alight about 
 his footsteps. Sleepless but languid, weary 
 and yet restless, she had thrown herself on 
 her bed without taking off her clothes, and in 
 the dark, as the bells for the first mass had 
 rung over the shadowy fields, she had, for the 
 first time, fallen into a heavy sleep, haunted 
 by dreams of her lover, which made her stretch 
 her arms to him in the empty air, and murmur 
 sleeping wild and tender words. 
 
 She had been still on her bed, when the 
 men of the mill had roused her, beating at 
 the chamber door and crying to her : 
 
 c Generosa, Generosa, get up ! The master 
 
 is murdered, and lying dead at the church ! ' 
 138 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 She had been lying dreaming of Falko, and 
 feeling in memory his kisses on her mouth, 
 when those screams had come through the still- 
 ness of the early day, breaking through the 
 music of the blackbirds piping in the cherry 
 boughs outside her windows. 
 
 She had sprung from off her bed ; she had 
 huddled on some decenter clothing, and, burst- 
 ing through the detaining hands of the hench- 
 men and neighbours, had fled as fast as her 
 trembling limbs could bear her to the church. 
 
 4 Is it true ? Is it true ? ' she cried, with 
 white lips, to Gesualdo. 
 
 He looked at her with a long, inquiring 
 regard ; then, without a word, he drew the 
 linen off the dead face of her husband and 
 pointed to it. 
 
 She, strong as a colt, and full of life as a 
 young tree, fell headlong on the stone floor 
 in a dead swoon. 
 
 The people gathered about the doorway and 
 watched her suspiciously and without com- 
 passion. There was no one there who did 
 not believe her to be the murderess. No one 
 except Don Gesualdo. In that one moment 
 when he had looked into her eyes, he had felt 
 139 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 that she was guiltless. He called Candida to 
 her and left her, and closed the door on the 
 curious, cruel, staring eyes of the throng 
 without. 
 
 The people murmured. What title had he 
 more than they to command and direct in this 
 matter ? The murder was a precious feast to 
 them ; why should he defraud them of their 
 rights ? 
 
 ' He knows she is guilty,' they muttered, 
 1 and he wants to screen her and give her time 
 to recover herself and to arrange what story 
 she shall tell.' 
 
 In a later time they remembered against the 
 young vicar all this which he did now. 
 
 Soon there came the sound of horses' feet 
 on the road, and the jingling of chains and 
 scabbards stirred the morning air ; the cara- 
 bineers had arrived. Then came also the 
 syndic and petty officers of the larger village 
 of Sant' Arturo, where the Communal Munici- 
 pality in which Marca was enrolled had its 
 seat of justice, its tax offices and its schools. 
 There were a great noise and stir, grinding of 
 wheels and shouting of orders, vast clouds of 
 dust and ceaseless din of voices, loud bicker- 
 140 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 ings of conflicting authorities at war with one 
 another, and rabid inquisitiveness and greedy 
 excitement on all sides. 
 
 The feast of SS. Peter and Paul had been a 
 day of disaster and disorder, but to the good 
 people of Marca both these were sweet. They 
 had something to talk of from dawn till dark, 
 and the blacker the tragedy the merrier wagged 
 the tongues. The soul of their vicar alone 
 was sick within him. Since he had seen the 
 astonished, horrified eyes of the woman Gene- 
 rosa, he had never once doubted her, but he 
 felt that her guilt must seem clear as the noon- 
 day to all others. Her disputes with her 
 husband, and her passion for Falko Melegari, 
 were facts knov/n to all the village, and who 
 else had any interest in his death ? The whole 
 of Marca pronounced as with one voice against 
 her ; the women had always hated her for her 
 superior beauty, and the men had always borne 
 her a grudge for her saucy disdain of them, 
 and that way of bearing herself as though a 
 beggar from Bocca d'Arno were a queen. 
 
 * Neighbours put up with her pride while she 
 was on the sunny side of the street/ said 
 Candida, with grim satisfaction, ' but now she 
 141 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 is in the shade they'll fling the stones fast 
 enough,' and she was ready to fling her own 
 stone. Generosa had always seemed an im- 
 pudent jade to her, coming and talking with 
 Don Gesualdo, as she did, at all hours, and as 
 though the church and the sacristy were open 
 bazaars ! 
 
 How that day passed, and how he bore him- 
 self through all its functions, he never knew. 
 It was the dead of night, when he, still dressed, 
 and unable even to think calmly, clasping his 
 crucifix in his hands, and pacing to and fro his 
 narrow chamber with restless and uneven steps, 
 heard his name called by the voice of a man in 
 great agitation, and, looking out of his case- 
 ment, saw Falko Melegari on his grey horse, 
 which was covered with foam and sweating as 
 from a hard gallop. 
 
 * Is it true ? ' he cried, a score of times. 
 
 ' Yes, it is all true,' said Gesualdo. His 
 voice was stern and cold ; he could not tell 
 what share this man might not have had in 
 the crime. 
 
 ' But she is innocent as that bird in the air/ 
 screamed her lover, pointing to a scops owl 
 which was sailing above the cypresses. 
 142 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 Don Gesualdo bowed his head and spread 
 out his hands, palm downwards, in a gesture, 
 meaning hopeless doubt. 
 
 'I was away at dark into the town to buy 
 cattle,' said the steward, with sobs in his throat. 
 *I rode out by the opposite road; I knew 
 nought of it. Oh, my God, why was I not 
 here ? They should not have taken her with- 
 out it costing them hard.' 
 
 ' You would have done her no good,' said 
 Don Gesualdo, coldly. 'You have done her 
 harm enough already,' he added, after a pause. 
 
 Falko did not resent the words ; the tears 
 were falling like rain down his cheeks, his hands 
 were clenched on his saddle-bow, the horse 
 stretched its foam-flecked neck unheeded. 
 
 * Who did it? Who could do it? He had 
 many enemies. He was a hard man,' he 
 muttered. 
 
 Don Gesualdo gave a gesture of hopeless 
 doubt and ignorance. He looked down on 
 the lover's handsome face and head in the 
 moonlight. There was a strange expression 
 in his own eyes. 
 
 ' Curse you for a cold-hearted priest,' thought 
 the young steward, with bitterness. Then he 
 143 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 wheeled his horse sharply round, and, without 
 any other word, rode off towards his home in 
 the glistening white light, to stable his weary 
 horse, and to saddle another to ride into the 
 larger village of Sant' Arturo. It was past 
 midnight ; he could do no good ; he could see 
 no one ; but it was a relief to him to be in 
 movement. He felt that it would choke him 
 to sit and sup, and sleep, and smoke as usual in 
 his quiet house amongst the magnolias and the 
 myrtles, whilst the love of his life lay alone in 
 her misery. 
 
 All gladness, which would at any natural death 
 of Tasso Tassilo's have filled his soul, was 
 quenched in the darkness of horror in which 
 her fate was snatched from him and plunged 
 into the mystery and the blackness of imputed 
 crime. 
 
 He never actually suspected her for a moment ; 
 but he knew that others would, no doubt, do 
 more than suspect. 
 
 * Perhaps the brute killed himself,' he thought, 
 * that the blame of the crime might lie on her 
 and part her from me.' 
 
 Then he knew that such a thought was absurd. 
 
 Tasso Tassilo had loved his life, loved his mill, 
 
 144 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 and his money, and his petty power, and his 
 possession of his beautiful wife ; and besides, 
 what man could stab himself from behind be- 
 tween the shoulders? It was just the blow that 
 a strong yet timid woman would give. As he 
 walked to and fro on the old terrace, whilst they 
 saddled the fresh horse, he felt a sickening 
 shudder run through him. He did not suspect 
 her. No, not for an instant. And yet there 
 was a dim, unutterable horror upon him which 
 veiled the remembered beauty of her face. 
 
 The passing of the days which came after this 
 feast of the two apostles was full of an unspeak- 
 able horror to him, and in the brief space of 
 them he grew haggard, hollow-cheeked, almost 
 aged, despite his youth. The dread formalities 
 and tyrannies of law seized on the quiet village, 
 and tortured every soul in it ; everyone who 
 had seen or heard or known aught of the dead 
 man was questioned, tormented, harangued, 
 examined, suspected. Don Gesualdo himself 
 was made subject to a searching and oft-repeated 
 interrogation, and severely reproved that he had 
 not let the body lie untouched until the arrival 
 of the officers of justice. He told the exact 
 truth as far as he knew it, but when questioned 
 k 145 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 as to the relations of the murdered man and his 
 wife, he hesitated, prevaricated, contradicted 
 himself, and gave the impression to the judicial 
 authorities that he knew much more against the 
 wife than he would say. What he tried to do 
 was to convey to others his own passionate con- 
 viction of the innocence of Generosa, but he 
 utterly failed in doing this, and his very anxiety 
 to defend her only created an additional sus- 
 picion against her. 
 
 The issue of the preliminary investigation was, 
 that the wife of Tasso Tassilo, murdered on the 
 morning of the day of SS. Peter and Paul, was 
 consigned to prison, to be ' detained as a pre- 
 caution ' under the lock and key of the law, 
 circumstantial evidence being held to be strongly 
 against her as the primary cause, if not the 
 actual executant, of the murder of her lord. 
 
 Everyone called from the village to speak of 
 her, spoke against her, with the exception of 
 Falko Melegari, who was known to be her 
 lover, and whose testimony weighed not a 
 straw ; and Don Gesualdo, himself a priest, 
 indeed, but the examining judge was no friend 
 of priests, and would not have believed them on 
 their oaths, whilst the strong friendship for her 
 
 146 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 and the nervous anxiety to shield her, displayed 
 so unwisely, though so sincerely by him, did 
 her more harm than good, and made his bias so 
 visible, that his declarations were held valueless. 
 
 1 You know I am innocent ! ' she cried to him, 
 the day of her arrest ; and he answered her with 
 the tears falling down his cheeks : ' I am sure of 
 it ; I would die to prove it ! For one moment 
 I did doubt you — pardon me — but only one. 
 I am sure you are innocent as I am sure that the 
 sun hangs in the skies.* 
 
 But his unsupported belief availed nothing to 
 secure that of others ; the dominant feeling 
 amongst the people of Marca was against her, 
 and in face of that feeling and of the known 
 jealousy of her which had consumed the latter 
 days of the dead man, the authorities deemed 
 that they could do no less than order her pro- 
 visional arrest. Her very beauty was a weapon 
 turned against her. It seemed so natural to her 
 accusers that so lovely and so young a woman 
 should have desired to rid herself of a husband, 
 old, ill-favoured, exacting and unloved. In 
 vain — utterly in vain — did Falko Melegari, 
 black with rage and beside himself with misery, 
 swear by every saint in the calendar that his 
 
 147 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 relations with her had been hitherto absolutely 
 innocent. No one believed him. 
 
 ' You are obliged to say that/ said the judge, 
 with good-humoured impatience. 
 
 * But, God in Heaven, why not, when it is 
 true ? ' shouted Falko. 
 
 * It is always true when the damo is a man of 
 honour/ said the ironical judge, with an in- 
 credulous, amused smile. 
 
 So, her only defenders utterly discredited, she 
 paid the penalty of being handsomer and grander 
 than her neighbours, and was taken to the town 
 of Vendramino, and there left to lie in prison 
 until such time as the majesty of the law should 
 be pleased to decide whether or no it deemed 
 her guilty of causing the death of her husband. 
 The people of Marca were content. They only 
 could not see why the law should take such a 
 time to doubt and puzzle over a fact which to 
 them all was as clear as the weather-vane on 
 their church tower. 
 
 * Who should have killed him if not she or 
 her damo ? ' they asked, and no one could 
 answer. 
 
 So she was taken away by the men of justice, 
 and Marca no more saw her handsome head, 
 148 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 with the silver pins in its coiled hair, leaning 
 out from the square mill windows, or her 
 bright-coloured skirts going light as the wind 
 up the brown sides of the hills, and through 
 the yellow-blossomed gorse in the warm autumn 
 air, to some trysting-place under the topmost 
 pines, where the wild pigeons dwelt in the 
 boughs above, and the black stoat ran through 
 the bracken below. 
 
 The work of the mill went on the same, 
 being directed by the brother of Tassilo, who 
 had always had a share in it, both of labour and 
 profit. The murder still served for food for 
 people's tongues through vintage and onward 
 until the maize harvest and the olive-gathering. 
 As the nights grew long, and the days cold, it 
 ceased to be the supreme theme of interest in 
 Marca ; no one ever dreamed that there could 
 be a doubt of the absent woman's guilt, or said 
 a good word for her ; and no one gave her any 
 pity for wasting her youth and fretting her soul 
 out in a prison cell, though they were disposed 
 to grant that what she had done had been, after 
 all, perhaps only natural, considering all things 
 
 Her own family were too poor to travel to 
 
 her help, indeed, only heard of her misfortunes 
 149 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 after many days, and then only by chance, 
 through a travelling hawker. They could do 
 nothing for her, and did not try. She had 
 never sent them as much of her husband's 
 money as they had expected her to do, and now 
 that she was in trouble she might get out of it 
 as she could, so they said. She had always 
 cared for her earrings and breastpins, never 
 for them ; she would see if her jewels would 
 help her now. When any member of a poor 
 family marries into riches, the desire to profit 
 by her marriage is, if ungratified, quickly 
 turned into hatred of herself. Why should she 
 have gone to eat stewed kid, and fried lamb, 
 and hare baked with fennel, when they had 
 only a bit of salt fish and an onion now and 
 then ? 
 
 The authorities at Vendramino had admitted 
 the vicar of San Bartolo, once or twice, to 
 visit her, the jailer standing by, but he had 
 been unable to do more than to weep with her 
 and assure her of his own perfect belief in her 
 innocence. The change he found in her 
 shocked him so greatly that he could scarcely 
 speak ; and he thought to himself, as he saw 
 how aged and wasted and altered she was, ' If 
 
 150 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 she lose her beauty and grow old before her 
 time, what avail will it be to her even if they 
 declare her innocent ? Her gay lover will look 
 at her no more.' 
 
 Falko Melegari loved her wildly, ardently, 
 vehemently indeed ; but Don Gesualdo, with 
 that acute penetration which sometimes supplies 
 in delicate natures that knowledge of the world 
 which they lack, felt that it was not a love 
 which had any qualities in it to withstand the 
 trials of time or the loss of physical charms. 
 Perchance, Generosa herself felt as much, and 
 the cruel consciousness of it hurt her more than 
 her prison bars. 
 
Ill 
 
 The winter passed away, and with February 
 the corn spread a green carpet everywhere ; the 
 almond trees blossomed on the hill-sides, the 
 violets opened the ways for the anemones, and 
 the willows budded beside the water-mill. 
 There were braying of bugles, twanging of 
 lutes, cracking of shots, drinking of wines on 
 the farms and in the village as a rustic celebra- 
 tion of carnival. Not much of it, for times are 
 hard and men's hearts heavy in these days, and 
 the sunlit grace and airy gaiety natural to it 
 are things for ever dead in Italy, like the ilex 
 forests and the great gardens that have perished 
 for ever and aye. 
 
 Lent came, with its church bells sounding 
 in melancholy iteration over the March fields, 
 where the daffodils were blowing by millions 
 and the young priest of San Bartolo fasted and 
 prayed and mortified his flesh in every way 
 that his creed allowed, and hoped by such 
 152 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 miseries, pains and penances to attain grace 
 in heaven, if not on earth, for Generosa in her 
 misery. All through Lent he wearied the 
 saints with incessant supplication for her. 
 
 Day and night he racked his brain to dis- 
 cover any evidence as to who the assassin had 
 been. He never once doubted her ; if the 
 very apostles of his Church had all descended 
 on earth to witness against her, he would have 
 cried to them that she was innocent. 
 
 The sickening suspicions, the haunting, irre- 
 pressible doubts, which now and then came 
 over the mind of her lover as he walked to 
 and fro by the edge of the river at night, 
 looking up at what had been the casement of 
 her chamber, did not assail for an instant the 
 stronger faith of Gesualdo, weak as he was in 
 body, and, in some ways, weak in character. 
 
 The truth might remain in horrid mystery, 
 in impenetrable darkness, for ever ; it would 
 made no difference to him ; he would be 
 always convinced that she had been innocent. 
 Had he not known her when she was a little 
 barefooted child, coming flying through the 
 shallow green pools and the great yellow grasses 
 and the sunny cane-brakes of Bocca d'Arno ? 
 
 iS3 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 Most innocent, indeed, had been his relations 
 with the wife of Tassilo, but to him it seemed 
 that the interest he had taken in her, the 
 pleasure he had felt in converse with her, had 
 been criminal. There had been times when 
 his eyes, which should have only seen in her a 
 soul to save, had become aware of her mere 
 bodily beauty, had dwelt on her with an 
 awakening of carnal admiration. It sufficed to 
 make him guilty in his own sight. This agony, 
 which he felt for her, was the sympathy of a 
 personal affection. He knew it, and his con- 
 sciousness of it flung him at the feet of his 
 crucifix in tortures of conscience. 
 
 He knew, too, that he had done her harm 
 by the incoherence and the reticence of his 
 testimony, by the mere vehemence with which 
 he had unwisely striven to affirm an innocence 
 which he had no power to prove ; even by 
 that natural impulse of humanity which had 
 moved him to bring her husband's corpse under 
 the roof of the church and close the door upon 
 the clamorous and staring throng who saw in 
 the tragedy but a pastime. He, more than any 
 other, had helped to cast on her the darkness 
 of suspicion ; he, more than any other, had 
 154 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 helped to make earthly peace and happiness for 
 ever denied to her. 
 
 Even if they acquitted her in the house of 
 law yonder, she would be dishonoured for life. 
 Even her lover, who loved her with all the 
 sensual, coarse ardour of a young man's un- 
 controlled desires, had declared that he would 
 be ashamed to walk beside her in broad day so 
 long as this slur of possible, if unproven, crime 
 were on her. Don Gesualdo mused on all 
 these things until his sensitive soul began to 
 take alarm lest it were not a kind of sin to be 
 so occupied with the fate of one to the neglect 
 and detriment of others. Candida saw him 
 growing thinner and more shadow-like every 
 day with ever-increasing anxiety. To fast, she 
 knew, was needful above all for a priest in 
 Lent, but he did not touch what he might 
 lawfully have eaten ; the new-laid eggs and the 
 crisp lettuces of her providing failed to tempt 
 him, and no mortal man, she told him, could 
 live on air and water as he did. 
 
 ' There should be reason in all piety/ she 
 said to him, and he assented. 
 
 But he did not change his ways, which were 
 rather those of a monk of the Thebaid than of 
 155 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 a vicar of a parish. He had the soul in him of 
 a St Anthony, of a St Francis, and he had been 
 born too late ; the world as it is was too coarse, 
 and too incredulous, for him, even in a little 
 rustic primitive village hidden away from the 
 eyes of men under its millet and its fig trees. 
 
 The people of Marca, like his old servant, 
 noticed the great change in him. Pale he had 
 always been, but now he was the colour of his 
 own ivory Christ ; taciturn, too, he had always 
 been, yet he had ever had playful words for 
 the children, kind words for the aged ; these 
 were silent now. The listless and mechanical 
 manner with which he went through the offices 
 of the Church contrasted with the passionate and 
 despairing cries which seemed to come from his 
 very soul when he preached, and which vaguely 
 frightened a rural congregation who were 
 wholly unable to understand them. 
 
 1 One would think the good parocco had some 
 awful sin on his soul/ said a woman to Candida 
 one evening. 
 
 * Nay, nay ; he is as pure as a lamb/ said 
 
 Candida, twirling her distaff, 'but he was 
 
 always helpless and childlike, and too much 
 
 taken up with heavenly things— may the saints 
 
 156 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 forgive me for saying so. He should be in a 
 monastery along with St Romolo and St 
 Francis.' 
 
 But yet, the housekeeper, though loyalty 
 itself, was, in her own secret thoughts, not a 
 little troubled at the change she saw in her 
 master. She put it down to the score of his 
 agitation at the peril of Generosa Fe ; but 
 this in itself seemed to her unfitting in one of 
 his sacred calling. A mere light-o'-love and 
 saucebox, as she had always herself called the 
 miller's wife, was wholly unworthy to occupy, 
 even in pity, the thoughts of so holy a man. 
 
 * There could not be a doubt that she had 
 given that knife-stroke amongst the canes in 
 the dusk of the dawn of SS. Peter and Paul,' 
 thought Candida, amongst whose virtues charity 
 had small place ; * but what had the parocco to 
 do with it ? ' 
 
 In her rough way, motherly and unmannerly, 
 she ventured to take her master to task for 
 taking so much interest in a sinner. 
 
 'The people of Marca say you think too 
 
 much about that foul business ; they do even 
 
 whisper that you neglect your holy duties,' she 
 
 said to him, as she served the frugal supper of 
 
 157 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 cabbage soaked in oil. * There will always be 
 crimes as long as the world wags on, but that 
 is no reason why good souls should put 
 themselves about over that which they cannot 
 help.' 
 
 Don Gesualdo said nothing, but she saw the 
 nerves of his mouth quiver. 
 
 ' 1 have no business to lecture your reverence 
 on your duties/ she added, tartly ; * but they 
 do say that so much anxiety for a guilty woman 
 is a manner of injustice to innocent souls.' 
 
 He struck his closed hand on the table with 
 concentrated expression of passion. 
 
 * How dare you say that she is guilty ? ' he 
 cried. ' Who has proved her to be so ? ' 
 
 Candida looked at him with shrewd, suspicious 
 eyes as she set down the bottle of vinegar. 
 
 ' 1 have met with nobody who doubts it,' she 
 said, cruelly, ' except your reverence and her 
 lover up yonder at the villa.' 
 
 * You are all far too ready to believe evil/ 
 said Don Gesualdo, with nervous haste ; and 
 he arose and pushed aside the untasted dish and 
 went out of the house. 
 
 ' He is beside himself for that jade's sake,' 
 thought Candida, and after waiting a little while 
 15S 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 to see if he returned, she sat down and ate 
 the cabbage herself. 
 
 Whether there were as many crimes in the 
 world as flies on the pavement in summer, she 
 saw no reason why that good food should be 
 wasted. 
 
 After her supper, she took her distaff and 
 went and sat on the low wall which divided the 
 church ground from the road, and gossiped 
 with anyone of the villagers who chanced to 
 come by. No one was ever too much occupied 
 not to have leisure to talk in Marca, and the 
 church wall was a favourite gathering place 
 for the sunburnt women with faces like leather 
 under their broad summer hats, or their 
 woollen winter kerchiefs, who came and went 
 to and from the fields or the well or the wash- 
 ing reservoir, with its moss-grown stone tanks 
 brimming with brown water under a vine- 
 covered pergola, where the hapless linen was 
 wont to be beaten and banged as though it 
 were so many sheets of cast-iron. And here 
 with her gossips and friends, Candida could not 
 help letting fall little words and stray sentences 
 which revealed the trouble her mind was in as 
 to the change in her master. She was devoted 
 159 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 to him, but her devotion was not so strong as 
 her love of mystery and her impatience of any- 
 thing which opposed a barrier to her curiosity. 
 She was not conscious that she said a syllable 
 which could have affected his reputation, yet her 
 neighbours all went away from her with the 
 idea that there was something wrong in the 
 presbytery, and that, if she had chosen, the 
 priest's housekeeper could have told some very 
 strange tales. 
 
 Since the days of the miller's murder, a 
 vague feeling against Don Gesualdo had been 
 growing up in Marca. A man who does not 
 cackle, and scream, and roar, till he is hoarse, 
 at the slightest thing which happens, is always 
 unnatural and suspicious in the eyes of an 
 Italian community. The people of Marca 
 began to remember that he had some fisher- 
 men's blood in him, and that he had always 
 been more friendly with the wife of Tasso 
 Tassilo than had been meet in one of his 
 calling. 
 
 Falko Melegari had been denied admittance 
 
 to her by the authorities. They were not sure 
 
 that he, as her lover, had not some complicity 
 
 in the crime committed ; and, moreover, his 
 
 160 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 impetuous and inconsiderate language to the 
 Judge of Instruction at the preliminary investi- 
 gation had been so fierce and so unwise that it 
 had prejudiced against him all officers of the 
 law. This exclusion of him heightened the 
 misery he felt, and moved him also to a 
 querulous impatience with the vicar of San 
 Bartolo for being allowed to see her. 
 
 ' Those black snakes slip and slide in any- 
 where,' he thought, savagely ; and his contempt 
 for and dislike of ecclesiastics, which the manner 
 and character of Don Gesualdo had held in 
 abeyance, revived in its pristine force. 
 
 In Easter-time, Don Gesualdo was always 
 greatly fatigued, and, when Easter came round 
 this year, and the sins of Marca were poured 
 into his ear — little, sordid, mean sins of which 
 the narration wearied and sickened him — they 
 seemed more loathsome to him than they had 
 ever done. There was such likeness and such 
 repetition in the confessions of all of them — 
 greed, avarice, dishonesty, fornication ; the 
 scale never varied, and the story told kept 
 always at the same low level of petty and 
 coarse things. Their confessor heard, with a 
 tired mind, and a sick heart, and, as he gave 
 
 L 161 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 them absolution, shuddered at the doubts of 
 the infallibility of his Church, which for the 
 first time passed with dread terror through his 
 thoughts. The whole world seemed to him 
 changing. He felt as though the solid earth 
 itself were giving way beneath his feet. His 
 large eyes had a startled and frightened look in 
 them, and his face grew thinner every day. 
 
 It was after the last office in this Easter week, 
 when a man came through the evening shadows 
 towards the church. His name was Emilio 
 Raffagiolo, but he was always known as the 
 girellone, the rover. Such nicknames replace 
 the baptismal names of the country people till 
 the latter are almost forgotten, whilst the family 
 name is scarcely ever employed at all in rural 
 communities. The girellone was a carter, who 
 had been in service at the water-mill for some 
 few months. He was a man of thirty or 
 thereabouts, with a dusky face and a shock 
 head of hair, and hazel eyes, dull and yet 
 cunning. He was dressed now in his festal 
 attire, and he had a round hat set on one side 
 of his head ; he doffed it as he entered the 
 church. He could not read or write, and his 
 ideas of his creed were hazy and curious. The 
 162 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 Church represented to him a thing with virtue 
 in it, like a charm or a bunch of herbs ; it was 
 only necessary, he thought, to observe certain 
 formulas of it to be safe within it ; conduct 
 outside it was of no consequence. Nothing on 
 earth can equal in confusion and indistinctness 
 the views of the Italian rustic as regards his 
 religion. The priest is to him as the medicine 
 man to the savage ; but he has ceased to respect 
 his councils whilst retaining a superstitious feel- 
 ing aboufe-iiis office. 
 
 This man, doffing his hat, entered the church 
 and approached the confessional, crossing him- 
 self as he did so. Don Gesualdo, with a sigh, 
 prepared to receive his confession, although the 
 hour was unusual, and the many services of the 
 day had fatigued him, until his head swam and 
 his vision was clouded. But at no time had he 
 ever availed himself of any excuse of time or 
 physical weakness to avoid the duties of his 
 office. Recognising the carter, he wearily 
 awaited the usual tale of low vice and petty sins, 
 some drunkenness, or theft, or lust, gratified in 
 some unholy way, and resigned himself wearily 
 to follow the confused repetitions with which 
 the rustic of every country answers questions or 
 163 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 narrates circumstances. His conscience smote 
 him for his apathy. Ought not the soul of 
 this clumsy and wine-soddened boor to be as 
 dear to him as that of lovelier creatures? 
 
 The man answered the usual priestly inter- 
 rogations sullenly and at random ; he could 
 not help doing what he did, because supersti- 
 tion drove him to it, and was stronger for 
 the time than any other thing ; but he was 
 angered at his own conscience, and afraid ; his 
 limbs trembled, and his tongue seemed to him 
 to swell and grow larger than his mouth, and 
 refused to move as he said at length in a thick, 
 choked voice : 
 
 * It was I who killed him ! ' 
 
 1 Who ? ' asked Don Gesualdo, whilst his 
 own heart stood still. Without hearing the 
 answer he knew what it would be. 
 
 * Tasso, the miller ; my master/ said the 
 carter ; and, having confessed thus far, he 
 recovered confidence and courage, and, in the 
 rude, involved, garrulous utterances common 
 to his kind, he leaned his mouth closer to 
 Gesualdo's ear, and told, with a curious sort 
 of pride in the accomplishment of it, why and 
 how it had been done. 
 
 164 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 * I wanted to go to South America/ he 
 muttered. * I have a cousin there, and he says 
 one makes money fast and works little. I had 
 often wished to take Tassilo's money, but I was 
 always afraid. He locked it up as soon as he 
 took any, were it ever so little, and it never 
 saw light again till it went to the bank, or 
 was paid away for her finery. He wasted many 
 a good fifty franc note on her back. Look 
 you, the night before the feast of Peter and 
 Paul, he had received seven hundred francs in 
 the day for wheat, and I saw him lock it up in 
 his bureau, and say to his wife that he should 
 take it to the town next day. That was in 
 the forenoon. At eventide they had a worse 
 quarrel than usual. She taunted him and he 
 threatened her. In the late night I lay 
 listening to hear him astir. He was up before 
 dawn, and he unbarred and opened the mill- 
 house himself, and called to the foreman, and 
 he said he was going to the town, and told us 
 what we were to do. 'I shall be away all 
 day/ he said. It was still dusky. I stole out 
 after him without the men seeing. I said to 
 myself I would take this money from him as 
 he went along the cross roads to take the 
 165 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 diligence at Sant' Arturo. I did not say to 
 myself I would kill him, but I resolved to get 
 the money. It was enough to take one out 
 to America, and keep one awhile when one 
 got out there. So I made up my mind. 
 Money is at the bottom of most things. I 
 followed him half a mile before I could get my 
 courage up. He did not see me because of 
 the canes. He was crossing that grass where 
 the trees are so thick, when I said to myself, 
 4 Now or never ! ' Then I sprang on him and 
 stabbed him under the shoulder. He fell like 
 a stone. I searched him, but there was nothing 
 in his pockets except a revolver loaded. I 
 think he had only made a feint of going to 
 the town, thinking to come back and find the 
 lovers together. I buried the knife under a 
 poplar a few yards off where he fell. I could 
 have thrown it in the river, but they say things 
 which have killed people always float. You 
 will find it if you dig for it under the big 
 poplar tree that they call the Grand Duke's, 
 because they say Pietro Leopoldo sat under 
 it once on a time. There was a little blood 
 on the blade, but there was none anywhere 
 else, for he bled inwardly. They do, if you 
 
 1 66 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 strike right. I was a butcher's lad once, and 
 I used to kill the oxen, and I know. That is 
 all. When I found the old rogue had no 
 money with him, I could have killed him a 
 score of times over. I cannot think how it 
 was that he left home without it, unless it was, 
 as I say, that he meant to go back unknown 
 and unawares, and surprise his wife with 
 Melegari. That must have been it, I think. 
 For, greedy as he was over his money, he was 
 greedier still over his wife. I turned him over 
 on his back, and left him lying there, and I 
 went home to the mill and began my day's 
 work, till the people came and wakened her 
 and told the tale ; then I left off work and 
 came and looked on like the rest of them. 
 That is all.' 
 
 The man who made the confession was calm 
 and unmoved ; the priest who heard it was sick 
 with horror, pale to the lips with agitation and 
 anguish. 
 
 * But his wife is accused ! She may be 
 condemned ! ' he cried, in agony. 
 
 4 1 know that,' said the man, stolidly. ' But 
 
 you cannot tell of me. I have told you under; 
 
 the seal of confession.' 
 
 167 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 It was quite true ; come what would, Don 
 Gesualdo could never reveal what he had heard. 
 His eyes swam, his head reeled, a deadly sick- 
 ness came upon him ; all his short life simple 
 and harmless things had been around him ; he 
 had been told of the crimes of men, but he had 
 never been touched by them ; he had known 
 of the sins of the world, but he had never 
 realised them. The sense that the murderer 
 of Tasso Tassilo was within a hand's breadth 
 of him, that these eyes which stared at him, 
 this voice which spoke to him, were those of 
 the actual assassin, that it was possible, and 
 yet utterly impossible, for him to help justice 
 and save innocence — all this overcame him with 
 its overwhelming burden of horror and of 
 divided duty. He lost all consciousness as he 
 knelt there and fell heavily forward on the 
 wood-work of the confessional. 
 
