The Waters of Edera Part 20

"I do not say this otherwise; but the law is with those who hara.s.s you now. We cannot alter the times, good Clelia; we must take them as they are. Your son should go to San Beda and urge his rights, not with violence but with firmness and lucidity; he should also provide himself with an advocate, or he will be driven out of his home by sheer force, and with some miserable sum as compensation."

Clelia Alba's brown skin grew ashen grey, and its heavy lines deepened.

"You mean... that is possible?"

"It is more than possible. It is certain. These things always end so.

My poor dear friend! do you not understand, even yet, that nothing can save your homestead?"

Clelia Alba leaned her elbows on her knees and bowed her face upon her hands. She felt as women of her race had felt on some fair morn when they had seen the skies redden with baleful fires, and the glitter of steel corslets s.h.i.+ne under the foliage, and had heard the ripe corn crackle under the horses' hoofs, and had heard the shrieking children scream, "The lances are coming, mother! Mother!

save us!"

Those women had had no power to save homestead or child; they had seen the pikes twist in the curling locks, and the daggers thrust in the white young throats, and the flames soar to heaven, burning rooftree and clearing stackyard, and they had possessed no power to stay the steel or quench the torch. She was like them.

She lifted her face up to the light.

"He will kill them."

"He may kill one man -- two men -- he will have blood on his hands.

What will that serve? I have told you again and again. This thing is inevitable -- frightful, but inevitable, like war. In war do not millions of innocent and helpless creatures suffer through no fault of their own, no cause of their own, on account of some king's caprice or statesman's blunder? You are just such victims here.

Nothing will preserve to you the Terra Vergine. My dear old friend, have courage."

"I cannot believe it, sir; I cannot credit it. The land is ours; this little bit of the good and solid earth is ours; G.o.d will not let us be robbed of it."

"My friend! no miracles are wrought now. I have told you again and again and again you must lose this place."

"I will not believe it!"

"Alas! I pray hat you may not be forced to believe; but I know that I pray in vain. Tell me, you are certain that Adone will not answer that summons?"

"I am certain."

"He is mad."

"No, sir he is not mad. No more than I, his mother. We have faith in Heaven."

Don Silverio was silent. It was not for him to tell them that such faith was a feeble staff.

"I must not tarry," he said, and rose. "The night is near at hand.

Tell your son what I have said. My dear friend, I would almost as soon stab you in the throat as say these things to you; but as you value your son's sanity and safety make him realise this fact, which you and he deny: the law will take your home from you, as it will take the river from the province."

"No, sir!" said Clelia Alba fiercely. "No, no, no! There is a G.o.d above us!"

Don Silverio bade her sadly farewell, and insisted no more. He went through the odorous gra.s.slands, where the primrose and wild hyacinth grew so thickly and the olive branches were already laden with small green berries, and his soul was uneasy, seeing how closed is the mind of the peasant to argument or to persuasion. Often had he seen a poor beetle pus.h.i.+ng its ball of dirt up the side of a sandhill only to fall back, and begin again, and again fall; for any truth to endeavour to penetrate the brain of the rustic is as hard as for the beetle to climb the sand. He was disinclined to seek the discomfiture of another useless argument, but neither could he be content in his conscience to let this matter wholly alone.

Long and dreary as the journey was to San Beda, he undertook it again, saying nothing to any one of his purpose. He hoped to be able to put Adone's contumacy in a pardonable light before the Syndic, and perhaps to plea his cause better than the boy could plead it for himself. To Don Silverio he always seemed a boy still, and therefore excusable in all his violence and extravagances.

The day was fine and cool, and walking was easier and less exhausting than it had been at the season of his first visit; moreover, his journey to Rome had braced his nerves and sinews to exertion, and restored to him the energy and self-possession which the long, tedious, monotonous years of solitude in Ruscino had weakened. There was a buoyant wind coming from the sea with rain in its track, and a deep blue sky with grand clouds drifting past the ultramarine hues of the Abruzzo range. The bare brown rocks grew dark as bronze, and the forest-clothed hills were almost black in the shadows, as the cl.u.s.tered towers and roofs of the little city came in sight. He went, fatigued as he was, straight to the old ducal palace, which was now used as the munic.i.p.ality, without even shaking the dust off his feet.

