Complete Story. The Miracle by the Roadside.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XXIV, 10 December 1904, Page 10

Complete Story. The Miracle by the Roadside.

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LEO CRANE...

They were miserably dressed. At a time long past the man's knotted sash and the woman's ueekcloth had been of the brightest colours, but now both were dull of hue and faded. In a great measure the couple were as their ornaments — the man secmiig careworn and tired, the . woman's face presenting a pallor where there was needed but the glow of health that she might be beautiful. They had both passed over the farthest boundaries of fertile Youthland and were facing a long, cheerless vista into the drear gray country of Age. Something strangely pathetic was pictured in their half-spent plodding manner. It seemed that living was some tedious task to them, without hope of pleasure or reward. Their features wore drawn and hardened, their eyes strained from the anxiet yof the groping way, for they had 10-t the one all-neces-sary guide through the deserts of life. Though together, they were yet alone. Without a word they trudged doggedly over the nwu-ii stones of the street, drag--ging after them a low cart, upon which was strapped an organ. The little ironsluml wheels bumped noisily, and often their squat strength would Im? sorely tested by the jolting of the cart into the ruts. With many whines and queer sounds they protested against this hard lot, for the organ was heavy. 'Hie man between the shafts of the cart said nothing, but pulled silently as a beast. The organ was a rare box. Its rich easing of dark wood was quaintly carved iiiTo grapes and twisted vines, through which Howers peeped their dimpled heads and cupids danced merrily. It was filled .with Um sweet, gladsome melodies of happiness. light in colour and gracefully fantastic. Yet. perhaps because the man its masfor no longer hummed and smiled as in th< old days, when Tils heart sang with the musiy. perhaps -because the thing was satiated with its own comedy of rippling nu-asures, it seemed to desire the tones of Life's graver hymns and the chanted monotones of misery and heavy labour. So the organ dragged upon the man heavily ami wearied him. When it would bet I.lc down into the deep places, his musch's would have to strain. The breath of him would come then in short, jerking gasps, and the veins would start suddenly in his swe-ating temples until they ]<•- aembled great purple threads knotted‘in an olive cloth.

The little patient woman, half harnessed Io the cart’s »4dp> by a leathern thong, ing the man's endeavour, would struggle in feeble willingness to aid him, sometimex turning about s) that she might the Letter plant her feed in the hollows. Ami when the §tpbbom thing, yielding to the terrible th robbings of their common h(-i‘.jl, would crawl up the way they willed it should go. the toilers would gladly p;. use to tremble in very weakness. "Will it be nujeh farther, Giotto?’’ asked the woman after one of the. e mighty st rugglee. Tjic frowning man stopped muttering bi- imprecations, ami growled, in reply: “Ji, is in the country—have I not already told you?’ ‘ Yes.*’ she murmured, a trifle breathlessly. “and we have not yet left the city. The country inu.-t be far away. Giotto, Is it a ver.y pretty country? You arc tired. Couhl we not -could we not make just the old round to-day instead of ” ‘ : Ah. yes." interrupted the man with a Fttocr. "and who will p:tv Petro his debt? Y ho? "lie wi i wait a little longer, perhaps,” fLc argued, bypefuiix. "And sometimes-— f< mvtimes. Giotto, vow know we do finely or the-regular st wets.” “Yvs, .sometimes,” he cried out. angrily, dropping bis bands down with a mute expression <»l wearinesh to grasp the handle's ngain- "But we do not get a chance at a fete often, while the streets are always- there. To morrow we will go the regular way. for,” and he shrugged his shoulders almost pathetically, row there will be no fete. ’Those who wait for tomorrow never relish today. They barter reality for a phantom, and they are always waiting, waiting. No,

no, Beata, let us have nothing to do with to-morrow. It is God’s country. We will understand, it when it conics.” “But are you not tired, Giotto?” asked the woman, monotonously. “Tired? I am tired—when there is much money to be earned? No, 1 am not tired. Yon —you were weeping last night, and for what? You, answer me. Ah, yes, to go back to Sicily—to go back to Sicily. But that can only be to-mor-row, and unless we go to the fete today, to-morrow may never bless us.”

For the instant a flash of almost daring hope lighted the man’s eyes, but again they died into the dull glow of bestial stolidity. His hands clutched in a tired way at the eart’s shafts. “To see the hills again,” he murmured, wearily. And the little woman gave a long sigh, but she said nothing. “Weil, here is a big step towards it.” he called bravely a moment, later. “Cheer up now, Beata mine, the fete is indeed a blessing to us. It will bring Sicily four days nearer; perhaps, besides paying Petro for this beast of an organ and its cart. Then, too the man told me if we came before midday we could have dinner — think of that. White bread, maybe, and —and a taste of wine.” litre a. look of desirous longing Hooded the cavernous eyes of the man Until in. their way they seemed to speak. He licked out-his dry tongue slowly across his lips. “Hurry, now,” he muttered,' “for it is not yet mid-day.”