 His teachers had said aright in the days 
 of his novitiate, that he would never be of 
 stern enough stuff to deal with the realities 
 of life. 
 
 When he recovered his senses, sight and 
 sound and sensibility all returning to him 
 slowly and with a strange, numb pricking 
 
 168 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 pain in his limbs, and his body and his brain, 
 the church was quite dark, and the man who 
 had confessed his crime to him was gone. 
 
 Gesualdo gathered himself up with effort, 
 and sat down on the wooden seat and tried 
 to think. He was bitterly ashamed of his 
 own weakness. What was he worth, he, 
 shepherd and leader of men, if at the first 
 word of horror which affrighted him, he 
 fainted as women faint, and failed to speak 
 in answer the condemnation which should 
 have been spoken ? Was it for such cowardice 
 as this that they had anointed him and re- 
 ceived him as a servitor of the Church? 
 
 His first impulse was to gc and relate his 
 feebleness and failure to his bishop ; the next 
 he remembered that even so much support 
 as this he must not seek ; to no living being 
 must he tell this wretched blood-secret. 
 
 The law which respects nothing would not 
 respect the secrets of the confessional ; but 
 he knew that all the human law in the world 
 could not alter his own bondage to the duty 
 he had with his own will accepted. 
 
 It was past midnight when, with trembling 
 limbs, he groped his way out of the porch of 
 169 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 his church and found the entrance of the 
 presbytery, and climbed the stone stairs to 
 his own chamber. 
 
 Candida opened her door, and thrust her 
 head through the aperture, and cried to him : 
 
 'Where have you been mooning, reverend 
 sir, all this while, and the lamp burning to 
 waste and your good bed yawning for you ? 
 You are not a strong man enough to keep 
 these hours, and for a priest they are not 
 decent ones.' 
 
 ' Peace, woman/ said Don Gesualda in a 
 tone which she had never heard from him. 
 He went within and closed the door. He 
 longed for the light of dawn, and yet he 
 dreaded it. 
 
 When the dawn came, it brought nothing 
 to him except the knowledge that the real 
 murderer was there, within a quarter of a 
 mile of him, and yet could not be denounced 
 by him to justice even to save the guiltless. 
 
 The usual occupations of a week-day claimed 
 his time, and he went through them all with 
 mechanical precision, but he spoke all his 
 words as in a dream, and the red sanded 
 bricks of his house, the deal table, with 
 
 170 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 the black coffee and the round loaf set out 
 on it, the stone sink at which Candida was 
 washing endive and cutting lettuces, the old 
 men and women who came and went telling 
 their troubles garrulously and begging for 
 pence, the sunshine which streamed in over 
 the threshold, the poultry which picked up 
 the crumbs off the floor, all these homely 
 and familiar things seemed unreal to him, 
 and were seen as through a mist. 
 
 This little narrow dwelling, with the black 
 cypress shadows falling athwart it, which had 
 once seemed to him the abode of perfect peace, 
 now seemed to imprison him, till his heart 
 failed and died within him. 
 
 In the dead of night, at the end of the week, 
 moved by an unconquerable impulse which had 
 haunted him the whole seven days, he rose and 
 lit a lanthorn and let himself out of his own 
 door noiselessly, stealthily, as though he were 
 on some guilty errand, and took the sexton's 
 spade from the tool-house and went across the 
 black shadows which stretched over the grass, 
 towards the place where the body of Tasso 
 Tassilo had lain dead. In the moonlight there 
 stood, tall and straight, a column of green leaves, 
 171 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 it was the stately Lombardy poplar, which was 
 spared by the hatchet because Marca was, so 
 far as it understood anything, loyal in its regret 
 for the days that were gone. Many birds which 
 had been for hours sound asleep in its boughs 
 flew out with a great whirr of wings, and with 
 chirps of terror, as the footfall of the vicar 
 awakened and alarmed them. He set his 
 lanthorn down on the ground, for the rays of 
 the moon did not penetrate as far as the deep 
 gloom the poplars threw around them, and 
 began to dig. He dug some little time without 
 success, then his spade struck against some- 
 thing which shone amidst the dry clay soil : it 
 was the knife. He took it up with a shudder. 
 There were dark red spots on the steel blade. 
 It was a narrow, slightly curved, knife, about 
 six inches long, such a knife as every Italian of 
 the lower classes carries every day, in despite 
 of the law, and with which most Italian murders 
 are committed. 
 
 He looked at it long. If the inanimate thing 
 could but have spoken, could but have told the 
 act which it had done ! 
 
 He, kneeling on the ground, gazed at it with 
 
 a sickening fascination, then he replaced it 
 172 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 deeper down in the ground, and with his spade 
 smoothed the earth with which he covered it. 
 The soil was so dry that it did not show much 
 trace of having been disturbed. Then he re- 
 turned homeward, convinced now of the truth 
 of the confession made to him. Some men 
 met him on the road, country lads driving 
 cattle early to a distant fair ; they saluted him 
 with respect, but laughed when they had passed 
 him. 
 
 What had his reverence, they wondered, 
 been doing with a spade this time of night ? 
 Did he dig for treasure ? There was a tradition 
 in the country side, of sacks of ducal gold 
 which had been buried by the river to save 
 them from the French troops in the time of 
 of the invasion by the First Consul. 
 
 Don Gesualdo, unconscious of their com- 
 ments, went home, put the spade back in the 
 tool-house, unlocked his church, entered and 
 prayed long ; then waking his sleepy sexton, 
 bade him rise, and set the bell ringing for the 
 first mass. The man got up grumbling because 
 it was still quite dark, and next day talked to 
 his neighbours about the queer ways of his 
 vicar ; how he would walk all night about his 
 173 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 room, sometimes get up and go out in the 
 dead of night even ; he complained that his 
 own health and patience would soon give way. 
 An uneasy feeling grew up in the village, some 
 gossips even suggested that the bishop should 
 be spoken to in the town ; but everyone was 
 fearful of being the first to take such a step, 
 and no one was sure how so great a person 
 could be approached, and the matter remained 
 in abeyance. But the disquietude, and the 
 antagonism, which the manner and appearance 
 of their priest had created, grew with the 
 growth of the year, and with it also the 
 impression that he knew more of the 
 miller's assassination than he would ever 
 say. 
 
 A horrible sense of being this man's ac- 
 complice grew also upon himself ; the bond of 
 silence which he kept perforce with this wretch 
 seemed to him to make him so. His slender 
 strength and sensitive nerves ill fitted him to 
 sustain so heavy a burden, so horrible a 
 knowledge. 
 
 4 It has come to chastise me because I have 
 thought of her too often, have been moved by 
 her too warmly,' he told himself ; and his soul 
 174 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 shrank within him at what appeared the greatness 
 of his own guilt. 
 
 Since receiving the confession of the carter, 
 he did not dare to seek an interview with 
 Generosa. He did not dare to look on her 
 agonised eyes and feel that he knew what could 
 set her free and yet must never tell it. He 
 trembled, lest in sight of the suffering of this 
 woman, who possessed such power to move 
 and weaken him, he should be untrue to his 
 holy office, should let the secret he had to keep 
 escape him. Like all timid and vacillating 
 tempers, he sought refuge in procrastination. 
 
 All unconscious of the growth of public 
 feeling against him, and wrapped in that ab- 
 sorption which comes from one dominant idea, 
 he pursued the routine of his parochial life, and 
 went through all the ceremonials of his office, 
 hardly more conscious of what he did than the 
 candles which his sacristan lighted. The con- 
 fession made to him haunted him night and 
 day. He saw it, as it were, written in letters 
 of blood on the blank, white walls of his bed- 
 chamber, of his sacristy, of his church itself. 
 The murderer was there, at large, unknown to 
 all ; at work like any other man in the clear, 
 175 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 sweet sunshine, talking and laughing, eating 
 and drinking, walking and sleeping, yet as 
 unsuspected as a child unborn. And all the 
 while Generosa was in prison. There was 
 only one chance left, that she should be ac- 
 quitted by her judges. But even then the slur 
 and stain of an imputed, though unproven, 
 crime would always rest upon her and make 
 her future dark, her name a by-word in her 
 birth-place. No mere acquittal, leaving doubt 
 and suspicion behind it, would give her back 
 to the light and joy of life. Every man's 
 hand would be against her ; every child would 
 point at her as the woman who had been accused 
 of the assassination of her husband. 
 
 One day he sought Falko Melegari, when 
 the latter was making up the accounts of his 
 stewardship at an old bureau in a deep window- 
 embrasure of the villa. 
 
 * You know that the date of the trial is fixed 
 for the tenth of next month ? ' he said, in a 
 low, stifled voice. 
 
 The young man, leaning back in his wooden 
 chair, gave a sign of assent. 
 
 1 And you ? ' said Don Gesualdo, with a 
 curious expression in his eyes, ' if they absolve 
 176 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 her, will you have the courage to prove your 
 own belief in her innocence ? Will you marry 
 her when she is set free ? ' 
 
 The question was abrupt and unlooked for ; 
 Falko changed colour ; he hesitated. 
 
 * You will not ! ' said Don Gesualdo. 
 
 'I have not said so,' answered the young 
 man, evasively. 'I do not know that she 
 would exact it/ 
 
 Exact it ! Don Gesualdo did not know much 
 of human nature, but he knew what the use of 
 that cold word implied. 
 
 ' I thought you loved her ! I mistook/ he 
 said, bitterly. A rosy flush came for a moment 
 on the wax-like pallor of his face. 
 
 Falko Melegari looked at him insolently. 
 
 * A churchman should not meddle with these 
 things ! Love her ! I love her — yes. It 
 ruins my life to think of her yonder. I would 
 cut off my right arm to save her ; but to marry 
 her if she come out absolved — that is another 
 thing ; one's name a by-word, one's credulity 
 laughed at, one's neighbours shy of one — that 
 is another thing, I say. It will not be enough 
 for her judges to acquit her ; that will not 
 prove her innocence to all the people here, 
 
 M 177 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 or to my people at home in my own 
 country/ 
 
 He rose and pushed his heavy chair away 
 impatiently ; he was ashamed of his own words, 
 but in the most impetuous Italian natures, prud- 
 ence and self-love are oftentimes the strongest 
 instincts. The priest looked at him with a 
 great scorn in the depths of his dark, deep, 
 luminous eyes. This handsome and virile 
 lover seemed to him a very poor creature ; a 
 coward and faithless. 
 
 ' In the depths of your soul you doubt her 
 yourself ! ' he said, with severity and contempt, 
 as he turned away from the writing table, and 
 went out through the windows into the garden 
 beyond. 
 
 1 No, as God lives, I do not doubt her,' cried 
 Falko Melegari. ' Not for an hour, not for a 
 moment. But to make others believe — that is 
 more difficult. I will maintain her and befriend 
 her always if they set her free ; but marry her 
 — take her to my people — have everyone say 
 that my wife had been in gaol on suspicion of 
 murder — that I could not do ; no man would 
 do it who had a reputation to lose. One loves 
 for love's sake, but one marries for the world's/ 
 
 1 7 8 
 
. DON GESUALDO 
 
 He spoke to empty air ; there was no one to 
 hear him but the little green lizards who had 
 slid out of their holes in the stone under the 
 window-step. Don Gesualdo had gone across 
 the rough grass of the garden, and had passed 
 out of sight beyond the tall hedge of rose-laurel. 
 
 The young man resumed his writing, but he 
 was restless and uneasy, and could not continue 
 his calculations of debit and credit, of loss and 
 profit. He took his gun, whistled his dog, and 
 went up towards the hills, where hares were to 
 be found in the heather and snipe under the 
 gorse, for close time was unrecognised in the 
 province. His temper was ruffled, and his 
 mind in great irritation against his late com- 
 panion ; he felt angrily that he must have 
 appeared a poltroon, and a poor and unmanly 
 lover in the eyes of the churchman. Yet he 
 had only spoken, he felt sure, as any other man 
 would have done in his place. 
 
 In the sympathy of their common affliction, 
 his heart had warmed for awhile to Gesualdo, 
 as to the only one who, like himself, cared for 
 the fate of Tasso Tassilo's wife ; but now that 
 suspicion had entered into him, there returned 
 with it all his detestation of the Church 
 179 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 and all the secular hatreds which the gentle 
 character of the priest of Marca had for a time 
 lulled in him. 
 
 ' Of course he is a liar and a hypocrite,' he 
 thought, savagely. ' Perhaps he was a murderer 
 as well ! ' 
 
 He knew that the idea was a kind of madness. 
 Don Gesualdo had never been known to hurt a 
 fly ; indeed, his aversion to even see pain in- 
 flicted had made him often the laughing-stock 
 of the children of Marca when he had rescued 
 birds, or locusts, or frogs, from their torment- 
 ing fingers, and forbade them to throw stones 
 at the lambs or kids they drove to pasture. 
 'They are not baptised/ the children had often 
 said, with a grin, and Gesualdo had often 
 answered : ' The good God baptised them Him- 
 self/ 
 
 It was utter madness to suppose that such a 
 man, tender as a woman, timid as a sheep, gentle 
 as a spaniel, could possibly have stabbed Tasso 
 Tassilo to the death within a few roods of his 
 own church, almost on holy ground itself. And 
 yet, the idea grew and grew in the mind of Gene- 
 rosa's lover until it acquired all the force of an 
 actual conviction. We welcome no supposition 
 180 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 so eagerly as we do one which accords with and 
 intensifies our own prejudices. He neglected 
 his duties and occupations to brood over this 
 one suspicion, and put together all the trifles 
 which he could remember in confirmation of it. 
 It haunted him wherever he was ; at wine fair, 
 at horse market, at cattle sale, in the corn-field, 
 amongst the vines, surrounded by his peasantry 
 at noonday, or alone in the wild, deserted 
 garden of the villa by moonlight. 
 
 In his pain and fury, it was a solace to 
 him to turn his hatred on to some living 
 creature. As he sat alone and thought over 
 all which had passed (as he did think of it 
 night and day always), many a trifle rose 
 to his mind which seemed to him to confirm 
 his wild and vague suspicions of the vicar of 
 San Bartolo. Himself a free-thinker, it ap- 
 peared natural to suspect any kind of crime 
 in a member of the priesthood. The sceptic 
 is sometimes as narrow and as arrogant in 
 his free-thought as the believer in his bigotry. 
 Falko Melegari was a good-hearted young man, 
 and kind, and gay, and generous by nature ; but 
 he had the prejudices of his time and of his 
 school. These prejudices made him ready to 
 
 181 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 believe that a priest was always fit food for the 
 galleys, or the scaffold, a mass of concealed 
 iniquity covered by his cloth. 
 
 * I believe you know more than anyone,' 
 he said, roughly, one day when he passed the 
 vicar on a narrow field-path, while his eyes 
 flashed suspiciously over the downcast face 
 of Don Gesualdo, who shrank a little as if he 
 had received a blow, and was silent. 
 
 He had spoken on an unconsidered im- 
 pulse, and would have been unable to say 
 what his own meaning really was ; but as he 
 saw the embarrassment, and observed the 
 silence, of his companion;" what he had 
 uttered at hazard seemed to him curiously 
 confirmed and strengthened. 
 
 1 If you know anything which could save 
 her, and you do not speak,' he said, passion- 
 ately, ' may all the devils you believe in 
 torture you through all eternity ! ' 
 
 Don Gesualdo still kept silent. He made 
 the sign of the cross nervously, and went 
 on his way. 
 
 ' Curse all these priests,' said the young 
 man, bitterly, looking after him. ' If one 
 could only deal with them as one does with 
 
 182 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 other men ! — but, in their vileness and their 
 feebleness, they are covered by their frock 
 like women.' 
 
 He was beside himself with rage and 
 misery, and the chafing sense of his own 
 impotence ; he was young, and strong, and 
 ardently enamoured, and yet he could do 
 no more to save the woman he loved from 
 eternal separation from him than if he had 
 been an idiot or an infant, than if he had 
 had no heart in his breast, and no blood 
 in his veins. 
 
 Whenever he met the vicar afterwards, 
 he did not even touch his hat, but scowled 
 at him in scorn, and ceased those outward 
 observances of respect to the Church which 
 he had always given before to please his 
 master, who liked such example to be set 
 by the steward to the peasantry. 
 
 'If Ser Baldo send me away for it, so 
 he must do,' he thought. * I will never 
 set foot in the church again. I should 
 choke that accursed parocco with his own 
 wafer.' 
 
 For suspicion is a poisonous weed which, 
 if left to grow unchecked, soon reaches 
 183 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 maturity, and Falko Melegari soon persuaded 
 himself that his own suspicion was a truth, 
 which only Jacked time, and testimony, to 
 become as clear to all eyes as it was to 
 his. 
 
 184 
 
IV 
 
 Meantime Don Gesualdo was striving with the 
 utmost force that was in him to persuade the 
 real criminal to confess publicly what he had 
 told under the seal of confession. He saw the 
 man secretly, and used every argument with 
 which the doctrines of his Church and his 
 own intense desires could supply him. But 
 there is no obstinacy so dogged, no egotism so 
 impenetrable, no shield against persuasion so 
 absolute, as the stolid ignorance and self-love 
 of a low mind. The carter turned a deaf ear 
 to all censure as to all entreaty ; he was stolidly 
 indifferent to all the woe that he had caused 
 and would cause if he remained silent. What 
 was all that to him? The thought of the 
 miller's widow shut up in prison pleased him. 
 He had always hated her as he had seen her in 
 what he called her finery, going by him in the 
 sunshine, with all her bravery of pearl necklace, 
 of silver hairpins, of gold breast chains. Many 
 185 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 and many a time he had thirsted to snatch at 
 them and pull them off her. What right had 
 she to them, she, a daughter of naked, hungry 
 folks, who dug and carted sea and river sand 
 for a living even as he carted sacks of flour. 
 She was no better than himself! Now and 
 then, Generosa had called him, in her careless, 
 imperious fashion, to draw water or carry wood 
 for her, and when he had done so she never 
 had taken the trouble to bid him good day or 
 to say a good-natured word. His pride had 
 been hurt, and he had had much ado to restrain 
 himself from calling her a daughter of begga A ~s, 
 a worm of the sand. Like her own people, he 
 was pleased that she should now find her fine 
 clothes and her jewelled trinkets of no avail to 
 her, and that she should weep the light out of 
 her big eyes, and the rose-bloom off her peach- 
 like cheeks in the squalor and nausea of a town 
 prison. 
 
 Don Gesualdo, with all the force which a 
 profound conviction that he speaks the truth 
 lends to any speaker, wrestled for the soul of 
 this dogged brute, and warned him of the 
 punishment everlasting which would await him 
 
 if he persisted in his refusal to surrender him- 
 186 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 self to justice. But he might as well have 
 spoken to the great millstones that rest in the 
 river water. Why, then, had this wretch cast 
 the burden of his vile secret on innocent 
 shoulders ? It was the most poignant anguish 
 to him that he could awaken no sense of guilt 
 in the conscience of the criminal. The man 
 had come to him partly from a vague super- 
 stitious impulse, remnant of a credulity instilled 
 into him in childhood, and partly from the 
 want to unburden his mind, to tell his story to 
 someone, which is characteristic of all weak 
 minds in times of trouble and peril. It had 
 relieved him to drag the priest into sharing his 
 own guilty consciousness ; he was half proud 
 and half afraid of the manner in which he had 
 slain his master, and bitterly incensed that he 
 had done the deed for nothing ; but, beyond 
 this, he had no other emotion except that he 
 was glad that Generosa should suffer through 
 and for it. 
 
 * You will burn for ever if you persist in 
 such hideous wickedness,' said Don Gesualdo 
 again and again to him. 
 
 4 1 will take my chance of that/ said the man. 
 1 Hell is far off, and the galleys are near/ 
 187 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 ' But if you do not believe in my power to 
 absolve you or leave you accursed, why did you 
 ever confess to me ? ' cried Don Gesualdo. 
 
 * Because one must clear one's breast to 
 somebody when one has a thing like that on 
 one's mind,' answered the carter, ' and I know 
 you cannot tell of it again.' 
 
 From that position nothing moved him. 
 No entreaties, threats, arguments, denunciations, 
 stirred him a hair's-breadth. He had confessed 
 per sfogarsi (to relieve himself) : that was all. 
 
 But one night after Gesualdo had thus 
 spoken to him, vague fears assailed him, terrors 
 material, not spiritual ; he had parted with his 
 secret ; who could tell that it might not come 
 out like a sleuth hound, and find him and 
 denounce him ? He had told it to be at peace, 
 but he was not at peace. He feared every 
 instant to have the hand of the law upon him. 
 Whenever he heard the trot of the carabineers' 
 horses going through the village, or saw their 
 white belts and cocked hats in the sunlight of 
 the fields, a cold tremor of terror seized him 
 lest the priest should after all have told. He 
 knew that it was impossible, and yet he was 
 afraid. 
 
 188 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 He counted up the money he had saved, a 
 little roll of filthy and crumpled bank notes for 
 very small amounts, and wondered if they 
 would be enough to take him across to America. 
 They were very few, but his fear compelled him 
 to trust to them. He invented a story of 
 remittances which he had received from his 
 brother, and told his fellow-labourers and his 
 employer that he was invited to join that 
 brother, and then he packed up his few clothes 
 and went. At the mill and in the village they 
 talked a little of it, saying that the fellow was 
 in luck, but that they for their parts would not 
 care to go so far. Don Gesualdo heard of his 
 flight in the course of the day. 
 
 * Gone away ! Out of the country ? ' he 
 cried involuntarily, with white lips. 
 
 The people who heard him wondered what 
 it could matter to him that a carter had gone to 
 seek his fortunes over the seas. 
 
 The carter had not been either such a good 
 worker, or such a good boon companion, that 
 anyone at the mill or in the village should 
 greatly regret him. 
 
 'America gets all our rubbish/ said the 
 people, ' much good may it do her.' 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 Meantime, the man took his way across the 
 country, and, sometimes by walking, sometimes 
 by lifts in waggons, sometimes by helping char- 
 coal burners on the road, made his way, first to 
 Vendramino to have his papers put in order, 
 and then to the sea coast, and in the port of 
 Leghorn took his passage in an emigrant ship 
 then loading there. The green cane-brakes and 
 peaceful millet fields of Marca saw him no 
 more. 
 
 But he had left the burden of his blood- 
 guiltiness behind him, and it lay on the guiltless 
 soul with the weight of the world. 
 
 So long as the man had remained in Marca, 
 there had been always a hope present with Don 
 Gesualdo that he would persuade him to confess 
 in a court of justice what he had confessed to 
 the church, or that some sequence of accidents 
 would lead up to the discovery of his guilt. 
 But with the ruffian gone across the seas, lost in 
 that utter darkness which swallows up the lives 
 of the poor and obscure when once they have 
 left the hamlet in which their names mean 
 something to their neighbours, this one hope 
 was quenched, and the vicar, in agony, re- 
 proached himself with not having prevailed in 
 
 IQO 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 his struggle for the wretch's soul ; with not 
 having been eloquent enough, or wise enough, 
 or stern enough to awe him into declaration of 
 his ghastly secret to the law. 
 
 His failure seemed to him a sign of Heaven's 
 wrath against himself. 
 
 * How dare I,' he thought, * how dare I, 
 feeble and timid and useless as I am, call myself 
 a servant of God, or attempt to minister to 
 other souls ? ' 
 
 He had thought, like an imbecile, as he told 
 himself, to be able to awaken the conscience and 
 compel the public confession of this man, and 
 the possibility of flight had never presented 
 itself to his mind, natural and simple as had 
 been such a course to a creature without re- 
 morse, continually haunted by personal fears of 
 punishment. He, he alone on earth, knew the 
 man's guilt ; he, he alone had the power to 
 save Generosa, and he could not use the power 
 because the secrecy of his holy office was 
 fastened on him like an iron padlock on his 
 lips. 
 
 The days passed him like nightmares ; he 
 
 did his duties mechanically, scarcely consciously ; 
 
 the frightful alternative which was set before 
 191 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 him seemed to parch up the very springs of life 
 itself. He knew that he must look strangely 
 in the eyes of the people ; his voice sounded 
 strangely in his own ears ; he began to feel that 
 he was unworthy to administer the blessed 
 bread to the living, to give the last unction to 
 the dying ; he knew that he was not at fault, 
 and yet he felt that he was accursed. Choose 
 what he would, he must, he thought, commit 
 some hateful sin. 
 
 The day appointed for the trial came ; it was 
 the tenth of May. A hot day, with the bees 
 booming amongst the acacia flowers, and the 
 green tree-frogs shouting joyously above in the 
 ilex tops, and the lizards running in and out of 
 the china-rose hedges on the highways. Many 
 people of Marca were summoned as witnesses, 
 and these went to the town in mule carts or 
 crazy chaises, with the farm-horse put in the 
 shafts, and grumbled because they would lose 
 their day's labour in their fields, and yet were 
 pleasurably excited at the idea of seeing Gene- 
 rosa in the prisoner's dock, and being able 
 themselves to tell all they knew, and a great 
 deal that they did not know. 
 
 Falko Melegari rode over at dawn by him- 
 192 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 self, and Don Gesualdo, with his housekeeper 
 and sacristan, who were all summoned to give 
 testimony, went by the diligence, which started 
 from Sant' Arturo, and rolled through the 
 dusty roads and over the bridges, and past the 
 wayside shrines, and shops, and forges, across 
 the country to the town. 
 
 The vicar never spoke throughout the four 
 weary hours during which the rickety and 
 crowded vehicle, with its poor, starved, bruised 
 beasts, rumbled on its road through the lovely 
 shadows and cool sunlight of the early morning. 
 He held his breviary in his hand for form's 
 sake, and, seeing him thus absorbed in holy 
 meditation as they thought, his garrulous 
 neighbours did not disturb him, but chattered 
 amongst themselves, filling the honeysuckle- 
 scented air with the odours of garlic and wine 
 and coarse tobacco. 
 
 Candida glanced at him anxiously from time 
 to time, haunted by a vague presentiment of 
 ill. His face looked very strange, she thought, 
 and his closely-locked lips were white as the 
 lips of a corpse. When the diligence was 
 driven over the stones of the town, all the 
 passengers by it descended at the first wine- 
 N 193 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 house which they saw on the piazza to eat 
 and drink, but he, with never a word, motioned 
 his housekeeper aside when she would have 
 pressed food on him, and went into the 
 cathedral of the place to pray alone. 
 
 The town was hot and dusty and sparsely 
 peopled. It had brown walls and large brick 
 palaces untenanted, and ancient towers, also of 
 brick, pointing high to heaven. It was a place 
 dear to the memory of lovers of art for the 
 sake of some fine paintings of the Sienese school 
 which hung in its churches, and was occasionally 
 visited by strangers for sake of these ; but, for 
 the most part, it was utterly forgotten by the 
 world, and its bridge of many arches, said to 
 have been built by Augustus, seldom re- 
 sounded to any other echoes than those of the 
 heavy wheels of the hay or corn waggons 
 coming in from the pastoral country around. 
 
 The Court-house, where all great trials took 
 place, stood in one of the bare, silent, dusty squares 
 of the town. It had once been the ancient palace 
 of the Podesta, and had the machicolated walls, 
 the turreted towers, and the vast stairways and 
 frescoed chambers of a larger and statelier time 
 than ours. The hall of justice was a vast 
 194 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 chamber pillared with marble, vaulted and 
 painted, sombre and grand. It was closely- 
 thronged with country folks ; there was a scent 
 of hay, of garlic, of smoking pipes hastily 
 thrust into trouser pockets, of unwashed flesh 
 steaming hotly in the crowd, and the close 
 air. The judge was there with his officers, a 
 mediaeval figure in black square cap and black 
 gown. The accused was behind the cage as- 
 signed to such prisoners, guarded by carabineers 
 and by the jailers. Don Gesualdo looked in 
 once from a distant doorway ; then with a 
 noise in his ears like the sound of the sea, 
 and a deadly sickness on him, he stayed with- 
 out in the audience- chamber, where a breath 
 of air came to him up one of the staircases, 
 there waiting until his name was called. 
 
 The trial began. Everything was the same 
 as it had been in the preliminary examination 
 which had preceded her committal on the 
 charge of murder. The same depositions were 
 made now that had then been made. In the 
 interval, the people of Marca had forgotten 
 a good deal, so added somewhat of their own 
 invention to make up for the deficiency ; but, 
 on the whole, the testimony was the same 
 i9S 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 given with that large looseness of statement, 
 and absolute indifference to fact, so character- 
 istic of the Italian mind, the judge, from 
 habit, sifting the chaff from the wheat in the 
 evidence with unerring skill, and following 
 with admirable patience the tortuous windings 
 and the hazy imagination of the peasants he 
 examined. 
 
 The examination of the vicar did not come on 
 until the third day. These seventy or eighty 
 hours of suspense were terrible to him. He 
 scarcely broke his fast, or was conscious of 
 what he did. The whole of the time was 
 passed by him listening in the court of justice, 
 or praying in the churches. When at last he 
 was summoned, a cold sweat bathed his face 
 and hair ; his hands trembled ; he answered 
 the interrogations of the judge and of the 
 advocates almost at random ; his replies seemed 
 scarcely to be those of a rational being ; he 
 passionately affirmed her innocence with de- 
 lirious repetition and emphasis, which produced 
 on the minds of the examiners the contrary 
 effect to that which he endeavoured to create. 
 
 1 This priest knows that she is guilty, ' 
 thought the president. ' He knows it — perhaps 
 196 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 he knows even more — perhaps he was her 
 accomplice.' 
 
 His evidence, his aspect, his wild and con- 
 tradictory words, did as much harm to her 
 cause as he ignorantly strove to do good. 
 From other witnesses of Marca, the Court 
 had learned that a great friendship had always 
 been seen to exist between the vicar of San 
 Bartolo and Generosa Fe, and that on the 
 morning when the murder was discovered, 
 the priest had removed the body of the dead 
 man to the sacristy, forestalling the officers of 
 justice and disturbing the scene of the murder. 
 A strong impression against him was created 
 beforehand in the audience and on the bench, 
 and his pallid, agitated countenance, his in- 
 coherent words, his wild eyes, which inces- 
 santly sought the face of the prisoner, all 
 gave him the appearance of a man conscious 
 of some guilt himself and driven out of his 
 mind by fear. The president cross-examined 
 him without mercy, censured him, railed at 
 him, and did his uttermost to extract the truth 
 which he believed that Don Gesualdo concealed, 
 but to no avail ; incoherent and half-insane as 
 he seemed, he said no syllable which could 
 197 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 betray that which he really knew. Only when 
 his eyes rested on Generosa, there was such an 
 agony in them that she herself was startled 
 by it. 
 
 * Who would ever have dreamt that he 
 would have cared so much ? ' she thought. 
 ' But he was always a tender soul ; he always 
 pitied the birds in the traps, and the oxen that 
 went to the slaughter.' 
 
 Reproved, and censured without stint, for 
 the president knew that to insult a priest was 
 to merit promotion in high quarters, Don 
 Gesualdo was at last permitted to escape from 
 his place of torture. Blind and sick he got 
 away through the crowd, past the officials, 
 down the stairs, and out into the hot air. 
 The piazza was thronged with people who 
 could not find standing room in the Court- 
 house. The murmur of their rapid and loud 
 voices was like the noise of a sea on his ears ; 
 they had all the same burden. They all re- 
 peated like one man the same words : ' They 
 will condemn her,' and then wondered what 
 sentence she would receive ; whether a score 
 of years of seclusion or a lifetime. 
 
 He went through the chattering, curious 
 
 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 cruel throng, barbarous with that barbarity of 
 the populace, which in all countries sees with 
 glee a bull die, a wrestler drop, a malefactor 
 ascend the scaffold, or a rat scour the streets 
 soaked in petroleum and burning aiive. The 
 dead man had been nothing to them, and his 
 wife had done none of them any harm, yet 
 there was not a man or a woman, a youth or 
 a girl in the crowd, who would not have felt 
 that he or she was defrauded of his entertain- 
 ment if she were acquitted by her judges, 
 although there was a general sense amongst 
 them that she had done no more than had 
 been natural, and no more than had been her 
 right. 
 
