It was only an hour after midday, and Antonino had been sitting long on a bench before the little fishing osteria. Something seemed to be passing through his mind, for every five minutes he sprang up, stepped out into the sun, and examined carefully the paths which led right and left to the two island towns. "The weather looked suspicious," he told the hostess; "it was clear enough now, but he knew this colour of the sea and sky; it had looked just like this before the last great storm, when the English family were saved with such difficulty. She must remember it?"
"No."
"Well, she would remember what he had said, if it changed before night."
"Have you many visitors over there?" asked the hostess, after a pause.
"They are just beginning to come. We have had hard times till now. The bathers have not arrived yet."
"The spring was late. Have you done better here in Capri?"
"I should not have managed to get macaroni twice a week if it had depended on the boat. Now and then a letter to take to Naples, or a gentleman who wanted a row on the sea or to fish--that was all. But you know that my uncle has got the great orange garden, and is a rich man. 'Tonino,' he said to me, 'as long as I live you shall not want, and afterwards you will be cared for.' So I got through the winter with God's help."
"Has your uncle children?"
"No; he was never married; he was long in foreign countries where he managed to scrape many a good piaster together; now he has an idea of setting up a large fishery, and is going to put me at the head of the whole affair to see that he gets his rights."
"So you are a made man, Antonino." The young boatman shrugged his shoulders. "Each one has his burden to bear," he said. Then he sprang up and looked right and left at the weather, though he must have known that there was but one weather-side.
"Let me bring you another flask, your uncle can pay for it," said the hostess.
"Only one glass more, my head is warm already."
"It won't get into your head, you can drink as much as you like of it. Here is my husband just coming, you must sit down and chat with him a bit."
And truly the stately patron of the inn approached them just at that moment down the hill, with his net on his shoulder, and his red cap set jauntily sideways on his ringletted hair. He had been into the town with fish, ordered by the great lady for our little friend the padre of Lorento. When he caught sight of the young fisherman he waved him a hearty greeting; then seating himself near him on the bench, began to question and talk. His wife had just brought a fresh flask of pure unadulterated Capri, when the shore sand to their left crackled, and Lauretta advanced towards them from the road to Anacapri. She greeted them with a hasty nod, and stopped irresolutely.
Antonino sprang up; "I must away," he said; "it is a girl from Lorento who came this morning with the padre, and must go back this evening to her sick mother."
"Well, but it is a long time before night," said the host, "she will have time enough to drink a glass of wine. Here, wife, bring a clean glass."
"Thank you, I do not wish to drink," said Lauretta, remaining at some little distance.
"Pour out, wife, pour out, she wants pressing."
"Let her alone," said the young man, "she has a will of her own, when once she has made up her mind, no one can make her alter it." And therewith he took a hasty leave, and ran down to his boat, to set the sail, and stood waiting for the girl. She waved a greeting back to the hostess, and then with hesitating steps approached the boat. She glanced on all sides, as if she hoped for the arrival of other passengers; but the Marina was deserted; the fishermen slept, or were away at sea with their nets and hooks. A few women and children sat in their doorways, sleeping or spinning; and the strangers who had come across in the morning, delayed their return until the cooler evening. She was prevented from looking around her long, for before she could turn round, Antonino had taken her in his arms and carried her like a child to the boat. Then he sprang in after her, and with a few strokes from the oars, they were in the open sea.
She seated herself in the fore-part of the boat, with her back half turned towards him, so that he could only see heren profil. The expression of her face was even more haughty than usual; the dark hair hung low over the broad low forehead, and around her finely cut nostrils quivered an expression of defiance; her swelling lips were firmly compressed.
After they had sailed on in silence for some time, she felt the sun burning her face, so she took her bread out and threw the handkerchief over her hair; then she began to eat, to dine in fact, for she had eaten nothing at Capri.
Antonino did not contemplate this long in silence. He took two oranges out of the basket which he had brought over full in the morning, and said, "Here is something to eat with your bread, Lauretta--don't think that I kept them for you, they fell out of the basket into the boat, and I found them when I brought the empty ones back."