And at this the woman smiled a little hopefully. Yet she. could not help seeing bow Wet was the. man's hair in the glow of the sun or imagining the stretching of bis arms’ aching muscles. “Yes —but,” she half whispered, timidly laying her hand upon his shoulder in a slight caress. “But what?” demanded he, sharply. “ I only thought yon were so very tired, Giotto —so very tired. 1 do so want to go back to the hills, yes, but 1 do not care to bring even happy Sicily nearer by linking you so weak.” “Hush! you are a feol, Beata,” he muttered, impatiently, snaking free his arm. “You do all the work, Giotto.” she continued, softly. “You will not let me help you. And this strong sun is ndt’gobd. It,is different from that, at home. ’ Think of Guido and little Paula—” Her vo'ce quavered tremulously with the slightest touch of a woman’s whimper. . “Would they not, be here with us but for its hut breath? I do jiot want Siciiy without —without you, Gotto.” Then the man's eyes, and they .-were at times not without their shades of sweetness, tilled with tearg; but instead of looking at her, he tossed his head in determined desire to be sullen, and even replied savagely through his clenched teeth, “Ah, yes, you—y ou were thinking only of yourself.” Stooping quickly. Jis grasped the handles of the shafts. He threw his body forward, and with an effort that made him groan set the wheels turning. “Come,” he called, harshly. So the. little woman began to tugaway at the strap again with all her strength. Giotto strained and bent down his shoulders so that she would have but a slight chance to pull. They walked onward quickly and did not talk. And neither the cart nor ils weight of rosewood and comedy seemed lightly, if indred quite so light as before.

■ Ti e sun was now very-hot.-’{The eity street -was .deserted. With a feverish int-’msity the glare beamed down upon th-: unshaded centre, where the rounded stones were.;js thousands of b isters raised since the dawn. ■ About c.ic’i was a viscous circle of irritating dust. The pale amber and white houses flung back into the street half their rightful share of the heat. The few trees were as if parched, and Covered with so thick a layer of the withering dust that their green lyul nil run into a sieklv grey. Many 1 times ’the little bumping cart would rest and cea-c the jolting of its

springs. .The ipan , would remove Ms hat, and while mopping from Ms foilhead his heritage, grumble indistinctly. Yet always at these brief haults the woman’s face would find some moment in which to relieve its tense. lines by a smile of great sweetness. Like rare memories were these expressions. But often the man would be staring stolidly the other way, ga'ning nothing from these faint breaths of encouragement, unconscious of the ghosts of his youth. And so the woman in turr would sigh, knowing her glances impotent and wasted, a thought that gathered for its company tears. And the man, too, sighed, though angrily - , feeling only in his averted face the burning of the sun, upon his heart the heavy burden of the years. Sometimes tney would both turn and gaze at the thing they dragged. As some monstrous embodied sin, it seemed bound hopelessly to their tired backs. Then the quick thought to cast off its chains—to be free—to run far away from it —would come, and swiftly following upon its heels, as the ache after the burn, their •unharnessed souls would rush back to the loved shrine of their hearts’ desire—to distant, blessed Sicily. Once again they would rest in the charm of its quiet hills at sunset. In that instant the baking city would for .them have faded. They were young, together, and on those flowered slopes that dip gracefully down to bathe roeky feet in a surf of leathered pearl. The gentle air was filled with the blown perfume of the grasses. Behind them, kissing softly the palest clouds, loomed the faint blue peaks, ever growing, and indistinct as the solemn mysteries of some calm faith. Around her would be Giotto's arms; across his taee would blow her loosened hair. Ami now, away off at the edge of the .enchanted sea a tiny sail glinted for a momeflt in the farew ell glow, . causing them both to rise and. watch its course. The sky dr coped down its long, delicate robes of pale green, so that the last copper beams could paint their folds in fad-, •ing tints before cloaked in the sombre grays of twilight. Overhead, as a great winging gull with pinions' of shadowed fawn,; a single cloud hovered. Then one star, pure and .solitary, a virgin bfacon of the early night, would peer out modestly to guide the moon, a sail-set barque upon a placid sea. And the night wind,’ jnoist with the love of the waves, crept in as if afraid from the darkening. waste pi. waters.., . - . , Sicily! Their own beautiful world of. peace. Sicily! the land of their lovesongs. But heartlessly out from the sordid town a waggon crashed —and they were again in teh sweltering streets; sadder older, with only the lines in the woman's face to speak of the children dead. Harsh, and restless, as the discordant qu trelling of selfish wolves, came the thousand' grinding Kbises of the eity. Their hearts ■were onec more leaden-weighted. I’ara-