 The dark, slender, emaciated figure of the 
 priest glided through the excited and boisterous 
 groups ; the air had the heat of summer ; the 
 sky above was blue and cloudless ; the brown 
 brick walls of church and palace seemed baking 
 in the iight of the sun, In the corner of the 
 square was a fountain relic of the old times 
 when the town had been a place of pageantry 
 and power ; beautiful pale green water, cold 
 and fresh, leaping and flowing around marble 
 dolphins. Don Gesualdo stooped and drank 
 199 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 thirstily, as though he would never cease to 
 drink, then went on his way and pushed aside 
 the leathern curtain of the cathedral door and 
 entered into the coolness and solitude of that 
 place of refuge. 
 
 There he stretched himself before the cross 
 in prayer, and wept bitter, burning, unavailing 
 tears for the burden which he bore of another's 
 sin and his own helplessness beneath it, which 
 seemed to him like a greater crime. 
 
 But even at the very altar of his God, peace 
 was denied him. Hurried, loud, impetuous 
 steps from heavy boots fell on the old, worn, 
 marble floor of the church, and Falko Melegari 
 strode up behind him and laid a heavy hand 
 upon his shoulders. The young man's face 
 was deeply flushed, his eyes were savage, his 
 breath was quick and uneven ; he had no heed 
 for the sanctity of the place or of his com- 
 panion. 
 
 'Get up and hear me,' he said, roughly. 
 1 They all say the verdict will be against her ; 
 you heard them.' 
 
 Don Gesualdo made a gesture of assent 
 
 'Very well, then,' said the steward, through 
 his clenched teeth, ' if it be so, indeed, I swear, 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 as you and I live, that I will denounce you to 
 the judges in her stead.' 
 
 Don Gesualdo did not speak. He stood in 
 a meditative attitude with his arms folded on 
 his chest. He did not express either surprise 
 or indignation. 
 
 ' I will denounce you/ repeated Melegari, 
 made more furious by his silence. ' What 
 did you do at night with your spade under the 
 Grand Duke's poplars? Why did you carry 
 in and screen the corpse ? Does not the whole 
 village talk of your strange ways and your 
 altered habits? There is more than enough 
 against you to send to the galleys a score of 
 better men than you. Anyhow, I will de- 
 nounce you if you do not make a clean breast 
 of all you know to the president to-morrow. 
 You are either the assassin or the accomplice, 
 you accursed, black-coated hypocrite ! ' 
 
 A slight flush rose on the waxen pallor of 
 Don Gesualdo's face, but he still kept silence. 
 
 The young man, watching him with eyes of 
 hatred, saw guilt in that obstinate and mulish 
 dumbness. 
 
 ' You dare not deny it, trained liar though 
 you be ! ' he said, with passionate scorn. * Oh, 
 20 1 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 wretched cur, who ventures to call yourself a 
 servitor of heaven, you would let her drag all 
 her years out in misery to save your own 
 miserable, puling, sexless, worthless life ! Well! 
 hear me and understand. No one can say that 
 I do not keep my word, and here, by the cross 
 which hangs above us, I take my oath that if 
 you do not tell all you know to-morrow, should 
 she be condemned, I will denounce you to the 
 law, and if the law fail to do justice, I will kill 
 you as Tasso Tassilo was killed. May I die 
 childless, penniless, and accursed if my hand 
 fail ! ' 
 
 Then, with no other word, he strode from 
 the church, the golden afternoon sunshine 
 streaming through the stained windows above 
 and falling on his fair hair, his flushed face, his 
 flaming eyes, till his common humanity seemed 
 all transfigured. He looked like the avenging 
 angel of Tintoretto's Paradise. 
 
 Don Gesualdo stood immovable in the 
 deserted church ; his arms crossed on his 
 breast, his head bent. A great resolve, a 
 mighty inspiration, had descended on him with 
 the furious words of his foe. Light had come 
 to him as from heaven itself. He could not 
 
DON GESUALDO .. 
 
 give up the secret which had been confided to 
 him in the confessional, but he could give up 
 himself. His brain was filled with legends of 
 sacrifice and martyrdom. Why might he not 
 become one of that holy band of martyrs ? 
 
 Nay, he was too humble to place himself 
 beside them even in thought. The utmost he 
 could do, he knew, would be only expiation 
 for what seemed to him his ineffaceable sin in 
 letting any human affection, however harmless, 
 unselfish, and distant, stain the singleness and 
 purity of his devotion to his vows. He had 
 been but a fisher-boy, until he had taken his 
 tender heart and his ignorant mind to the 
 seminary, and he had been born with the soul 
 of a San Rocco, of a S. John, out of place, out 
 of time, in the world he lived in ; a soul in 
 which the passions of faith and of sacrifice were 
 as strong as are the passions of lust and of 
 selfishness in other natures. The spiritual 
 world was to him a reality, and the earth, with 
 its merciless and greedy peoples, its plague of 
 lusts, its suffering hearts, its endless injustice, 
 an unreal and hideous dream. 
 
 To his temper, the sacrifice which suddenly 
 rose before him as his duty, appeared one which 
 203 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 would reconcile him at once to the Deity he 
 had offended, and the humanity he was tempted 
 to betray. To his mind, enfeebled and ex- 
 hausted by long fasting of the body and denial 
 of every natural indulgence, such sacrifice of 
 self seemed an imperious command from 
 heaven. He would drag out his own life in 
 misery, and obloquy, indeed, but what of that ? 
 Had not the great martyrs and founders of his 
 Church endured as much or more ? Was it 
 not by such torture, voluntarily accepted and 
 endured on earth, that the grace of God was 
 won ? 
 
 He would tell a lie, indeed ; he would draw 
 down ignominy on the name of the Church ; 
 he would make men believe that an anointed 
 priest was a common murderer, swayed by low 
 and jealous hatreds ; but of this he did not 
 think. In the tension and perplexity of his 
 tortured soul, the vision of a sacrifice in which 
 he would be the only sufferer, in which the 
 woman would be saved, and the secret told 
 to him be preserved, appeared as a heaven-sent 
 solution of the doubts and difficulties in his 
 path. Stretched in agonised prayer before one 
 
 of the side altars of the cathedral, he imagined 
 204 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 the afternoon sunbeams streaming through the 
 high window on his face to be the light of a 
 celestial world, and in the hush and heat of the 
 incense-scented air, he believed that he heard a 
 voice which cried to him, ' By suffering all 
 things are made pure.' 
 
 He was not a wise, or strong, or educated 
 man. He had the heart of a poet, and the 
 mind of a child. There was a courage in him 
 to which sacrifice was welcome, and there was a 
 credulity in him which made all exaggeration of 
 simple faith possible. He was young and 
 ignorant and weak ; yet at the core of his 
 heart there was a dim heroism : he could 
 suffer and be mute, and in the depths of his 
 heart he loved this woman better than himself, 
 with a love which in his belief made him 
 accursed for all time. 
 
 When he at last arose and went out of the 
 church doors, his mind was made up to the 
 course that he would take ; an immense calm 
 had descended upon the unrest of his soul. 
 
 The day was done, the sun had set, the 
 
 scarlet flame of its afterglow bathed all the 
 
 rusty walls and dusty ground with colours of 
 
 glory. The crowd had dispersed ; there was 
 205 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 no sound in the deserted square except the 
 ripple of the water as it fell from the dolphins' 
 mouths into the marble basin. As he heard 
 that sweet, familiar murmur of the falling 
 stream, the tears rose in his eyes and blotted 
 out the flame-like pomp and beauty of the 
 skies. Never again would he hear the water 
 of the Marca river rushing, in cool autumn 
 days, past the poplar stems and the primrose 
 roots upon its mossy banks ; never again would 
 he hear in the place of his birth the grey-green 
 waves of Arno sweeping through the cane- 
 brakes to the sea. 
 
 At three of the clock on the following day 
 the judgment was given in the court. 
 
 Generosa Fe was decreed guilty of the 
 murder of her husband, and sentenced to 
 twenty years of solitary confinement. She 
 dropped like a stone when she heard the 
 sentence, and was carried out from the court 
 insensible. Her lover, when he heard it, gave 
 a roar of anguish like that of some great 
 beast in torment, and dashed his head against 
 the wall and struggled like a mad bull in the 
 hands of the men who tried to hold him. Don 
 Gesualdo, waiting without, on the head of the 
 206 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 staircase, did not even change countenance ; 
 to him this bitterness, as of the bitterness of 
 death, had been long past ; he had been long 
 certain what the verdict would be, and he 
 had, many hours before, resolved on his own 
 part. 
 
 A great calm had come upon his soul, and 
 his face had that tranquillity which comes alone 
 from a soul which is at peace within itself. 
 
 The sultry afternoon shed its yellow light on 
 
 the brown and grey and dusty town ; the crowd 
 
 poured out of the Court-house, excited, contrite, 
 
 voluble, pushing and bawling at one another, 
 
 ready to take the side of the condemned 
 
 creature now that she was the victim of the 
 
 law. The priest alone of them all did not 
 
 move ; he remained sitting on the upright 
 
 chair under a sculptured allegory of Justice 
 
 and Equity which was on the arch above his 
 
 head, and with the golden light of sunset falling 
 
 down on him through the high casement above. 
 
 He paid no heed to the hurrying of the crowd, 
 
 to the tramp of guards, to the haste of clerks 
 
 and officials eager to finish their day's work and 
 
 get away to their wine and dominoes at the 
 
 taverns. His hands mechanically held his 
 207 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 breviary ; his lips mechanically repeated a 
 Latin formula of prayer. When all the people 
 were gone, one of the custodians of the place 
 touched his arm, telling him that they 
 were about to close the doors ; he raised his 
 eyes like one who is wakened from a trance, 
 and to the man said quietly : 
 
 * I would see the president of the court for a 
 moment, quite alone. Is it possible ? ' 
 
 After many demurs and much delay, they 
 brought him into the presence of the judge, 
 in a small chamber of the great palace. 
 
 * What do you want with me ? ' asked the 
 judge, looking nervously at the white face and 
 the wild eyes of his unbidden visitant. 
 
 Don Gesualdo answered : 'I am come to tell 
 you that you have condemned an innocent 
 woman.' 
 
 The judge looked at him with sardonic 
 derision and contempt. 
 
 * What more ? ' he asked. ' If she be innocent, 
 will you tell me who is guilty ? ' 
 
 * I am,' replied the priest. 
 At his trial he never spoke. 
 
 With his head bowed and his hands clasped, 
 
 he stood in the cage where she had stood, and 
 208 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 never replied by any single word to the repeated 
 interrogations of his judges. Many witnesses 
 were called, and all they said testified to the 
 apparent truth of his self-accusation. Those 
 who had always vaguely suspected him, all 
 those who had seen him close the door of the 
 sacristy on the crowd when he had borne the 
 murdered man within, the mule drivers who 
 had seen him digging at night under the great 
 poplars, the sacristan who had been awakened 
 by him that same night so early, even his old 
 housekeeper, though she swore that he was 
 a lamb, a saint, an angel, a creature too good 
 for earth, a holy man whose mind was dis- 
 traught by fasting, by visions, these all, either 
 wilfully or ignorantly, bore witness which con- 
 firmed his own confession. The men of law 
 had the mould and grass dug up under the 
 Grand Duke's poplar, and when the blood- 
 stained knife was found therein, the very earth, 
 it seemed, yielded up testimony against him. 
 
 In the end, after many weeks of investigation, 
 Generosa was released and Don Gesualdo was 
 sentenced in her place. 
 
 Falko Melegari married her, and they went 
 to live in his own country in the Lombard 
 O 209 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 plains, and were happy and properous, and 
 the village of Marca and the waters of its 
 cane-shadowed stream knew them no more. 
 
 Sometimes she would say to her husband : 
 * I cannot think that he was guilty ; there 
 was some mystery in it.' 
 
 Her husband always laughed, and said in 
 answer : * He was guilty, be sure ; it was 
 I who frightened him into confession ; those 
 black rats of the Church have livers as white 
 as their coats are black.' 
 
 Generosa did not wholly believe, but she 
 thrust the grain of doubt and of remorse 
 away from her and played with her hand- 
 some children. After all, she mused, what 
 doubt could there be ? Did not Don Gesualdo 
 himself reveal his guilt, and had he not always 
 cared for her, and was not the whole popula- 
 tion of Marca willing to bear witness that they 
 had always suspected him and had only held 
 their peace out of respect for the Church? 
 
 He himself lived two long years amongst 
 the galley-slaves of the western coast ; all that 
 time he never spoke, and he was considered 
 by the authorities to be insane. Then, in 
 the damp and cold of the third winter, his 
 
DON GESUALDO 
 
 lungs decayed, his frail strength gave way, he 
 died of what they called tuberculosis, in the 
 spring or the year. In his last moments 
 there was seen a light of unspeakable ecstasy 
 upon his face, a smile of unspeakable rapture 
 on his mouth. 
 
 ' Domine Deus libera me ! ' he murmured, 
 as he died. 
 
 A bird came and sang at the narrow case- 
 ment of his prison cell as his spirit passed 
 away. It was a nightingale : perchance one 
 of those who had once sung to him in the 
 summer nights from the wild-rose hedge at 
 Marca. 
 
 211 
 

THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 i 
 
 Genistrello is a wild place in the Pistoiese hills. 
 
 Its name is derived from the genista or broom 
 which covers many an acre of the soil, and shares 
 with the stone pine and the sweet chestnut the 
 scanty earth which covers its granite and sand- 
 stone. It is beautiful exceedingly ; but its 
 beauty is only seen by those to whom it is a 
 dead letter which they have no eyes to read. 
 It is one of the many spurs of the Apennines 
 which here lie overlapping one another in curve 
 upon curve of wooded slopes with the higher 
 mountains rising behind them ; palaces, which 
 once were fortresses, hidden in their valleys, and 
 ruined castles, or deserted monasteries, crowning 
 their crests. 
 
 From some of these green hills the sea is 
 visible, and when the sun sets where the sea is 
 215 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 and the red evening glows behind the distant 
 peaks, it is lovely as a poet's dream. 
 
 On the side of this lonely hill, known as 
 Genistrello, there dwelt a man of the name of 
 Castruccio Lascarisi. He was called ' Caris ' by 
 the whole countryside ; indeed, scarcely any 
 knew that he had another patronymic, so en- 
 tirely amongst these people does the nickname 
 extinguish, by its perpetual use, the longer 
 appellative. 
 
 His family name was of Greek extraction un- 
 doubtedly ; learned Greeks made it familiar in 
 the Italian Renaissance, at the courts of 
 Lorenzo and of Ludovico ; but how it had 
 travelled to the Pistoiese hills to be borne by un- 
 learned hinds none knew, any more than any know 
 who first made the red tulip blossom as a wild 
 flower amidst the wheat, or who first sowed the 
 bulb of the narcissus amongst the wayside grass. 
 
 He lived miles away from the chapel and the 
 hamlet. He had a little cabin in the heart of 
 the chestnut woods, which his forefathers had 
 lived in before him ; they had no title which 
 they could have shown for it except usage, but 
 that had been title enough for them, and was 
 enough for Caris. 
 
 216 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 It had been always so. It would be always 
 so. His ideas went no further. The autumnal 
 migration was as natural and inevitable to him 
 as to the storks and herons and wild duck 
 which used to sail over his head, going south- 
 ward like himself as he walked through the 
 Tuscan to the Roman Maremma. But his dis- 
 like to the Maremma winters was great, and 
 had never changed in him since he had trotted 
 by his father's side, a curly-pated baby in a 
 little goatskin shirt looking like a Correggio's 
 St. John. 
 
 What he longed for, and what he loved, were 
 the cool heights of Genistrello and the stone 
 hut with the little rivulet of water gushing at 
 its threshold. No one had ever disturbed his 
 people there. It was a square little place built 
 of big unmortared stones in old Etruscan 
 fashion ; the smoke from the hearth went out 
 by a hole in the roof, and a shutter and door of 
 unplaned wood closed its only apertures. 
 
 The lichen and weeds and mosses had welded 
 the stones together, and climbed up over its 
 conical rush roof. No better home could be 
 needed in summer-time ; and when the cold 
 weather came, he locked the door and went 
 217 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 down with his pack, on his back and a goatshair 
 belt round his loins to take the familiar way to 
 the Roman Maremma. 
 
 Caris was six-and-twenty years old ; he 
 worked amongst the chestnut woods in summer 
 and went to the Maremma for field labour in 
 the winter, as so many of these husbandmen 
 do ; walking the many leagues which separate 
 the provinces, and living hardly in both seasons. 
 The songs they sing are full of allusions to this 
 semi-nomadic life, and the annual migration has 
 been a custom ever since the world was young — 
 when the great Roman fleets anchored where 
 now are sand and marsh, and stately classic 
 villas lifted their marble to the sun where now 
 the only habitation seen is the charcoal-burner's 
 rush-roofed, moss-lined hut. 
 
 Caris was a well-built, lithe, slender son of the 
 soil, brown from sun and wind, with the straight 
 features and the broad low brows of the classic 
 type, and great brown eyes like those of the 
 oxen which he drove over the vast plains down 
 in the Maremma solitudes. He knew nothing 
 except his work. 
 
 He was not very wise, and he was wholly 
 unlearned, but he had a love of nature in his 
 218 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 breast, and he would sit at the door of his hut 
 at evening time, with his bowl of bean-soup 
 between his knees, and often forget to eat in his 
 absorbed delight as the roseate glow from the 
 vanished sunrays overspread all the slopes of 
 the Pistoiese Apennines and the snow-crowned 
 crests of the Carara mountains. 
 
 ' What do you see there, goose ? ' said a char- 
 coal-burner, once passing him as he sat thus 
 upon his threshold with the dog at his feet. 
 
 Caris shrugged his shoulders stupidly and 
 half-ashamed. He could not read the great 
 book outspread upon the knees of the moun- 
 tains, yet he imperfectly felt the beauty of its 
 emblazoned pages. 
 
 The only furniture in the cabin was a table 
 made of a plank, two rude benches, and one 
 small cupboard ; the bed was only dried leaves 
 and moss. There were a pipkin, two platters, 
 and a big iron pot which swung by a cord and 
 a hook over the stones where the fire, when 
 lighted, burned. They were enough ; he 
 would not have known what to do with more if 
 he had had more. He was only there from 
 May to October ; and in the fragrant summers 
 of Italian chestnut woods, privation is easily 
 219 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 borne. The winter life was harder and more 
 hateful ; yet it never occurred to him to do else 
 than to go to Maremma ; his father and grand- 
 father had always gone thither, and as naturally 
 as the chestnuts ripen and fall, so do the men in 
 autumn join the long lines of shepherds and 
 drovers and women and children and flocks and 
 herds which wind their way down the mountain 
 slopes and across the level wastes of plain and 
 marsh to seek herbage and work for the winter- 
 time. 
 
 It never entered the head of Caris, or of the 
 few who knew him or worked with him, to 
 wonder how he and his had come thither. They 
 were there as the chestnut-trees were, as the 
 broom was, as the goats and squirrels and wood- 
 birds were there. The peasant no more wonders 
 about his own existence than a stone does. 
 For generations a Lascaris had lived in that 
 old stone hut which might itself be a relic of 
 
 o 
 
 an Etruscan tomb or temple. No one was 
 concerned to know further. 
 
 The peasant does not look back ; he only 
 
 sees the road to gain his daily meal of bread 
 
 or chestnuts. The past has no meaning to him, 
 
 and to the future he never looks. That is the 
 
 220 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 reason why those who want to cultivate or con- 
 vince him fail utterly. If a man cannot see the 
 horizon itself, it is of no use to point out to 
 him spires or trees or towers which stand out 
 against it. 
 
 The world has never understood that the 
 moment the labourer is made to see, he is made 
 unhappy, being ill at ease and morbidly envious 
 and ashamed, and wholly useless. Left alone, 
 he is content in his own ruminant manner, 
 as the buffalo is when left untormented amidst 
 the marshes, grazing at peace and slumbering 
 amidst the rushes and the canes. 
 
 Caris was thus content. He had health and 
 strength, though sometimes he had a fever-chill 
 from new-turned soil and sometimes a frost- 
 chill from going out on an empty stomach 
 before the sun had broken the deep shadows of 
 the night. But from these maladies all out- 
 door labourers suffer, and he was young, and 
 they soon passed. He had been the only son 
 of his mother; and this fact had saved him 
 from conscription. As if she had lived long 
 enough when she had rendered him this service, 
 she died just as he had fulfilled his twenty-third 
 year ; and without her the stone hut seemed for 
 
 221 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 awhile lonely; he had to make his fire, and boil 
 or roast his chestnuts, and mend holes in his 
 shirts, and make his own rye loaves; but he 
 soon got used to this, and when in Maremma 
 he always worked with a gang, and was fed and 
 lodged — badly, indeed, but regularly — at the 
 huge stone burn which served such purposes on 
 the vast tenuta where the long lines of husband- 
 men toiled from dusk of dawn to dusk of eve 
 under the eye and lash of their overseer; and 
 when on his native slopes of Genistrello he was 
 always welcome to join the charcoal-burners' 
 rough company or the woodsmen's scanty 
 supper, and seldom passed, or had need to pass, 
 his leisure hours alone. And these were very few. 
 His mother had been a violent-tempered 
 woman, ruling him with a rod of iron, as she 
 had ruled her husband before him; a woman 
 loud of tongue, stern of temper, dreaded for 
 miles around as a witch and an evil-eye; and 
 although the silence and solitude which reigned 
 in the cabin after her death oppressed him pain- 
 fully at first, he soon grew used to these, and 
 found the comfort of them. He brought a 
 dog with him after his winter in Maremma 
 which followed on his mother's loss — a white 
 222 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 dog of the Maremma breed, and he and the 
 dog kept house together in the lonely woods in 
 fellowship and peace. Caris was gentle and 
 could never beat or kick a beast as others of 
 his kind do ; and the oxen he drove knew this. 
 He felt more akin to them and to the dogs 
 than he did to the men with whom he worked. 
 He could not have expressed or explained this, 
 but he felt it. 
 
 He had little mind, and what he had moved 
 slowly when it moved at all ; but he had a 
 generous nature, a loyal soul, and a simple and 
 manly enjoyment of his hard life. It did not 
 seem hard to him. He had run about on his 
 bare feet all his childhood until their soles were 
 as hard as leather, and he was so used to his 
 daily meal of chestnuts in cold weather, and of 
 maize or rye-bread with cabbage, or bean-soup, 
 in the hot season, that he never thought of 
 either as meagre fare. In summer he wore 
 rough hempen shirt and trousers ; in winter 
 goatskin and rough homespun wool. In appear- 
 ance, in habits, in clothing, in occupation, he 
 differed little from the peasant who was on that 
 hillside in the times of Pliny and of Properticus. 
 Only the gods were changed ; Pan piped no 
 223 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 more in the thicket, the Naiad laughed no 
 longer in the brook, the Nymph and Satyr 
 frolicked never beneath the fronds of the ferns. 
 
 In their stead there was only a little gaudy 
 chapel on a stony slope, and a greasy, double- 
 chinned, yellow-cheeked man in black, who 
 frowned if you did not give him your hardly- 
 earned pence, and lick the uneven bricks of the 
 chapel floor when he ordered you a penance. 
 
 Caris cared little for that man's frown. 
 
 He sat thus at his door one evening when 
 the sun was setting behind the many peaks and 
 domes of the Apennine spurs which fronted 
 him. The sun itself had sunk beyond them 
 half an hour before, but the red glow which 
 comes and stays long after it was in the heavens 
 and on the hills. 
 
 Genistrello was a solitary place, and only 
 here and there a hut or cot like his own was 
 hidden away under the saplings and under- 
 growth. Far away down in the valley were 
 the belfries and towers of the little strong- 
 walled city which had been so often as a lion in 
 the path to the invading hosts of Germany; 
 and like a narrow white cord the post-road, 
 now so rarely used, wound in and out until its 
 224 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 slender thread was lost in the blue vapours of 
 the distance, and the shadows from the clouds. 
 
 Bells were tolling from all the little spires 
 and towers on the hills and in the valleys, for 
 it was a vigil, and there was the nearer tinkle 
 of the goats' bells under the heather and broom 
 as those innocent marauders cropped their supper 
 off the tender chestnut-shoots, the trails of 
 ground ivy, and the curling woodbine. Caris, 
 with his bowl of bean-soup between his knees 
 and his hunch of rye-bread in his hand, ate 
 hungrily, whilst his eyes rilled themselves with 
 the beauty of the landscape. His stomach was 
 empty — which he knew, and his soul was empty 
 — which he did not know. 
 
 He looked up, and saw a young woman 
 standing in front of him. She was handsome, 
 with big, bright eyes, and a rosy mouth, and 
 dusky glossy hair coiled up on her head like a 
 Greek Venus. 
 
 He had never seen her before, and her sudden 
 apparition there startled him. 
 
 ' Good-even, Caris,' she said familiarly, with 
 a smile like a burst of sunlight. ' Is the mother 
 indoors, eh ? ' 
 
 Caris continued to stare at her. 
 P 225 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 ' Eh, are you deaf ? ' she asked impatiently. 
 ' Is the mother in, I want to know ? ' 
 
 c My mother is dead,' said Caris, without 
 preamble. 
 
 < Dead ! When did she die ? ' 
 ' Half a year ago,' said Caris, with the peasant's 
 confusion of dates and elongation of time. 
 
 1 That is impossible,' said the young woman 
 quickly. * I saw her myself and spoke with her 
 here on this very spot in Easter week. What 
 makes you say she is dead ? ' 
 
 f Because she is dead ! ' said Caris doggedly. 
 * If you do not believe it, go and ask the 
 sacristan and sexton over there.' 
 
 He made a gesture of his head towards the 
 belfry of an old hoary church, dedicated to St. 
 Fulvo, which was seven miles away amongst the 
 chestnut woods of an opposing hillside, and 
 where his mother had been buried by her wish, 
 because it was her birthplace. 
 
 The girl this time believed him. She was 
 dumb for a little while with astonishment and 
 regret. Then she said, in a tone of awe and 
 expectation, ' She left her learning and power 
 with you, eh ? — and the books ? ' 
 
 c No,' said Caris rudely. ( I had all the 
 226 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 uncanny things buried with her. What use- 
 were they ? She lived and died with scarce 
 a shift to her back/ 
 
 * Oh ! ' said the girl, in a shocked tone, as 
 though she reproved a blasphemy. * She was a 
 wonderful woman, Caris.' 
 
 Caris laughed a little. 
 
 ' Eh, you say so. Well, all her wisdom 
 never put bit nor drop in her mouth nor a 
 copper piece in her hand that I did not work 
 for ; what use was it, pray ? ' 
 
 c Hush. Don't speak so ! ' said the maiden, 
 looking timidly over her shoulder to the under- 
 growth and coppice growing dim in the shadows 
 of the evening. 
 
 ' 'Tis the truth ! ' said Caris stubbornly. ' I 
 did my duty by her, poor soul ; and yet I fear 
 me the Evil One waited for her all the while, 
 for as soon as the rattle came in her throat, a 
 white owl flapped and screeched on the thatch, 
 and a black cat had sat on the stones yonder 
 ever since the sun had set.' 
 
 c The saints preserve us ! ' murmured the 
 girl, her rich brown and red skin growing 
 pale. 
 
 There was silence ; Caris finished munching 
 227 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 his bread ; he looked now and then at his visitor 
 with open-eyed surprise and mute expectation. 
 
 ' You have buried the things with her? ' she 
 asked him, in a low tone, at length. 
 
 He nodded in assent. 
 
 < What a pity ! What a pity ! ' 
 
 < Why that ? ' 
 
 * Because if they are underground with her 
 nobody can use them.' 
 
 Caris stared with his eyes wider opened still. 
 
 c What do you want with the devil's tools, a 
 fresh, fair young thing like you ? ' 
 
 1 Your mother used them for me,' she an- 
 swered crossly. 'And she had told me a 
 number of things — ay, a vast number ! And 
 just in the middle uncle spied us out, and he 
 swore at her and dragged me away, and I had 
 never a chance to get back here till to-night, 
 and now — now you say she is dead, and she 
 will never tell me aught any more/ 
 
 ' What can vou want so sore to know ? ' said 
 Caris, with wonder, as he rose to his feet. 
 
 c That is my business,' said the girl. 
 
 ' True, so it is,' said Caris. 
 
 But he looked at her with wonder in his dark- 
 brown, ox- like eyes. 
 
 228 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 ' Where do you live ? ' he asked ; c and how 
 knew you my name ? ' 
 
 c Everybody knows your name,' she answered. 
 c You are Caris, the son of Lisabetta, and when 
 you sit on your doorstep it would be a fool 
 indeed would not see who you are.' 
 
 'So it would,' said Caris. 'But you,' he 
 added after a pause, ' who are you ? And what 
 did you want with Black Magic ? ' 
 
 ' I am Santina, the daughter of Neri, the 
 smith, by the west gate in Pistoia,' she said in 
 reply to the first question, and making none to 
 the second. 
 
 ' But what wanted you of my mother ? ' he 
 persisted. 
 
 c They said she knew strange things,' said the 
 girl evasively. 
 
 4 If she did she had little profit of them,' said 
 Caris sadly. 
 
 The girl looked at him with great persuasive- 
 ness in her face, and leaned a little nearer to him. 
 
 * You did not really bury the charms with 
 her ? You have got them inside ? You will let 
 me see them, eh ? ' 
 
 ' As the saints live, I buried them,' said 
 Caris truthfully ; ' they were rubbish, or worse ; 
 229 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 accursed maybe. They are safe down in the 
 ground till the Last Day. What can such a 
 bright wench as yourself want with such queer, 
 unhallowed notions ? ' 
 
 The girl Santina glanced over her shoulders 
 to make sure that no one was listening; then 
 she said in a whisper : 
 
 1 There is the Gobbo's treasure in these woods 
 somewhere — and Lisabetta had the wand that 
 finds gold and silver/ 
 
 Caris burst into a loud laugh. 
 
 c Ah, truly! That is a good jest. If she 
 could find gold and silver, why did we always 
 have iron spoons for our soup, and a gnawing 
 imp in our stomachs ? Go to, my maiden. Do 
 not tell such tales. Lisabetta was a poor and 
 hungry woman all her days, and scarce left 
 enough linen to lay her out in decently, so help 
 me Heaven ! ' 
 
 The girl shook her head. 
 'You know there is the treasure in the 
 woods,' she said angrily. 
 
 ' Nay, I never heard of it. Oh, the Gobbo's ? 
 Che-che! For hundreds of years they have 
 grubbed for it all over the woods, and who 
 ever found anything, eh ? ' 
 230 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 1 Your mother was very nigh it often and 
 often. She told me.' 
 
 c In her dreams, poor soul ! ' 
 
 ' But dreams mean a great deal.' 
 
 ' Sometimes,' said Caris seriously. c But 
 what is it to you ? ' he added, the suspicion 
 always inherent to the peasant struggling with 
 his admiration of the girl, who, unbidden, had 
 seated herself upon the stone before the door. 
 With feminine instinct she felt that to make 
 him do what she wished, she must confide in 
 him, or appear to confide. 
 
 And thereon she told him that unless she 
 could save herself, her family would wed her to 
 a wealthy old curmudgeon who was a cart- 
 maker in the town ; and to escape this fate she 
 had interrogated the stars by means of the dead 
 Lisabetta and of the astrologer Faraone, who 
 dwelt also in the hills, but this latter reader of 
 destiny would tell her nothing, because he was 
 a friend of her father's, and now the witch of 
 Genistrello was dead and had left her fate but 
 half told ! 
 
 ' What did she tell you ? ' said Caris, wincing 
 at the word witch. 
 
 * Only that I should go over the mountains 
 231 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 to some city and grow rich. But it was all dark 
 — obscure — uncertain ; she said she would 
 know more next time ; and how could I tell 
 that before I came again she would have died ? ' 
 
 * You could not tell that, no,' said Caris 
 absently. 
 
 He was thinking of the elderly well-to-do 
 wheelwright in the town, and he felt that he 
 would have liked to brain him with one of his 
 own wooden spokes or iron linchpins. For the 
 girl Santina was very beautiful as she sat there 
 with her large eyes shining in the shadows and 
 the tears of chagrin and disappointment stealing 
 down her cheeks. For her faith in her charms 
 and cards had been great, and in her bosom 
 there smouldered desires and ideas of which 
 she did not speak. 
 
 She saw the effect that her beauty produced, 
 and said to herself : c He shall dig up the things 
 before he is a week older.' 
 