"You had better eat them yourself, my bread is enough for me."
"They are so refreshing in the heat, and you have had such a long walk."
"They gave me a glass of water above there, that refreshed me enough."
"As you please," he said, and let them fall back into the basket again.
Fresh silence. The sea was like a mirror, and hardly rustled round the boat's keel--even the white seamews, that had their nests amongst the rocks, pursued their prey without a cry.
"You could take the two oranges home to your mother," Antonino again began.
"We have some at home, and when they are gone, I can go and buy more."
"But take them to her with a kind word from me.
"She does not know you."
"You can tell her who I am."
"Ido not know you."
It was not the first time that she had thus denied him. A year before, when the painter had just arrived at Lorento, it chanced one summer evening that Antonino and some other young fellows of the town were playing boicia on an open piece of ground near the High-street--then it was that the Neapolitan first saw Lauretta, who, bearing a water-jar on her head, swept by without seeming to notice his presence. Struck with her beauty, he stood gazing at her, forgetting that he was just in the centre of the play-ground, and might have cleared it in two steps. A ball, thrown by no friendly hand, struck him on the ancle, and reminded him that that was not the place to lose himself in reveries. He looked round as if he expected an apology; the young fisherman who had thrown the ball, stood silent and defiant amongst his companions, and the stranger thought it his best policy to avoid a discussion and go. But people had talked about the affair at the time, and spoke anew about it when the painter began openly to pay his court to Lauretta. "I do not know him," she had said angrily, when the painter asked her whether she refused him for the sake of this uncivil youth. And yet the story had reached her ears too; and since that time, whenever she met Antonino, she recognized him well enough.
And now they sat in the boat like the bitterest enemies, and the heart of each beat fiercely. Antonine's usually good-tempered face was deeply flushed. He struck his oars into the water till the foam splashed over them, and his lips moved from time to time as if he spoke evil words. She pretended not to observe it, put on her most indifferent expression, bent over the side of the boat and let the water run through her fingers; then she took off her handkerchief and arranged her hair as if she had been alone; only her eyebrows still drew together, and in vain she held her wet hand against her burning cheeks to cool them.
Now they reached the centre of the bay, and far or near there was not a sail to be seen--the island was far behind them, before them the coast lay bathed in sun-mist; not even a seamew broke in upon the intense solitude. Antonino glanced around him. An idea seemed to force its way through his mind; the flush fled quickly from his cheek, and he dropped the oars. In spite of herself, Lauretta looked around excited, but fearless.
"I must make an end of this," burst from the fisherman's lips; "it has lasted too long already; I wonder that it has not sent me mad before this! You do not know me, you say? Have you not long enough seen how I passed you like a madman, with my heart bursting to speak to you? You saw it, for then you put on your evil look and turned your back upon me."
"What had I to talk to you about?" she answered shortly. "I saw long ago that you wanted to attach yourself to me; but I do not want to be gossipped about for nothing, and less than nothing, for I will never marry you, neither you nor any one!"
"Nor any one? You will not always say that, because you sent away the painter. Bah! you were a child then. You will get lonesome some day, and then, mad as you are, you will take the first that comes."
"No one knows his future. Perhaps I may change my mind; what is it to you if I do?"
"What is it to me?" he cried, and sprang so violently from his seat that the boat rocked again. "What is that to me! and you can ask me that, when you know how I feel towards you? Unhappy shall it be for him who is received better than I have been!"
"Have I engaged myself to you? Am I to blame if you let your brain wander? What right have you over me?"
"Oh!" he cried, "truly is it not written down. No lawyer has signed it and sealed it. But I feel that I have as much right over you as I have to enter heaven if I die an honest man. Do you think that I will look on calmly when you go to church with another, and the girls pass by me and shrug their shoulders? Do you think that I will be so insulted?"
"Do what you like. I shall not trouble myself, scold as you may. I too will do asIplease."