disc was lost in the pitiless foreign glare. The man wiped the .sweat from his and without uttering a single woid, M beasts, cursed, they went on again. _ ' The summer day was growing old. The sun, having run its mad course, now .seemed te have spent its fiercest wrath, and was turning even mild. But the earth yet steamed and the dust of tha road’s centre was heavy and hot. Its ribbon trail, a light streak amid tha darker fields, showed where the highway crossed a distant hill.

And there, out over the erest of it, two tiny specks of blaek came creeping. Soon these two became three to the eye, but the three were all as of one body, uncouth and lumbering as some stupid beast in motion. After a while it became apparent that two of the objects lived and dragged a senseless third. They advanced slowly.

lii perhaps an hour’s time the toilers and their burden had descended to the pleasant shaded places of the intervening vallty, crossed its old stone culvert spanning a brook, and without pausing once to rest, began climbing upward the longer aud unshaded hill. When erosing tire culvert, cool in its green moss and the shade of drooping trees smelling of the Witter and the damp moisture of Jong grasses, the woman who toiled beside the man gazed as if to stop a while there in the pleasant shadow would be heavenly. When they had gone a little way up the ascent, she plainly faltered, and turned to look back onee, probably to relieve by the sight of clear wet green her aching eyes. But the man kept on. Her short steps began to lag, and the leathern strap often became limp and slack as she ceased to pull upon it. ■ ill you not rest a moment. Giotto?” she ventured, timidly. Without a word’ of reply, the man turned the ca.-t half around, so that ils wheels could not draw backward, and, dropping the shafts, sat upon them. The woman took a few dragging steps aside, and sank down wearily upon the dusty sod. For a few momenta the man rested. in silence. Then, in peevish restlessness, he began looking about for something in which to place his interest.

“1 will count the money,” he suggested: Removing-his battered hat of yellow straw and drawing out from a trousers pocket a few coins, he dropped them one after another into the crown, counting in his mother tongue. As each bit -fell h’s face assumed more and. more of a disgruntled sneer. The very, last piece lie-flung Into-the hat contemptuously. . , “A fete they called it,” he exclaimed, disdainfully. ... The tired woman had been plucking the.blades of grass near to her hand as a child does.. She glanced up . ami nodded.-

“But you would come, Gotto.” He glared at her and gritted his white teeth.

. “And.- how wa» I to know they would be misers'!’’ he asked. ,

, She shrugged her ' little narrow ahoulders. After a bit o« silence she added to his complaint: “If we had gone the regular streets we could hare had dinner.” “Oh, that was your fault." he answered, harshly. “You would not walk fast enough. I told you he said ‘before mid-day.’ ”. “Then why did they ask me to dance and sing for them! It is hard indeed when one is hungry and weak from the sun.” “We both suffered it,” he declared, at length, decisively. “Do not talk of it again. Are you better than I am?” She did not reply to this, but hung down her head a little. Then he swung the cart about and started forward. The little woman still sat by the roadside. “Come!” he called, angrily, “we shall be late.” “I am so tired, Gotto; can you not •wait a-— “Come!” It cost quite an effort for her to move from the place, yet she obediently hurried after his striding figure. Patiently she caught at the swinging strap and bent to her portion of labour. Five minutes’ climbing passed with no sound other than the whining of the cart and the man’s heavy breathing. Then, with a grim burst of derisive laughter, he cried out: “They called it a fete! A paupers’ feast!” “You would come, Gitto,” the woman murmured. ' “For you,” he snarled at her—“for you, that we might have Sicily nearer. Ah, Sicily—-it is as far off as ever.” “Farther. perhaps,” echoed the woman, in her changeless tone of the inevitable. And the man. angered, his eyes firing «s coals fanned into a glow by some dangerous wind, struck her cruelly. Full upon the mouth he struck her. A ■heavy blow barbed with rage. The little woman staggered slightly and drew one hand up to her lips. A fewdrops of blood began to trickle down from beneath her fingers. Her eyes seemed, in their dumb reproaches, as bruised as the reddened flesh, only they ■were filled with a patient sorrow, while the lips glowed feverishly. She said nothing. “Now be quiet,” the man growled, in a half tone of regret. So on went the cart once more. Now fully two-thirds of the tedious hillside showed the marks of the dragging burden. And the wheels of it jolted and groaned in monotonous contentment, as if satisfied at last that its desire for life’s miseries had been glutted Doggedly the man bent down his head and shoulders, shamed within himself. But suddenly he stopped and looked about, for above the grumbling noise of the cart there had sounded a faint cry. Tie saw the little woman reel a weak step or two in the road, catch at the carvel panels of the organ, and fall, striking sharp one of the bright' wheel tyres. Silent and motionless she lay outstretched in the dust, one hand limply thrown as if in a pitiful gesture. “Beata!” gasped the man in surprise. She did not move. Then dropping