 She got up with apparent haste and alarm; 
 seeing how dark it had grown around her, only 
 a faint red light lingering far away above the 
 lines of the mountains. 
 
 * I am staying at the four roads with my aunt, 
 who married Massaio,' she said as she looked 
 
 232 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 over her shoulder and walked away between the 
 chestnut sapling and the furze. 
 
 Caris did not offer to accompany or try to 
 follow her. He stood like one bewitched 
 watching her lithe, erect figure run down the 
 hill and vanish as the path wound out of sight 
 amongst the pines. No woman had ever 
 moved him thus. He felt as if she had poured 
 into him at once scalded wine and snow-water. 
 
 She was so handsome and bold and lissom, 
 and yet she made his flesh creep talking of his 
 mother's incantations, and bidding him knock 
 at the door of the grave. 
 
 1 What an awful creature for tempting a man 
 is a woman,' he thought, ' and they will scream 
 at their own shadows one minute and dare the 
 devil himself the next ! ' 
 
 That night Caris sat smoking his black pipe 
 on the stone before the door where she had sat, 
 and the scalded wine and the snow-water coursed 
 by turns feverishly through his veins, as once 
 through Cymon's. 
 
 233 
 
II 
 
 4 Where hast been, hussy? ' said Massaio crossly, 
 yet jokingly, to his niece when she went home 
 that night. 
 
 The four roads was a place where the foui 
 cart-tracks at the foot of that group of hills 
 met and parted ; the man was a seller of wood, 
 and his cottage and his wood-yards and sheds 
 thatched with furze stood where the four roads 
 met under some huge stone pines. The aunt 
 of Santina had married there many years 
 before. 
 
 They were people well-off, who ate meat, 
 drank wine, and had a house full of hardware, 
 pottery, and old oak: people as far removed 
 from Caris and his like as if they had been lords 
 or princes. He knew them by sight, and doffed 
 his hat to them in the woods. 
 
 The thought that she was the niece of 
 Massaio, the man who paid for his wood and 
 charcoal with rolls of banknotes, and sent his 
 234 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 own mules to bring the loads down from the 
 hills, placed Santina leagues away from and 
 above him. 
 
 The only women with whom he had ever had 
 any intercourse had been the rude wenches who 
 tramped with the herds, and dug and hoed 
 and cut grass and grain on the wastes of 
 the Maremma ; creatures burnt black with the 
 sun and wrinkled by the winds, and with skin 
 hard and hairy, and feet whose soles were like 
 wood — c la femelle de Thorn me/ but not so clean 
 of hide or sweet of breath as the heifers they 
 drove down along the sea-ways in autumn 
 weather. 
 
 This girl who called herself Santina was 
 wholesome as lavender, fresh as field thyme, 
 richly and fairly odoured as the flower of the 
 wild pomegranate. 
 
 When supper was over and the house was on 
 the point of being bolted and barred, Santina 
 threw her brown soft round arm round her 
 uncle's neck. 
 
 ' 1 went down to see Don Fabio, and he was 
 out, and I sat talking with his woman and 
 forgot the time,'" she said penitently. 
 
 Don Fabio was the priest of the little gaudy 
 235 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 church low down in the valley where the post- 
 road ran. 
 
 Massaio patted the cheek, which was like an 
 apricot, and believed her. 
 
 Her aunt did not. 
 
 c There is still snow where the man of God 
 lives up yonder, and there is no water, only 
 dust, on her shoes,' thought the shrewd 
 observer. 
 
 But she did not say so ; for she had no wish 
 to put her husband out of humour with her 
 kinsfolk. 
 
 But to Santina, when with her alone, she 
 said testily : 
 
 1 1 fear you are going again to the black arts 
 of that woman Lisabetta ; no good ever is got 
 of them ; it is playing with fire, and the devil 
 breathes the fire out of his mouth! ' 
 
 ' I cannot play with it if I wished,' said 
 Santina innocently ; ' Lisabetta is dead months 
 ago.' 
 
 'That is no loss to anybody if it be true,' 
 said Eufemia Massaio angrily. 
 
 Lisabetta had been such an obscure and 
 lonely creature, that her death had been taken 
 little note of anywhere, and the busy, bustling 
 236 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 housewife of Massaio had had no heed of such 
 an event. She had not even known the woman 
 by sight ; had only been cognizant of her evil 
 repute for powers of sorcery. 
 
 Santina went up to her room, which she 
 shared with three of the Massaio children. 
 Long after they were sleeping in a tangle of 
 rough hair and brown limbs and healthy rosy 
 nudity, the girl, their elder, sat up on the rude 
 couch staring at the moon through the little 
 square window. 
 
 She was thinking of words that Lisabetta 
 had said, as she had dealt out the cards and 
 gazed in a bowl of spring water, ' Over the 
 hills and far away; wealth and pleasure and 
 love galore — where ? how ? when ? — ay, that is 
 hid ; but we shall see, we shall see ; only over 
 the hills you go, and all the men are your 
 slaves.' 
 
 How? when? where? That was hidden 
 with the dead fortune-teller under the earth. 
 
 Santina did not for a moment doubt the 
 truth of the prophecy, but she was impatient 
 for its fulfilment to begin. She knew she was 
 of unusual beauty, and the organist at the 
 duomo in Pistoia had told her that her voice 
 237 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 was of rare compass, and only wanted tuition 
 to be such a voice as fetches gold in the big 
 world which lay beyond these hills. But that 
 was all. 
 
 She could sing well and loudly, and she knew 
 all the * canzoe ' and ' stornelli ' of the district 
 by heart; but there her knowledge stopped; 
 and no one had cared to instruct or enlighten 
 her more. Her own family thought the words 
 of the organist rubbish. 
 
 There are so many of these clear-voiced, flute- 
 throated girls and boys singing in their adoles- 
 cence in the fields and woods and highways; 
 but no one thinks anything of their carols, and 
 life and its travail tell on them and make them 
 hoarse, and their once liquid tones grow harsh 
 and rough from exposure to the weather, and 
 from calling so loudly from hill to hill to 
 summon their children, or their cattle, or their 
 comrades, home. 
 
 The human voice is a pipe soon broken. 
 The nightingale sings on and on and on, from 
 youth to age, and neither rain nor wind hurt his 
 throat; but men and women, in rough, rustic 
 lives, soon lose their gift of song. They sing 
 at all ages, indeed, over their furrows, their 
 238 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 washing-tank, their yoked oxen, their plait of 
 straw or hank of flax; but the voice loses its 
 beauty as early as the skin its bloom. 
 
 Santina had no notion in what way she could 
 make hers a means to reach those distant parts 
 in which her fate was to av/ait her if the cards 
 spake truly. Only to get away somewhere, 
 somehow, was her fixed idea; and she would 
 no more have married the sober, well-to-do 
 wheelwright her people picked out for her, than 
 she would have thrown her vigorous and virgin 
 body down the well. 
 
 c He shall get me the cards and the treasure 
 wand out of her grave before this moon is out,' 
 she said, between her white teeth, with which 
 she could crack nuts and bite through string 
 and grind the black bread into powder. 
 
 Caris took no definite shape in her eyes ex- 
 cept as an instrument to get her will and ways. 
 She was but a country girl just knowing her 
 letters, and no more ; but the yeast of restless 
 ambition was fermenting in her. 
 
 She sat staring at the moon, while the tired 
 
 children slept as motionless as plucked poppies. 
 
 The moon was near its full. Before it waned 
 
 she swore to herself that she would have Lisa- 
 
 239 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 betta's magic tools in her hands. Could she 
 only know more, or else get money ! She was 
 ignorant, but she knew that money was power. 
 With money she could get away over those 
 hills which seemed drawn like a screen between 
 her fate and her. 
 
 Marry Matteo ! She laughed aloud, and 
 thought the face in the moon laughed too. 
 
 The outfit was made, the pearls were bought, 
 the 'stimatore' who is called in to appraise 
 every article of a marriage corredo had fingered 
 and weighed and adjudged the cost of every 
 single thing, and the wheelwright had bought 
 the bed and the furniture, and many other 
 matters not usual or incumbent on a bride- 
 groom, and her parents had said that such 
 a warm man and so liberal a one was never 
 seen in their day : and very little time was 
 there now left wherein she could escape her 
 fate. 
 
 All unwillingness on her part would have 
 been regarded by her parents as an insanity, 
 and would have only seemed to her bridegroom 
 as the spice which is added to the stewed hare. 
 There was no chance for her but to use this 
 single fortnight which she had been allowed to 
 240 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 spend in farewell at the four roads of Genis- 
 trello. 
 
 Her uncle and aunt had helped generously 
 in the getting together of the corredo ; and 
 their wish to have her with them had been at 
 once conceded. Her parents were poor, and 
 the woodsman was rich as rubies are esteemed, 
 amongst the oak scrub and chestnut saplings of 
 the Pistoiese Apennines. 
 
 The Massaio people liked her and indulged 
 her; but had they dreamed that she meant to 
 elude her marriage they would have dragged 
 her by the hair of her head, or kicked her with 
 the soles of their nob-nailed boots down the 
 hillside into her father's house, and given her 
 up to punishment without pity, as they would 
 have given a runaway horse or dog. 
 
 The day for the ceremony had not been fixed, 
 for in this country, where love intrigues speed 
 by as swift as lightning, matrimonial contracts 
 move slowly and cautiously ; but the word was 
 passed, the goods were purchased, the house 
 was ready ; and to break a betrothal at such a 
 point would have been held a crime and a 
 disgrace. 
 
 Santina herself knew that ; she was well 
 C 241 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 aware that decent maidens do not do such things 
 when the dower clothing and linen are all 
 stitched, and the marriage-bed bought by the 
 bridegroom. She knew, but she did not care. 
 She was headstrong, changeable, vain and full 
 of thirst for pleasure and for triumph and for 
 wealth. She would not pass her life in her 
 little native town, in the wheelwright's old house 
 with a jealous rheumatic curmudgeon, for all 
 the saints in heaven and all the friends on earth. 
 ' Not I ! Not I ! Oh, why did Lisabetta 
 go underground for ever with half the cards 
 unread ? ' she thought, as she sat upon her 
 couch of sacking and dry maize leaves, and she 
 shook her clenched hands at the moon with 
 anger at its smiling indifference. The moon 
 could sail where it chose and see what it liked ; 
 and she was chained down here by her youth, 
 and her sex, and her ignorance, and her poverty ; 
 and her only one faint hope of escape and aid 
 lay in the closed grave of a dead old woman. 
 
 Though she was voluble and garrulous and 
 imprudent and passionate, she could keep her 
 own counsel. 
 
 Under her Tuscan volubility there was also 
 the Tuscan secretiveness. Nobody saw inside 
 242 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 her true thoughts. Her mind was like a little 
 locked iron box into which no one could peep. 
 
 The Tuscan laughs quickly, weeps quickly, 
 rages, fumes, smiles, jumps with joy ; seems a 
 merely emotional creature, with his whole heart 
 turned inside out ; but in his inmost nature 
 there is always an ego wholly different to that 
 which is shown to others, always a deep reserve 
 of unspoken intents and calculations and desires. 
 
 It resembles a rosebush all bloom and dew 
 and leaf and sunshine, inside which is made the 
 nest of a little snake, never seen, but always 
 there ; sometimes, instead of the snake, there is 
 only a flat stone ; but something alien there 
 always is under the carelessly blowing roses. 
 
 The Tuscan never completely trusts his 
 nearest or dearest, his oldest friend, his truest 
 companion, his fondest familiar ; be he gentle 
 or simple, he never gives himself away. 
 
 The homeliest son and daughter of the soil 
 will always act as though he or she were 
 cognizant of the axiom of the fine philosopher 
 of courts : c Deal with your friend at all times as 
 though some day he would become your enemy.' 
 
 Santina, therefore, had told her secret intent 
 to no living soul, and only Caris's old weird 
 
 243 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 mother had been shrewd enough to guess it in 
 the girl's flashing eyes and in her eager ques- 
 tioning of Fate. 
 
 The house of Massaio was a very busy house, 
 especially so at this season of the year, when 
 the purchasing and fetching and stacking of 
 wood for the coming winter was in full vigour, 
 and all the boys and girls were up in the woods 
 all day long, seeking out and bringing down 
 brushwood and pines and cut heather. 
 
 Santina with wonderful alacrity entered into 
 the work, although usually she was averse to 
 rough labour, fearing that it would spoil her 
 hands and her skin before she could get to that 
 unknown life of delight which she coveted. 
 
 But going with the heedless and unobservant 
 children up on the hillsides where the heather 
 and chestnut scrub grew, and farther up still 
 where the tall stone pines grew, she had chances 
 of meeting Caris or of again getting away to his 
 hut unnoticed. He was usually at this season 
 occupied in carrying wood or helping the char- 
 coal-burners, and was now in one place, now in 
 another, as men who have no fixed labour 
 must be. 
 
 Moreover, her just estimate of her own 
 244 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 attraction for him made her guess that this 
 year he would choose to labour nearer the four 
 roads than usual, if he could get employment, 
 and she was in no manner surprised when she 
 saw him amongst a group of men who were 
 pulling at the ropes of one of her uncle's wood- 
 carts, to prevent the cart and the mules har- 
 nessed to it from running amuck down the 
 steep incline which led to that green nook at 
 the foot of Genistrello, where the woodman's 
 buildings and sheds were situated. 
 
 She gave him a sidelong glance and a shy 
 smile as she passed them, and Caris, colouring 
 to the roots of his hair, let his rope slacken and 
 fall, and was sworn at fiercely by his fellow- 
 labourers, for the cart lurched, and one of the 
 wheels sunk up to its hub in the soft wet 
 sand. 
 
 ' Get away, lass !' shouted the carter roughly. 
 ' Where women are men's work is always 
 fouled.' 
 
 ' You unmannerly churl !' shouted Caris ; and 
 he struck the carter sharply across the shoulders 
 with his end of the rope. 
 
 The man flung himself round and tried to 
 strike his assailant in return with the thong of 
 245 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 his Jong mule-whip ; but Caris caught it in his 
 grip and closed with him. 
 
 They wrestled savagely for a moment, then 
 the carter, freeing his right arm, snatched out of 
 his breeches belt the knife which every man 
 carries, however severely the law may denounce 
 and forbid such a habit. It would have buried 
 its sharp, narrow blade in the ribs or the breast 
 of Caris had not the other men, at a shout from 
 Massaio, who came hurrying up, thrown them- 
 selves on the two combatants, and pulled them 
 apart. 
 
 ' To with you both ! ' cried Massaio, 
 
 furious to see his cart stuck in the sand, its 
 load of wood oscillating, and the time wasted of 
 men whom he paid by the day. 
 
 Santina had stood quietly on the bank above 
 the mules and the men, watching with keen 
 interest and pleasure. 
 
 * Why did you stop them, uncle ? ' she cried 
 to Massaio pettishly. ' I do love to see two 
 good lads fight. 'Tis a sight that warms one's 
 blood like good communion wine.' 
 
 But no one heeded what she said. 
 
 On these hills women are used but never 
 listened to by any man. 
 246 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 ' The cows give milk, not opinions/ the men 
 said to their womenkind. 
 
 Only Caris had seen in the sunlight that lithe 
 erect figure amongst the gorse, and those two 
 burning, melting, shining eyes, which had incited 
 him to combat. 
 
 He was deeply angered with Massaio for 
 stopping the duello. 
 
 A knife? What mattered a knife? He 
 had one, too, in his breeches band ; in another 
 second he, too, would have had his out, and 
 then Santina would have seen work fit for a 
 brave, bold woman to watch, with the red blood 
 running merrily through the thirsty sand and 
 the tufted heather. 
 
 He was not quarrelsome or bloodthirsty; but 
 any man who goes down into Maremma through 
 the * macchia/ where the ' mal-viventi ' hide, 
 learns to know very well how to sell his own 
 life dearly, and hold the lives of others cheaply ; 
 and these contraband knives, which the law 
 forbids so uselessly, cost very little to buy, 
 and yet do their work surely, quickly, and well. 
 
 He cast one longing look up at Santina 
 standing above amongst the gorse, and moved 
 on sullenly with the other men and the mule, 
 247 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 when the cart with rare effort had been pulled 
 erect and dragged out of the sand. It was then 
 only an hour or two after daybreak. 
 
 The day came and ended without Caris seeing 
 his goddess again. 
 
 During the repose at noontide, when he with 
 others broke bread and ate soup at the big table 
 in Massaio's kitchen, she was not there. They 
 were served by her aunt Eufemia. He had 
 only accepted this work of fetching and stack- 
 ing for sake of the vicinity to her which it 
 offered ; and his heart was heavy and his 
 blood was turned, as he would himself have 
 expressed it. 
 
 Chagrin and irritation, in the Italian's opinion, 
 turns the blood as tempest changes milk. He 
 was too shy and tongue-tied to venture to in- 
 quire for her ; and the instinct of secrecy which 
 characterizes all passion was joined to his 
 natural hesitation in speech. 
 
 Massaio's people seemed, too, to him to be 
 very grand folks, with their byres and stalls 
 filled with beasts, and their casks of wine and 
 great earthern jars of oil standing there for any- 
 body to read in mute declaration of their pros- 
 perity. 
 
 248 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 A barrel of wine had never entered the hut of 
 the Lascarises within the memory of man. No 
 one took any notice of him. He was a c brac- 
 ciante,' paid by the day, nothing more. Had 
 Eufemia known that he was the old witch's 
 son he would have attracted her attention ; but 
 she did not know it. When there is quick 
 rough work to be done, nobody notices who 
 does it. 
 
 When the last wood of the day was brought 
 in, Caris went home by himself, by ways he 
 knew. He was downcast and dull. He had 
 been baulked of his knife-play with the carter, 
 and he had not seen Santina. 
 
 At a bend in the hill- path, where the chestnut 
 saplings grew taller than usual, and aged pines 
 with scaly scarred trunks were left standing, he 
 heard a laugh amongst the leafy scrub, and in 
 the dusk of the moonless evening a slender 
 straight figure shot up from its screen of 
 heather. 
 
 ' Eh, Caris ! ' cried the girl to him. c What a 
 poor day's work ! Have you left Black Simon 
 without an inch of steel in him ? Fie for shame ! 
 A man should always write his name large when 
 he has a stiletto for his pen.' 
 249 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 Caris gazed at her dumb and agitated, the 
 veins in his throat and temples throbbing. 
 
 'It was your uncle stopping the play/ he 
 muttered ; ' and I could not begin to brawl in his 
 house.' 
 
 Santina shrugged her shoulders. * Brave men 
 don't want excuses,' she said unkindly. 
 
 * Ask of me in Maremma,' said Caris sullenly. 
 1 They will tell you whether men taste my 
 blade/ 
 
 1 Maremma is far,' said Santina, sarcastic and 
 jeering ; * and the men there are weak ! ' 
 
 * You shall see what you shall see,' muttered 
 Caris, growing purple, red, and then pale. 
 ' Tell me a man you have a quarrel with — nay, 
 one who stands well with you — that will be 
 better/ 
 
 ' Those are words,' she said, with curt con- 
 tempt. 
 
 ' You shall see deeds. Who is it stands well 
 with you P ' 
 
 1 No one. Many wish it' 
 
 ' Your promised man should ; but he is old, 
 and a poor creature. 'Twould be no credit to 
 do away with him.' 
 
 1 He is a poor creature,' said Santina, her lips 
 250 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 curling. * So are you, when to do a woman a 
 pleasure you will not open a grave.' 
 
 c Open a grave ! Nay, nay, the saints for- 
 bid.' 
 
 4 The saints ! That is how all weaklings and 
 cowards talk. What harm could it do any 
 saint in heaven for you to get those magic 
 things ? If they be the devil's toys and tools, 
 as you say, more reason to pluck them out of 
 holy ground.' 
 
 ' How you go on !' muttered Caris, whose 
 slower brain was scared and terrified by his 
 companion's rapid and fearless strides of thought. 
 c Heaven have mercy on us ! You would have 
 me commit sacrilege ! Rifle a tomb ! Holy 
 Christ ! and that tomb my mother's ! ' 
 
 The sweat stood on his brow, and made the 
 chestnut curls of his hair wet as with dew or rain. 
 
 Santina poured into his all the magnetic force 
 and fire of her own eyes, shining in the dusk 
 like some wild cat of the woods. 
 
 * Sacrilege ! whew ! Where got you that big 
 word ? You put the things in ; you can take 
 the things out. Your mother will sleep sounder 
 without them. I want them, my lad, do you 
 understand ? I want them. And what I want 
 251 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 I get from those who love me ; and those who 
 deny me, hate me, and 1 hate them.' 
 
 Caris shuddered as he heard. 
 
 c I love you,' he stammered. ' Do not hate 
 me — for pity's sake, do not hate me.' 
 
 ' Obey me, then,' she said, with her dark 
 level brows contracting over her luminous eyes, 
 
 6 In anything else ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, ay ! It is always anything else, except 
 the one thing which is wanted ! ' 
 
 * But what is it you want ? ' 
 
 ' I want the charms and the wand and the 
 book out of your mother's grave.' 
 
 c What could you do with them ? Without 
 the knowledge, they are no more than a dry 
 twig and a few dirty play-cards.' 
 
 ' How know you what knowledge I have ? I 
 want the things, that is all, I tell you.' 
 
 * They were accursed if they had any use in 
 them. And what use had they ? She who 
 understood them lived and died all but a 
 beggar. If they had any power in them, they 
 cheated and starved her.' 
 
 The speech was a long one for Caris, whose 
 thoughts were so little used to fit themselves to 
 utterance. 
 
 252 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 Santina heard him with the passionate im- 
 patience and intolerance of a swift mind with a 
 dull one, of a bold will with a timid nature. 
 
 She had set her soul on possessing these magic 
 things ; she was convinced that she should find 
 the way to make them work ; superstition was 
 intense and overwhelming in her, and allied to a 
 furious ambition, all the more powerful because 
 given loose rein through her complete ignorance. 
 
 c Oh, you white-livered ninny!' she cried to 
 him, with boundless scorn. * Would to Heaven 
 Black Simon had buried his blade into you ! 
 It would have rid the earth of a dolt and a 
 dastard ! ' 
 
 'Then let me be, if I be worth so little,' 
 said Caris sullenly, whilst his eyes devoured 
 her beauty half seen in the darkness which 
 preceded the late rising of the moon. Then 
 she saw that she had mistaken her path, and 
 she changed it. She let great tears come into 
 her eyes, and her mouth trembled, and her 
 bosom heaved. 
 
 ' This was the lad I could have loved ! ' she 
 
 murmured. * This was the strong bold youth 
 
 whom 1 thought would be my brave and bonny 
 
 damo before all the countryside. Oh, what 
 
 253 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 fools are women — what fools ! — taken by the 
 eye, with a falcon glance and a sheaf of nut- 
 brown curls and a broad breast that looks as if 
 the heart of a true man beat in it. Oh, woe is 
 me ! Oh, woe is me ! I dreamed a dream, and 
 it has no more truth in it than the slate shingle 
 here has of silver.' 
 
 She kicked downward scornfully as she spoke 
 the crumbling slate and mia which showed 
 here and there betwixt the heather plants in the 
 tremulous shadow relics of a quarry worked 
 long centuries before, and forsaken when the 
 fires of the camp of Hun and Goth had blazed 
 upon those hillsides. 
 
 254 
 
Ill 
 
 Caris stared at her as she spoke, his whole 
 frame thrilling and all his senses alive as they 
 had never been before under a woman's glamour. 
 He heeded not the derision, he thought not of 
 the strangeness of the avowal ; delicacy is not 
 often a plant which grows in uncultured soil, 
 and he had none of the intuition and suspicion 
 which an educated man would have been moved 
 by before such an avowal and such an up- 
 braiding. He only knew, or thought he 
 was bidden to know, that he had the power 
 in him to please her fancy and awaken her 
 desire. 
 
 1 You love me ! You can love me ! ' he shouted 
 in a loud, vibrating, exultant voice which wakened 
 all the echoes of the hills around him, and he 
 sprang forward to seize her in his arms. But 
 Santina, agile and strong, pushed him back, and 
 stood aloof. 
 
 'Nay, nay, stand off!' she cried to him. 
 255 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 * Ne'er a coward shall touch me. All I said 
 was, you might have won me.* 
 
 * I am no coward,' said Caris hotly. ' And 
 why do you fool and tempt one so ? Tis unfair. 
 'Tis unfair. You may rue it.' 
 
 His face was convulsed, his eyes were aflame, 
 he breathed like a bull in a hard combat. 
 
 Santina smiled ; that was how she liked to see 
 a man look. 
 
 She had all the delight in watching and weigh- 
 ing the effects of the passion which she excited 
 that moved the great queens of Asia and the 
 empresses of Rome. She was only a poor girl, 
 but the love of dominance and the violence of 
 the senses were in her strong and hot and 
 reckless. 
 
 In her was all that ferment of ambition and 
 vanity and discontent which drives out from 
 their hamlets those who are born with some- 
 thing in them different to their lot and alien to 
 their fellows. She had never been anywhere 
 farther afield than the hills and woods about 
 Pistanse, but she knew that there were big cities 
 somewhere, where men were made of money, 
 and women wore satin all day long, and every- 
 body ate and drank out of gold plates and silver 
 256 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 vessels. She knew that ; and to get to these 
 kingdoms of delight was the one longing which 
 possessed her day and night. 
 
 She wanted to get one thing out of this man 
 — the means of liberty — and she cared nothing 
 how she won it. Besides, he was so simple, so 
 malleable, so credulous, it diverted her to play 
 on him as one could play on a chitarra, making 
 the strings leap and sigh and thrill and groan. 
 And he was good to look at, too, with his 
 tanned, fresh face, and his clustering curls, 
 and his strong, straight, cleanly limbs. 
 
 ' I only said you might have won me,' she 
 repeated — ' nay, you may still, if you have 
 the heart of a man and not of a mouse. 
 Hearken ! ' 
 
 ' Do not fool me,' said Caris sternly, ' or as 
 the Lord lives above us ' 
 
 She laughed airily. 
 
 1 Oh, big oaths cannot frighten me. It shall 
 lie with you. I want those things of your 
 mother's. When you bring them I will thank 
 you — as you choose.' 
 
 He grew gray under his brown, bright 
 skin. 
 
 ' Always that/ he muttered — ' always that ! ' 
 R 257 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 4 Naturally, it is what I want.' 
 
 1 Go, get them, since you think it holy 
 work.' 
 
 ' 1 will/ said Santina, c and then good-night 
 to you, my good Caris ; you will never see me 
 more.' 
 
 She turned on her heel and began to run 
 down the slope in the moonlight. 
 
 Santina would not have ventured inside the 
 graveyard at night to get mountains of gold. 
 She would not have passed after nightfall within 
 a mile of its gate without crossing herself and 
 murmuring Aves all the way. Superstition was 
 born and bred in every inch of her bone and 
 every drop of her blood, and she would no 
 more have carried out her threat than she would 
 have carried the mountain upon her shoulders. 
 
 But he did not know that. She was so bold, 
 so careless, so self-confident, if she had told him 
 she would split open the earth to its centre he 
 would have believed her. 
 
 He overtook her as she fled down the slope 
 and seized her in his arms. 
 
 * No, no ! ' he cried, close in her ear. ' It is 
 not work for you. If it must be done I will 
 do it. Will you swear that you will give 
 258 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 yourself to me if I bring you the unholy 
 things ? ' 
 
 * I love you ! ' she said breathlessly, while her 
 lips brushed his throat — * yes, I do love you ! 
 Go, get the things, and bring them hither at 
 dawn. I will meet you. Oh, I will find the 
 way to use them, never fear. That is my 
 business. Get you gone. They are calling 
 below. They shut the house at the twenty- 
 four/ 
 
 No one was calling, but she wished to get rid 
 of him. He was strong, and he was on fire 
 with her touch and her glance ; he strained 
 her in his arms until her face was bruised 
 against the hairy sinews and bones of his chest. 
 
 She thrust him away with a supreme effort, 
 and ran down the stony side of the hill, and 
 was swallowed up in the duskiness of the 
 tangled scrub. 
 
 A little scops owl flitted past, uttering its 
 soft, low note, which echoes so far and long in 
 the silence of evening in the hills. 
 
 Caris shook himself like a man who has been 
 half stunned by a heavy fall. He was on fire 
 with the alcohol of passion, and chilled to the 
 marrow by the promise he had made. 
 259 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 Open a tomb ! Rifle a grave ! See his 
 mother again in her cere clothes — see all the 
 untold and untellable horrors of which the dead 
 and the earth make their secrets ! 
 
 Oh, why had he ever admitted that he had 
 sealed up the uncanny things in the coffin ! 
 He could have bitten his tongue out for its 
 tell-tale folly. 
 
 He had thrust them in almost without con- 
 sciousness of his act as he had hammered the 
 lid down on the deal shell all alone with it 
 in his cabin. 
 
 The things had been always under his 
 mother's pillow at night ; it had seemed to 
 him that they ought to go with her down to 
 the grave. He had had a secret fear of them, 
 and he had thought that their occult powers 
 would be nullified once thrust in sacred soil. 
 He had been afraid to burn them. 
 
 The churchyard in which his mother lay was 
 on the topmost slope of Genistrello, where the 
 brown brick tower of the massive medieval 
 church of St. Fulvo rose amongst the highest 
 pines, upon a wind-swept and storm-scarred 
 scarp. 
 
 Few were the dead who were taken there ; 
 260 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 meagre and miserable were the lot and the 
 pittance of its poor Vicar, and weather-beaten 
 and worn by toil were the score of peasants 
 who made up its congregation, coming thence 
 from the scattered huts and farmhouses of the 
 hillside. 
 
 It was seven miles off from the chestnut 
 wood where he dwelt, and twice seven from the 
 four roads ; a lonely and not over-safe tramp 
 across the hills and the water-courses and the 
 brushwood. 
 
 But it was not the distance which troubled 
 him, nor any possible danger. He knew his 
 way through all that country, and the full round 
 moon was by now showing her broad disc over 
 the edge of the farther mountains on the south- 
 east. But the thought of what he would have 
 to do at the end of his pilgrimage made him 
 sick with fear not altogether unmanly. 
 
 He knew that what he would do would be 
 sacrilege and punishable by law, but it was not 
 of that he thought : his mind was filled with 
 those terrors of the nether world, of the un- 
 known, of the unseen, which a lonely life and a 
 latent imagination made at once so indistinct 
 and so powerful to him. 
 261 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 * Had she but asked me anything else ! ' he 
 thought piteously. c Anything ! — to cut off 
 my right hand or to take the life of any man ! [ 
 
 But she had set him this task ; inexorably as 
 women of old set their lovers to search for the 
 Grail or beard the Saracen in his mosque, and 
 he knew that he must do what she willed or 
 never again feel those warm red lips breathe on 
 his own. 
 
 He tightened the canvas belt round his loins, 
 and went home to his cabin to fetch a pickaxe 
 and a spade, and, bidding his dog stay to guard 
 the empty hut, he set out to walk across the 
 vast steep breadth of woodland darkness which 
 separated him from the church and churchyard 
 which were his goal. 
 
 A labourer on those hills all his life, and 
 accustomed also to the more perilous and mur- 
 derous thickets of Maremma, where escaped 
 galley-slaves hid amongst the boxwood and the 
 bearberry, and lived in caves and hollow trees, 
 no physical alarm moved him as he strode on 
 across the uneven ground with the familiar 
 scents and sounds of a woodland night around 
 him on every side. 
 
 The moon had now risen so high that the 
 262 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 valleys were bathed in her light, and the sky 
 was radiant with a brilliancy which seemed but 
 a more ethereal day. 
 
 He had no eyes for its beauty. His whole 
 soul was consumed by the horror of his errand. 
 He only looked up at the pointers and the pole- 
 star which he knew, so as to guide himself by 
 them up the steep slopes to the church, for he 
 had left the cart-tracks and mule-paths and 
 struck perforce through the gorse and under- 
 growth westward, gradually ascending as he 
 went. 
 
 ' Poor mother ! poor mother ! ' he kept saying 
 to himself. It seemed horrible to him to go 
 and molest her out in her last sleep and take 
 those things which were buried with her. 
 Would she know ? Would she awake ? Would 
 she rise and strike him ? 
 
