The Lost Girl Part 89

"No, this country is a country for old men. It is only for old men,"

he said, talking of Pescocalascio. "You won't stop here. n.o.body young can stop here."

The odd plangent cert.i.tude in his voice penetrated her. And all the young people said the same thing. They were all waiting to go away.

But for the moment the war held them up.

Ciccio and Pancrazio were busy with the vines. As she watched them hoeing, crouching, tying, tending, grafting, mindless and utterly absorbed, hour after hour, day after day, thinking vines, living vines, she wondered they didn't begin to sprout vine-buds and vine stems from their own elbows and neck-joints. There was something to her unnatural in the quality of the attention the men gave to the wine. It was a sort of worship, almost a degradation again. And heaven knows, Pancrazio's wine was poor enough, his grapes almost invariably bruised with hail-stones, and half-rotten instead of ripe.

The loveliness of April came, with hot sunshine. Astonishing the ferocity of the sun, when he really took upon himself to blaze.

Alvina was amazed. The burning day quite carried her away. She loved it: it made her quite careless about everything, she was just swept along in the powerful flood of the sunshine. In the end, she felt that intense sunlight had on her the effect of night: a sort of darkness, and a suspension of life. She had to hide in her room till the cold wind blew again.

Meanwhile the declaration of war drew nearer, and became inevitable.

She knew Ciccio would go. And with him went the chance of her escape. She steeled herself to bear the agony of the knowledge that he would go, and she would be left alone in this place, which sometimes she hated with a hatred unspeakable. After a spell of hot, intensely dry weather she felt she would die in this valley, wither and go to powder as some exposed April roses withered and dried into dust against a hot wall. Then the cool wind came in a storm, the next day there was grey sky and soft air. The rose-coloured wild gladioli among the young green corn were a dream of beauty, the morning of the world. The lovely, pristine morning of the world, before our epoch began. Rose-red gladioli among corn, in among the rocks, and small irises, black-purple and yellow blotched with brown, like a wasp, standing low in little desert places, that would seem forlorn but for this weird, dark-l.u.s.trous magnificence. Then there were the tiny irises, only one finger tall, growing in dry places, frail as crocuses, and much tinier, and blue, blue as the eye of the morning heaven, which was a morning earlier, more pristine than ours. The lovely translucent pale irises, tiny and morning-blue, they lasted only a few hours. But nothing could be more exquisite, like G.o.ds on earth. It was the flowers that brought back to Alvina the pa.s.sionate nostalgia for the place. The human influence was a bit horrible to her. But the flowers that came out and uttered the earth in magical expression, they cast a spell on her, bewitched her and stole her own soul away from her.

She went down to Ciccio where he was weeding armfuls of rose-red gladioli from the half-grown wheat, and cutting the lushness of the first weedy herbage. He threw down his sheaves of gladioli, and with his sickle began to cut the forest of bright yellow corn-marigolds.

He looked intent, he seemed to work feverishly.

"Must they all be cut?" she said, as she went to him.

He threw aside the great armful of yellow flowers, took off his cap, and wiped the sweat from his brow. The sickle dangled loose in his hand.

"We have declared war," he said.

In an instant she realized that she had seen the figure of the old post-carrier dodging between the rocks. Rose-red and gold-yellow of the flowers swam in her eyes. Ciccio's dusk-yellow eyes were watching her. She sank on her knees on a sheaf of corn-marigolds.

Her eyes, watching him, were vulnerable as if stricken to death.

Indeed she felt she would die.

"You will have to go?" she said.

"Yes, we shall all have to go." There seemed a certain sound of triumph in his voice. Cruel!

She sank lower on the flowers, and her head dropped. But she would not be beaten. She lifted her face.

"If you are very long," she said, "I shall go to England. I can't stay here very long without you."

"You will have Pancrazio--and the child," he said.

"Yes. But I shall still be myself. I can't stay here very long without you. I shall go to England."

He watched her narrowly.

"I don't think they'll let you," he said.

"Yes they will."

At moments she hated him. He seemed to want to crush her altogether.

She was always making little plans in her mind--how she could get out of that great cruel valley and escape to Rome, to English people. She would find the English Consul and he would help her. She would do anything rather than be really crushed. She knew how easy it would be, once her spirit broke, for her to die and be buried in the cemetery at Pescocalascio.

And they would all be so sentimental about her--just as Pancrazio was. She felt that in some way Pancrazio had killed his wife--not consciously, but unconsciously, as Ciccio might kill _her_.

Pancrazio would tell Alvina about his wife and her ailments. And he seemed always anxious to prove that he had been so good to her. No doubt he had been good to her, also. But there was something underneath--malevolent in his spirit, some caged-in sort of cruelty, malignant beyond his control. It crept out in his stories. And it revealed itself in his fear of his dead wife. Alvina knew that in the night the elderly man was afraid of his dead wife, and of her ghost or her avenging spirit. He would huddle over the fire in fear.

In the same way the cemetery had a fascination of horror for him--as, she noticed, for most of the natives. It was an ugly, square place, all stone slabs and wall-cupboards, enclosed in four-square stone walls, and lying away beneath Pescocalascio village obvious as if it were on a plate.

"That is our cemetery," Pancrazio said, pointing it out to her, "where we shall all be carried some day."

And there was fear, horror in his voice. He told her how the men had carried his wife there--a long journey over the hill-tracks, almost two hours.

These were days of waiting--horrible days of waiting for Ciccio to be called up. One batch of young men left the village--and there was a lugubrious sort of saturnalia, men and women alike got rather drunk, the young men left amid howls of lamentation and shrieks of distress. Crowds accompanied them to Ossona, whence they were marched towards the railway. It was a horrible event.

A shiver of horror and death went through the valley. In a lugubrious way, they seemed to enjoy it.

"You'll never be satisfied till you've gone," she said to Ciccio.

"Why don't they be quick and call you?"

"It will be next week," he said, looking at her darkly. In the twilight he came to her, when she could hardly see him.

"Are you sorry you came here with me, Allaye?" he asked. There was malice in the very question.

She put down the spoon and looked up from the fire. He stood shadowy, his head ducked forward, the firelight faint on his enigmatic, timeless, half-smiling face.

"I'm not sorry," she answered slowly, using all her courage.

"Because I love you--"

She crouched quite still on the hearth. He turned aside his face.

After a moment or two he went out. She stirred her pot slowly and sadly. She had to go downstairs for something.

And there on the landing she saw him standing in the darkness with his arm over his face, as if fending a blow.

"What is it?" she said, laying her hand on him. He uncovered his face.

"I would take you away if I could," he said.

"I can wait for you," she answered.

He threw himself in a chair that stood at a table there on the broad landing, and buried his head in his arms.

"Don't wait for me! Don't wait for me!" he cried, his voice m.u.f.fled.

"Why not?" she said, filled with terror. He made no sign. "Why not?"

she insisted. And she laid her fingers on his head.

He got up and turned to her.

"I love you, even if it kills me," she said.

But he only turned aside again, leaned his arm against the wall, and hid his face, utterly noiseless.

"What is it?" she said. "What is it? I don't understand." He wiped his sleeve across his face, and turned to her.

"I haven't any hope," he said, in a dull, dogged voice.