and put it into his hand. He bowed again as he accepted a light. “From Milano,” Don said. “It is far.”
“It is far,” the woman said. Her fingers rippled briefly.
“He has been there,” she said.
“I was there, signori,” the man said. He held the cigarette carefully between thumb and forefinger. “One takes care to escape the carriages.”
“Yes.” Don said. “Those without horses.”
“Without horses,” the woman said. “There are many. Even here in the mountains we hear of it.”
“Many,” Don said. “Always whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.”
“Si,” the woman said. “Even here I have seen it.” Her hand rippled in the sunlight. The man looked at us quietly, smoking. “It was not like that when he was there, you see,” she said.
“I am there long time ago, signori,” he said. “It is far.”
He spoke in the same tone she had used, the same tone of grave and courteous explanation.
“It is far,” Don said. We smoked. The mule cropped with delicate, jerking tinkles of the bell. “But we can rest yonder,” Don said, extending his hand toward the valley swimming blue and sunny beyond the precipice where the path turned. “A bowl of soup, wine, a bed?”
The woman watched us across that serene and topless rampart of the deaf, the cigarette smoking close between thumb and finger. The woman’s hand flickered before his face. “Si,” he said; “si. With the priest: why not? The priest will take them in.” He said something else, too swift for me. The woman removed the checked cloth which covered the basket, and took out a wineskin. Don and I bowed and drank in turn, the man returning the bows.
“Is it far to the priest’s?” Don said.
The woman’s hand flickered with unbelievable rapidity.
Her other hand, lying upon the basket, might have belonged to another body. “Let them wait for him there, then,” the man said. He looked at us. “There is a funeral today. You will find him at the church. Drink, signori.”
We drank in decorous turn, the three of us. The wine was harsh and sharp and potent. The mule cropped, its small bell tinkling, its shadow long in the slanting sun, across the path. “Who is it that’s dead, signora?” Don said.
“He was to have married the priest’s ward after this harvest,” the woman said; “the banns were read and all. A rich man, and not old. But two days ago, he died.”
The man watched her lips. “Tchk. He owned land, a house: so do I. It is nothing.”
“He was rich,” the woman said. “Because he was both young and fortunate, my man is jealous of him.”
“But not now,” the man said. “Eh, signori?”
“To live is good,” Don said. He said, e hello.
“It is good,” the man said; he also said, bello.
“He was to have married the priest’s niece, you say,” Don said.
“She is no kin to him,” the woman said. “The priest just raised her. She was six when he took her, without people, kin, of any sort. The mother was workhouse-bred. She lived in a hut on the mountain yonder. It was not known who the father was, although the priest tried for a long while to persuade one of them to marry her for the child’s…”
“One of which?” Don said.
“One of those who might have been the father, signor. But it was never known which one it was, until in 1916. He was a young man, a laborer; the next day we learned that the mother had gone too, to the war also, for she was never seen again by those who knew her until one of our boys came home after Caporetto, where the father had been killed, and told how the mother had been seen in a house in Milano that was not a good house. So the priest went and got the child. She was six then, brown and lean as a lizard. She was hidden on the mountain when the priest got there; the house was empty. The priest pursued her among the rocks and captured her like a beast: she was half naked and without shoes and it winter time.”
“So the priest kept her,” Don said. “Stout fellow.”
“She had no people, no roof, no crust to call hers save what the priest gave her. But you would not know it. Always with a red or a green dress for Sundays and feast days, even at fourteen and fifteen, when a girl should be learning modesty and industry, to be a crown to her husband. The priest had told that she would be for the church, and we wondered when he would make her put such away for the greater glory of God. But at fourteen and fifteen she was already the brightest and loudest and most tireless in the dances, and the young men already beginning to look after her, even after it had been arranged between her and him who is dead yonder.”
“The priest changed his mind about the church and got her a husband instead,” Don said.
“He found for her the best catch in this parish, signor. Young, and rich, with a new suit each year from the Milano tailor. Then the harvest came, and what do you think, signori? she would not marry him.”
“I thought you said the wedding was not to be until after this harvest,” Don said. “You mean, the wedding had already been put off a year before this harvest?”
“It had been put off for three years. It was made three years ago, to be after that harvest. It was made in the same week that Giulio Farinzale was called to the army. I remember how we were all surprised, because none had thought his number would come up so soon, even though he was a bachelor and without ties save an uncle and aunt.”
“Is that so?” Don said. “Governments surprise everybody now and then. How did he get out of it?”
“He did not get out of it.”
“Oh. That’s why the wedding was put off, was it?”
The woman looked at Don for a minute. “Giulio was not the fiance’s name.”
“Oh, I see. Who was Giulio?”
The woman did not answer at once. She sat with her head bent a little. The man had been watching their lips when they spoke. “Go on,” he said; “tell them. They are men: they can listen to women’s tittle-tattle with the ears alone. They cackle, signori; give them a breathing spell, and they cackle like geese. Drink.”
“He was the one she used to meet by the river in the evenings; he was younger still: that was why we were surprised that his number should be called so soon. Before we had thought she was old enough for such, she was meeting him. And hiding it from the priest as skillfully as any grown woman could…” For an instant the man’s washed eyes glinted at us, quizzical.
“She was meeting this Giulio all the while she was engaged to the other one?” Don said.
“No. The engagement was later. We had not thought her old enough for such yet. When we heard about it, we said how an anonymous child is like a letter in the post office: the envelope might look like any other envelope, but when you open it.. And the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy.”
“Did he ever find it out?” Don said.
“Yes. It was not long after. She would slip out of the house at dusk; she was seen, and the priest was seen, hidden in the garden to watch the house: a servant of the holy God forced to play watchdog for the world to see. It was not good, signori.”
“And then the young man got called suddenly to the army,” Don said. “Is that right?”
“It was quite sudden; we were all surprised. Then we thought that it was the hand of God, and that now the priest would send her to the convent. Then in that same week we learned that it was arranged between her and him who is dead yonder, to be after the harvest, and we said it was the hand of God that would confer upon her a husband beyond her deserts in order to protect His servant. For the holy are susceptible to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God’s aid.”
“Tchk, tchk,” the man said. “It was nothing. The priest looked at her, too,” he said. “For a man is a man, even under a cassock. Eh, signori?”
“You would say so,” the woman said. “You without grace.”
“And the priest looked at her, too,” Don said.
“It was his trial, his punishment, for having been too lenient with her. And the punishment was not over: the harvest came, and we heard that the wedding was put off for a year: what do you think of that, signori? that a girl, come from what she had come from, to be given the chance which the priest had given her to save her from
