One of the white-robed brotherhood, boys for the most part who, when the ceremonies were over, would receive three soldi each and a slice of watermelon, knocked at the door of the new house as he pa.s.sed, and the others followed his example.

"Curse you!" yelled Giacobbe furiously, leaning far out of the window.

"Boors! walking in the procession, are you?" and he was about to spit on them, but Brontu prevented him, telling him it would not do.

Now came the green brocade standard, with its hundred variegated ribbons and gilded staff; and next the Madonna of the a.s.sumption, extended with closed eyes on her portable couch, covered with necklaces and rings that looked like relics of the bronze age, and watched over by the four green cherubs.

On each of the four sides, walking beside the bearers, was a man wearing a white tunic and carrying in his arms a child dressed as an angel. They were charming little creatures, two blond and two brunette, and they chattered gaily with one another, shouting to make themselves heard. One of them, tickled under the knee by the man who carried him, squirmed and wriggled, one wing hanging limply down.

The sight of these children touched some finer emotion in Brontu, Giacobbe, and the others, and bending their knees, they crossed themselves devoutly. The children, for their part, gazed up at the windows, and one of them, recognising an uncle in the group, flung a red confetto at him, which, missing fire, fell back into the road.

Priest Elias and the little stranger from Nuoro came next, wearing brocade and lace robes, pale and handsome in their bravery. They walked with clasped hands and rapt faces, chanting in Latin.

"The devil!" exclaimed Giacobbe suddenly. "If there isn't that dirty old Isidoro Pane! You'd suppose he was running the whole procession; I'm going to spit on him."

"No, you're not," commanded Brontu.

Giacobbe coughed to attract the fisherman's attention, but the other did not so much as raise his eyes, continuing to intone the prayers to which the people responded as with a single voice.

The surging, vari-coloured crowd had flowed together behind the procession, and above the sea of heads could still be seen the swaying silver cross. The men had all uncovered,--bald heads, shining with perspiration, mops of thick black hair, rough, curly pates,--and then the gay head-kerchiefs of the women, some with black grounds and yellow squares, others striped with red, or covered with green spots,--all surmounting flushed faces, flashing eyes, white bodices crossed on the breast, red, gesticulating hands. Gradually the crowd thinned; an old cripple came limping along, then a woman with two children hanging to her skirts, then three old women--a child with a yellow flower in its mouth--the street grew empty and silent; the noise, and movement, and colour receding in waves, and growing ever fainter as the low, melancholy cadence of the chanted invocations died away in the distance.

As the last sounds ceased, two cat's paws appeared on the wall opposite Giacobbe's house, followed by a little, white face, with wide startled eyes, then the animal leaped on the wall, and sat staring intently down into the street.

"Too late!" cried Brontu, waving a salute.

The others shouted with laughter, and when Giacobbe presently told them it was time to be off, they refused to go. The host, thereupon, seizing a lath covered with plaster, tried to drive them out, and the entire troop of rough, bearded men began to run from room to room, pushing one another by the shoulders, yelling, tumbling over each other, and shrieking with laughter like so many schoolboys. Driven forth at length, they continued their horseplay in the street, until Giacobbe, having locked the door and put the key in his pocket, led the way back to the tavern. At dusk Brontu and the herdsman, supporting one another, appeared at the white house.

Aunt Martina was sitting on the portico with her hands beneath her ap.r.o.n, reciting the rosary. When her eyes fell on the two men she remained perfectly still and silent, but her lips tightened, and she shook her head ever so slightly, as though to say: "Truly, a fine sight!"

"Where is Giovanna?" demanded Brontu.

"She went to her mother's."

"Oh! she went to her mother's, the old harpy's? Well, she's always going there, curse her."

"Don't shout so, my son."

"I will; I'll shout as much as I like; I'm in my own house," and turning towards the common, he began to call at the top of his voice:

"Giovanna! Giovanna!"

Giovanna appeared at the door of the cottage, and started to cross the common hastily with an alarmed air; as she drew near, however, her expression changed to one of annoyance and disgust. Pausing in front of the two men, she regarded them with a look of undisguised scorn.

Giacobbe laughed, but Brontu reddened to the tips of his ears with anger.

"Well," she demanded; "what is the matter? Have you got the colic?"

"He would have got it pretty soon if you hadn't come," said Giacobbe.

