Corleone: A Tale of Sicily. F. Marion Crawford
her despairing eyes. That disturbed him as he met it and saw no change in it, but always the same hopeless pain.
'Come,' he said quietly, 'this is not sensible. Do I look like a man who is going to be killed like a dog in the street, without doing something to help myself?'
Her eyes filled again.
'Oh, pray—please—do not speak like that! Say goodbye to me—I cannot bear it any longer—and yet it kills me to let you go!'
She turned from him and covered her eyes with her hands for a moment, while he put his arm round her reassuringly. Then, all at once, she looked up.
'I will be brave—goodbye!' she said quickly.
It was a silent leave-taking after that, for he could not say much. His only answer to her must be his safe return, but as they went back along the walk she felt that she was with him for the last time. It was like going with him to execution.
Orsino walked back to the city alone, thinking over her words and her face, and wondering whether there could be anything in presentiments of evil. He had never had any himself, that he could remember, and he had never seen anybody so thoroughly under the influence of one as Vittoria seemed to be.
Before dinner he went to see San Giacinto, whom he found alone in his big study, sitting in his huge chair before his enormous table. He was so large that he had his own private furniture made to suit his own dimensions. The table was covered with note-books and papers, very neatly arranged, and the gray-haired giant was writing a letter. He looked up as Orsino entered and uttered a sort of inarticulate exclamation of satisfaction. Then he went on writing, while Orsino sat down and watched him.
'Do you happen to have a gun license?' asked San Giacinto, without looking up.
'Of course.'
'Put it in your pocket for the journey,' was the answer, as the pen went on steadily.
'Is there any game about Camaldoli?' enquired Orsino, after a pause.
'Brigands,' replied San Giacinto, laconically, and still writing.
He would have said 'woodcock' in the same tone, being a plain man and not given to dramatic emphasis. Orsino laughed a little incredulously, but said nothing as he sat waiting for his kinsman to finish his letter. His eyes wandered about the room, and presently they fell on a stout sole-leather bag which stood by a chair near the window. On the chair itself lay two leathern gun-cases obviously containing modern rifles, as their shape and size showed. With a man's natural instinct for arms, Orsino rose and took one of the weapons out of its case, and examined it.
'Winchesters,' said San Giacinto, still driving his pen.
'I see,' answered Orsino, feeling the weight, and raising the rifle to his shoulder as though to try the length of the stock.
'Most people prefer them in Sicily,' observed San Giacinto, who had signed his name and was folding his note carefully.
'What do you want them for?' asked the younger man, still incredulous.
'It is the custom of the country to carry them down there,' said the other. 'Besides, there are brigands about. I told you so just now.'
San Giacinto did not like to repeat explanations.
'I thought you were joking,' remarked Orsino.
'I never did that. I suppose we shall not have the luck to fall in with any of those fellows, but there has been a good deal of trouble lately, and we shall not be particularly popular as Romans going to take possession of Sicilian lands. We should be worth a ransom too, and by this time the whole country knows that we are coming.'
'Then we may really have some excitement,' said Orsino, more surprised than he would show at his cousin's confirmation of much that Vittoria had said. 'How about the mafia?' he asked by way of leading San Giacinto into conversation. 'How will it look at us?'
'The mafia is not a man,' answered San Giacinto, bluntly. 'The mafia is the Sicilian character—Sicilian honour, Sicilian principles. It is an idea, not an institution. It is what makes it impossible to govern Sicily.'
'Or to live there,' suggested Orsino.
'Except with considerable tact. You will find out something about it very soon, if you try to manage that place. But if you are nervous you had better not try.'
'I am not nervous, I believe.'
'No, it is of no use to be. It is better to be a fatalist. Fatalism gives you your own soul, and leaves your body to the chemistry of the universe, where it belongs. If your body comes into contact with something that does not agree with it, you die. That is all.'
There was an admirable directness in San Giacinto's philosophy, as Orsino knew. They made a final agreement about meeting at the station on the following morning, and Orsino went home a good deal less inclined to treat Vittoria's presentiments lightly. It had been characteristic of San Giacinto that he had hitherto simply forgotten to mention that there might be real danger in the expedition to Camaldoli, and it was equally in accordance with Orsino's character to take the prospect of it simply and gravely. There was a strong resemblance between the two kinsmen, and Orsino understood his cousin better than his father or any of his brothers.
He had already explained to his mother what he was going to do, and she had been glad to learn that he had found something to interest him. Both Corona and Sant' Ilario had the prevailing impression that the Sicilian difficulties were more or less imaginary. That is what most Romans think, and the conviction is general in the north of Italy. As Orsino said nothing about his conversation with San Giacinto on that last evening, his father and mother had not the slightest idea that there was danger before him, and as they had both noticed his liking for Vittoria, they were very glad that he should go away just then, and forget her.
The old Prince bade him goodbye that night.
'Whatever you do, my boy,' he said, shaking his snowy old head energetically, 'do not marry a Sicilian girl.'
The piece of advice was so unexpected that Orsino started slightly, and then laughed, as he took his grandfather's hand. It was oddly smooth, as the hands of very old men are, but it was warm still, and not so feeble as might have been expected.
'And if you should get into trouble down there,' said the head of the house, who had known Sicily seventy years earlier, 'shoot first. Never wait to be shot at.'
'It is not likely that there will be much shooting nowadays,' laughed Sant' Ilario.
'That does not make my advice bad, does it?' asked old Saracinesca, turning upon his son, for the least approach to contradiction still roused his anger instantly.
'Oh no!' answered Giovanni. 'It is very good advice.'
'Of course it is,' growled the old gentleman, discontentedly. 'I never gave anyone bad advice in my life. But you boys are always contradicting me.'
Giovanni smiled rather sadly. It was not in the nature of things that men over ninety years old should live much longer, but he felt what a break in the household's life the old man's death must one day make, when the vast vitality should be at last worn out.
CHAPTER IX
Orsino travelled down to Naples with San Giacinto in that peculiar state of mind in which an unsentimental but passionate man finds himself when he is leaving the woman he loves in order to go and do something which he knows must be done, which he wishes to do, and which involves danger and difficulty.
San Giacinto did not say much more about brigands, or the mafia, but he talked freely of the steps to be taken on arriving in Messina, in order to get a proper escort of soldiers from Piedimonte to Camaldoli, and it was perfectly clear that he anticipated trouble. Orsino was surprised to find that he expected to have four or five carabineers