"You shall not say so long," he cried, and his whole frame quivered. "I am man enough not to let my life be destroyed by such fancies. Do you know that you are here in my power, and must do asIwill?"
She shrank together, and her eyes gleamed at him.
"Murder me if you like." she said, slowly.
"We must not do things by halves." he replied, sadly; "there is room for both of us in the sea, I cannot save you, child," and he spoke almost compassionately, dreamingly. "But we must dive below, both of us--and at once--and now," he shrieked, madly seizing her by both arms. But in an instant he drew back his right hand, the blood streamed from it--she had bitten him to the bone.
"MustI do what you will?" she cried, freeing herself from him with a sudden turn; "let us, see whether I am in your power." And then she sprang over the gunwale of the boat and disappeared for a moment beneath the waves.
She soon rose again; her clothes dung tightly around her; the water had loosened her hair, which hung in heavy masses around her neck. She struck out boldly with her arms, and swam, without a sound, steadily from the boat towards the shore. Sudden terror seemed to have paralyzed Antonino. He stood bent forward in the boat, his eyes fixed staringly upon her, as if a miracle was being enacted before them. Then he shook himself, sprang to the oars, and rowed with all the strength he could command towards her, whilst the boarding of his boat grew ever redder from his free-streaming blood.
In a moment he was by her side, rapidly as she swam. "For the sake of the ever blessed Virgin," he cried, "come into the boat! I have been a madman, God knows what took away my reason. It struck into my brain like lightning from heaven, and burnt in me, till I knew not what I did or said. I do not ask you to forgive me, only save your life, and come into the boat again."
She swam on as if she heard not. "You can never reach the land, it is still two miglia off. Think of your mother: if anything happened to you, she would die of grief!"
She measured with a glance the distance from the shore. Then, without saying a word, she swam to the boat, and seized the gunwale. He moved across to help her; his jacket, which was lying on the seat, slid off into the sea as the boat heeled over with the girl's weight. She swung herself lithely up, and regained her former seat. When he saw her safe, he seized the oars again. But she spread out her dripping garments and wrung the water from her hair. As she did it, she glanced at the flooring of the boat, and saw the blood; then she cast a hasty look at his hand, which wielded the oar as unwounded. "There," she said, and reached him her handkerchief. He shook his head and rowed onwards. At last she rose, stepped over to him, and bound the handkerchief tightly over the deep wound. Then, in spite of his resistance, she took one of the oars from him, and seating herself opposite to him, though without looking at him, her gaze fixed on oar reddened with his blood, helped on the boat with vigorous strokes. They were both pale and silent. As they neared the land they met the fishermen who were moving to sea to cast their nets for the night. They greeted Antonino, and laughed at Lauretta: neither of them answered a word.
The sun was still high over Procida when they reached the marina. Lauretta shook her gown, now nearly dried, and sprang on shore. The old spinning woman who had seen them start in the morning stood again on her roof. "What is the matter with your hand, 'Tonino?" she called down to him. "Jesus! the boat is swimming in blood!"
"'Tis nothing, Commare," answered the young man; "I tore it on a nail that stuck out too far. It will be well by to-morrow. The blood is only near the hand, and that makes it look worse than it is."
"I will come and put some herbs upon it, Comparello. Wait, I will be down with you directly."
"Don't trouble yourself, Commare; it is all over now and to-morrow it will be gone and forgotten. I have a good skin that soon grows over a wound."
"Addio!" said Lauretta, turning towards the path that led up from the beach.
"Good night," called the fisherman after her, without looking towards her. Then he took his tackle out of the boat, and his baskets, and strode up the narrow stone steps to his hut.
There was no one but himself in the two rooms, through which he now paced to and fro. Through the unglazed windows, only closed by wooden shutters, the wind blew in still more refreshingly than on the calm sea, and the solitude pleased him. He paused before the little picture of the Virgin, and gazed thoughtfully at the silver paper star-glory pasted around it. Yet he thought not of prayer. For what should he pray now, when he had nothing more to hope for!
