The Children of the King | Page 6

of her face. The
features were calm and resigned, but when the pain of the death agony

seized upon her the thin lips parted and deep lines of suffering appeared
about the mouth; She seemed to struggle as best she could, but the low,
quavering cry would not be stifled--lower and more trembling each
time it was renewed.
An old barefooted friar with a kindly eye and a flowing grey beard
stood beside her. He had done what he could to comfort her and was
going away. But she feebly begged him to stay a little longer. In an
interval, while she had no pain, she spoke to her boys.
"Ruggiero--Sebastiano--dear sons--you could not save me, and I am
going. God bless you. Our Lady help you--remember--you are Children
of the King--remember--ah."
She sighed heavily and her jaw fell as another sort of pallor spread
suddenly over her face. Poor Carmela was dead at last, after weeks of
sickness, worked to death, as the neighbours said, by Pietro Casale and
his wife Concetta.
She left those two boys, lean, poorly clad lads of ten and twelve years,
yellow haired and blue eyed, with big bones and hunger-pinched faces.
They could just remember seeing their father brought home dead with a
knife wound in his breast six years earlier. Now they took hands as they
looked at their dead mother with a sort of wondering gaze. There were
no tears, no cries of despair--least of all did they show any fear.
Old Padre Michele made them kneel down, still hand in hand, while he
recited prayers for the dead. The boys knew some of the responses,
learned by ear with small regard for Latinity, though they understood
what they were saying. When the monk got up they rose also and
looked again at the poor dead face.
"You have no relations, my children," said the old man.
"We are alone," answered the elder boy in a quiet, clear voice. "But I
will take care of Sebastiano."
"And I will help Ruggiero," said the younger in much the same tone.

"You are hungry?"
"Always," answered both together, without hesitation.
Padre Michele would have smiled, but the hungry faces and the
mournful tone told him how true the spoken word must be. He fumbled
in the pockets in the breast of his gown, and presently produced a few
shady-looking red and white sugar sweetmeats, bullet-like in shape and
hardness.
"It is all I have now, my children," said the old man. "I picked them up
yesterday at a wedding, to give them to a poor little girl who was ill.
But she was dead when I got there, so you may have them."
The lads took the stuff thankfully and crunched the stony balls with
white, wolfish teeth.
With Padre Michele's help they got an old woman from amongst the
neighbours to rouse herself and do what was necessary. When all was
over she took the brown blanket as payment without asking for it,
smuggling it out of the mean room under her great black handkerchief.
But it was day then, and Don Pietro Casale was wide awake. He
stopped her in the narrow part of the lane at the foot of his own
staircase, and forcibly undid the bundle, to the old woman's
inexpressible discomfiture. He said nothing, as he took it from her and
carried it away, but his thin grey lips smiled quietly. The old woman
shook her fist at him behind his back and cursed his dead under her
breath. From Rome to Palermo, swear at a man if you please, call him
by bad names, and he will laugh at you. But curse his dead relations or
their souls, and you had better keep beyond the reach of his knife, or of
his hands if he have no weapon. So the old woman was careful that
Pietro Casale should not hear her.
"Managgia l'anima di chi t' e morto!" she muttered, as she hobbled
away.
Everything in the room where Carmela died belonged to Don Pietro,
and he took everything. He found the two boys standing together,

looking across the fence of the cabbage garden down at the distant
valley and over at the height opposite, beyond which the sea was
hidden.
"Eh! You good-for-nothings!" he called out to them. "Is nothing done
to-day because the mother is dead? No bread to-night, then--you know
that."
"We will not work for you any more," answered Ruggiero, the elder, as
both turned round.
Don Pietro went up to them. He had a short stout stick in his hand,
tough and black with age, and he lifted it as though to drive them to
work. They waited quietly till it should please him to come to close
quarters, which he did without delay. I