"Say that I come for the affair of Adone Alba," he said to the first persons he saw in the ante-room on the first floor. In the little ecclesiastical town his calling commanded respect. They begged him to sit own and rest, and in a few minutes returned to say that the most ill.u.s.trious the Count Corradini would receive him at once in his private room; it was a day of general council, but the council would not meet for an hour. The Syndic was a tall, spare, frail man, with a patrician's face and an affable manner. He expressed himself in courteous terms as flattered by the visit of the Vicar Ruscino, and inquired if in any way he could be of the slightest service.

"Of the very greatest, your Excellency," said Don Silverio. "I have ventured to come hither on behalf of a young paris.h.i.+oner of mine, Adone Alba, who, having received the summons of your Excellency only yesterday, may, I trust, be excused for not having obeyed it on the date named. He is unable to come to-day. May I offer myself for his subst.i.tute as _amicus curie_!"

"Certainly, certainly," said Corradini, relieved to meet an educated man instead of the boor he had expected. "If the summons were delayed by any fault of my officials, the delay must be inquired into.

Meanwhile, most reverend, have you instructions to conclude the affair?"

"As yet, I venture to remind your Excellency, we do not even know what is the affair of which you speak."

"Oh no; quite true. The matter is the sale of the land known under the t.i.tle of the Terra Vergine."

"Thank Heaven I am here, and not Adone," thought Don Silverio.

Aloud he answered, "What sale? The proprietor has heard of none."

"He must have heard. It can be no news to you that the works about to be made upon the river Edera will necessitate the purchase of the land known as the Terra Vergine."

Here the Syndic put on gold spectacles, drew towards him a black portfolio filled by plans and papers, and began to move them about, muttering, as he searched, little sc.r.a.ps of phrases out of each of them. At last he turned over the sheets which concerned the land of the Alba.

"Terra Vergine -- Commune of Ruscino -- owners Alba from 1620 -- family of good report -- regular taxpayers -- sixty hectares -- land productive; value -- just so -- humph, humph, humph!"

Then he laid down the doc.u.ments and looked at Don Silverio from over his spectacles.

"I conclude, most reverend, that you come empowered by this young man to treat with us?"

"I venture, sir," replied Don Silverio respectfully, "to remind you again that it is impossible I should be so empowered, since Adone Alba was ignorant of the reason for which he was summoned here."

Corradini shuffled his doc.u.ments nervously with some irritation.

"This conference, then, is a mere waste of time? I hold council to-day --"

"Pardon me, your Excellency," said Don Silverio blandly. "It will not be a waste of time if you will allow me to lay before you certain facts, and, first, to ask you one question: Who is, or are, the buyer or buyers of this land?"

The question was evidently unwelcome to the Syndic; it was direct, which every Italian considers ill-bred, and it was awkward to answer.

He was troubled for personal reasons, and the calm and searching gaze of the priest's dark eyes embarra.s.sed him. After all, he thought, it would have been better to deal with the boor himself.

"Why do you ask that?" he said irritably. "You are aware that the National Society for the Improvement of Land and the foreign company of the Teramo-Tronto Electric Railway combine in these projected works?"

"To which of these two societies, then, is Adone Alba, or am I, as his _loc.u.m tenens_, to address ourselves?"

"To neither. This commune deals with you."

"Why?"

Count Corradini took off his gla.s.ses, put them on again, s.h.i.+fted the papers and plans in his imposing portfolio.

"May I ask again -- why?" said Don Silverio in the gentlest tones of his beautiful voice.

"Because, because," answered the Syndic irritably, "because the whole affair is in treaty between our delegates and the companies. Public societies do not deal with private individuals directly, but by proxy."

"Pardon my ignorance," said Don Silverio, "but why does the commune desire to subst.i.tute itself for the owner?"