And to-day the sun seemed to stand still.
He longed for night, for he was weary, and the loss of blood had affected him more than he would confess. He felt a violent pain in his hand, seated himself on a stool, and loosened the bandage. The repressed blood sprang forwards again, and his hand was much swollen around the wound. He washed it carefully, and held it long in the cold water. When he withdrew it he could plainly see the marks of Lauretta's teeth. "She was right," he said to himself; "I was a brute and deserved no better. I will send her back her handkerchief to-morrow morning by Giuseppe, for me shall she never see again." He washed the handkerchief carefully, and spread it out in the sun, after he had bound up his maimed limb again as well as he could with his left hand and his teeth. Then he threw himself upon his bed and closed his eyes.
The bright moon and the pain of his hand awoke him out of a half sleep. He sprang up to calm the throbbing beat of the blood in cold water, when he heard a rustling at his door. "Who is there?" he said, and opened it. Lauretta stood before him.
Without saying much she entered. She threw aside the handkerchief she had worn over her head, and placed a basket on the table. Then she drew a deep sigh.
"You are come for your handkerchief," he said; "you might have spared yourself the trouble, for tomorrow morning I should have asked Giuseppe to take it to you."
"It is not for the handkerchief," she answered, hastily; "I have been on the mountain gathering herbs that are good for wounds--there!" and she raised the cover of her basket.
"Too much trouble," he said, without any harshness--"too much trouble. It is better already--much better; and even if it were worse, I have deserved it. What do you do here so late? If any one were to see you--you know how they talk, though they know not what they say?"
"I do not trouble myself about them," she answered vehemently; "but your hand Imustsee, and put herbs upon it, for you can never do it with your left."
"I assure you that there is no necessity for such trouble!"
"Then let me see it, that I may believe it."
She seized his hand before he could prevent her, and untied the bandage. When she saw the angry swelling, she shrank together, and screamed "Jesus, Maria!"
"It is a little swollen," he said; "a day and a night will put it all right again."
She shook her head. "You will not be at sea again for a week!"
"The day after to-morrow, I hope--what does it matter?"
In the mean time she had found a basin, and washed the wound afresh, which he suffered her to do like a child; then she laid the healing leaves of the herbs upon it, which soon assuaged the burning pain, and bound up the hand with strips of linen which she had brought with her.
When she had finished, he said, "I thank you--and listen--if you will do me one kindness more--'forgive me for letting such madness get possession of me to-day, and forget all that I have said and done. I do not know myself how it all happened.Younever gave me any cause for it--never, never! And you shall never more hear anything from me that can annoy you."
"It isIwho have to pray for your pardon," she said, interrupting him; "Ishould have told you all, differently and better, and not have irritated you by my rude manner; and now, even this wound----"
"It was necessary, and high time that I was brought to my senses! and, as I said, it is of no consequence--do not talk of forgiveness. You have done me good, and I thank you for it. And now go to rest, and there--there is your handkerchief--you can take it with you now."
He offered it to her, but she stood still and seemed to struggle with herself; at last, she said, "You have lost your jacket on my account, and I know that you had the money for the oranges in your pockets. It struck me just now--I cannot replace it at once, for I have not sufficient, and if I had it would belong to my mother; but here I have the silver cross that the painter laid on the table the last time he was with us; I have never seen it since, and do not care to keep it longer in my box. If you sell it--it is well worth a couple of piastres, my mother said--it would help to repair your loss, and what may be wanting I will try to gain by spinning at night, when my mother is asleep."
"I shall not take it!" he said, shortly, pushing back the glittering cross she had taken from her pocket.
"Youmusttake it," she cried; "who knows how long you may be laid up with your hand? There it lies, and I will never set my eyes on it again!"
"Then throw it into the sea!"
"It is no present that I make you--it is only what you have a right to, and what I owe you."