 Then he thought of a dead woman whom he 
 had found once in the ' macchia ' in Maremma, 
 lying unburied under some myrtle bushes ; he 
 remembered how hideous she had looked, how 
 the ants and worms had eaten her, how the wild 
 boars had gnawed her flesh, how the jaws had 
 grinned and the empty eyeballs had stared, and 
 how a black toad had sat on her breast. 
 263 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 Would his mother look like that? 
 
 No ; for she was safe under ground, under 
 sacred ground, shut up secure from wind and 
 weather in that deal shell which he had himself 
 made and hammered down ; and she was in her 
 clothes, all neat and proper, and the holy oil 
 had been upon her. 
 
 No, she had been put in her grave like a 
 Christian, witch though they said that she was. 
 She could not look like the woman in Maremma, 
 who had been a vagrant and a gipsy. 
 
 Yet he was afraid — horribly afraid. 
 
 264 
 
IV 
 
 It was a soft and luminous night; there was 
 the faintest of south winds now and then 
 wandering amongst the tops of the pines, and 
 fanning their aromatic odours out of them. 
 The sound of little threads of water trickling 
 through the sand and moss, and falling down- 
 ward through the heather, was the only sound, 
 save when a night bird called through the dark, 
 or a night beetle whirred on its way. 
 
 The summit of the hillside was sere and arid, 
 and its bold stony expanse had seldom a living 
 thing on it by daylight. By night, when the 
 priest and sacristan of St. Fulvo were sleeping, 
 there was not a single sign of any life, except 
 the blowing of the pine-tops in the breeze. 
 
 He had never been there except by broad 
 day ; his knees shook under him as he looked 
 up at the tall straight black tower, with the 
 moonlit clouds shining through the bars of its 
 open belfry. If he had not heard the voice of 
 265 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 Santina crying to him, c No coward shall win 
 me,' he would have turned and fled. 
 
 He was alone as utterly as though all the 
 world were dead. 
 
 It was still barely midnight when he saw the 
 bell-tower on high looming darker than the dark 
 clouds about it, and the pine-trees and the 
 presbytery and the walls of the burial-ground 
 gathered round it black and gaunt, their shapes 
 all fused together in one heap of gloom. 
 
 The guardians of the place, old men who 
 went early to their beds, were sleeping some- 
 where under those black roofs against the 
 tower. Below, the hills and valleys were all 
 wrapped in the silence of the country night. 
 
 On some far road atired team of charcoal- 
 bearing mules might be treading woefully to the 
 swing of their heavy bells, or some belated string 
 of wine-carts might be creeping carefully through 
 the darkness, the men half- drunk and their 
 beasts half-asleep. 
 
 But there was no sound or sign of them in 
 the vast brooding stillness which covered like 
 great soft wings the peaceful hills overlapping 
 one another, and the serenity of the mountains 
 bathed in the rays of the moon. 
 266 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 There was no sound anywhere : not even the 
 bleat of a sheep from the flocks, nor the bark of 
 a dog from the homesteads. 
 
 Caris crossed himself, and mounted the steep 
 path which led to the church-gate. 
 
 The last time he had come thither he had 
 climbed up with the weight of his mother's 
 coffin on his shoulders ; the ascent being too 
 steep for a mule to mount and he too poor to 
 pay for assistance. 
 
 The walls of the graveyard were high, and 
 the only access to it was through a wooden 
 iron-studded door, which had on one side of it 
 a little hollowed stone for holy water, and above 
 it a cross of iron and an iron crown. To force 
 the door was impossible ; to climb the wall was 
 difficult, but he was agile as a wild cat, and 
 accustomed to crawl up the stems of the pines 
 to gather their cones, and the smooth trunks 
 of the poplars in the valleys to lop their 
 crowns. 
 
 He paused a moment, feeling the cold dews 
 run like rain off his forehead, and wished that 
 his dog was with him, a childish wish, for the 
 dog could not have climbed : then he kicked off 
 his boots, set his toe-nails in the first crevice in 
 267 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 the brick surface, and began to mount with his 
 hands and feet with prehensile agility. 
 
 In a few moments he was above on the broad 
 parapet which edged the wall, and could look 
 down into the burial-place below. But he did 
 not dare to look ; he shut his eyes convulsively 
 and began to descend, holding by such slight 
 aids as the uneven surface and the projecting 
 lichens afforded him. He dropped at last 
 roughly but safely on the coarse grass within 
 the enclosure. 
 
 All was black and still ; the graveyard was 
 shut in on three sides by its walls, and at the 
 fourth side by the tower of the church. 
 
 The moon had passed behind a cloud and he 
 could see nothing. 
 
 He stood ankle-deep in the grass ; and as he 
 stirred he stumbled over the uneven broken 
 ground, made irregular by so many nameless 
 graves. He felt in his breeches pockets for his 
 pipe and matches, and drew one of the latter 
 out and struck it on a stone. 
 
 But the little flame was too feeble to show 
 him even whereabouts he was, and he could 
 not in the darkness tell one grave from 
 another. 
 
 268 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 Stooping and stretching out his hands, he 
 could feel the rank grass and the hillocks all 
 round him ; there were a few head-stones, but 
 only a few ; of such dead as were buried in the 
 graveyard of St. Fulvo, scarce one mourner in a 
 century could afford a memorial stone or even 
 a wooden cross. 
 
 He stood still and helpless, not having 
 foreseen the difficulty of the darkness. 
 
 He could feel the stirring of wings in the air 
 around him. His sense told him that they 
 were but owls and bats, of which the old tower 
 was full ; but he shivered as he heard them go 
 by ; who could be sure what devilish thing they 
 might not be ? 
 
 The horror of the place grew on him. 
 Still, harmless, sacred though it was, it filled 
 him with a terror which fastened upon him, 
 making his eyeballs start, and his flesh creep, 
 and his limbs shake beneath him. 
 
 Yet he gripped his pickaxe closer and tighter, 
 and held his ground, and waited for the moon 
 to shine from the clouds. 
 
 Santina should see he was no white - livered 
 boy. He would get her what she asked, and 
 then she would be his — his — his; and the 
 269 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 woods would hide their loves and the cold moss 
 grow warm with their embrace. 
 
 Stung into courage and impatience by her 
 memory, he struck violently upon one of the 
 stones his whole handful of brimstone matches ; 
 they flared alight with a blue, sharp flash, and 
 he saw there at his feet his mother's grave. 
 
 He could not doubt that it was hers ; it was 
 a mound of clay on which no grass had had 
 time to grow, and there were the cross-sticks 
 he had set up on it as a memorial, with a bit of 
 an old blue kerchief which had been hers tied 
 to them. 
 
 It was just as he had left them there four 
 months before, when the summer had been 
 green and the brooks dry and the days long and 
 light. She was there under his feet where he 
 and the priest had laid her, the two crossed 
 chestnut sticks the only memorial she would 
 ever have, poor soul ! 
 
 She was there, lying out in all wind and 
 weather alone — horribly, eternally alone ; the 
 rain raining on her and the sun shining on her, 
 and she knowing nought, poor, dead woman ! 
 
 Then the wickedness of what he came to do 
 smote him all of a sudden so strongly that he 
 270 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 staggered as under a blow, and a shower of hot 
 tears gushed from his eyes, and he wept 
 bitterly. 
 
 * Oh, mother, poor mother ! ' he cried aloud. 
 
 She had been a hard mother to him, and had 
 had ways which he had feared and disliked, and 
 a cruel tongue and a bad name on the hillside, 
 but she had been his mother, and when she had 
 lain dying she had been sorrowful to think that 
 she would leave him alone. 
 
 She had been his mother, and he came to 
 rifle her grave. 
 
 What a crime! What a foul, black crime, 
 such as men and women would scarce speak of 
 with bated breath by their hearths in the full 
 blaze of day ! What a crime ! He abhorred 
 himself for doing it, as he would have abhorred 
 a poisoner or a parricide seeing them pass to the 
 gallows. 
 
 c Oh, mother, mother, forgive me ! She 
 will have it so !' he sobbed with a piteous 
 prayer. 
 
 He thought that, being dead, his mother 
 would understand and forgive, as she would 
 never have understood or forgiven when living. 
 
 Then he struck his spade down into the 
 271 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 heavy clay on which no bird-sown seed of blade 
 or blossom had yet had any time to spring. 
 
 He dug and dug and dug, till the sweat 
 rolled off his limbs and his shoulders ached and 
 his arms quivered. 
 
 He threw spadefuls of clay one after another 
 out on the ground around, his eyes growing 
 used to the darkness, and his hands gripping 
 the spade handle harder and harder in despera- 
 tion. The very horror of his action nerved 
 him to feverish force. 
 
 1 Oh, Santina, Santina, you give my soul to 
 hell fires everlasting ! ' he cried aloud once, as 
 he jammed the iron spade down deeper and 
 deeper into the ground, tearing the stiff soil 
 asunder and crushing the stones. 
 
 The moon came forth from the clouds, and 
 the burial-ground grew white with her light 
 where the shadows of the wall did not fall. 
 He looked up once ; then he saw black crosses, 
 black skulls and cross-bones, rank grass, crumb- 
 ling headstones, nameless mounds all round 
 him, and beyond them the tower of the church. 
 
 But his mother's coffin he did not find. In 
 vain he dug, and searched, and frantically 
 tossed aside the earth in such haste to 
 272 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 have ended and finished with his horrible 
 task. 
 
 His mother's coffin he could not find. 
 
 Under the rays of the moon the desecrated 
 ground lay, all broken up and heaped and 
 tossed together, as though an earthquake had 
 riven the soil. But the deal shell which he had 
 made with his own hands and borne thither on 
 his own shoulders, he could not find. 
 
 < She will never believe ! she will never be- 
 lieve ! ; he thought. 
 
 Santina would never believe that he had 
 come there if he met her at dawn with empty 
 hands. He could hear in fancy her shrill, cruel, 
 hissing shriek of mockery and derision ; and he 
 felt that if he did so hear it in reality it would 
 drive him mad. 
 
 He dug, and dug, and dug, more furiously, 
 more blindly, going unconsciously farther and 
 farther away from where the two crossed chest- 
 nut sticks had been; they had been uprooted 
 and buried long before under the first heap 
 of clay which he had thrown out from the 
 grave. 
 
 He had forgotten that they alone were his 
 landmarks and guides; in the darkness which 
 s 273 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 had been followed by the uncertain, misleading 
 light of the moon, he had gone far from them. 
 
 His work had become almost a frenzy with 
 him ; his nerves were strung to an uncon- 
 trollable pitch of excitation, fear, and horror, 
 and obstinacy, and a furious resolve to obtain 
 what he sought, with a terrible dread of what 
 he should see when he should reach it, had 
 together, in their conflict of opposing passions, 
 driven him beside himself. 
 
 He dug on and on, without any conscious- 
 ness of how far he had gone from his goal, and 
 no sense left but the fury of determination to 
 possess himself of what he knew was there in 
 the earth beneath him. 
 
 He stood up to his knees in the yawning 
 clay, with the heavy clods of it flung up on 
 either side of him, and the moon hanging up 
 on high in the central heavens, her light often 
 obscured by drifting cloud wrack, and at other 
 times shining cold and white into his face, as 
 though by its searching rays to read his soul. 
 
 How long he had been there he knew not; 
 time was a blank to him ; his supernatural 
 terrors were lost in the anguish of dread lest 
 he should be unable to do Santina's will. 
 274 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 He felt as though he strove with the fiend 
 himself. 
 
 Who but some hideous power of evil could 
 have moved the corpse and baffled and beaten 
 him thus ? Perhaps truly the charms had been 
 things born of the devil, and the devil had 
 taken them both to himself, and the body of his 
 mother with them. He dug on and on frantic- 
 cally, deriving relief from the fever within him 
 through that violent exertion which strained 
 every vein and muscle in his body, till he felt 
 as though beaten with iron rods. 
 
 He did not see, in the confusion of his mind 
 and the gloom of the night, that he had come 
 close under the graveyard wall, and was digging 
 almost at its base. He believed himself still to 
 be on the spot where he had buried his mother ; 
 and he had deepened the pit about him until he 
 was sunk up to his loins. He never remem- 
 bered the danger of the priest or the sacristan 
 waking and rising and seeing him at his occult 
 labour. 
 
 He never remembered that the bell would 
 
 toll for matins whilst the stars would be still in 
 
 their places, and the hills and the valleys still 
 
 dark. All sense had left him except one set, 
 
 275 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 insane resolve to obtain that by which the 
 beauty of a woman was alone to be won. 
 
 Of crime he had grown reckless, of emotion 
 he had none left ; he was only frantically, 
 furiously determined to find that which he had 
 come to seek. Standing in the damp, clogging 
 soil, with the sense of moving creatures about 
 him which his labours had disturbed in the bowels 
 of the earth, he dug and dug and dug until his 
 actions had no purpose or direction in them, 
 only hurling clod upon clod in breathless, aim- 
 less, senseless monotony and haste. 
 
 At last his spade struck on some substance 
 other than the heavy soil and the slimy worms ; 
 he thrilled through all his frame with triumph 
 and with terror. 
 
 At last ! At last ! He never doubted that 
 it was the coffin he sought ; he did not know 
 that his mother's grave lay actually yards away 
 from him. Oh, were there only light, he 
 thought ; it was so dark, for the moon had now 
 passed down behind the wall of the graveyard, 
 and there would be only henceforth growing 
 ever darker and darker that dense gloom which 
 precedes the dawn. He dared not go on 
 digging ; he was afraid that the iron of his 
 276 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 spade should stave in the soft wood of the coffin, 
 and cut and maim the body within it. He 
 stooped and pushed the clay aside with his 
 hands, trying to feel what the tool had struck. 
 
 What met his touch was not wood, but 
 metal — rounded, smooth, polished ; though 
 clogged and crusted with the clay-bed in which 
 it lay. He pushed the earth farther and farther 
 away, and the object he had reached seemed to 
 lie far down, under the soil, and to be held 
 down by it. 
 
 He was himself hemmed in by the broken 
 clods, and stood in the hole he had dug, half 
 imprisoned by it. But he could move enough 
 to strike a few remaining matches on the iron 
 of the spade, and let their light fall on what he 
 had unearthed. 
 
 Then it seemed to him that a miracle had 
 been wrought. 
 
 Before him lay a silver image of the Child 
 Christ. His knees shook, his whole frame 
 trembled, his lips gasped for breath; the flame 
 of the matches died out ; he was left in the dark 
 with the image. 
 
 ' It is the Gesu ! It is the Gesu ! ' he 
 muttered, sure that his dead mother, or the 
 277 
 
THE SILVER CHRTST 
 
 saints, or both, had wrought this miracle to 
 show him the evil of his ways. 
 
 In truth, the statue had lain there many 
 centuries, buried against the wall by pious 
 hands in times when the torch of war had been 
 carried flaming over all the wasted villages and 
 ravaged fields in the plain below. 
 
 But no such explanation dawned on the mind 
 of Caris. 
 
 To him it was a miracle wrought by the 
 saints or by the dead. In the dark he could 
 feel its round shoulders, its small hands folded 
 as in prayer, its smooth cheek and brow, its 
 little breast ; and he touched them reverently, 
 trembling in every nerve. 
 
 He had heard of holy images shown thus to 
 reward belief or to confound disbelief. 
 
 His faith was vague, dull, foolish, but it was 
 deep-rooted in him. He was a miserable sinner ; 
 and the dead and the saints turned him thus 
 backward on his road to hell ; so he thought, 
 standing waist-deep in the rugged clay and 
 clutching his spade to keep himself from falling 
 in a swoon. 
 
 278 
 
To Caris miracles were as possible as daily 
 bread. 
 
 He knew little of them, but he believed in 
 them with his whole soul. It seemed wonderful 
 that the heavenly powers should create one for 
 such a poor and humble creature as himself; 
 but it did not seem in any way wonderful that 
 such a thing should be. 
 
 The Divine Child was there in the earth, 
 keeping away all evil things by its presence, and 
 he could not doubt that the saints who were 
 with Mary, or perchance his own mother's 
 purified spirit, had called the image there to 
 save him from the fiend. 
 
 He sank on his knees on the clay, and said 
 over breathlessly all the Aves he could think of 
 in his awe. They were few, but he repeated 
 them over and over again, hoping thus to find 
 grace and mercy for his sin for having broken 
 into these sacred precincts and disturbed the 
 dead in their rest. 
 
 279 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 But what of Santina? Would she believe 
 him when he told her of this wondrous thing ? 
 
 If he went to her with his hands empty, 
 would she ever credit that he had courage to 
 come upon this quest ? He could hear, as it 
 were, at his ear, her mocking, cruel, incredulous 
 laughter. 
 
 She had said, ' Bring me the magic toys.' 
 What would the tale of a miracle matter to 
 her? She wanted treasure and knowledge. 
 She would care nothing for the souls of the 
 dead or the works of the saints — nothing. 
 
 He knew that her heart was set on getting 
 things which she knew were evil, but believed 
 were powerful for good and ill, for fate and 
 future. 
 
 Suddenly a thought which froze his veins 
 with its terror arose in him, and fascinated him 
 with its wickedness and his daring. What if 
 he took the holy image to her in proof that he 
 had tried to do her will, and had been turned 
 from his errand by powers more than mortal ? 
 
 Since she had believed in the occult powers of 
 his mother's divining tools, surely she would 
 still more readily believe in the direct and visible 
 interposition of the dead ? 
 280 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 If he bore the Gesu to her in his arms, she 
 could not then doubt that he had passed the 
 hours of this night in the graveyard of St. 
 Fulvo. 
 
 She could not, before its sacred testimony, be 
 angry, or scornful, or incredulous, or unkind. 
 
 But could he dare to touch the holy thing? 
 Would the image consent to be so taken ? 
 Would not its limbs rebel, its lips open, its 
 body blister and blast the mortal hands which 
 would thus dare to desecrate it ? 
 
 A new fear, worse, more unspeakable than 
 any which had moved him before, now took 
 possession of him as he knelt there on the 
 bottom of the pit which he had dug, gazing 
 through the blackness of the darkness to the 
 spot where he knew the silver body of the 
 Christ Child lay. 
 
 The thing was holy in his eyes, and he meant 
 to use it for unholy purposes. He felt that his 
 hands would wither at the wrist if they took up 
 that silver Gesu from its bed of earth. 
 
 His heart beat loudly against his ribs, his 
 head swam. 
 
 It was still dark, though dawn in the east had 
 risen. 
 
 281 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 He crawled out of the pit of clay with 
 difficulty, holding the silver image to his bosom 
 with one arm, and stood erect, and gazed 
 around him. 
 
 If saints or friends were there beside him, they 
 made no sign; they neither prevented nor 
 avenged the sacrilege. 
 
 The sweet, sharp smell of the wet blowing 
 grasses was in his nostrils, and the damp cling- 
 ing sods were about his feet, dragging at the 
 soles of his boots, that was all. 
 
 He began to think of the way in which he 
 could, thus burdened, climb the wall. 
 
 The silver Christ was heavy in his hold, and 
 he needed to have both hands free to ascend the 
 height above him. 
 
 He knew it was an image and not a living 
 god ; yet none the less was it in his sight holy, 
 heaven-sent, miraculous, potent for the service 
 of the saints, and to take it up and bear it away 
 seemed to him like stealing the very Hostia 
 itself. 
 
 True, he would bring it back and give it to 
 
 the vicar, and let it, according to the reverend 
 
 man's choice, be returned to its grave or laid 
 
 on the altar of the church for the worship of 
 
 282 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 the people, and the continued working of 
 miracles. 
 
 Yes, he said to himself, assuredly he would 
 bring it back. He would only bear it in his 
 arms most reverently to Santina, that she might 
 see and believe, and become his ; and then he 
 would return hither with it and tell the priest 
 the wondrous story. 
 
 Yet he shook as with palsy at the thought of 
 carrying the blessed image as though it were a 
 mere living human babe. 
 
 It seemed to him as if no man could do such 
 a deed and live. The anointed hands of a priest 
 might touch it, but not his — his so hard and 
 rough and scarred with work, never having held 
 aught better than his pipe of clay and his tool 
 of wood or of iron, and the horn haft of his 
 pocket-knife. 
 
 Nor was even his motive for taking it pure. 
 He wanted through it to justify himself in the 
 sight of a woman, and to find favour with her, 
 and to gratify a strong and furious passion. His 
 reasons were earthly, gross, selfish; they could 
 not redeem, or consecrate, or excuse his act. 
 That he knew. 
 
 All was still, dusky, solitary ; the church was 
 283 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 wrapt in gloom, the daybreak did not reach it ; 
 only above the inland hills the white light spread 
 where he could not see; behind the high wall of 
 the graveyard, beyond the ranges of the inland 
 hills, the gray soft light of daybreak had arisen. 
 
 He thought he heard voices all around him, 
 and amongst them that of his mother warning 
 him to leave untouched the sacred Child, and 
 get up on his feet and flee. But above these he 
 heard the laughter of Santina mocking him as 
 an empty-handed, white-livered fool, who came 
 with foolish tales of visions to hide his quaking 
 soul. 
 
 Better that his arms should shrivel, that his 
 sight should be blinded, that his body should 
 be shrunken and stricken with the judgment of 
 heaven, than that he should live to hear her red 
 lips laugh and call him a feckless coward. 
 
 With all the life which was in him shrinking 
 and sickening in deadly fear, he stooped down, 
 groped in the dark until he found the image, 
 grasped its metal breast and limbs, and dragged 
 it upward from the encircling earth. 
 
 It was of the size of a human child of a year 
 old. 
 
 He plucked it roughly upward, for his terror 
 284 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 made him rude and fierce, and held it in his 
 arms, whilst he wondered in his great awe and 
 horror that no judgment of affronted heaven 
 followed on his desperate act. 
 
 All was still well with him ; he saw, he heard, 
 he breathed, he lived; the cool night air was 
 blowing about him, the clouds were letting fall 
 a faint fine mist-like rain. 
 
 He undid the belt about his loins — a mere 
 piece of webbing with a buckle — strapped it 
 around the body of the Gesu, and taking the 
 ends thereof between his firm, strong teeth, 
 sought in the dark for the place whence he had 
 descended, and found it. 
 
 He climbed the wall with slow, laborious, and 
 painful effort, the dead weight of the silver figure 
 encumbering him as he mounted with cat-like 
 skill, cutting his hands and bruising his skin 
 against the rough, undressed stones. 
 
 He dropped carefully down on the earth 
 beneath, and began the descent of the hill. 
 
 * When I can bring the little Christ back, I 
 can get the tools,' he thought. It seemed a 
 small matter. 
 
 He was forced to leave behind him his spade 
 and pickaxe. 
 
 285 
 
VI 
 
 When at last he reached the top of the coping, 
 he saw that it was dawn. His heart leaped in 
 his breast. Down in the chestnut coppice 
 Santina would be awaiting him ; and she would 
 believe — surely, certainly she would believe — 
 when she should see this holy Gesu brought out 
 from the tomb. 
 
 He was in good time. It was barely day. 
 He unslung the little Christ and took it again 
 in his arms, as carefully as a woman would take 
 a new-born child. The polished limbs grew 
 warm in his hands; its small face leaned against 
 his breast; he lost his awe of it; he ceased to 
 fear what it might do to him ; he felt a kind of 
 love for it. 
 
 'Oh, Gesu, dear Gesu, smile on us!' he said 
 to it ; and although it was still too dark to see 
 more than its outline faintly, he thought he saw 
 the mouth move in answer. 
 
 Holding it to him, he started homeward down 
 286 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 the stony slope. He was thankful to be out of 
 that ghostly place of tombs ; he was thankful 
 to have escaped from that scene of terror whole 
 in limb, and uncursed if unpardoned ; the ten- 
 sion of his nerves in the past hours had given 
 place to an unreasoning and overstrung glad- 
 ness. But for his reverence for the burden he 
 carried, he could have laughed aloud. 
 
 Only once now and then, as he went, his 
 conscience smote him. His poor mother ! — 
 he had forgotten her ; he had displaced the 
 mark set above her grave ; no one would ever 
 now be sure where she was buried. Did it hurt 
 her, what he had done ? Would she be jealous 
 in her grave of the woman for whom he did it ? 
 Was it cruel to have come away without smooth- 
 ing the rugged earth above her bed and saying 
 an Ave for her ? 
 
 But these thoughts, this remorse, were fleet- 
 ing ; his whole mind was filled with the heat 
 of passion and its expectation. Fatigued and 
 overworked and sleepless as he was, he almost 
 ran down the paths of the hills in his haste, and 
 tore his skin and his clothes as he pushed his 
 way through the brush wood and furze, guarding 
 only the Gesu from hurt as he went. 
 287 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 The day had now fully dawned, and the sun 
 had risen ; its rosy flush was warm over all the 
 land and sky ; the woodlarks and the linnets 
 were singing under the bushes ; the wild doves 
 were dabbling in the rivulets of water ; the 
 hawks were circling high in the light. 
 
 On the wooded hillside all was peaceful with 
 the loveliness of the unworn day ; the air was 
 full of the smell of heather and wet mosses and 
 resinous pine-cones ; rain was falling above 
 where the church was, but in these lower woods 
 there was a burst of sunrise warmth and light. 
 None of these things, however, did he note. He 
 went on and on, downward and downward, 
 holding the silver image close against his 
 breast, scarcely feeling the boughs which grazed 
 his cheeks or the flints which wounded his 
 naked feet. 
 
 When he came within sight of the place 
 where he had left Santina the night before, 
 he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of her 
 through the tangle of leaves and twigs and 
 fronds. And true enough to her tryst she was 
 there, waiting impatiently, fretting, wishing the 
 time away, blaming her own folly in setting all 
 her hopes of freedom and the future on a 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 foolish, cowardly churl — for so she called him 
 in her angry thought, as she crouched down 
 under the chestnut scrub and saw the daylight 
 widen and brighten. 
 
 She ran a great risk in hiding there ; if any 
 of her people or their carters saw her, their 
 suspicions would be aroused and their ques- 
 tions endless. She would say that she came 
 for mushrooms ; but they would not believe 
 her. She was too well known for a late riser 
 and a lazy wench. 
 
 Still, she had imperilled everything to keep 
 her word with him, and she waited for him 
 seated on the moss, half covered with leaves, 
 except at such times as her impatient temper 
 made her cast prudence to the winds and rise 
 and look out of the thicket upward to the hills. 
 
 She had made herself look her best ; a yellow 
 kerchief was tied over her head, her hair shone 
 like a blackbird's wing, her whole face and form 
 were full of vivid, rich, and eager animal beauty. 
 To get away — oh, only to get away! She 
 looked up at the wild doves sailing over the 
 tops of the tall pines and envied them their 
 flight. 
 
 Caris saw that eager, longing look upon her 
 T 289 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 countenance before he reached her, and he 
 thought it was caused by love for him. 
 
 He held the Gesu to his bosom with both 
 hands and coursed like lightning down the 
 steep slope which still divided him from her ; 
 he was unconscious of how jaded, soiled, and 
 uncomely he looked after his long night's work 
 and all his ghostly fears ; his feet were scratched 
 and bleeding, his shirt soaked in sweat, his flesh 
 bespattered with the clay, his hair wet and 
 matted with moisture ; he had no remembrance 
 of that, he had no suspicion that even in that 
 moment of agitation, when she believed her 
 errand done, her will accomplished, she was 
 saying in her heart as she watched him draw 
 nigh : ' He has got them, he has got them ; but, 
 Holy Mary! what a clown! — he has all the mud 
 of fifty graves upon him ! ' 
 
 He rushed downward to her, and held the 
 silver image out at arm's-length, and sobbed 
 and laughed and cried aloud, indifferent who 
 might hear, his voice trembling with awe and 
 ecstasy. 
 
 c It is the Gesu Himself, the Gesu — and I 
 have brought Him to you because now you 
 will believe — and my mother must be well with 
 290 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 them in heaven or they never had wrought such 
 a miracle for me — and such a night as I have 
 passed, dear God ! such things as I have seen 
 and heard — but the Child smiles — the Child 
 is pleased — and now you will believe in me, 
 though I could not find the magic things — and 
 I said to myself when she sees the Gesu she 
 will believe — and she will be mine — mine — 
 mine! The Lord forgive me, that has been 
 all my thought, though heaven wrought such 
 a miracle for me ! ' 
 
 The words poured out of his mouth one over 
 another like the rush of water let loose through 
 a narrow channel. He was blind with his own 
 excess of emotion, his own breathless desire ; he 
 did not see the changes which swept over the 
 face of Santina in a tumult of wrath, wonder, 
 fury, eagerness, suspicion, cupidity, as one after 
 another each emotion went coursing through 
 her soul and shining in her eyes, making her 
 beauty distorted and terrible. 
 
 Her first impulse was fury at his failure to 
 bring her what she wanted ; the second was to 
 comprehend in a flash of instantaneous insight 
 the money value of that to which he only 
 attached a spiritual merit. 
 291 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 She snatched the image from him, and in the 
 morning light she saw the silver of it glisten 
 through the earth which still in parts clung to 
 it. It might be better, surer, more quick aid to 
 her than the uncertain divining tools whereof 
 she was ignorant of the full employ. Her 
 rapid mind swept over in a second all the uses 
 to which it might be put, and comprehended 
 the superstitious adoration of it which moved 
 Caris and made him control his passion for her- 
 self, as he stood gazing at it in her arms, his 
 own hands clasped in prayer, and his whole 
 frame trembling with the portentous sense of 
 the mercy of heaven which had been made 
 manifest to him. 
 
 She in a second divined that it had been part 
 of some buried treasure which he had by acci- 
 dent disinterred, but she was too keen and wise 
 to let him see that she did so ; it was her part 
 to humour and to confirm him in his self- 
 deception. 
 
 She calmed the angry, gibing words which 
 rose to her lips, she held back the exultant 
 covetousness which flashed in her eyes and 
 betrayed itself in the clutching grasp of her 
 fingers ; she gazed on the Gesu with a worship 
 292 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 half real, half affected, for it was also a holy 
 image to her, if its sanctity were to her out- 
 weighed and outshone by its monetary worth in 
 precious metal. 
 
 * Tell me how you found this ? ' she asked, 
 under her breath, as one almost speechless with 
 awe before such a manifestation from on high. 
 
 She was really in genuine fear. He had been 
 into precincts which none could enter without 
 offending immortal and unseen powers. He 
 had done it at her bidding. Who could be 
 sure that the offending spirits would not avenge 
 his sacrilege on her ? 
 
 But through her fears she kept her hold upon 
 the image, whilst she asked the question. 
 
 Tremblingly he told her how he had passed 
 the awful hours of the night and failed to find 
 his mother's tomb, but in its stead found this. 
 
 < And I brought it that you should know that 
 I had been there,' he said in conclusion, ' that 
 you might know I had been where you willed, 
 and am no coward ; and we will take it back to- 
 gether and give it to the holy man up yonder — 
 and now — and now — and now ' 
 
 His hands touched her, his breath was upon 
 her, his timid yet violent passion blazed in his 
 293 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 eyes and quivered all over his frame : he had 
 dared all things for his reward, and he claimed 
 it. But, quick as lightning, and merciless as 
 dishonest, she put the holy image between her 
 and him. The sacred silver froze his burning 
 lips. 
 
 His arms fell to his side as though they were 
 
 paralyzed. 
 
 { Not while the Gesu is with us,' she mur- 
 mured in rebuke. ' Let us not be unworthy — 
 you say yourself a miracle was wrought.' 
 
 ' But ' 
 
 He stood before her, checked, daunted, 
 breathing heavily, like a horse thrown back 
 on its haunches in full flight. 
 
 ' Hush ! ' she said, with a scared look. 
 ' There are people near ; I hear them. We 
 will take the Gesu back to the church, but 
 that cannot be till dusk. I will keep Him safe 
 with me. Go, you dear, and clean your skin 
 and your clothes, lest any seeing you should 
 suspect what you have done.' 
 
 <I will not go,' he muttered; * you pro- 
 mised ' 
 
 ' I promised, oh fool ! ' she said, with quick 
 passion, 'and my word I will keep, but not 
 294 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 while the Gesu is with us. I love you for all 
 you have braved. I love you for all you have 
 done. I will be yours and no other's. See ! I 
 swear it on the Holy Child's head ! ' 
 
 And she kissed the silver brow of the 
 babe. 
 
 He was convinced, yet irresolute and im- 
 patient. 
 
 * Let us go back with it now, then,' he 
 muttered. Q l did but bring him to show you 
 in witness of what I had done.' 
 
