The cottage consisted of a kitchen, with the usual stone fireplace in the centre and the oven in one corner, and two bedrooms, furnished in the most meagre way. Giovanna's bedstead was of wood, very high, and provided with an extremely hard mattress and a red cotton counterpane.

Aunt Bachissia took the little Martino, who was whimpering in his sleep, and laid him down, cradling him between her two hands, while Giovanna got ready for bed. When she was undressed and her head bare, the beautiful hair wound around it somewhat in the fashion of the ancient Romans, the mother covered her carefully and went out.

No sooner was she left to herself, however, than she threw off the covers and began to moan and lament. She was completely worn out with sorrow and fatigue, and her eyes were heavy with sleep, yet she could not rest. Confused pictures kept crowding through her brain, and, as though her mental anguish were not already suffering enough, sharp pains shot through her teeth and temples. Every time she had one of these twinges it was as though some one had poured a jug of boiling water down her spine, and she shook with nervous terror. Altogether, the night was one long horror.

From the adjoining room, the door of which stood open, Aunt Bachissia could hear Giovanna muttering and raving; now addressing Costantino in terms of extravagant endearment; then the jury with threats and imprecations. She herself, meanwhile, lay wide awake, her brain clear and active, going over every detail of what had taken place, and laying plans for the future. The sound of Giovanna's grief only aroused a dumb sense of resentment in her breast, and yet, after a while, she too found herself weeping.

CHAPTER IV

On the evening of the following day, a Sat.u.r.day, Brontu Dejas, returning from the sheepfolds, was hardly off his horse before he began to grumble. Among themselves, the Dejases were notorious grumblers, though with outsiders they were always extremely suave. Apart from this trait he was a good-natured devil; young and handsome, very dark and thin, of medium height, with a short curling red beard. He had beautiful teeth, and, when talking to women, smiled continually in order to show them.

Coming home on this particular evening, he began to grumble because he found neither light nor supper awaiting him. It must be admitted that there was some justification; for, after all, he was a working-man, and week after week he would return from six days of toil to find a house as dark and squalid as a beggar's hovel.

"Eh! eh!" he said, as he began to unharness his horse. "This might as well be Isidoro Pane's shanty! Let us have some light, at any rate, so we can see to swear. What is there for supper?"

"Bacon and eggs; there now, be patient," said Aunt Martina. "Did you know that Costantino Ledda had been sentenced to thirty years?"

"Twenty-seven. Well, are those the eggs? My dear mamma, that bacon is rancid. Why don't you give it to the chickens? the chickens, do you hear?" and he snapped his handsome teeth angrily.

"They won't eat it," answered Aunt Martina tranquilly. "Yes, twenty-seven. Ah! twenty-seven years, that is a long time. I dreamed he had got penal servitude."

"Have you been to see the women yet? How pleased they must be now with their fine marriage! Miserable beggars!"

He had asked the question with evident curiosity, yet the moment his mother told him that she had been, and that Giovanna was tearing her hair and quite beside herself, while it was plain to see that Aunt Bachissia wished now that she had strangled her daughter before allowing her to make such a match, he turned on her furiously.

"What business had you to go near the den of those wretched beggars?"

"Ah! my son. Christian charity! You don't seem to have any idea of what that is!" Aunt Martina liked, indeed, to pretend that she was a charitable person. "Priest Elias was there too this morning; yes, he went to comfort them. Giovanna wants to take the baby to Nuoro for Costantino to see before they carry him off. I told her she was crazy to think of such a thing in this heat; but Priest Elias told her to go, and he nearly cried!"

"What does he know about children! He is barren, like all the rest of them," snarled Brontu, who hated the priests because his uncle, who had been rector in the village before Priest Elias Portolu came from Nuoro, had left all his property to a hospital. Aunt Martina had not forgiven this outrage either, but the old she-wolf knew how to disguise her feelings, and when Brontu railed against the priests she always made the sign of the cross.

"What makes you talk that way, you fool?" said she, hastily crossing herself. "You don't know where your feet may carry you! Priest Elias is a saint. If he were to hear such evil talk as that--beware! He has the Holy Books, and if he chooses to, he can curse our fields, and bring the locusts, and make the bees die!"

"A fine saint!" exclaimed Brontu. Then he insisted upon hearing all the particulars about the Eras,--how Giovanna had cried out, what that old kite, Aunt Bachissia, had said----

"Well, Giovanna's sobs were enough to melt the very stones; and Aunt Bachissia was in despair because now, in addition to all the rest, the lawyer's fees and other expenses of the trial have stripped them of everything they possessed, even to the house."