"A right to! I have no right to anything from you! If you should happen to meet me in future, do me one kindness--do not look at me, that I may not think that you are putting me in mind of how I have offended you. And now--good night!--and let it be the last."
He laid her handkerchief in the basket, placed the cross on the top of it, and closed the lid. When he looked up and saw her face, he started. Large, heavy tears rolled over her cheeks--she let them run their course unheeded.
"Maria Santissima!" he cried. "Are you ill? You tremble from head to foot!"
"It is nothing," she said--"I will go home:" and turned towards the door. Then a burst of weeping overcame her; she pressed her forehead against the doorpost, and sobbed loud and vehemently. Before he could reach her, she turned suddenly round and cast herself upon his neck. "I cannot, cannot bear it," she cried, and clung to him like a dying man to life. "I cannot bear to hear you saying kind words to me, and telling me to leave you, with all the fault on my conscience! Beat me--trample me under your feet--curse me--or, if it be true that you love mestill, after all the ill that I have done you, then take me and keep me, and make of me what you will, but send me not thus away from you----" Fresh vehement sobs interrupted her.
He held her awhile in his arms, stricken dumb. "If I love you still!" he cried. "Holy Madonna! do you think that all my heart's blood has run out of that little wound? Do you not feel it beating in my breast, as if it would spring out, and to you? Ifyouonly say it to try me--or from pity to me--there, go, and I will even forget this too! You shall not think that you are indebted to me because you know what I suffer for you."
"No!" she said, firmly, raising her forehead from his shoulder, and gazing passionately in his face with her wet eyes--"I love you; and if I only say itnow, I have long feared and fought against it--and now will I change, for I can no longer bear to look at you when you pass me in the street: and now I will kiss you too," she said, "that you may say if you doubt again, 'She has kissed me!' and, Lauretta kisses no one but the man she takes as her husband."
She kissed him thrice, and then freed herself from his arms, and said, "Good night, darling! Now sleep, and heal your hand; and do not come with me, for I fear no one now--but thee!"
Therewith she glided through the doorway, and disappeared in the shadow of the wall; but he looked long through the window, and over the sea, over which all the stars seemed trembling.
The next time the little Padre Curato emerged from the confessional, by which Lauretta had been a long time kneeling, he laughed quietly to himself. "Who would have thought it," he murmured, "that God would so soon have taken pity on this strange heart? And I was blaming myself for not having attacked the demon of obstinacy more fiercely! But our eyes are too short-sighted for the ways of Heaven! And now, may God bless them both, and let me live till Lauretta's eldest boy can go to sea in his father's place."
Ay! ay! ay! La Rabbiata!
It was late in January. The first snow hung upon the mountains, and the sun, shrouded by mists, had only melted away a narrow band around their feet. But the waste of the campagna bloomed like spring. Only the sombre boughs of the olive trees, that here and there followed in rows the gentle undulations of the plain, or surrounded some lonely cabin, and the frosted scrubby bushes that grew about the road, still showed the effects of winter. At this time of the year the scattered herds are collected within hurdles, near the huts of the campagnuoli, which are generally placed under the shelter of some hillock, and scantily enough protected from the weather by straw piled up from the ground; whilst those amongst the herdsmen who can sing or play the bagpipe have left, to wander about Rome as pifferari, to serve the artists as models, or to support their poor frozen existences by some similar industry.
The dogs are now the herds of the campagna, and sweep through the deserted waste in packs, maddened by hunger, and no longer restrained by the herdsmen, on whose poverty they are only a burden.
Towards evening, when the wind began to blow more strongly, a man emerged from the Porta Pia, and wandered along the carriage-road which runs between the country houses. His cloak hung carelessly from his sturdy shoulders, and his broad grey hat was pushed back from his forehead. He gazed towards the mountains till the road became more enclosed, and only permitted him a narrowed glance of the distance between the garden walls.