 * No/ she said, with that imperious command 
 in her voice and her gaze which made the 
 resolve in him melt like wax beneath a flame. 
 * You cannot be seen with me in such a state as 
 you are. I will carry the Christ back to the 
 church if so be that He rests uneasily in common 
 arms like ours, and then — well, I will pass by 
 your cabin as I come down. Dost complain of 
 that, my ingrate ? ' 
 
 A flood of warmth and joy and full belief 
 swept like flame through the whole being of 
 Caris. Her eyes were suffused, her cheek 
 blushed, her lips smiled ; he believed himself 
 beloved ; he thought himself on the threshold 
 of ecstasy ; the minutes seemed like hours until 
 295 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 he should regain his hut and watch from its 
 door for her coming. 
 
 1 You will go now ? ' he asked eagerly. 
 
 * At once, 5 she answered, holding the Gesu to 
 her as a woman would hold a sucking child. 
 
 Caris closed his eyes, dazed with her beauty 
 and the wild, sweet thought of how she would 
 hold to her breast some child of his on some fair 
 unborn morrow. 
 
 c Then go,' he muttered. * The sooner we 
 part, the sooner we shall meet. Oh, my 
 angel ! ' 
 
 She gave him a smile over her shoulder, and 
 she pushed her way upward through the chest- 
 nut boughs, carrying the Gesu folded to her 
 bosom. 
 
 Watching her thus depart, a sudden and new 
 terror struck him. 
 
 'Wait,' he called to her. 'Will the priest 
 be angered that I disturbed the graves, think 
 you ? ' 
 
 c Nay, nay, not when he sees that you give 
 him the image,' she called backward in answer. 
 
 Then she disappeared in the green haze of 
 foliage, and Caris struck onward in the opposite 
 direction, to take the way which led to his cabin 
 296 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 on Genistrello. Her words had awakened him 
 to a consciousness of his bruised, befouled, and 
 tattered state. 
 
 He wished to avoid meeting anyone who 
 might question him as to his condition. 
 
 He got as quickly as he could by solitary 
 paths to his home, and was met with rapture by 
 his dog. He entered the house, and drank 
 thirstily ; he could not eat ; he washed in the 
 tank at the back of the hut, and clothed himself 
 in the best that he had : what he wore on holy 
 and on festal days. 
 
 Then he set his house-door wide open to the 
 gay morning light which, green and gleeful, 
 poured through the trunks of the chestnuts and 
 pines ; and he sat down on his threshold with 
 the dog at his feet, and waited. 
 
 It would be a whole working-day lost, but 
 what of that ? A lover may well lose a day's 
 pay for love's crown of joy. 
 
 Hour after hour passed by, and his eyes 
 strained and ached with looking into the green 
 light of the woods. But Santina came not. 
 
 The forenoon, and noontide and afternoon 
 went by ; and still no living thing came up to 
 his solitary house. The whole day wore away, 
 297 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 and he saw no one, heard nothing, had no 
 visitant except the black stoat which flitted 
 across the path, and the grey thrushes which 
 flew by on their autumn flights towards lower 
 ground. 
 
 The long, fragrant, empty day crept slowly 
 by, and at last ended. She had not come. 
 
 He was still fasting. He drank thirstily, but 
 he could not eat, though he fed the dog. 
 
 He was in a state of nervous excitation almost 
 delirious. The trees and the hills and the sky 
 seemed to whirl around him. He dared not 
 leave the hut, lest she should come thither in 
 his absence. He stared till he was sightless 
 along the green path which led down to the four 
 roads. Now and then, stupidly, uselessly, he 
 shouted aloud ; and the mountains echoed his 
 solitary voice. 
 
 The dog knew that something was wrong 
 with his master, and was pained and afraid. 
 
 The evening fell. The night wore away. 
 He put a little lamp in his doorway, thinking 
 she might come, through shyness, after dark ; 
 but no one came. Of her there was no sign, or 
 from her any word. 
 
 When the day came he was still dressed and 
 298 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 sleepless, seated before his door ; the flame of 
 the little lamp burnt on, garish and yellow in 
 the sunshine. 
 
 The sun mounted to the zenith ; it was 
 again noon. He went indoors, and took a 
 great knife which he was accustomed to carry 
 with him to Maremma. He put it in his belt 
 inside his breeches, so that it was invisible. 
 
 Then he called the dog to him, kissed him on 
 the forehead, gave him bread, and motioned to 
 him to guard the house ; then he took his way 
 once more down the hillside to Massaio's 
 house. 
 
 If she had fooled him yet again, she would 
 not live to do it thrice. His throat was dry as 
 sand ; his eyes were bloodshot ; his look was 
 strange. 
 
 The dog howled and moaned as he passed out 
 of sight. 
 
 He went onward under the boughs tinged 
 with their autumnal fires, until he came to the 
 place where the house and sheds and walls of 
 the wood merchant's homestead stood. He 
 walked straight in through the open gates, and 
 then stood still. 
 
 He saw that there was some unusual stir and 
 299 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 trouble in the place : no one was at work, the 
 children were gaping and gabbling, the house- 
 wife was standing doing nothing, her hands at 
 her sides ; Massaio himself was seated drumming 
 absently on the table. 
 
 * Where is Santina ? ' asked Caris. 
 
 They all spoke in answer, ' Santina is a jade ' 
 — Massaio's voice louder and rougher than the 
 rest. 
 
 c She has gone out of the town and away, 
 none knows where ; and she has left a letter be- 
 hind her saying that none need try to follow, 
 for she is gone to a fine new world, where she 
 will want none of us about her ; and my brother 
 says it is all my fault, giving her liberty out on 
 the hills. And the marvel is where she got the 
 money, for we and they kept her so close — not 
 a stiver — not a penny — and it seems she took 
 the train that goes over the mountains ever so 
 far, and paid a power of gold at the station 
 wicket. ' 
 
 The voice of Caris crossed his in a loud, 
 bitter cry. ' She sold the Gesu ! As God lives — 
 she sold the Gesu ! ' 
 
 Then the blood rushed from his nostrils and 
 his mouth, and he fdl face downwards. 
 300 
 
VII 
 
 A few days later he was arrested for having 
 violated and robbed the tombs in the burial- 
 grounds of St. Fulvo. The pickaxe and the 
 spade had been found with his name burned on 
 the wood of them ; he was sentenced to three 
 years at the galleys for sacrilege and theft. 
 
 When the three years were ended he was an 
 old, gray, bowed man, though only twenty- nine 
 years of age ; he returned to his cabin, and the 
 dog, who had been cared for by the charcoal- 
 burners, knew him from afar off, and flew down 
 the hill-path to meet him. 
 
 1 The wench who ruined you,' said the char- 
 coal-burners around their fire that night, c they 
 do say she is a fine singer and a rich madam 
 somewhere in foreign parts. She sold the Gesu — 
 ay, she sold the Gesu to a silversmith down in 
 the town. That gave her the money to start 
 with, and the rest her face and her voice have 
 done for her.' 
 
 301 
 
THE SILVER CHRIST 
 
 * Who has the Gesu ? ' asked Caris, hiding 
 his eyes on the head of the dog. 
 
 <Oh, the Gesu, they say, was put in the 
 smelting-pot,' said the charcoal-burner. 
 
 Caris felt for the knife which was inside his 
 belt. It had been given back to him with his 
 clothes when he had been set free at the end of 
 his sentence. 
 
 4 One could find her/ he thought, with a 
 thrill of savage longing. Then he looked down 
 at the dog and across at the green aisles of the 
 pines and chestnuts. 
 
 1 Let the jade be,' said the forest-man to him. 
 ' You are home again, and 'twas not you who 
 bartered the Christ' 
 
 Caris fondled the haft of the great knife 
 under his waistband. 
 
 1 She stole the Gesu and sold Him,' he said, 
 in a hushed voice. ' One day I will find her, 
 and I will strike her : once for myself and twice 
 for Him/ 
 
 302 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 i 
 
 It was a small lemon-tree, not more than forty 
 inches high, growing in its red earthen vase as 
 all lemons are obliged to be grown further 
 north than Rome. There were many thousands 
 and tens of thousands of other such trees in the 
 land ; but this one, although so little, was a 
 source of joy and pride to its owner. He had 
 grown it himself from a slender slip cast away 
 on a heap of rubbish, and he had saved his 
 pence up with effort and self-denial to purchase, 
 second-hand, the big pot of ruddy clay in 
 which it grew, now that it had reached its first 
 fruit-bearing prime. It had borne as its first 
 crop seven big, fragrant lemons, hanging from 
 its boughs amidst leaves which were as fresh and 
 green as a meadow in May. He had watched 
 its first buds creep out of the slender twigs, 
 U 305 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 and swell and swell gradually into sharp-pointed 
 little cones, which in their turn became pale 
 yellow fruit, ' fit for a princess,' as he said, 
 patting their primrose-coloured rind. They 
 seemed so many separate miracles to him, 
 coming as by some magic out of the little 
 starry white flowers on the glossy twigs. 
 
 He was a poor, ignorant man, by name Dario 
 Baldassino, known as Fringuello (or the 
 Chaffinch) to his neighbourhood and fellow 
 workmen. He lived on the south side of the 
 ferry of Royezano, and dug and carted the 
 river-sand ; a rude labour and a thankless, 
 taking the sinew and spirit out of a man, and 
 putting little in return into his pocket. The 
 nave or ferry is a place to please an artist. All 
 the land around on this south side is orchard — 
 great pear-trees and cherry-trees linked together 
 by low-growing vines, and in the spring months 
 making a sea of blossom stretching to the 
 river's edge. The watermills, which were there 
 centuries ago, stand yellow and old, and cluster 
 like beavers' dams upon the water. The noise 
 of the weir is loud, but the song of the nightin- 
 gale can be heard above it. Looking along 
 westward down the widening, curving stream, 
 306 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 above the fruit-trees planted thick as woods, 
 there arise, two miles off, the domes and spires 
 of the city of Florence, backed by the hills, 
 which here take an Alpine look upon them 
 when the sun sets beyond the rounded summits 
 of the more distant Carrara range ; and the 
 spurs of the Apennines grow deeply blue with 
 that intense transparent colour which is never 
 seen in northern lands. To the north also lie 
 the mountains, and on the east ; and late into 
 May the snow lingers where the day breaks 
 above Vallombrosa and Casentino. All the 
 vale is orchard, broken now and then by some 
 great stone-pine, some walnut or chestnut tree, 
 some church spire with its statue of its saint, 
 some low, red-brown roofs, some grey old 
 granary with open-timbered lofts. It is a serene 
 and sylvan scene — at sunset and at sunrise 
 grand — and the distant city rises on its throne 
 or* verdure, seeming transfigured as Dante, 
 exiled, may have seen it in his dreams. 
 
 Of all this beauty outspread before his sight 
 Fringuello saw little; his eyes were always set 
 on the sand and shingle into which he drove his 
 heart-shaped spade — all which is the pageant of 
 the painter, the paradise of the poet, but is 
 
 307 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 nothing to the toiler of the soil. The sweat of 
 his fatigue drops down before his eyes, and shuts 
 out from him the scenes amidst which he dwells. 
 For him the weir has no song, the orchard no 
 poem, the mountains no counsel, and the vales 
 no charm. He does but see the cart-rucks in 
 the sand, the house-fly in the sunlight, the coins 
 hard-earned in his horny palm, the straw which 
 covers the coveted wine-flask, or the glass which 
 holds the hot and acid flavours of less natural 
 drinks. Now and then Giotto looks up from 
 his sheepfold, and Robert Burns from his fur- 
 row, but it is only once in a century. This poor 
 labourer, Fringuello, lived in two little rooms in 
 a poor house which looked on the weir and the 
 water-mills. He had never been able to have a 
 house of his own, and even the small charge of 
 the rooms was more than he could easily pay, 
 miserable though they were. His employment 
 was intermittent, and in winter, when the river 
 was spread wide over its bed, covering the sand 
 and shingle, it ceased entirely. Some odd jobs he 
 got elsewhere, but nothing certain. He had no 
 knowledge of any other work than the digging 
 and carrying which had been his lot. But he 
 was always merry, with the mirth which had 
 308 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 gained him his nickname, and in his light-hearted 
 poverty had done what the poorest always do — 
 he had married at twenty a girl as poor as him- 
 self. She was called Lizina, the familiar cor- 
 ruption of Luisa, and was the daughter of a 
 cobbler of the adjacent village of Ripoli. 
 
 It was an imprudent union and a foolish one, 
 but it was happier than many which fulfil every 
 condition of prudence and thrift. Lizina was a 
 blithe, buoyant, active, and laborious creature, 
 and whilst she lived he never had a hole in his 
 hempen shirt, or went without a tablespoonful 
 of oil to his beans and bread. They were as 
 merry and happy as if they had really been a 
 pair of chaffinches in a nest in one of the pear- 
 trees. But of joy the gods are envious, whether 
 it go to roost in garret or palace, and in a few 
 brief years Lizina died of fever and left him all 
 alone with one little girl, as like herself as the 
 bud is like the flower. 
 
 For months he never sang as he worked, and 
 his ruddy face was pale, and he had long fits of 
 weeping when he lay on his lonely bed, and 
 stared up at the starry skies which were visible 
 through the square, unshuttered window. Lizina 
 was in the ground, in a nameless grave, with 
 
 309 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 two crossed sticks set above it, and the river 
 rolled over the weir, and the wide wheel turned, 
 and the orchards blossomed, and the people 
 laughed on the yellow sand, and no one cared 
 that a little merry, glad, tender, harmless life 
 was done for and over, stamped down into the 
 clay like a crushed butterfly, a broken branch, a 
 rotten fruit, or a dead grasshopper. Nobody 
 cared ; and after a time he, too, ceased to care, 
 and began to hum and whistle and carol once 
 more as he worked, and laughed once more at 
 his comrades' jokes as they dug up the heavy 
 sand. In the lives of the poor there is little 
 leisure for sorrow, and toil passes over them 
 like an iron roller over the inequalities of a 
 road, forcing them down into dull indifference, 
 as the roller forces into level nothingness alike 
 the jagged flint and the sprouting grass. 
 
 Meanwhile, Lizina, as she was called after 
 her mother, grew up apace like the little 
 lemon -tree which had been planted at her 
 birth, a lovely child like a Correggio cherub, 
 thriving on her dry bed and herb -soup as 
 the lemon plant thrived on the dry earth and 
 uncongenial atmosphere of the attic under the 
 roofs, 
 
 310 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 Fringuello did his best by both of them, 
 making up to them by tenderness and gentle- 
 ness what he was forced to refuse to both of 
 material comfort. Both the child and the tree 
 went hungry often, suffered from cold and frost 
 in the sharp, short winters, and languished in 
 the scorching days, when foul odours rose from 
 the naked bed of the shrunken river, and white 
 clouds of little moths hovered over the cracked 
 sand, and the leaves of the orchards grew yellow 
 and wrinkled, and curled up, and dropped in 
 the heat before their time. 
 
 All that he could not help ; he could not help 
 it more than he could help the shrinking of the 
 river in drought, and the coming of blight to 
 the orchards. Though it went to his soul like 
 a knife-thrust when he saw the child pale and 
 thin, and the lemon-tree sickly and shrunk, he 
 could do nothing. But he murmured always, 
 'Patience, courage,' as he coaxed the child to 
 eat a morsel of crust, and consoled the tree with 
 a spray of spring-water, and he got them both 
 safely through several burning summers and icy 
 winters, and when they were both sixteen years 
 old the tree was strong and buxom, with glossy 
 foliage and fine fruit, and the child was healthy 
 
 311 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 and handsome, with shining eyes and laughing 
 mouth. 
 
 He had worked as hard as any mule for 
 them both, and though a young man in years, 
 he looked an old man from excess of toil, 
 though his heart was light and his smile was 
 like sunshine. 
 
 When he got up in the dark to go to his 
 work, and drew his leathern belt about his lean 
 ribs, he always looked at the pale light of dawn 
 as it touched the green leaves of the tree and the 
 closed eyes of the child, and then he muttered 
 an Ave, content and thankful at heart. Many 
 would have thought the hardness of his lot 
 excuse enough for suicide; he never knew what 
 it was not to feel tired, he never knew what it 
 was to have a coin in his pocket for pleasure. 
 His bones ached, and the gnawing of rheu- 
 matism was in his nerves, from the many hours 
 spent knee-deep in water or damp sand, and 
 always at the pit of his stomach was that other 
 still worse gnawing of perpetual insufficiency of 
 food. But he was content and grateful to his 
 fate, as the birds are, though they hunger and 
 thirst, and every man's hand is against them. 
 
 The child and the tree were indissolubly 
 312 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 united in his mind and memory. They had 
 grown up together, and seemed part and parcel 
 of each other. Imagination scarcely exists in the 
 brains of the poor ; they do not know what it 
 is. The perpetual grind of daily want leaves 
 no space for or possibility of impersonal fancy 
 in it ; but, in a vague kind of superstitious way, 
 he associated the well-being of the one with the 
 welfare of the other. If the tree sickened and 
 drooped for a day, he always looked nervously 
 at Lizina to see if she ailed anything also. If 
 the little girl coughed or grew hot with fever, 
 he always watched anxiously the leaves of the 
 lemon. It was a talisman and fetish to him; 
 and when he came up from the river at evening 
 when his work was done, he looked upward 
 always to see the green boughs of the tree at 
 the square little window of his garret under 
 the deep eaves, and above an archway of old 
 brown-red brick. 
 
 If it had been missing at the window, he 
 would have told himself that Lizina was dead. 
 There was no likelihood that it would ever be 
 missing there. Lemon-trees live long, and this 
 one would, he knew, most likely outlive himself 
 if he kept it from worm and fly, and rot and 
 313 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 mildew. Nevertheless, he always glanced up- 
 ward to make sure that it was there when he 
 toiled up the strip of road which led to his 
 home when his work in the sand was done. 
 Lizina herself did not wait at the window. 
 She always came jumping and dancing down 
 the path, her auburn curls flying, and her big 
 brown eyes sparkling ; barefooted, ill-clad, 
 scarcely fed, but happy and healthy, singing at 
 the top of her voice as her father had always 
 done in his youth. 
 
 When they reached their fifteenth birthday, 
 neither she nor the lemon-tree had ever ailed 
 anything worse than a passing chill from a 
 frosty week, or a transient sickness from a 
 sultry drought. 
 
 The lemon-tree had given her the few little 
 gifts she had ever received. The pence brought 
 in by its fruit were always laid out for her : 
 cake at Christmas, sugar-egg at Easter, a white 
 ribbon for her first Communion, a pair of shoes 
 to wear on high feasts and holy days — these 
 little joys, few and far between, had all come to 
 her from the copper pieces gained by the pale, 
 wrinkled, fragrant fruit sold at five centimes 
 each in the village or the town. c Soldi delta 
 3H 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 Lizinanina? said her father whenever he put 
 any so gained in his trousers pocket. 
 
 Well as he loved his pipe, and thankful as he 
 was when he could get a drink of watered wine, 
 he never touched a halfpenny of the lemon 
 money to buy a pinch of tobacco or a glass of 
 mezzo-vino. It was all saved up carefully for 
 his little girl's small wants. Sometimes in hard 
 seasons it had even to go in bread for her, but 
 of that bread he would never himself take a 
 mouthful. Moreover, the pence were few, for 
 the lemons were not many. 
 
 Lizina remained quite a child, though she 
 grew fast, and her little round breasts swelled 
 up high and firm where the rough hempen shift 
 cut across them. Young as she was, the eyes of 
 an admirer had fallen upon her, and young 
 Cecco, the son of Lillo, the contadino where the 
 big pine stood (a pine three hundred years old 
 if one), had said to her father and to her that 
 when he had served out his time in the army 
 he should say something serious about it ; but 
 Fringuello had answered him ungraciously that 
 he could never give her bridal clothes or bridal 
 linen, so that she would needs die a maid, and 
 his own people had told him roughly that when 
 315 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 he should have served his time he would be in 
 a different mind. But Cecco, nevertheless, 
 thought nothing would please him ever so well 
 as this ragged, pretty child with her blowing 
 cloud of short, crisp bright curls, and he said to 
 her one evening as she sat on the wall by the 
 ferry, ' If you will be patient, my Lizinanina, I 
 will be true ; ' and Lizina, too young to be 
 serious, but amused and triumphant, laughed 
 gaily and saucily, and replied to him : c I will 
 make no promises, Cecco. You will come back 
 with a shorn pate and soft hands and tender 
 soles to your feet.' 
 
 For the soldier seems but a poor creature to 
 the children of the soil, and is, indeed, of but 
 little use when the barracks vomit him out of 
 their jaws and send him back to his home, a 
 poor, indifferent trooper, but also a spoiled 
 peasant ; having learned to write indeed, but 
 having forgotten how to handle a spade, drive a 
 plough, or prune a grape-vine, and to whose 
 feet, once hard and firm as leather, the once 
 familiar earth with its stones and thorns and 
 sticks seems rough and sharp and painful, after 
 having marched in ill-fitting boots for three 
 years along smooth roads and paven streets, 
 316 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 To the city lad and lass the conscript may 
 seem somebody very fine ; but to the country 
 ones he seems but a mere popinjay, only useful 
 to waste powder. Lizina, although only a river 
 labourer's daughter, was country born and bred, 
 and had the prejudices and preferences of the 
 country, and had run about under the orchard 
 boughs and down the vineyards of the country- 
 side till she thought as a peasant and spoke as 
 one. 
 
 Cecco was mortified, but he shared her views 
 of the life to which he was about to go. He 
 was useful now to tame a steer, to milk a heifer, 
 to fell a tree, to mow a meadow, to reap a field, 
 to get up in the dark and drive the colt into 
 the city with a load of straw and bring back a 
 load of manure. But in the barracks he would 
 be nothing — worse than nothing ; a poor numb- 
 skull, strapped up in stiff clothes with a pack 
 on his back, and a musket, which he must fire 
 at nothing, on his shoulder. 
 
 c Wait for me, Lizina,' he said sadly. ' The 
 time will soon pass, and I will come back and 
 marry you, despite them all.' 
 
 c Pooh ! I shall have married a man with a 
 mint of money by the time they let you come 
 3i7 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 back,' said the unkind child, saucily tossing the 
 curls out of her eyes ; but through her long 
 lashes her glance rested a moment softly on the 
 ruddy face of Cecco, which had looked down 
 on her so often through the boughs and twigs 
 of the cherry or pear trees of his father's farm, 
 as he threw down fruit into her outstretched 
 and eager little hands where she stood in the 
 grass of the orchard. 
 
 She said nothing more tender then, being 
 coy and wayward and hard to piease, as became 
 her incipient womanhood ; but before she went 
 to bed that night she came close to her father's 
 side and put her hand on his. 
 
 c Cecco says he will come back and marry 
 me, babbo? she said, with a child's directness. 
 Her father stroked her curls. 
 
 1 That is a joke, dear ; his people would 
 never let him marry a little penniless chit like 
 you.' 
 
 Lizina shook her head sagely with a little 
 proud smile. 
 
 * He will not mind his people. He will do 
 it — if I wish — when he comes back.' 
 
 Her father looked at her in amazement ; in 
 his eyes she was a little child still. 
 318 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 ' Why, baby, you speak like a woman ! ' he 
 said stupidly. ' I am glad this lad goes away, 
 as he puts such nonsense into your head.' 
 
 ' But if we both wish, you would not mind, 
 babbo ? ' she asked, persistent and serious. 
 
 ' The angels save us ! She speaks like a 
 grown woman ! ' cried her father. * My poor 
 little dear,' he thought sadly, * you will never 
 be able to wed anyone. We are poor! so 
 poor ! I can never give you even a set of 
 shifts. Who could go to a house so naked — 
 in rags, as one may say ? My poor little angel, 
 you must live a maid or go to a husband as 
 beggared as 1/ 
 
 He wished to say all this, but the words 
 choked him in his throat. It seemed so cruel 
 to set before the child the harsh, mean demands 
 of life, the merciless rules and habits of that 
 narrow world of theirs, which was bounded by 
 the river and the sand on one side, and the 
 cornfields and orchards on the other. 
 
 'Let be, let be,' he said to himself. 'She is 
 but a child, and the youth is going away for 
 years ; if it please her to think of this thing, it 
 can hurt no one. He will forget, and she will 
 forget.' 
 
 319 
 
A LEMO-NTREE 
 
 So he patted her pretty brown cheek, and 
 drew her closer and kissed her. 
 
 1 You are but a baby, my treasure,' he said 
 softly. ' Put these grave thoughts out of your 
 head. Many moons will wax and wane before 
 Cecco will be free again to come to his old 
 home. The future can take care of itself. I 
 will say neither yea nor nay. We will see 
 what the years will bring forth.' 
 
 ' But you would not mind ? ' she murmured 
 coaxingly. 
 
 The tears started to his eyes. 
 
 1 Ah ! God knows, dear, how sweet it would 
 be tome!' 
 
 He thought of his little girl safe and happy 
 for her lifetime in that pleasant and plentiful 
 household under the red-brown roofs where the 
 big pine grew amongst the pear and cherry 
 trees. The vision of it was beautiful and im- 
 possible. It hurt him to look on it, as the sun 
 dazzles the eyes at noon. 
 
 ' But put it out of your head — out of your 
 head, little one!' he said. 'Even if the boy 
 should keep of the same mind, never would 
 Lillo consent.' 
 
 ' Cecco will keep in the same mind,' said 
 320 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 Lizina, with the serene undoubting certainty of 
 childhood, and she broke off a little twig of the 
 lemon -tree, with a bud upon it and three 
 leaves, and gave it to Cecco that evening in the 
 dusk as they sat again upon the river-wall. It 
 was all she had to give, except her little waking 
 heart. 
 
 The next day he went away along the dusty 
 high-road in his father's cart to begin his new 
 life. He sobbed as if his heart would break, 
 and fastened in his shirt was the lemon shoot. 
 
 c To break off a bud ! Oh, Lizina ! ' cried 
 her father, in reproof and reproach. * A bud 
 means a fruit, and a fruit means a halfpenny, 
 perhaps a penny.' 
 
 ' It is only one,' said the child ; ' and I have 
 nothing else.' 
 
 Lizina did not speak of him, nor did she 
 seem to fret in any way. Her blithe voice rang 
 in clear carol over the green river water, as she 
 sat on the wall whilst her father worked below, 
 and she ate her dry bread with healthy and 
 happy appetite. 
 
 1 She is only a baby. She has forgotten the 
 boy already,' thought her father, half dis- 
 appointed, half relieved, whilst he broke up the 
 x 321 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 earth about the roots of the lemon-tree, and 
 counted the little pointed fruits coming out on 
 it, green as malachite, and promising a fair crop. 
 
 No letters could arrive to stimulate her 
 memory, for Cecco could scarcely scrawl his 
 name, and Lizina could not read her ABC. 
 Absence to the poor is a complete rupture, an 
 absolute blank, over which the intelligence can 
 throw no bridge. 
 
 Fringuello worked early and late, worked like 
 a willing mule, and lost no chance of doing any- 
 thing, however hard, which could bring in a 
 centime ; and he was so tired when night fell 
 that he could do little except swallow his bread- 
 soup and fling himself down on his bed of dry 
 leaves thrust into an old sack. So that as long 
 as Lizina's voice was heard in song, and her 
 little bare feet ran busily to and fro, he noticed 
 nothing else, and was content, believing all was 
 well with her. 
 
 The winter which followed on Cecco's 
 departure to his military service was of unusual 
 rigour for the vale of Arno ; the waters were 
 stormy and dark, and the fields were frozen and 
 brown, and snow lay on the long lines of the 
 mountains from their summit to their base. 
 322 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 But the lemon-tree flourished before its narrow 
 window, and Lizina was well and gay in the 
 cold little brick-floored, plaster-wailed, unceiled 
 garret ; and her father asked nothing more of 
 Fate, and went out to his work in the bitter 
 coldness and darkness of the morning dawns 
 with an empty stomach but a warm heart, 
 leaving her sleeping, easily and dreamlessly, 
 curled up like a little dormouse in her corner of 
 the room. 
 
 The winter passed and the spring came, 
 making all the orchard lands once more become 
 seas of white flowers, and setting the chaffinches 
 and linnets and nightingales to work at their 
 nests amongst the lovely labyrinth of bursting 
 blossom ; and one sunlit afternoon, towards the 
 close of April, the village priest, coming along 
 the road by the river, saw Fringuello, who was 
 backing his sand-cart into the bed of the now 
 shallow stream, and beckoned to him. The 
 priest had an open letter in his hand, and his 
 plump, smooth olive face was sad. 
 
 ' Dario/ he said gravely, ' I have some terrible 
 news in this paper. Lillo's son, Cecco, is dead. 
 I have to go and tell the family. The authorities 
 have written to me.' 
 
 323 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 He stopped suddenly, surprised by the effect 
 which his news had on his hearer. 
 
 6 Saints protect us, how you look ! ' he cried. 
 4 One would think you were the lad's father ! ' 
 
 < Is it sure ? Is it true ? ' stammered 
 Fringuello. 
 
 c Ay, ay, it is true and sure enough. The 
 authorities write to me,' answered the vicar, 
 with some pride. ' Poor lad ! Poor, good, 
 pretty lad ! They sent him to the Marenna 
 marshes, and the ague and fever got on him, 
 and he died in the fort a week ago. And only 
 to think that this time last year he was bringing 
 me arm fuls of blooming cherry boughs for the 
 altar at Easter-day ! And now dead and buried. 
 Good lack ! Far away from all his friends, poor 
 lad ! The decrees of heaven are inscrutable, but 
 it is of course for the best.' 
 
 He crossed himself and went on his way. 
 
 Fringuello doffed his cap mechanically, and 
 crossed himself also, and rested against the shaft 
 of his cart with his face leaning on his hands. 
 His hope was struck down into nothingness ; 
 the future had no longer a smile. Though he 
 had told himself, and them, that children were 
 fickle and unstable, and that nothing was less 
 324 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 likely than that the lad would come back in the 
 same mind, he had nevertheless clung to and 
 cherished the idea of such a fate for his little 
 daughter with a tenacity of which he had been 
 unconscious until his air castle was scattered to 
 the winds by the words of the priest. The boy 
 was dead ; and never would Lizina go to dwell 
 in peace and plenty at the old farmhouse by the 
 great pine. 
 
 c It was too good to be. Patience ! ' he said 
 to himself, with a groan, as he lifted his head 
 and bade the mule between the shafts move 
 onward. His job had to be done ; his load had 
 to be carried ; he had no leisure to sit down 
 alone with his regret. 
 
 c And it is worse for Lillo than it is for me,' 
 he said to himself, with an unselfish thought for 
 the lad's father. 
 
 He looked up at the little window of his own 
 attic which he could see afar off ; the lemon- 
 tree was visible, and beside it the little brown 
 head of Lizina as she sat sewing. 
 
 c Perhaps she will not care ; I hope she will 
 not care,' he thought. 
 
 He longed to go and tell her himself lest she 
 should hear it from some gossip, but he could 
 325 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 not leave his work. Yet, he could not bear the 
 child to learn it first from the careless chattering 
 of neighbouring gossips. 
 
 When he had discharged the load he carried, 
 he fastened the mule to a post by the water- 
 side, and said to a fellow-carter, * Will you 
 watch him a moment whilst I run home ? ' and 
 on the man's assenting he flew with lightning 
 speed along the road and up the staircase of his 
 house. 
 
 Lizina dropped her sewing in amazement as 
 he burst into the room and stood on the 
 threshold with a look which frightened her. 
 
 She ran to him quickly. 
 
 'Babbo ! Babbo ! What is the matter ? ' 
 she cried to him. Then, before he could 
 answer, she said timidly, under her breath, ' Is 
 anything wrong — with Cecco? ' 
 
 Then Fringuello turned his head away and 
 .wept aloud. 
 
 He had hoped the child had forgotten. He 
 knew now that she had remembered only too 
 well. All through the year which had gone by 
 since the departure of the youth she had been 
 as happy as a field-mouse undisturbed in the 
 wheat. The grain was not ripe yet for her, 
 326 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 but she was sure that it would be, and that her 
 harvest would be plenteous. She had always 
 been sure, quite sure, that Cecco would come 
 back ; and now, in an instant, she understood 
 that he was dead. 
 
 Lizina said little then or at any time ; but 
 the little gay life of her changed, grew dull, 
 seemed to shrink into itself and wither up as a 
 flower will when a worm is at its root. She had 
 been so sure that Cecco would return ! 
 
 c She is so young ; soon it will not matter to 
 her,' her father told himself. 
 
