He had known la Mara ever since she was a little girl. Their acquaintance had begun in a pitched battle once when they met down in the valley, both of them after blackberries. The little girl, knowing that she was "within her rights," had seized Jeli by the neck as if he were a thief. For awhile they exchanged blows on the slope--"You one, I one,"--as the cooper does on the hoops of his barrels; but when they got tired of it they gradually calmed down, though they still had each other by the hair.

"Who are you?" demanded Mara.

And when Jeli with less breeding refused to tell who he was,--

"I am Mara, the daughter of _Ma.s.saro_ Agrippino, who is the keeper of all these fields here."

Jeli then let his grasp relax, and the little girl set to work to pick up the blackberries that had fallen during their struggle, now and then glancing with curiosity at her antagonist.

"Just beyond the bridge, on the edge of the orchard, there are lots of big berries," suggested the little maid, "and the hens are eating them."

Jeli meantime was creeping off stealthily, and Mara, after standing on tip-toe to watch him disappearing in the grove, turned her back and ran home as fast as her legs would carry her.

But from that day forth they began to be friends. Mara went with her hemp to spin on to the parapet of the little bridge, and Jeli would slowly drive his cattle toward the slopes of the _poggio del Bandito_.

At first he kept at a distance, roving around and looking from afar, with suspicion in his face, but he kept gradually edging near, with the watchful gait of a dog used to stones. When at last he joined her, they remained long hours without speaking a word, Jeli attentively watching the intricate work of the stockings which Mara's mamma had hung round her neck, or she looking on while he carved his pretty zig-zags on the almond sticks. Then they would separate, he going one way, she the other, without saying a word, and the little girl as soon as she was in sight of her house would start to run, kicking high her petticoat with her little red legs.

When the p.r.i.c.kly pears were ripe they would settle down in the thick of the bushes, peeling the figs all the live-long day. They would wander together under the immemorial walnuts, and Jeli would beat so many of the walnuts that they would shower down thick as hail, and the girl would tire herself out picking them up with jubilant shouts--more than she could carry; and then she would scamper away nimbly, holding up the two corners of her ap.r.o.n, bobbing like a little old woman.

During the winter time, Mara dared not put her nose out of doors, it was so cold. Sometimes toward evening could be seen the smoke of Jeli's fires of sumach wood, which he built on the _Piano del lettighiere_, or on the _Poggio di Macca_, so as not to perish of the cold, like the tomt.i.ts which he sometimes found in the morning behind some rock, or in the shelter of a clod. The horses also found pleasure in dangling their tails around the fire, and they would cuddle close together so as to be warmer.

In March, the larks came back to the plain, the sparrows to the roofs, the leaves and the nests to the hedges. Mara took up her habit of going about with Jeli in the soft gra.s.s among the flowering bushes under the still bare trees which were just beginning to show tender points of green. Jeli would make his way through the brambles like a bloodhound, so as to discover the nests of the blackbirds which would look up to him in astonishment with their little keen eyes; the two children would carry, cuddled in their hearts, little wee rabbits just born, almost without fur, but already quick to move their long ears.

They would scour the fields in pursuit of the drove of horses, entering the plains behind the hay-gatherers, step for step with the herd, pausing every time that a mare stopped to pluck a mouthful of gra.s.s. At evening, when they got back to the bridge, they separated, he going in one direction, she in another, without saying good-by.

Thus they pa.s.sed the whole summer. When the sun began to go down behind the _Poggio alla Croce_, the robin red-b.r.e.a.s.t.s also went toward the mountain, as it grew dark, following the light among the clumps of p.r.i.c.kly pears. The crickets and cicadae were no longer heard, and at that hour a great melancholy spread through the air.

About that time, to Jeli's tumble-down hovel came his father, the cowherd, who had caught the malaria at Ragoleti, and could scarcely dismount from the a.s.s which brought him. Jeli started a fire quickly, and ran to "the hall" for some hen's eggs.

"Put a little straw down in front of the fire as soon as you can,"

said his father, "for I feel the fever returning."

The chill of the fever was so severe that _compare_ Menu buried under his thick cloak, the saddle-bags of the a.s.s and Jeli's sacks shook as the leaves do in November, in spite of the great blaze of branches which made his face white as a corpse.

The contadini of the farm came to ask him,--

"How do you think you feel, _compare_ Menu?"

The poor man could only answer with a whine like a sucking puppy.

"It's a kind of malaria that kills more surely than a rifle bullet,"

said his friends, as they warmed their hands at the fire.

The doctor was called, but it was money thrown away, because the disease is one of those clear and evident ones which even a boy would know how to cure; unless the fever happens to be so severe that it will kill at any rate, a little quinine cures it quickly.