The young man listened intently, his face beaming with satisfaction, and his white teeth gleaming. In his undisguised pleasure he was simply and purely savage.

"Listen," said Aunt Martina, when she had finished. "Giacobbe Dejas will be here presently to see you too. He wanted to begin his term of service to-morrow, but I told him to wait till Monday. To-morrow is a holiday, and there is no sense in our having him eat at our expense."

"Beautiful St. Costantino! You _are_ close, mamma."

"Oh, you; you are just like a child! What use is there in wasting things? Life is long and it takes a great deal to live."

"And how are those two women going to live?" asked Brontu after a short silence, seating himself before the eggs and bread.

"They will catch snails, I suppose," said Aunt Martina scornfully. She had taken up her spindle again, and was spinning close to the open door.

"You take a great interest in them, Brontu Dejas."

Silence. Within the room the only sounds were the rattle of the spindle and the noise of Brontu's strong teeth, as he munched the hunks of hard bread; outside, though, beyond the portico, the crickets were chirping incessantly; and from the far-away, deserted woods, through the warm, dim atmosphere of the falling night, came the melancholy cry of an owl.

Brontu poured out some wine, raised the gla.s.s, and opened his mouth, but not to drink. There was something he wanted to say to his mother, but the words would not come. He drank the wine, brushed some drops off his beard with the back of his hand, and again opened his mouth, but still the words died away.

A sound of heavy boots was heard, tramping across the open s.p.a.ce before the house. Aunt Martina, still spinning, arose, told her son that Giacobbe Dejas was coming, and, taking the food and wine, put them away in the cupboard.

Giacobbe saw the action as he entered, and at once understood that she was hiding something in order not to have to offer it to him; but, as he himself would have put it, he was too much a "man of the world" to allow any expression of resentment to escape him.

He advanced, therefore, smiling and cheerful.

"I will wager," said he, laying one finger on his nose, "that you were talking about me."

"No, we were speaking of poor Costantino Ledda."

"Ah, yes, poor fellow!" returned Giacobbe, becoming serious at once.

"And when you think that he is innocent! As innocent as the sun! No one can be more sure of it than I."

Brontu threw himself back in an easy att.i.tude, crossed his legs, and, turning slightly around, showed his teeth as he did when talking to women. "As to that, opinions may differ," he said sharply. "There, for instance, is my mother; she dreamed that he had got the death sentence."

"Oh, no, Brontu! What are you talking about? Penal servitude!"

"Well, it amounts to the same thing. Now, we will talk business."

"Very well, let us talk business, by all means," a.s.sented Giacobbe, crossing his legs as well.

A little later the two men, having settled the matter in hand, went off together, Brontu leading the way to the tavern. He himself was not in the least close, and if he never offered a visitor a gla.s.s in his own house, it was only not to irritate Aunt Martina. At the tavern, though, he was superb, and on this particular evening he made Giacobbe drink so much, and drank so much himself, that they both became tipsy.

Coming out at last into the silent, deserted street, filled with the odour of the dry fields, they began talking again of Costantino, and Brontu said, with brutal frankness, that he was glad of the sentence.

"Go to the devil!" shouted Giacobbe. "You have no heart!"

"All right, that's it; I have no heart."

"Just because Giovanna wouldn't have you, you are glad to hear of the death, or worse than death, of a brother."

"He's not dead, and he's not a brother; and it was I who would not have Giovanna Era. If I had wanted her to, she would have licked the soles of my shoes."

"b.u.m--b.u.m--look out, or you'll have a tumble, my little spring bird. You lie like a servant-maid."

"I--I--am--not--a--a--servant-maid," stammered Brontu, furious. "If you say anything like that again, I'll take you by the crown of your head and choke you."

"b.u.m--I tell you, you'll fall down, little spring bird," repeated Giacobbe at the top of his lungs. Their voices rang out through the quiet street; then they suddenly ceased talking, and stillness reigned once more. In the distance, under the light of the stars which overhung the mountain crests like garlands of golden flowers, the owl still sounded his melancholy note.

All at once Brontu began to cry in a strange, drunken fashion, with neither sobs nor tears.

"Well, what is the matter now?" demanded Giacobbe in a low tone. "Are you drunk?"