 But the months went by and the seasons, and 
 she did not recover her bloom, her mirth, her 
 elasticity ; her small face was always grave and 
 pale. She went about her work in the same 
 way, and was docile, and industrious, and un- 
 complaining, but something was wrong with 
 her. She did not laugh, she did not sing ; she 
 seldom even spoke unless she was spoken to 
 first. He tried to persuade himself that there 
 was no change in her, but he knew that he tried 
 to feed himself on falsehood. He might as well 
 have thought his lemon-tree unaltered if he had 
 found it withered up by fire. 
 
 327 
 
II 
 
 Once Lizina said to her father, ' Could one 
 
 walk there ? ' 
 
 ' Where, dear ? Where ? ' 
 
 'Where they have put Cecco,' she answered, 
 knowing nothing of distances or measurements 
 or the meaning of travel or change of place. 
 
 She had never been farther than across the 
 ferry to the other bank of the river. 
 
 Her father threw up his hands in despair. 
 
 ' Lord ! my treasure ! why it is miles and 
 miles and miles away ! I don't know rightly 
 even where — some place where the sun goes 
 down.' 
 
 And her idea of walking thither seemed to 
 him so stupefying, so amazing, so incredible, 
 that he stared at her timorously, afraid that 
 iher brain was going wrong. He had never 
 gone anywhere in all his life. 
 
 ' Oh, my pretty, what should we do, you and 
 I, in a strange place ? ' moaned Fringuello, 
 328 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 weeping with fear at the thought of change 
 and with grief at the worn, fevered face lifted 
 up to his. ' Never have I stirred from here 
 since I was born, nor you. To move to and 
 fro — that is for well-to-do folks, not for us ; 
 and when you are so ill, my poor little one, 
 that you can scarcely stand on your feet— if 
 you were to die on the way ' 
 
 c I shall not die on the way,' said the child 
 firmly. 
 
 ' But I know nought of the way,' he cried 
 wildly and piteously. * Never was I in one of 
 those strings of fire-led waggons, nor was ever 
 any one of my people that ever I heard tell of. 
 How should we ever get there, you and I ? I 
 know not even rightly what place it is.' 
 
 < I know,' said Lizina ; and she took a 
 crumpled scrap of paper out of the breast of 
 her worn and frayed cotton frock. It bore the 
 name of the seashore town where Cecco had 
 died. She had got the priest to write it down 
 for her. ' If we show this all along as we go 
 people will put us right until we reach the 
 place,' she said, with that quiet persistency 
 which was so new in her. ' Ask how one can 
 get there,' she persisted, and wound her arm 
 329 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 about his throat, and laid her cheek against his 
 in her old caressing way. 
 
 ' You are mad, little one — quite mad ! ' said 
 Fringucllo, aghast and affrighted ; and he 
 begged the priest to come and see her. 
 
 The priest did come, but said sorrowfully to 
 him : 
 
 ' Were I you, I would take her down to one 
 of the hospitals in the town ; she is ill.' 
 
 He did so. He had been in the town but a 
 few times in his whole life ; she never. It was 
 now wintry weather ; the roads were wet, the 
 winds were cold ; the child coughed as she 
 walked and shivered in her scanty and too thin 
 clothes. The wise men at the hospital looked 
 at her hastily among a crowd of sick people, 
 and said some unintelligible words, and scrawled 
 something on a piece of paper — a medicine, as 
 it proved — which cost to buy more than a day 
 of a sand carter's wage. 
 
 c Has she really any illness ? ' he asked, with 
 wild, imploring eyes, of the chemist who made 
 up the medicine. 
 
 4 Oh no — a mere nothing,' said the man in 
 answer ; but thought as he spoke : c The doctors 
 might spare the poor devil's money. When 
 33o 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 the blood is all water like that there is nothing 
 to be done ; the life just goes out like a wind- 
 blown candle.' c Get her good wine; butcher's 
 meat ; plenty of nourishing food,' he added, 
 reflecting that while there is youth there is 
 hope. 
 
 The father groaned aloud, as he laid down 
 the coins which were the price of the medicine. 
 Wine! Meat! Nourishment! They might 
 as well have bidden him feed her on powdered 
 pearls and melted gold. They got home that 
 day footsore and wet through ; he made a little 
 fire of boughs and vine-branches, and, for the 
 first time ever since it had been planted, he 
 forgot to look at the lemon-tree. 
 
 'You are not ill, my Lizinanina?' he 
 said eagerly. * The chemist told me it was 
 nothing.' 
 
 1 Oh no, it is nothing/ said the child ; and 
 she spoke cheerfully and tried to control the 
 cough which shook her from head to foot. 
 
 Tears rolled down her father's cheeks and 
 fell on to the smouldering heather, which he set 
 all right. Wine ! Meat ! Nourishment ! The 
 three vain words rang through his head all 
 night. They might as well have bade him 
 33i 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 set her on a golden throne and call the stars 
 down from their spheres to circle round her. 
 
 c My poor little baby ! ' he thought ; ' never 
 did she have a finger ache, or a winter chill, 
 or an hour's discomfort, or a moment's pain 
 in mind or body until now ! ' 
 
 The child wasted and sickened visibly day 
 by day. Her father looked to see the lemon- 
 tree waste and sicken also ; but it flourished 
 still, a green, fresh, happy thing, though grow- 
 ing in a place so poor. A superstitious, silly 
 notion took possession of him, begotten by his 
 nervous terrors for his child, and by the mental 
 weakness which came of physical want. He 
 fancied the lemon -tree hurt the child, and 
 drew nourishment and strength away from her. 
 Perhaps in the night, in some mysterious way 
 — who knew how? He grew stupid and 
 feverish, working so hardly all day on hardly 
 more than a crust, and not sleeping at night 
 through his fears for Lizina. Everything 
 seemed to him cruel, wicked, unintelligible. 
 Why had the State taken away the boy who 
 was so contented and useful where he was 
 born ? Why had the strange, confined, weari- 
 some life amongst the marshlands killed him ? 
 332 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 Why was he himself without even means to 
 get decent food? Why, after working hard 
 all these years, could he have no peace ? Must 
 he even lose the one little creature he had? 
 The harshness and injustice of it all disturbed 
 his brain and weighed upon his soul. He sank 
 into a sullen silence ; he was in the mood 
 when good men turn bad, and burn, pillage, 
 slay — not because they are wicked or unkind 
 by nature, but because they are mad from 
 misery. 
 
 But she was so young, and had been always 
 so strong, he thought ; this would pass before 
 long, and she would be herself again — brisk, 
 brown, agile, mirthful, singing at the top of 
 her voice as she ran through the lines of the 
 cherry-trees. He denied himself everything 
 to get her food, and left himself scarce enough 
 to keep the spark of life in him. He sold 
 even his one better suit of clothes and his one 
 pair of boots ; but she had no appetite, and 
 perceiving his sacrifice, took it so piteously to 
 heart that it made her worse. 
 
 The neighbours were good-natured and 
 brought now an egg i now a fruit, now a loaf 
 for Lizina ; but they could not bring her 
 333 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 appetite, and were offended and chilled by her 
 lassitude, her apparent ignorance of their good 
 intentions, and her indifference to their gifts. 
 
 Some suggested this nostrum, others that ; 
 some urged religious pilgrimages, and some 
 herbs, and some charms, and some spoke of a 
 wise woman, who, if you crossed her hand 
 with silver, could relieve you of any evil if 
 she would. But amidst the multitude of coun- 
 sellors, Lizina only grew thinner and thinner, 
 paler and paler, all her youth seeming slowly 
 to wane and die out of her. 
 
 Her little sick heart was set obstinately on 
 what her father had told her was impossible. 
 
 None of Cecco's own people thought of 
 going to the place where he died. He was 
 dead, and there was an end to it ; even his 
 mother, although she wept for him, did not 
 dream of throwing away good money in a silly 
 and useless journey to the place where he had 
 been put in the ground. 
 
 Only the little girl, who had laughed at him 
 and flouted him as they sat on the wall by the 
 river, did think of it constantly, tenaciously, 
 silently. It seemed to her horrible to leave 
 him all alone in some unfamiliar, desolate place, 
 334 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 where no step was ever heard of any whom 
 he had ever known, She said nothing of it, 
 for she saw that even her father did not under- 
 stand ; but she brooded over the thought of 
 it constantly, turning to and fro in her mind 
 the little she had ever known or heard of the 
 manner and means by which people transported 
 themselves from place to place. There were 
 many, of course, in the village who could have 
 told her how others travelled, but she was too 
 shy to speak of the matter even to the old 
 man of the ferry, in whose boat, when it was 
 moored to a poula driven in the sand, she had 
 spent many an hour of playtime. She had 
 always been a babbling, communicative, merry 
 child, chattering like a starling or a swift, until 
 now. Now she spoke rarely, and never of the 
 thing of which her heart was full. 
 
 One day her father looked from her pinched, 
 wan face to the bright green leaves of the 
 flourishing lemon-tree, and muttered an oath. 
 
 c Day and night, for as many years as you are 
 old, I have taken care of that tree, and sheltered 
 it and fed it ; and now it alone is fair to see and 
 strong, whilst you — verily, oh verily, Lizina, I 
 could find it in my heart to take a billhook and 
 
 335 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 hew it down for its cruelty in being glad and 
 full of vigour, whilst you pinch and fade, day by 
 day, before my sight ! ' 
 
 Lizina shook her head, and looked at the 
 tree which had been the companion of her 
 fifteen years of life. 
 
 ' It's a good tree, babbo ! ' she said gently. 
 ' Think how much it has given us ; how many 
 things you bought me with the lemon money ! 
 Oh ! it is very good ; do not ever say a word 
 against it ; but — but — if you are in anger with 
 it, there is a thing which you might do. You 
 have always kept the money which it brought 
 for me P ' 
 
 1 Surely, dear. I have always thought it 
 yours,' he answered, wondering where her 
 thoughts were tending. 
 
 * Then — then,' said Lizina timidly, c if it be 
 as mine really, and you see it no more with 
 pleasure in its place there, will you sell it, and 
 with the price of it take me to where Cecco 
 lies ? ' 
 
 Her eyes were intensely wistful ; her cheeks 
 grew momentarily red in her eagerness ; she put 
 both hands to her chest and tried to stop the 
 cough which began to choke her words. Her 
 
 336 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 father stared, incredulous that he could hear 
 aright. 
 
 ' Sell the tree ? ' he asked stupidly. 
 Not in his uttermost needs had the idea of 
 selling it come to him. He held it in a 
 superstitious awe. 
 
 ' Since you say it is mine,' said the child. 
 * It would sell well. It is strong and beautiful 
 and bears good fruit. You could take me down 
 where the sun sets and the sea is — where Cecco 
 lies in the grass.' 
 
 c Good Lord ! ' said Fringuello, with a moan. 
 It seemed to him that the sorrow for her lost 
 sweetheart had turned the child's brain. 
 
 ' Do, father — do ! ' she urged, her thin brown 
 lips trembling with anxiety and with the sense 
 of her own powerlessness to move unless he 
 would consent. 
 
 Her father hid his face in his hands ; he felt 
 helpless before her stronger will. She would 
 force him to do what she desired, he knew ; 
 and he trembled, for he had neither knowledge 
 nor means to make such a journey as this would 
 be to the marshlands in the west, where Cecco 
 lay. 
 
 'And the tree— the tree ! ' he muttered. 
 Y 337 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 He had seen the tree so long by that little 
 square window, it was part of his life and hers. 
 The thought of its sale terrified him as if he 
 were going to sell some human friend into 
 bondage. 
 
 ' There is no other way,' said Lizina sadly. 
 
 She, too, was loth to sell the tree, but they 
 had nothing else to sell ; and the intense selfish- 
 ness of a fixed idea possessed her to the exclusion 
 of all other feeling. 
 
 Then the cough shook her once more from 
 head to foot, and a little froth of blood came to 
 her lips. 
 
 Lizina, in the double cruelty of her child- 
 hood and of her ill-health, was merciless to her 
 father, and to the tree which had been her com- 
 panion so long. She was possessed by the 
 egotism of sorrow. She was a little thing, now 
 enfeebled and broken by long nights without 
 sleep and long days without food, and her heart 
 was set on this one idea, which she did not 
 reveal — that she would die down there, and that 
 then they would put her in the same ground 
 with him. This was her idea. 
 
 In the night she got up noiselessly, whilst 
 her father was for awhile sunk in the deep 
 338 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 sleep which comes after hard manual toil, and 
 came up to the lemon-tree and leaned her cheek 
 against its earthen vase. 
 
 ' I am sorry to send you away, dearie/ she 
 said to it ; ' but there is no other way to go 
 to him.' 
 
 She felt as if it must understand and must 
 feel wounded. Then she broke off a little 
 branch — a small one with a few flowers on it. 
 
 * That is for him,' she said to it. 
 
 And she stood there sleepily with the moon- 
 light pouring in on her and the lemon-tree 
 through the little square hole of the window. 
 
 When she got back to her bed she was 
 chilled to the bone, and she stuffed the rough 
 sacking of her coverture between her teeth to 
 stop the coughing, which might wake her fathe^. 
 She had put the little branch of her lemon into 
 the broken pitcher which stood by her at night 
 to slake her thirst. 
 
 ' Sell it, babbo y quick, quick ! ' she said in the 
 morning. 
 
 She was afraid her strength would not last 
 for the journey, but she did not say so. She 
 tried to seem cheerful. He thought her better. 
 
 1 Sell it to-day — quick, quick ! ' she cried 
 339 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 feverishly ; and she knew that she was cruel 
 and ungrateful, but she persisted in her cruelty 
 and ingratitude. 
 
 Her father, in despair, yielded. 
 
 It seemed to him as if he were cutting the 
 throat of a friend. Then he approached the 
 tree to carry it away. He had called in one of 
 his fellow- carters to help to move it, for it was 
 too heavy for one man. With difficulty it was 
 forced through the narrow, low door and down 
 the steep stair, its leaves brushing the walls with 
 a sighing sound, and its earthen jar grinding on 
 the stone of the steps. Lizina watched it go 
 without a sigh, without a tear. Her eyes were 
 dry and shining ; her little body was quivering ; 
 her face was red and pale in quick, uneven 
 changes. 
 
 1 It goes where it will be better than with us,' 
 said Fringuello, in a vague apology to it, as he 
 lifted it out of the entrance of the house. 
 
 He had sold it to a gardener in a villa near 
 at hand. 
 
 ' Oh yes, it will be better off/ he said 
 
 feverishly, in the doubtful yet aggressive tone of 
 
 one who argues that which he knows is not true. 
 
 ' With rich people instead of poor ; out in a 
 
 34o 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 fine garden half the year, and in a beautiful 
 airy wooden house all winter. Oh yes, it will 
 be much better off. Now it has grown so big 
 it was choked where it stood in my little place ; 
 no light, no air, no sun, nothing which it 
 wanted. It will be much better off where it 
 goes ; it will have rich, new earth and every 
 sort of care.' 
 
 1 It has done well enough with you,' said his 
 comrade carelessly, as he helped to shove the 
 vase on to the hand-cart. 
 
 c Yes, yes,' said Fringuello impatiently, * but 
 it will do better where it goes. It has grown 
 too big for a room. It would starve with me/ 
 
 'Well, it is your own business,' said the 
 other man. 
 
 ' Yes, it is his own business,' said the neigh- 
 bours, who were standing to see it borne away 
 as if it were some rare spectacle. c But the tree 
 was always there ; and the money you get will 
 go,' they added, in their collective wisdom. 
 
 He took up the handles of the little cart and 
 placed the yoke of cord over his shoulders, and 
 began to drag it away. He bent his head down 
 very low so that the people should not see the 
 tears which were running down his cheeks. 
 34i 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 When he came back to his home he carried 
 its price in his hands — thirty francs in three 
 paper notes. He held them out to Lizina. 
 
 'All is well with it; it is to stand in a beauti- 
 ful place, close to falling water, half in shade, 
 half in sun, as it likes best. Oh, all is well 
 with it, dear ! do not be afraid.' Then his 
 voice failed him, and he sobbed aloud. 
 
 The child took the money. She had a little 
 bundle in her hand, and she had put on the 
 only pair of shoes she possessed. 
 
 1 Clean yourself, father, and come — come 
 quickly,' she said in a little hard, dry, panting 
 voice. 
 
 ( Oh wait, wait, my angel ! ' he cried piteously 
 through his sobs. 
 
 ' I cannot wait,' said the child, c not a 
 minute, not a minute. Clean yourself and 
 come.' 
 
 In an hour's time they were in the train. 
 The child did everything — found the railway- 
 station, asked the way, paid their fares, took 
 their seats, pushing her father hither and thither 
 as if he were a blind man. He was dumb with 
 terror and regret ; he resisted nothing. Having 
 sold the tree, there seemed to him nothing left 
 342 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 for him to do. Lizina obeyed him no more — 
 she commanded. 
 
 People turned to look after this little sick 
 girl with death written on her face, who spoke 
 and moved with such feverish decision, and 
 dragged after her this thin dumb man, her 
 small lean hand shut with nervous force upon 
 his own. All the way she ate nothing ; she 
 only drank thirstily of water whenever the train 
 stopped. 
 
 The novelty and strangeness of the transit, 
 the crowd, and haste, and noise, the unfamiliar 
 scenes, the pressure of unknown people, and 
 the stare of unknown eyes — all which was so 
 bewildering and terrible to her father, had no 
 effect upon her. Ali she thought of was to 
 get to the place of which the name was written 
 on the scrap of paper which she had shown at 
 the ticket-office, and which she continued to 
 show mutely to anyone who spoke to her. It 
 said everything to her ; she thought it must 
 say everything to everyone else. 
 
 Nothing could alarm her or arrest her atten- 
 
 o 
 
 tion. Her whole mind was set on her goal. 
 
 1 Your little lady is very ill ! ' said more than 
 one in a crowded railway-waggon, where they 
 343 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 jammed one on to another, thick as herrings in 
 a barrel. 
 
 ' Ay, ay, she is very ill,' he answered 
 stupidly ; and they did not know whether he 
 was unfeeling or daft. He was dizzy and sick 
 with the unwonted motion of the train, the 
 choking dust, the giddy landscape which seemed 
 to run past him, earth and sky together ; but 
 on Lizina they made no impression, except that 
 she coughed almost incessantly. She seemed 
 to ail nothing and to perceive nothing. He 
 was seized with a panic of dread lest they 
 should be taken in some wrong direction, even 
 out of the world altogether ; dreaded fire, acci- 
 dent, death, treachery ; felt himself caught up 
 by strong, invisible hands, and whirled away, 
 the powers of heaven or hell alone knew where. 
 His awful fear grew on him every moment 
 greater and greater ; and he would have given 
 his soul to be back safe on the sand of the river 
 at his home. 
 
 But Lizina neither showed nor felt any fear 
 whatever. 
 
 The journey took the whole day and part of 
 the ensuing night ; for the slow cheap train by 
 which they travelled gave way to others, passed 
 344 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 hours motionless, thrust aside and forgotten, 
 and paused at every little station on the road. 
 They suffered from hunger and thirst, and heat 
 and draught, and fatigue and contusion, as the 
 poor cattle suffered in the trucks beside them. 
 But the child did not seem to feel either ex- 
 haustion or pain, or to want anything except 
 to be there — to be there. The towns, the 
 mountains, the sea, the coast, all so strange 
 and wonderful to untravelled eyes, had no 
 wonder for her. She only wanted to get be- 
 yond them, to where it was that Cecco lay. 
 Every now and then she opened her bundle and 
 looked at the little twig of the lemon-tree. 
 
 Alarmed at her aspect, and the racking cough, 
 their companions shrank away from them as far 
 as the crowding of the waggon allowed of, and 
 they were left unquestioned and undisturbed, 
 whilst the day wore on and the sun went down 
 into the sea and the evening deepened into 
 night. 
 
 It was dawn when they were told to descend ; 
 they had reached their destination — a dull, sun- 
 baked, fever-stricken little port, with the salt 
 water on one side of it, and the machia and 
 marsh on the other. 
 
 345 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 Lizina got down from the train, holding her 
 little bundle in one hand and in the other her 
 father's wrist. Their limbs were bruised, aching, 
 trembling, their spines felt broken, their heads 
 seemed like empty bladders, in which their 
 brains went round and round ; but she did not 
 faint or fall — she went straight onward as though 
 the place was familiar to her. 
 
 Close to the desolate, sand-strewn station there 
 was a fort of decaying yellow stone, high walls 
 with loopholes, mounds of sand with sea-thistle 
 and bryony growing in them : before these was 
 the blue water, and a long stone wall running 
 far out into the water. To the iron rings in it a 
 few fisher boats were moored by their cables. 
 The sun was rising over the inland wilderness, 
 where wild boars and buffalo dwelt under im- 
 penetrable thickets. Lizinia led her father by 
 the hand past the fortifications to a little deso- 
 late church with crumbling belfry, where she 
 knew the burial-ground must be. There were 
 four lime-washed walls, with a black iron door, 
 through the bars of which the graves within and 
 the rank grass around them could be seen. 
 The gate was locked ; the child sat down on a 
 stone before it and waited. She motioned to 
 346 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 her father to do the same. He was like a poor 
 steer landed after a long voyage in which he 
 has neither eaten nor drank, but has been 
 bruised, buffeted, thrown to and fro, galled, 
 stunned, tormented. They waited, as she wished, 
 in the cool dust of the breaking day. The bell 
 above in the church steeple was tolling for the 
 first Mass. 
 
 In a little while a sacristan came out of the 
 presbytery near the church, and began to turn 
 a great rusty key in the church door. He saw 
 the two sitting there by the graveyard, and 
 looking at them over his shoulder, said to them, 
 * You are strangers — what would you ? 
 
 Lizina rose and answered him : ' Will you 
 open to me ? I come to see my Cecco, who 
 lies here. I have something to give him.' 
 
 The sacristan looked at her father. 
 
 ' Cecco ? ' he repeated, in a doubtful tone. 
 
 'A lad of Royezzano, a soldier who died 
 here,' said Fringuello, hoarsely and faintly, for 
 his throat was parched and swollen, and his 
 head swam. ' He and my child were play- 
 mates. Canst tell us, good man, where his 
 grave is made ? ' 
 
 The sacristan paused, standing before the 
 347 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 leathern curtain of the church porch, trying to 
 remember. Save for soldiers and the fisher 
 folk, there was no one who either lived or died 
 there ; his mind went back over the winter and 
 autumn months, to the last summer, in which 
 the marsh fever and the pestilential drought had 
 made many sicken and some die in the fort and 
 in the town. 
 
 ' Cecco ? Cecco ? ' he said doubtfully. ( A 
 Tuscan lad ? A conscript ? Ay, I do recall 
 him now. He got the tertian fever and died in 
 barracks. His reverence wrote about him to his 
 family. Yes, 1 remember. There were three 
 soldier lads died last year, all in the summer. 
 There are three crosses where they lie. I put 
 them there ; his is the one nearest the wall. 
 Yes, you can go in ; I have the key.' 
 
 He stepped across the road and unlocked the 
 gate. He looked wonderingly on Lizina as he 
 did so. ' Poor little one ! ' he muttered, in 
 compassion. * How small, how ill, to come so 
 far!' 
 
 Neither she nor her father seemed to hear 
 
 him. The child pressed through the aperture 
 
 as soon as the door was drawn ajar, and 
 
 Fringuello followed her. The burial-ground 
 
 348 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 was small and crowded, covered with rank grass, 
 and here and there sea-lavender was growing. 
 The sacristan led them to a spot by the western 
 wall where there were three rude crosses made 
 of unbarked sticks nailed across one another. 
 The rank grass was growing amongst the clods 
 of sun-baked yellow clay ; the high white wall 
 rose behind the crossed sticks ; the sun beat 
 down on the place : there was nothing else. 
 
 The sacristan motioned to the cross nearest 
 the wall, and then went back to the church, 
 being in haste, as it was late for matins. Lizina 
 stood by the two poor rude sticks, once branches 
 of the hazel, which were all that marked the 
 grave of Cecco. 
 
 Her father, uncovering his head, fell on his 
 knees. 
 
 The child's face was illuminated with a strange 
 and holy rapture. She kissed the lemon bough 
 which she held in her hand, and then laid it 
 gently down upon the grass and clay under the 
 wall. 
 
 1 1 have remembered, dear,' she said softly, 
 
 and knelt on the ground and joined her hands 
 
 in prayer. Then the weakness of her body 
 
 overcame the strength of her spirit ; she leaned 
 
 349 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 forward lower and lower until her face was 
 bowed over the yellow grass. * I came to lie 
 with you,' she said under her breath ; and then 
 her lips parted more widely with a choking 
 sio-h the blood gushed from her mouth, and in 
 a few minutes she was dead. 
 
 They laid her there in the clay and the sand 
 and the tussocks of grass, and her father went 
 back alone to his native place and empty 
 room. 
 
 One day on the river-bank a man said to 
 
 him: 
 
 ' It is odd, but that lemon-tree which you 
 sold to my master never did well ; it died 
 within the week— a fine, strong, fresh young 
 tree. Were there worms at its root, think you, 
 or did the change to the open air kill it ? ' 
 
 Fringuello, who had always had a scared, 
 wild, dazed look on his face since he returned 
 from the sea -coast, looked at the speaker 
 stupidly, not with any wonder, but like one 
 who hears what he has long known but only 
 imperfectly understands. 
 
 < It knew Lizina was dead,' he said simply ; 
 350 
 
A LEMON-TREE 
 
 and then thrust his spade into the sand and 
 dug. 
 
 He would never smile nor sing any more, 
 nor any more know any joys of life ; but he 
 still worked on from that habit which is the 
 tyrant and saviour of the poor. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 Valerie's Fate. 
 A Life Interest 
 Mona's Choice. 
 By Woman's Wit. 
 The Cost of Her Pride. 
 
 ALEXANDER. 
 
 Barbara. 
 
 A Fight with Fate. 
 A Golden Autumn. 
 Mrs. Crichton's Creditor. 
 The Step-mother. 
 
 A Missing Plero. 
 
 By F. M. ALLEN.-Green as Grass. 
 
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 By G. W APPLETQN.-Rash Conclusions. 
 
 Philistla. I Babylon. 
 Strange Stories. 
 For Maimie's Sake. 
 In all Shades. 
 The Beckoning Hand. 
 The Devil's Die. 
 This Mortal Coil. 
 The Tents of Shem. 
 
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 The Great Taboo. 
 Dumaresq's Daughter. 
 Duchess of Pbwysland. 
 Blood Royal. 
 Ivan Greet's Masterpiece. 
 The Scallywag. 
 At Market Value. 
 Under Sealed Orders. 
 
 ARTBMUS WARD'S WORKS, Complete. 
 By EDWIN L. ARNOLD. 
 
 Phra the Phoenician. | Const?b!e of St. Nicholas, 
 
Ill ST. MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 27 
 
 The Piccadilly (3/6) Novels— continued. 
 
 By ROBERT BARE. 
 In a Steamer Chair I A Woman Intervenes. 
 
 From Whose Bourne. | Revenge t 
 
 Bv FRANK BARRETT. 
 A Prodigal's Progress. I The Harding Scanda 
 Woman of Iron Bracelets. Under a Strange Mask. 
 Fettered for Life. I A Missing Witness. 
 
 Was She Justified ? 
 By ■ BELLE.'— Vashti and Esther. 
 By ARNOLD BENNETT. 
 The Gates of Wrath. | The Grand Babylon Hotel 
 
 By Sir W. BESANT and J. RICE. 
 By Celia's Arbour. 
 Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 The Seamy Side. 
 The Case of Mr. Lucraft. 
 In Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Ten Years' Tenant. 
 
 Ready-Money Mortiboy. 
 My Little Girl. 
 With Harp and Crown. 
 This Son of Vulcan. 
 The Golden Butterfly. 
 The Monks of Thelema. 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT. 
 
 All Sorts and Conditions. 
 The Captains' Room. 
 All in a Garden Fair. 
 Dorothy Forster. 
 Uncle Jack. | Holy Rose. 
 World Went Well Then. 
 Children of Gibeon. 
 Herr P^ulus. 
 For Faith and Freedom. 
 To Call Her Mine. 
 The Revolt of Man. 
 The Bell of St. Paul's. 
 Armorel of Lyonesse. 
 
 Katherine's by Tower. 
 Verbena Camellia Stepha- 
 The Ivqry Gate. [notis. 
 The Rebel Queen. 
 Dreams of Avarice. 
 In Deacon's Orders. 
 The Master Craftsman. 
 The Ciy of Refuge. 
 A Fountain Sealed. 
 The Changeling. 
 The Fourth Generation. 
 The Charm. 
 The Alabaster Box. 
 
 The Orange Girl. 
 
 By AMBROSE BIERCE.-In Midst of Life. 
 
 By HAROLD BINDLOSS.-Ainslie's Ju-ju. 
 
 By M. JYIcD. BODKIN. 
 
 Dora Myrl. | Shillelagh and Shamrock. 
 
 Patsey the Omadaun. 
 
 By PAUL BOURGET.-A Living Lie. 
 
 By J. D. BRAYSHAW.— Slum Silhouettes. 
 
 By H. A. BRYDEN.— An Exiled Scot. 
 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 Shadow of the Sword. 
 A Child of Nature. 
 God and the Man. 
 Martyrdom of Madeline, 
 Love Me for Ever. 
 Annan Water. 
 Foxglove Manor. 
 The Charlatan. 
 
 The New Abelard. 
 Matt. I Rachel Dene. 
 
 Master of the Mine. 
 The Heir of Linne. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 Red and White Heather. 
 Iiidy Kilpatrick. 
 Andromeda. 
 
 GELETT BURGESS and WILL IRWIN. 
 
 The Picaroons. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 
 Shadow of a Crime. | Son of Hagar. | Deemster. 
 
 By R. W, CHAMBERS.— The King in Yellow. 
 
 By J. M. CHAPPLE.-The Minor Chord. 
 
 By AUSTIN CLARE.-By Rise of River. 
 
 By Mrs. ARCHER CLIYE. 
 
 Paul Ferroll. | Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife. 
 
 By ANNE COATES.-Rie's Diary. 
 
 By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
 
 The Red Sultan. | The Burden of Isabel. 
 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 Armadale. I After Dark. 
 No Name. Antonina 
 Basil. I Hide and Seek. 
 The Dead Secret. 
 Queen of Hearts. 
 My Miscellanies. 
 The Woman in White. 
 The Law and the Lady. 
 The Haunted Hotel. 
 The Moonstone. 
 Man and Wife. 
 Poor Miss Finch. 
 Miss or Mrs.? 
 
 The New Magdalen. 
 The Frozen Deep. 
 The Two Destinies. 
 'I Say No.' 
 Little Novel'. 
 The Fallen Leaves. 
 Jezebel's Daughter. 
 The Black Robe. 
 Heart and Science. 
 The Evil Genius. 
 The Legacy of Cain. 
 A Rogue's Life. 
 Blind Love. 
 
 By MORT. and FRANCES COLLINS. 
 
 Blacksmith and Scholar. I You Play Me False. 
 The Village Comedy. | Midnight to Midnight, 
 
 By M. J. COLQUHOUN.— Every Inch a Soldier. 
 
 By HERBERT COMPTON. 
 
 The Inimitable Mrs. Massingham. 
 
 By E. H. COOPER.-Geoffory Hamilton. 
 
 By Y. C. COTES.— Two Girls on a Barge. 
 
 By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
 
 Th<* Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. 
 His Vanished Star. 
 
 By H. N. CRELLIN. 
 Romances of the Old Seraglio. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By S. R. CROCKETT and others. 
 Tales of Our Coast. 
 
 By B 
 
 Diana Barrington. 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 
 \ Family Likeness. 
 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 
 Mr Jervis. 
 
 Village Tales. 
 
 Some One Else. | Jason. 
 
 Infatuation. 
 
 M. 
 
 CROKBR. 
 Tue Real Lady Hilda. 
 Married or Single? 
 Two Masters. 
 In the Kingdom of Kerry 
 Interference. 
 A Third Person. 
 Beyond the Pale. 
 Miss Balmaine's Past. 
 Terence. | The Cat's-paw. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 By H. C. DAYIDSON.-Mr. Sadler's Daughters. 
 