Brontu opened his mouth and his lips moved, but no sounds came forth, and his anger presently died away as senselessly as it had come.

"Well----" he stammered. "I wanted you. We have hardly seen each other all day. What were you doing at your mother's? Who was there?"

"Who was there?" she repeated, in a tone of intense bitterness. "Why, no one. Who would you expect to find at our house?"

"Why, San Costantino might come--t--o--o--gi--i--i--ve you--u a po--em----" sang Giacobbe thickly. "Have you ever seen San Costantino?

Well, there's Isidoro Pane--he's perfectly crazy--he doesn't like you; no, indeed, he doesn't, and--and----"

"Shut up; hold your tongue!" said Aunt Martina. "And the sheepfolds left all this time to take care of themselves! That's the way you attend to your master's business! You're all alike, accursed thieves!"

Giacobbe sprang forward, erect and livid; and Giovanna, fearing that he was really going to strike the old woman, stepped quickly between them.

He turned, however, without saying a word, and sat down, but with so lowering an expression that Giovanna remained near her mother-in-law in an att.i.tude of protection.

Brontu, on the contrary, was struck with the idea that his mother deserved a rebuke.

"What sort of manners are these?" he demanded in a tone that was intended to be severe. "Why, you treat people as though--as though--as though they were beasts--everybody! To-day--to-day--no, yesterday was a holiday. If he chose to get drunk, what business was that of yours?"

"I got drunk on poison," remarked Giacobbe.

"Yes, poison," agreed Brontu. "And I did too. And there's another thing.

I'm tired of all this, mother and wife--and the whole business. So there! I'm going away. I'm going to spend the night with him in his palace. After all, we are relations, and--and----"

"Say it right out!" shouted Giacobbe. "You may be my heir; that's what you mean! Ha, ha, ha!"

He laughed boisterously, emitting sounds that were more like the howls of a wild beast than human laughter. Brontu, trying to imitate him, only succeeded in producing a noise like the cry of some happy animal in the springtime.

Giovanna felt herself grow sick with dread; she was afraid of the rapidly approaching darkness, of the solitude that enwrapped the common, of the presence of these two men whom wine had turned into quarrelsome beasts. "The excommunication," she thought, "has fallen on us all: on this servant, who dares to defy his master; on the son, who upbraids his mother; on me, Giovanna, who loathe and despise them one and all!"

Aunt Martina arose, went into the kitchen, and lit the candle. Giovanna followed her and set about preparing the supper. When it was ready they all sat down together, and for a little while everything went well.

Presently Brontu began to tell of how they had watched the procession from the windows of Giacobbe's "palace," his account of their foolish doings bringing a smile to his mother's lips. Then he tried to put his arm around his wife, but Giovanna's heart was full of gall. For her the holiday had been, if anything, sadder than an ordinary day; she had worked hard, she had not been to church, she had not so much as changed her dress; and yet, the moment she had allowed herself to go for a little recreation to the cottage,--the scene alike of her greatest misery and of her most intense happiness,--she had been ordered back as peremptorily as a dog is told to return to its kennel. Consequently, she was in no mood for endearments, and repulsed Brontu's proffered caress, telling him he was drunk.

Giacobbe, thereupon, laughed delightedly, which irritated Giovanna as much as it angered Brontu.

"What are you laughing at, you mangy cur?" demanded the latter.

"I might say I am not as mangy as you are yourself. But then, I--I want to say that--that--well, I'm laughing because I choose to."

"Eh! I can laugh too."

"Fools!" said Giovanna scornfully. "You make me sick, both of you."

At this Brontu, quite beside himself, suddenly turned on her:

"What is the matter with you, anyhow?" he demanded in a hard voice. "One would really like to know. Here you are, living on me, and when I offer to kiss you you fly out at me. You ought to be thankful to kiss the very ground under my feet; do you hear me?"

Giovanna grew livid. "What!" she hissed. "Am I treated any better than a servant in this house?"

"Well, a servant; all right, you can just stay one. What else should you be, woman?"

Giacobbe's squint-eyes sparkled at this, but Giovanna, rising to her feet, proceeded to pour out all the concentrated bitterness of the past months. Addressing her husband and mother-in-law, she called them slave-drivers and tyrants; threatened to go away, to kill herself; cursed the hour she had entered that house, and, in the transport of her rage, even revealed the debt to Giacobbe's sister.