_Compare_ Menu spent the eyes of his head for quinine but it was as good as thrown down a well.

"Take a good dose of _ecalibbiso_ tea, which does not cost anything,"

suggested _ma.s.saro_ Agrippino, "and if it doesn't work as well as quinine it doesn't ruin you by its cost."

So he took the decoction of eucaliptus, but the fever returned all the same, and even more violently. Jeli attended to his father the best he knew how. Every morning before he went off with his colts, he left him his medicine all prepared in a drinking cup, his bundle of dry branches within reach, his eggs in the hot ashes, and he came back as early as he could in the afternoon with more wood for the night, and the bottle of wine and a little piece of mutton, which he had gone as far as Licodia to buy for him. The poor lad did everything as handily as a clever maiden would have done, and his father, following him with weary eyes in his operations about the hovel, sometimes smiled to think that the boy would be able to do for himself in case he were left alone in the world.

On days when the fever left him for a few hours, _compare_ Menu would get up, all feeble as he was, and with his head wrapped in his handkerchief, would stagger out to the door to wait for Jeli while the sun was still warm. When Jeli dropped the bundle of wood at the door-steps, and placed the bottle and the eggs on the table, he would say to him,--

"Put the _ecalibbiso_ to boiling for to-night," or, "Remember that your aunt Agata has charge of your mother's money, when I shall be no more."

Jeli would nod "yes" with his head.

"It is hopeless," said _ma.s.saro_ Agrippino, every time he came to see _compare_ Menu and his fever. "His blood is all diseased by this time."

_Compare_ Menu listened without winking, with his face whiter than his night-cap.

He now no longer got up. Jeli began to weep when he found himself not strong enough to help him turn from one side to the other; shortly after _compare_ Menu lay perfectly still. The last words that he spoke to his boy were,--

"When I am dead, go to the owner of the cows at Ragoleti and let him give you the three _onze_ and the twelve _tumoli_ of corn, which are my due from March till now."

"No," replied Jeli, "it's only two _onze_ and a half, because you left the cows more than a month ago, and one must be fair to one's _padrone_."

"True!" agreed _compare_ Menu, closing his eyes.

"Now I am quite alone in the world, like a lost colt which the wolves may eat!" said Jeli to himself, when his father had been carried off to the cemetery of Licodia.

Mara had been one of those who came to see the dead man's house with that morbid curiosity which is excited by horrible things.

"Do you see how I am left?" asked Jeli, but the girl drew back so frightened that he could not induce her to step inside the house where the dead man had been.

Jeli went to receive the money due his father, and then he started off with his drove for Pa.s.sanitello, where the gra.s.s was already tall on the fallow-land, and the fodder was abundant; therefore, the colts remained there for some time in pasture.

Meantime Jeli had been growing into a big lad, and Mara also must be grown tall, he often thought to himself, while he played on his _zufalo_; and when he returned to Tebidi after some little time, slowly driving forward the mares through the dangerous paths of "Uncle Cosimo's Fountain," he scanned the little bridge down in the valley, and the hovel in the _Valle del Jacitano_, and the roof of "the Hall"

where the pigeons were always flying.

But at that time the _padrone_ had dismissed _ma.s.saro_ Agrippino, and all Mara's family were just on the point of moving away.

Jeli found the girl, who had grown tall and very pretty, standing at the entrance of the yard watching the furniture and things, which they were loading on the cart. The empty room seemed to him more gloomy and smoky than ever before. The table, the commode and the images of the Virgin and of Saint John, and even the nails for hanging up the gourds for seed had left on the walls the marks where they had been for so many years.

"We are going away," said Mara, when she saw him looking around. "We are going down to Marineo, where the great house stands in the plain."

Jeli took hold and helped _ma.s.saro_ Agrippino and _la gna Lia_ load up the cart, and when there was nothing else to carry out of the room he went and sat down with Mara on the edge of the watering-trough.

"Even houses," he remarked, when he saw the last hamper piled on, "even houses, when anything is taken away from them, do not any longer seem the same."

"At Marineo," replied Mara, "we shall have much better rooms, mamma says, and large as the cheese house."

"Now that you are going away, I shall not want to come here any more; it seems to me as if winter had come back--to see that door closed."

"At Marineo we shall find other friends, Pudda _la rossa_ and the _campiere's_ daughter; it will be jolly there; they have more than eighty harvesters in the season, and the bag-pipes, and they dance on the threshing-floor."

_Ma.s.saro_ Agrippino and his wife had gone off with the cart. Mara ran behind them, full of joyous excitement, carrying the baskets with the pigeons. Jeli was going to accompany her as far as the little bridge; and when Mara was just on the point of disappearing down the valley he called after her, "Mara! oh! Mara!"