 By JAMES DE MILLE. 
 A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. 
 
 By HARRY DE WINDT. 
 True Tales of Travel and Adventure. 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 Man from Manchester. | Tales of Terror. 
 Records of Vincent Trill. Chronicles of Michael 
 Myst. of Tamaica Terrace. Danevitch [Detective 
 Deacon Brodie. | Tyler Tatlock, Private 
 
 RICHARD DOWLING.-Old Corcoran 's Money. 
 CONAN DOYLE.— The Firm of Girdlestone. 
 
 By S. JEANNETTE DUNCAN. 
 A Daughter of To-day | Vernon's Aunt. 
 By ANNIE EDWARDES. 
 Archie LovelL | A Plaster Saint. 
 
 By G. S. EDWARDS.-Snazelleparilla. 
 By G. MANYILLE FENN. 
 
 Cursed by a Fortune. 
 The Case of Ailsa Gray. 
 Commodore Junk. 
 The New Mistress. 
 Witness to the Deed. 
 The Tiger Lily. 
 The White Virgin. 
 Black Blood. 
 Double Cunning. 
 
 A Fluttered Dovecote. 
 King of the Castle. 
 Master of the Ceremonies. 
 The Man with a Shadow. 
 One Maid's Mischief. 
 Story of Antony Grace. 
 This Man's Wife. 
 In Jeopardy. 
 Woman Worth Winning. 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERAi-D.-Fatal Zero. 
 
 By Hon. Mrs. Y/. FORBES. -Dumb. 
 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
 
 One by One. I A Real Queen. 
 
 A Dog and his Shadow. | Ropes of Sand. 
 Jack Doyle's Daughter. 
 Ry HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 Seth's Brother's Wife. I The Lawton Girl. 
 
 By PAUL GAULOT.— Th^- Red Shirts 
 By DOROTHEA GERARD. 
 A Queen of Curds and Cream. 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 Robin Gray. I The Braes of Yarrow. 
 
 Of High Degree, Queen of llie Meadow. 
 
 The Golden Shaft. | The Flower of the Forest 
 
 By E. GLANYILL5. 
 The Lost Heiress. I The Golden Rock. 
 
 Fair Colonist | Fossicker. | Tales from the Veld. 
 
 By E. J. GOODMAN. 
 The Fate of Herbert Wayne. 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GO JLO. 
 Red Spider. | Eve. 
 
 Bv ALFRED A. GRACE. 
 Tales of a Dyiiig Race. 
 ByCECIKj GRIFFITH.- Coriiithia Marazion. 
 
28 
 
 CI I ATT O & WIND US, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 The Piccadilly (3/6) Novels— continued. 
 By a. clayering gunter. 
 
 A Florida Enchantment. 
 
 Ey OWEN HALL. 
 The Track of a Storm | Jetsam. 
 
 By COSMO HAMILTON. 
 
 Clamour of Impossible. | Through a Keyhole. 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By BRET HARTB. 
 
 A Waif of the 
 A Ward of the Golden 
 Gate. I Springs. 
 
 A Sappho of Green 
 (.ol. Starbotile's Client. 
 Susy. I Sally Dows. 
 
 Bell-Ringer of Angel's. 
 Tales of Trail and Town. 
 
 A Protegee of Jack 
 
 Clarence. [Hamlin's 
 
 Backer's Luck. 
 
 Devil's Ford. 
 
 Crusade of ' Excelsior. 
 
 Three Partners. 
 
 Gabriel Conroy. 
 
 New Condensed Novels. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 Gfrth. I Dust. I Beatrix Randolph. 
 
 Ellice Cjuentin. David Poindexter's Dis 
 
 Sebastian Strome. appearance. 
 
 Fortune's Fool. | Spectre of Camera. 
 
 By Sir A. HELPS.— Ivan de Biion. 
 
 By I. HENDERSQN.-Agatha Page. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 
 Dorothy's Double. | The Queen's Cup. 
 
 Rujub, the Juggler. 
 
 By HEADON HILL.— Zambra the Detective. 
 
 By JOHN HILL.— The Common Ancestor. 
 
 By TIGHE HOPKINS. 
 
 Twixt Love and Duty. I Incomplete Adventurer. 
 
 Nugents of Carriccnna. | Nell Halienden. 
 
 By YICTOR HUGO.— The Outlaw of Iceland. 
 
 By FERGUS HUME. 
 
 Lady from Nowhere. | The Millionaire Mystery. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD 
 
 Professor's Experiment. 
 A Point of Conscence. 
 A Maiden all Foriora 
 The Coming of Chloe. 
 Nora Creina. 
 An Anxious Moment. 
 April's Lady. 
 Peter's Wife. 
 Lovice. 
 
 Marvel. 
 
 Unsatisfactory Lover. 
 In Durance Vile. 
 A Modern Circe. 
 Lady Patty. 
 A Mental Struggle. 
 Lady Verner's Flight. 
 The Reo-House Mystery, 
 The Three Graces. 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 The Leaden Casket. I Self-Condemned. 
 
 That Other Person. | Mrs. Juliet. 
 
 By R. ASHE KING.-A Drawn Game. 
 By GEORGE LA M BERT.— President of Boravia 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER. 
 Madame Sans-Gene. 
 
 By ADAM LILBURN.— A Tragedy in Marble 
 By HARRY LINDSAY. 
 
 Rhoda Roberts. | The Jacobite. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. 
 Under which Lord? 
 ' My Love ! ' | lone. 
 Paston Carew. 
 vowing the Wind 
 With a Silken Thread. 
 
 Atonement Learn Dundas 
 The One Too Many. 
 Dulcie Everton. 
 Tne Rebel of ?he Famiiy 
 An Octave of Friends. 
 The World Weil Lest. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY.-Gideon Fleyce. 
 
 b r justin McCarthy. 
 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 Linley Rochford. 
 Dear Lady Disdain. 
 Caraiola. | Mononia, 
 
 Wnteniile Neighbours. 
 My Enemy's Daughter. 
 Miss Misanthrope. 
 
 Donna yuixote. 
 
 Maid of Athens. 
 
 The Comet of a Season. 
 
 The Dictator. 
 
 Red Diamonds. 
 
 The Riddle Ring. 
 
 The Three Disgraces. 
 
 JUSTIN H. McCARTHY.-A London Legend. 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 
 Heather and Snow. | Phantastes. 
 
 By W. H. MALLOCK.-The New Republic. 
 By P. & Y. MARGUERIITE.-The Disaster 
 
 By L» T. MEADE. 
 
 On Brink of a Chasm, 
 The Siren. 
 
 The Way of a Woman. 
 A Son of Ishmael. 
 The BUie Diamond. 
 
 A Soldier of Fortune 
 In an Iron Grip. 
 Dr. Kumsey's Patient. 
 The Voice of the Charmer 
 An Adventuress. 
 
 A Stumble by the Way 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. | 
 
 This Stage of Fools. | Cynthia. 
 
 By EDMUND MITCHELL. 
 
 The Lone Star Rush. 
 
 By BERTRAM MITFORD. 
 
 The Gun-Runner. I The King's Assegai. 
 
 Luck of Gerard Ridgeley. | Renshaw Fanning's < >uest. 
 The Triumph of Hilary Blachland. 
 
 Mrs. MOLESWORTH.— Hathercourt Rectory. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 
 Maid Marian and Robin I Basile the Tester. 
 Hood. 
 
 I Golden Idol. 
 Young Lochinvar. 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 A Life's Atonement. 
 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 
 Coals of Ftre. 
 
 Old Blazer's Hero. 
 
 Val Strange. | Hearts. 
 
 A Moael Father. 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 
 First Person Singular. 
 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 
 The Way of the World. 
 
 Bob Martin's Little Girl. 
 
 Time's Revenges. 
 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 
 In Direst Peril. 
 
 Mount Desoair. 
 
 A Capful o' Nails. 
 
 Tales in Prose and Verse. 
 
 A Race for Millions. 
 
 This Li.tle World. 
 
 His Own Ghosr. 
 
 Church of Humanity. 
 
 V.C. : Castle Bariield and the Crimea. 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 
 The Bishops' Bibie | Paul Jones's Alias. 
 
 One Traveller Returns. 
 
 By HUME NISBET.-' Bail Up I' 
 By W. E. NORRI3. 
 
 Saint Ann's. | Billv Beliew. 
 
 Miss Wentworth's Idea. 
 By G. OHNET.-A Weird Gift. 
 Love's Depths. | The Woman of Mystery. 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 
 Whiteladies. | The Sorceress. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage 
 Strath more. | Lhandos. 
 Under Two Flags. « 
 Cecil Castlemaiue's Gage. 
 Tncotrin. | Puck. 
 Folle-Farine 
 A Dog of Flande-s. 
 Pascarel. | Signa. 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 Two Wooden Shoes. 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 Friendship. | Idalia. 
 
 Moths. Rurhno. 
 
 Pipistrello. | Ariadne. 
 
 A Village Commune. 
 
 Bimbi. ' I Wanda. 
 
 Frescoes. | Othmar. 
 
 In Mareinma. 
 
 Syrlin. ] Guilderoy. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 
 Two Offenders; 
 
 The Waters of Edera. 
 
 By G. SIDNEY PATERNOSTER. 
 
 The Motor Pirate. 
 
 By MARGARET A. PAUL. 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 High Spirits. | Bv Proxy. 
 The Talk of the Town. 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 For Cash Only. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 The Word and the Will. 
 Sunny Stories. 
 A Trying Patient. 
 Modern Dick Whittington 
 
 Lost Sir Massingberd 
 The Cly Hards of ClyfTe. 
 The Family Scapegrace. 
 ACounty Family. [Painted. 
 Less Black than We're 
 A Confidential Agent. 
 A Grape irom a Thorn. 
 In Peiil and Privation. 
 Mystery of Mirbridge. 
 
 By WILL PAYNE.— Terry the Dreamer 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker. I Mrs. Tregaskiss. 
 
 Christina Chard. | Nuhna. | Madame Izan 
 
 ' As a Watch in the Night.' 
 
 By E. C. PRICE.— Valentina, 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 
 Miss Maxwell's Alfections. 
 
 By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 Weird Stories. | A Rich Man's Daucrhtej, 
 
Ill ST. MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 29 
 
 The Piccadilly (3/6) Novels— continun 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 Peg Wofnngton ; and 
 Lhristii Johnstone. 
 
 Hard Cash. 
 
 Cloister and the Hearth. 
 
 Never Too Late to Mend 
 
 The Course of True 
 Love ; and Singleheart 
 and Doubleface. 
 
 Autobiography of a 
 Thief; Jack of all 
 Trades ; A Hero and 
 a Martyr ; and The 
 Wandering Heir. 
 
 Griffith Gaun 
 Love Little, Love Long. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Foul Play. 
 
 Put Yourself in His Place. 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 A Simpleton. 
 A Woman-Kater. 
 The Jilt, & other Stories ; 
 & Good Stories of Man. 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 Readiana ; and Bible 
 Characters. 
 
 By FRANK RICHARDSON. 
 
 Man Who Lost His Past. | The Bayswater Mystery. 
 
 By AMELIE RIVES. 
 Barbara Dering. | Meriel. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 The Hands of Justice. | Woman in the Dark. 
 
 By ALBERT ROSS.— A Sugar Princess. 
 By J. RUNCIMAN.-Skippcrs and Shellbacks. 
 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL 
 Round the Galley Fire. 
 In the Middle Watch. 
 
 the FoVsle Head. 
 A Voyage to the Cape. 
 Book for the Hammock. 
 Mystery of ' Ocean Star.' 
 Jenny Harlowe. 
 An Ocean Tragedy. 
 A Tale of Two Tunnels. 
 
 My Shipmate Louise. 
 Alone on Wide Wide Sea. 
 The Phantom Death. 
 Is he the Man J 
 Good Ship ' Mohock. 
 The Convict Ship. 
 Heart of Oak. 
 The Tale of the Ten. 
 The Last Entry. 
 
 The Death Ship. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL.-Drift of Fate. 
 
 By HERBERT RUSSELL.— True Blue. 
 
 By BAYLE ST. JOHN.-A Levantine Family. 
 
 By ADELINE SERGEANT. 
 Dr. Endicott's Experiment | Under False Pretences. 
 By M. P. SHIEL.-The Purple Cloud. 
 By GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 
 In London's Heart. 
 Mary Jane's Memoirs. 
 Mary Jane Married. 
 The Small-part Lady. 
 A Blind Marriage. 
 
 Dagonet Abroad. 
 Once uponChristmasTime 
 Without the Limelight. 
 Rogues and Vagabonds. 
 Biographs of Babylon. 
 
 By UPTON SINCLAIR.-PiinceHagen. 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 Without Love or Licence. | The Outsider. 
 The Master of Rathkelly. Beatrice and Benedick. 
 Long Odds. I A Racing Rubber. 
 
 By J. IflOYR SMITH.-The Prince of Argolis. 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 
 The Grey Monk. 
 
 The Master of Trenance. 
 
 The Web of Fate. 
 
 A Minion of The Moon 
 
 Secret of Wy vern Towers. 
 
 The Doom of Siva. 
 As it was Written. 
 Her Ladyship. 
 The Strange Experiences 
 of Mr. Verschoyle. 
 
 3y ALAN ST. AUBYH. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity. 
 The Junior Dean. 
 Master of St. Benedict's. 
 To his Own Master. 
 Callantay Bower. 
 In Face of the World. 
 Orchard Damerel. 
 
 The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 The Wooing of May. 
 A Tragic Honeymoon. 
 A Proctor s Wooing. 
 Fortune's Gate. 
 Bonnie Maggie Lauder. 
 Mary Unwin. 
 
 Mrs. Dunbar's Secret. 
 
 By JOHN JSTAFFGRD.-Dorisandl. 
 
 By R. STEPHENS.— The Cruciform Mark. 
 
 R. NEILSON STEPHENS.-Philip Winwood. 
 By R. A. STERNDALE.— The Afghan Knife. 
 By R. L. STEYENSON.-The Suicide Club. 
 By FRANK STOCKTON. 
 The Young Master of Hyson Hall. 
 By SUNDOWNER.— Told by the Taffrail. 
 By ANNIE THOMAS.— The Siren's Web. 
 By BERTHA THOMAS. 
 In a Cathedral City. 
 By FRANCES E. TROLLOPB. 
 Like Ships Upon Sea. | Anne Furness. 
 Mabel's Progress, 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 The Way we Live Now. I Marion Fay. 
 Frau Frohmann. | Scarborough's Family. 
 
 The Land-Leaguers. 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 Choice Works. 
 Library of Humour. 
 
 The Innocents Abroad. 
 Roughing- It; and The 
 
 Innocents at Home. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 The American Claimant. 
 Adventures Tom Sawyer. 
 Tom Sawyer Abroad. 
 Tom Sawyer, Detective. 
 
 Pudd'r.head Wilson. 
 The Gilded Age. 
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 ,£1. coo, 000 Bank-note. 
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 C. C. FRASER-TYTLER.-Mistress Judith. 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 What She Came Through. 
 
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 Mrs. Carmichael's God- 
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 Rachel Langton. 
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 A Young Dragon. 
 
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 Red Ryvington. 
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 Sens of Beiial. 
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 Strange Crimes. 
 Her Ladyship's Secret. 
 
 For Honour and Lii 
 
 A Woman Tempted Him. 
 
 Her Two Millions. 
 
 TwoSPinches of Snuff. 
 
 Nigel Fortescue. 
 
 Hitch Dene. | Ben Clough. 
 
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 A Queer Race. 
 
 The Old Factory. 
 
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 His Excellency. 
 
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 Philistia. 
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 Dumaresq's Daughter. 
 Duchess of Powsyland. 
 Blood Royal. 
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30 
 
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 Found Guilty. 
 
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 For L-vve and Honour. 
 
 John Ford, &c. 
 
 Woman of Iron Bracelets. 
 
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 Witness. 
 
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 Dorothy Forster. 
 Uncle Jack. [Then. 
 
 The World Went Very Well 
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 Herr Paulus. 
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 Armorel of Lyonesse. 
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 Verbena Camellia Stepha- 
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 Shadow of the Sword. 
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 Love Me for Ever. 
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 Annan Water. 
 
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 Rachel Dene. | Matt. 
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 Sweet Anne Page. 
 Transmigration. 
 From Midnight to Mid- 
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 A Fight with Fortune. 
 
 Sweet and Twenty. 
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 You Play Me False. 
 Blacksmith and Scholar. 
 Frances. 
 
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 Armadaie. | After Dark. 
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 Basil. | Hide and Seek. 
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 Queen of Hearts. 
 Miss or Mrs.? 
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 My Miscellanies. 
 
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 MATT CEIM.— The Adventures of a Fair Rebel, 
 
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 Diana Barrington. 
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 Married or Single? 
 Interference. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 By JAMES DE MILLE.— A Strange Manuscript, 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 
 Michael Danevitch. 
 In the Grip of the Law. 
 From Information Re- 
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 Tracked to Doom. 
 Link by Link. 
 Suspicion Aroused. 
 Riddles Read. 
 
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 Tracked and Taken. 
 Caught at Last! 
 Who Poisoned Hetty 
 Duncan? | Wanted! 
 Man from Manchester. 
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 Mystery Jamaica Terrace. 
 
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 A Point of Honour. [ Archie Lovell. 
 
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 The New Mistress. I The Tiger Lily. 
 
 Witness to the Deed. | The White Virgin. 
 
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 Bella Donna. | Fatal Zero. I Seventy - five Brooke 
 
 Never Forgotten. | Polly. Street. 
 
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 Strange Secrets. 
 
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 Olympia 
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 Queen Cophetua 
 
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 Seth's Brother's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. 
 
 Prefaced by Sir BARTLE FRERE. 
 
 Pandurang Hari. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 
 Robin Gray. 
 
 Fancy Free. 
 
 For Lack of Gold. 
 
 vvhat will the World Say ? 
 
 In Love and War. 
 
 For the King. 
 
 In Pastures Green 
 
 Queen of the Meadow. 
 
 A Heart's Problem. 
 
 The Dead Heart. 
 
 In Honour Bound. 
 Flower of the Forest. 
 The Braes of Yarrow, 
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 Of High Degree. 
 By Mead and Stream. 
 Loving a Dream. 
 A Hard Knot. 
 Heart's Delight. 
 Blood -Money 
 
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 A Fair Colonist. 
 
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 Red Spider. [ Eve. 
 
 ANDREW HALLIDAY.-Every-day Papers. 
 
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 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Quentin. | Ellice Garth. 
 Fortune's Fool. 
 Miss Cadogna. | Dust. 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 
 Love — or a Name. 
 David Poindexter's Dis- 
 appearance. [Camera. 
 The Spectre of the 
 
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 By G. A. HENTY.—Rujub the Juggler. 
 
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 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 
 Lady Verner's Flight. 
 
 A Maiden ah Forlorn. 
 In Durance Vile. 
 Marvel. | Peter's Wife. 
 A Mental Struggle. 
 A Modern Circe. 
 April's Lady. 
 
 The Red-House Mystery. 
 The Three Graces. 
 Unsatisfactory Lover. 
 Lady Patty. | NoraCreina 
 Professor's Experiment. 
 
Ill ST. MARTIN'S LANE LONDON, W.C. 
 
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 By Mrs. CflSHEL HOEY.-The Lover's Creed 
 
 Mrs. GEORGE HOOPER.-The House of Raby 
 
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 I hat Other Person. | The Leaden Casket. 
 
 Self-Condemned. 
 
 rnlnni,i tr By MAR K KERSHAW. 
 
 Colonial Facts and Fictions. 
 
 A r>„„ r- By r R * ASHE KING. 
 ■Th^w 08 ™ 8, tGreen.' I Passion's Slave. 
 The Wearing of the | Bell Barry. 
 
 Mada m B r an ^^e OND ™«™IM. 
 By JOHN LEYS.-The Lindsays. 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 i ntle B a y nd T fifn5e GARET AGNES PAUI * 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. 
 The World Well Lost. 
 Under which Lord? 
 Paston Carew. 
 'My Love!' | lone. 
 With a Silken Thread 
 
 The Atonement of Leam 
 
 Dundas. 
 Rebel of the Family. 
 Sowing- the Wind. 
 The One Too Many. 
 Dulcie Everton 
 
 _ ""'"= Overton. 
 
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 , B , y ,iH. STIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. 
 Waterdale Neighbours. 
 My Enemy's Daughter. 
 AFair Saxon. | Camiola 
 Liniey Rochford. 
 Miss Misanthrope 
 
 Donna Quixote. 
 
 Maid of Athens. 
 
 The Comet of a Season. 
 
 The Dictator. 
 
 Red Diamonds. 
 
 The Riddle Ring. 
 
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 r*r*„™„ " Stran £ er ' s Sealed Packet. 
 
 II , ?r P T B J5 ACDONA]LI >- H ^ther and Snow. 
 
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 By BRANDER MATTHEV/S. 
 
 A Secret of the Sea. 
 By L. T. MEABE.-A Soldier of Fortune. 
 TheMan£SS BD MERRICK. 
 
 Hathercour^ReSy. MOLB SWORTH. 
 r.„o^ m . By J> E » MUDDOCK. 
 
 ?F„°-, CHEISTI . E „ MURRAY. 
 
 Bentinck's Tutor! 
 
 Murphy's Master. 
 
 A County Family. 
 
 At Her Mercy. | Kit 
 
 Cecil's Tryst. | Halves. 
 
 The Clyffards of Clyffe. 
 
 The Foster Brothers. 
 
 Found Dead. 
 
 The Best of Husbands. 
 
 Walter's Word. 
 
 Fallen Fortunes. 
 
 Humorous Stories. 
 
 £200 Reward. 
 
 A Marine Residence. 
 
 Mirk Abbey. | High Spirits 
 
 Under One Roof. 
 
 Carlyon's Year. 
 
 For Cash Only. 
 
 The Canon's Ward. 
 
 The Talk of the Town. 
 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 
 A Trying Patient. 
 T . p By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED 
 The Romance of a Station I Christina Chard. 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker | Mrs. Tregaskiss. 
 1 he Soul of Countess Adrian. 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 Miss Maxwell's Affections. 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 It is Never To- T — -- ■ -■■""*■""" 
 
 A Perfect Treasure. 
 What He Cost Her. 
 A Confidential Agent. 
 Glow-worm Tales. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 Sunny Stories. 
 Lost Sir Massingberd. 
 A Woman's Vengeance. 
 The Family Scapegrace. 
 Gwendoline's Harvest. 
 Like Father, Like Son. 
 Married Beneath Him. 
 Not Wooed, but Won. 
 Less Black than We're 
 
 Painted. | By Proxy. 
 Some Private Views. 
 A Grape from a Thorn. 
 The Mystery of Mir- 
 
 bridge. I From Exile. 
 The Word and the Will. 
 A Prince of the Blood. 
 
 ^v. Late to 
 Mend. | The Jilt. 
 
 Christie Johnstone. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Put Yourself in His Place. 
 Love Little, Love Long. 
 Cloister and the Hearth. 
 Course of True Love. 
 Autobiography of a Thief. 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 
 Foul Play [Hard Cash. 
 1 he Wandering Heir 
 Smgleheart, Doubleface 
 Good Stories of Man, &c. 
 Peg Woffmgton. 
 Griffith Gaunt. 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 A Simpleton. 
 Readiana. 
 A Woman-Hater. 
 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 £irst Person Singular. 
 Bob Martin's Little Girl. 
 I mie's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime, 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair. 
 A Capful o' Nails. 
 
 A Model Father 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 Coals of Fire. 
 
 Xw«. ransr f- i Hearts - 
 
 Old Blazer's Hero. 
 The Way of the World. 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 A Life's Atonement 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 
 Paul Jones's Alias. 
 
 Dr Ram P ,„ By GE °BGES OHNET. 
 
 ->r. Rameau. f A Weird Gift ; 
 
 A Last Love. 
 vt,;» 1 a, By Mrs « OLIPHANT. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Smo^t^kndo, I M^ ittleM f°Bfm e h nSh ° eS 
 iTricotrin. I plplstrello. ' B ' mbl - 
 
 By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 S^wE* I It Uninhabited House. 
 
 HeSS Darling. h^S*-' ™ ™- 
 T Gard P en ,C Part y: Wa ' eS ' S | SB 532 C "* 
 
 By P. W. ROBINSON. 
 
 W omen are Strange | The Woman in the Dark 
 
 The Hands of Justice. 
 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL 
 
 e dnllev Firo M.. Ck; .. t 
 
 Round the Galley Fire 
 On the Fo'k'sle Head. 
 In the Middle Watch 
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 Book for the Hammock. 
 The Mystery of the 
 
 'Ocean Star.' 
 Romance Jenny Harlowe. 
 An Ocean Tragedy 
 
 My Shipmate Louise 
 Alone on Wide Wide Sea. 
 Good Ship 'Mohock.' 
 The Phantom Death. 
 Is He the Man? 
 Heart of Oak. 
 The Convict Ship. 
 The Tale of the Ten. 
 The Last Entry. 
 
 'nder Two Flags, 
 ecil Castlemaine's Gage 
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 olle-Fanne. 
 Dog of Flanders. 
 ? n a- I Ariadne, 
 
 rincess Napraxine. 
 1 a Winter City. 
 riendsJiip. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL.-A Country Sweetheart. 
 
 By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 
 
 Gaslight and Daylight. ^wooajjA. 
 
 By GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 
 The Ring o' Bells. 
 Mary Jane's Memoirs. 
 Mary Jane Married. 
 Tales of To-day. 
 Dramas of Life. 
 Tinkletop's Crime 
 
 Zeph. I My Two Wives. 
 Memoirs of a Landlady. 
 Scenes from the Show 
 Ten Commandments. 
 Dagonet Abroad. 
 Rogues and Vagabonds. 
 
 A. Villas Commune. 
 Wanda. | Othmar. 
 
 frescoes. | Guilderoy. 
 in Maremma. 
 Ruffino. 1 Syrlin. 
 Santa Barbara. 
 Two Offenders. 
 Ouida's Wisdom, Wit 
 and Pathos. 
 
 — a .«~_ ....^ , agauonas. 
 ARTHUR SKETCHLEY.-A Match in the Dark. 
 
 w.-*,, » t By HAWLEY SMART. 
 
 Without Love orLicence. 1 The Master of Rathkellv 
 Beatrice and Benedick. | The Plunger? | Long Odds 
 By R. A. STERNDALE.-The Afghan Knife. 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 
 The Mysteries of Heron 
 
 Dyke. 
 The Golden Hoop 
 Hoodwinked. 
 By Devious Ways. 
 
 Back to Life. 
 
 The Loudwater Tragedy 
 
 Burgo's Romance. 
 
 Quittance in Full. 
 
 A Husband from the Sea 
 
CHATTO & WIND US, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 Two-Shilling No%-els— continued. 
 
 Ey ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity. I Orchard Damerel. 
 
 The Junior Dean. In the Face of the World. 
 
 Master of St. Benedict's. | The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 
 To His Own Master. 
 
 By R. LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 
 New Arabian Nights. 
 
 By ROBERT SURTEES.-Handley Cross. 
 
 By WALTER THORNBURY. 
 
 Tales for the Marines. 
 
 By T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. 
 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 Frau Froiimann. 
 Marion Fay. 
 Kept in the Dark. 
 The Way We Live Now. 
 
 The Land-Leaguers. 
 The American Senator. 
 Scarborough's Family. 
 Golden Lion of Granpere. 
 
 By F. ELEANOR TROLLOPE. 
 
 Like Ships upon the Sea. | Anne Furness. 
 Mabel's Progress. 
 
 A Pleasure Trip. 
 The Gilded Aye. 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 Tom Sawyer. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 
 Stolen White Elephant. 
 Life on the Mibsrssippi. 
 Prince and Pauper. 
 A Yankee at Court. 
 | .£1,000,000 Bank-Note. 
 Sketches. 
 
 By C. C.FRASER-TYTLER.-Mistress Judith. 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 Bride's Pass. | Lady Bell 
 Buried Diamonds. 
 Sr. Mungo's City. 
 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 The Huguenot Family. 
 The Blackhall Ghosts. 
 What She Came Through. 
 Beauty and the Beast. 
 
 Disappeared. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD.— Queen against Owen. 
 
 By WM. WESTALL.-Trust-Money. 
 
 By Mrs. WILLIAMSON.-A Child AVidow. 
 
 By JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 
 
 Cavalry Life. | Regimental Legends. 
 
 By H. F. WOOD. 
 The Passenger from Scot- I The Englishman of the 
 land Yard. | Rue Cain. 
 
 By MARG. WYNMAN.— My Flirtations. 
 
 NEW SERIES OF TWO-SHILLING NOVELS. 
 
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 The Constable of St. Nicholas. 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT. 
 
 St. Katherme's by Tower. | The Kebel Queen. 
 
 By H. BINDLOSS.— Ainslie's Ju-ju. 
 
 By McD. BODKIN, K.C. 
 
 Dora Myrl, the Lady Detective. 
 
 By DICK DONOYAN. 
 
 Man from Manchester. I The Mystery of Jamaica 
 Wanted 1 | Dark Deeds. | Terrace. 
 Vincent Trill, Detective. 
 
 By G. M. FENN.-A Crimson Crime. 
 
 By PAUL GAULOT.— The Red Shirts. 
 
 By Major ARTHUR GRIFFITHS. 
 
 No. 93 ; and Biue Blood. 
 
 By OWEN HALL.-TrackofaStorra. 
 
 By ERET HARTE. 
 
 Luck Ronring Camp, &c. I Col. Starbottle's Client. 
 In a Hollow of the Hill-;. Protegee of Jack Hamlin's 
 Sappho of Green Springs. | Sahy Dows. 
 
 3y HEADCN HILL.— Zambra, the Detective. 
 
 By FERGUS HUME.— The Lady from Nowhere. 
 
 By EDMUND MITCHELL. 
 
 Plotters of Paris. | The Temple of Death. 
 
 Towards the Eternal Snows. 
 
 By BERTRAM MITFORD. 
 
 The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley. | The King's Assegai. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 
 Maid Marian and Robin Hood. 
 
 By CHRISTIE MURRAY.— His Own Ghost, 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Syrlin. | The Waters of Edera. 
 
 By JAS. PA YN.— Modern Dick Whittington. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL. 
 
 A Country Sweetheart. | The Drift of Fate. 
 
 By GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 
 In London's Heart. | Rogues and Vagabonds. 
 
 Ey FRANK STOCKTON. 
 
 The Young Master of Hyson Hall. 
 
 By SUNDOWNER.-Tale of the Serpent. 
 
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 ALLEN UPWARD.— Queen against Owen. 
 
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 BYRON WEBBER.-Sport and Spangles. 
 
 By JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 
 
 Cavalry Life ; and Regimental Legends. 
 
 By LOUIS ZANGWILL. 
 
 A Nineteenth-Century Miracle. 
 
 SIXPENNY COPYRIGHT NOVELS. 
 
 By GRANT ALLEN.-The Tents of Shem. 
 
 By WALTER BESANT. 
 
 Children of Gibeon. 1 All Sorts and Conditions of 
 
 For Faith and Freedom. | Men. | The Orange Girl. 
 
 Ey BESANT and RICE. 
 
 The Golden Butterfly. | Ready-Money Mortiboy. 
 
 The Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 The Shadow of the Sword. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 
 A Son of Hagar | The Deemster. 
 
 The Shadow of a Crime. 
 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 Armadale. | Antonina. I Man and WKe. | No Name. 
 T'.ie Moonstone. The Dead Secret. 
 
 The Woman in White. | The New Magdalen. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER. 
 
 Diana Barrington. | 1'ictry Miss NeviUe. 
 
 By JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 A Short History of our own Times. 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.-Joseph's Coat. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Puck. I Moths. I Strathmore. | Tricotrin. 
 Held in Bondage. | Under Two Flags. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN.-Walter's Ward. 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 Griffith Gaunt. I Put Yourself in His Place. 
 
 Foul Play. | Hard Cash. The Cloister and the 
 Peg Woffington ; and Hearth. 
 
 Christie Johnstone. I Never Too Late to Mend. 
 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL.-The Convict Ship. 
 
 By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 
 New Arabian Nights. 
 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL.— The Old Factory. 
 
 By EMILE ZOLA. 
 The Downfall. | The Dram- Shop. | Rome. 
 
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