A wild little village came in sight. This was the destination. Again no. Only the tall, handsome mountain youth who had sat across from her, descended grumbling because the bus had brought him past his road, the driver having refused to pull up. Everybody expostulated with him, and he dropped into the shadow. The big priest squeezed into his place. The bus wound on and on, and always towards that hollow skyline between the high peaks.
At last they ran up between buildings nipped between high rock-faces, and out into a little marketplace, the crown of the pass. The luggage was got out and lifted down. Alvina descended. There she was, in a wild centre of an old, unfinished little mountain town. The façade of a church rose from a small eminence. A white road ran to the right, where a great open valley showed faintly beyond and beneath. Low, squalid sort of buildings stood around—with some high buildings. And there were bare little trees. The stars were in the sky, the air was icy. People stood darkly, excitedly about, women with an odd, shell-pattern headdress of gofered linen, something like a parlourmaid’s cap, came and stared hard. They were hard-faced mountain women.
Pancrazio was talking to Ciccio in dialect.
“I couldn’t get a cart to come down,” he said in English. “But I shall find one here. Now what will you do? Put the luggage in Grazia’s place while you wait?—”
They went across the open place to a sort of shop called the Post Restaurant. It was a little hole with an earthen floor and a smell of cats. Three crones were sitting over a low brass brazier, in which charcoal and ashes smouldered. Men were drinking. Ciccio ordered coffee with rum—and the hard-faced Grazia, in her unfresh headdress, dabbled the little dirty coffee-cups in dirty water, took the coffeepot out of the ashes, poured in the old black boiling coffee three parts full, and slopped the cup over with rum. Then she dashed in a spoonful of sugar, to add to the pool in the saucer, and her customers were served.
However, Ciccio drank up, so Alvina did likewise, burning her lips smartly. Ciccio paid and ducked his way out.
“Now what will you buy?” asked Pancrazio.
“Buy?” said Ciccio.
“Food,” said Pancrazio. “Have you brought food?”
“No,” said Ciccio.
So they trailed up stony dark ways to a butcher, and got a big red slice of meat; to a baker, and got enormous flat loaves. Sugar and coffee they bought. And Pancrazio lamented in his elegant English that no butter was to be obtained. Everywhere the hard-faced women came and stared into Alvina’s face, asking questions. And both Ciccio and Pancrazio answered rather coldly, with some hauteur. There was evidently not too much intimacy between the people of Pescocalascio and these semi-townfolk of Ossona. Alvina felt as if she were in a strange, hostile country, in the darkness of the savage little mountain town.
At last they were ready. They mounted into a two-wheeled cart, Alvina and Ciccio behind, Pancrazio and the driver in front, the luggage promiscuous. The bigger things were left for the morrow. It was icy cold, with a flashing darkness. The moon would not rise till later.
And so, without any light but that of the stars, the cart went spanking and rattling downhill, down the pale road which wound down the head of the valley to the gulf of darkness below. Down in the darkness into the darkness they rattled, wildly, and without heed, the young driver making strange noises to his dim horse, cracking a whip and asking endless questions of Pancrazio.
Alvina sat close to Ciccio. He remained almost impassive. The wind was cold, the stars flashed. And they rattled down the rough, broad road under the rocks, down and down in the darkness. Ciccio sat crouching forwards, staring ahead. Alvina was aware of mountains, rocks, and stars.
“I didn’t know it was so wild!” she said.
“It is not much,” he said. There was a sad, plangent note in his voice. He put his hand upon her.
“You don’t like it?” he said.
“I think it’s lovely—wonderful,” she said, dazed.
He held her passionately. But she did not feel she needed protecting. It was all wonderful and amazing to her. She could not understand why he seemed upset and in a sort of despair. To her there was magnificence in the lustrous stars and the steepnesses, magic, rather terrible and grand.
They came down to the level valley bed, and went rolling along. There was a house, and a lurid red fire burning outside against the wall, and dark figures about it.
“What is that?” she said. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know,” said Ciccio. “Cosa fanno li—eh?”
“Ka—? Fanno il buga’—” said the driver.
“They are doing some washing,” said Pancrazio, explanatory.
“Washing!” said Alvina.
“Boiling the clothes,” said Ciccio.
On the cart rattled and bumped, in the cold night, down the highway in the valley. Alvina could make out the darkness of the slopes. Overhead she saw the brilliance of Orion. She felt she was quite, quite lost. She had gone out of the world, over the border, into some place of mystery. She was lost to Woodhouse, to Lancaster, to England—all lost.
They passed through a darkness of woods, with a swift sound of cold water. And then suddenly the cart pulled up. Someone came out of a lighted doorway in the darkness.
“We must get down here—the cart doesn’t go any further,” said Pancrazio.
“Are we there?” said Alvina.
“No, it is about a mile. But we must leave the cart.”
Ciccio asked questions in Italian. Alvina climbed down.
“Good evening! Are you cold?” came a loud, raucous, American-Italian female voice. It was another relation of Ciccio’s. Alvina stared and looked at the handsome, sinister, raucous-voiced young woman who stood in the light of the doorway.
“Rather cold,” she said.
“Come in, and