the bundles, he knelt by her. - Catching her by the rhoulders, he tried to raise up the dead weightof her. “Beata!” he called, fearingly—“Beats!” A paralysing terror now completely possessed the man. He began to do and say childish things. He trembled violently, and his heart thumped within him as, an engine gone mad. Up and down the long road he stared, and at the mute organ stupidly. No one was in sight. By the roadside was an old wall, heavy with vines and decaying moss. Within the slight shade of it he laid the little woman tenderly and started off at a hard run for the brook at the hill’s foot. Arriving there, he had no cup in which to carry back the water sought. But after a moment’s hesitation he hurriedly tore out a large piece of his shirt bosom and placed it folded within the crown of his hat This poor substitute he then filled, and with his bauds clasped beneath it in a further effort to caulk the leaks, started up the steep path again, running and stumbling and panting. Breathless he came to the wall. A terrible, nameless dread seized him when he saw the woman still as if dead. It bound his heart in coils and tried to strangle him. Quickly he splashed some of the water upon her face, and with fumbling fingers tried to unfasten the bosom of her dress. Nervously swearing, he tore it open at last and squeezed the last drops from the rag upon her breast.

“Beata!” he called again. But gone from his voice were all tones of anger and malignity. Only a loving emotion remained.

After a moment more her eyelids began to quiver slightly. So Giottc sat down and held her head upon his crossed knees. It was a cool and perfumed place. A few sweet wild flowers rustled with the grass. A pin dropped from the woman’s hair, allowing the strands of it, slowly falling, to mingle with the growing blades of the ground. For a long time Giotto sat there. Often he seemed praying. And when with a little gasp the woman’s mouth opened, he saw immediately the bruised place inside her lips, and that only Catching her up closely to him in repentance, he kissed the wound of his making. When he put back her head, Beata was smiling happily, for was not a strand of her blowing hair, caught in the little gold earring lie wore? —even as many a time long ago. And she laughed again with the old sweet laugh of a woman caught at love-making and caring not. “Beata,” he wnlspered, tenderly. Her hand crept up to his neck in a caress.

“Ah—when you kissed me so,” she sobbed, “I thought we were back—in Sicily.”

“Some day —perhaps,” he said to her, gently, smoothing back the hair from her forehead.

Then a great calm feeling of peace and forgiveness seemed to come to them out from the quietness of the fields. They both looked out across the rolling country. There, old, old visions took shape again. From the other side

of the road, where the meadows dipped away tinged with pale .sunshine aad gray brown with wind-stirred grasses, aud where flowers purely white nodded and-swayed in a pattern of the rarest, they could just see a placid pond marking the field's end. A score ot moss-crowned rocks were bathed in its reflecting surface. Beyond in the dim level stretdies of growing grain the water seemed to be distantly continued until it faded and faded. There the sun had died but a moment before. The lemon and green of its last pallor darkened slowly into soft lavender and the warmest of scarlets. Above them, as a lazy home-winging gull, a single cloud of mottled tail went drifting. Suddenly in the mirage a tiny speck of white showed once.

“Look! look, Giotto!” cried out the woman, pointing, “is it not so like Tomaso’s boat?”

The little speech recalled a host of olden memories. The man’s grasp upon her wrist grew tight They each knew the other’s thought—Sicily! the land of their love-songs! He drew her up to him with a quick, passionate motion, and kissed from her eyes the tears. Some day, Beata mine,” be murmured. “Now, Giotto —now ”

Like two children they laughed happily. The grim lines seemed to smooth out from their faces. A little later they went to where the cart stood. Grasping the strap and handles, with a common effort they started it. And paying no attention to the grumbling of its wheels, but kept step by step together, they trudged out over the hill.

Late that night the little iron shod wheels rumbled over the stones of their home street. Near by, an indistinct blot in the gloom, a group of men and women gossiped upon a doorstep. “You have gone far, Beata,” called out from them a voice. “Where?”

“OU, la-la!” replied the little woman, gaily, waving her hand, “we have been to Sicily.’’