The confinement seemed to oppress him. He lost himself again dejectedly in the thoughts to escape which he had sought the free air. A stately cardinal tripped by with his suite without his observing or greeting him. The carriage following its master first reminded him of his omission. From Tivoli rolled carriages and light vehicles, full of strangers, who had taken a fancy to see the mountains and cascades under snow. He cast not a glance at the pretty faces of the young Englishwomen, with whose blue veils the tramontane played. Hastily he turned from the road, sideways to the left, along a field-path which first ran past mills and wine-shops, and then led out into the midst of the waste of the campagna.
And now he paused for a moment, breathing deeply, and enjoying the freedom of the broad wintry sky. The shrouded sun gleamed redly over all, lighted up the ruins of the aqueduct, and tinged with rose the snow on the Sabine hills.
Behind him lay the town. Not far from him a clock began to strike, but lightly, through the opposing wind. It made him restless; as though he wished to prevent the least sound of life from reaching him, and he strode onward. He soon left the narrow path, which swept up and down the waves of the plain, swung himself over the rails which had guarded the pasturing herds during the summer, and buried himself still deeper and deeper in the solitary darkness.
A stillness reigned there as deep as that on a sleeping sea. One could almost hear the rustle of the crows' wings as they floated over the waste. No cricket chirped, no ritornella of the home-returning market-woman reached his ear from the distant road. It pleased him. He struck his staff against the hard earth, and rejoiced in the sound with which she answered him. "She does not say much," he said, in the dialect of the lower class of Romans; "but she means honestly, and cares in silence for her babbling children who trample her under their feet. Would I never needed to hear their voices again, these windy rogues; my ears are sore with their smooth phrases! As if I were nothing--as if I knew not better on what those things depend, about which they love to chatter--because I only know how to create them!
"And yet I live on them, and must keep a good countenance when they sniff and sneer at my work. Accidenti!" He cursed on his beard--an echo answered him: he looked, startled around; no hut, no hillock was there within a circle of half a mile, and he could not believe in the neighbourhood of man. At last he stepped onward, and thought "A gust of wind mocked thee!" Then suddenly it sounded again, nearer and clearer. He stood and listened keenly. "Am I near a cabin, or a fold where the cattle are lowing? It cannot be--it sounded differently--itsoundsdifferently; and now--now"--and a shudder shook his whole frame. "It is the dogs," he said slowly.
The cry came nearer and nearer, hoarse as that of wolves; no barking or yelping, but a snarling howl, which the voice of the wind swept together into one uninterrupted, terrible melody. A paralyzing power seemed to exist in it, for the traveller stood motionless, his mouth and eyes rigidly open, his face half turned towards the side from which the battle-cry of the raging brutes swelled towards him.
At last he shook himself with fierce determination. "It is too late! they have long had the scent; and in this twilight I should fall before the tenth step if I tried to fly. Well, like a dog have I lived! and now, to be destroyed by my fellows!--there is sense in it! If I had a knife I would make it easier for my guests; but this"--and he tried the strong iron spike of his staff--"if there be but few of them, who knows whether my hunger may not survive theirs?"
He threw his cloak around him, so as to have his right arm free, and to form with its many folds a sort of protection to his left, and grasped his staff. With cold-blooded determination he examined the ground on which he stood. He found it free from grass, stony, and hard. "They may come!" he said, planting himself firmly upon his feet. He saw them now, and counted them in the gloaming. Five he counted, and then a sixth. They rave like fiends from hell--long-limbed, skeleton brutes! "Wait!" and he raised a heavy stone; "we must declare war according to custom."
Therewith he hurled the stone at the nearest, twenty paces from him. A redoubled howling answered--the pack was checked for a moment. One of them lay struggling on the ground.
"Armistice!" said the man. His lips trembled, his heart throbbed heavily against his left arm, which grasped his cloak spasmodically; but the lids over the keen eyes winked not. He saw his enemies break forth again, and their eyes glared through the darkness. They came on in couples, the largest first. A second stone rebounded from the bony chest of one of the leaders, and the ravening brute sprang, hoarsely snarling, against the dark form. A thrust, and he fell backwards on the sward, and the staff, whirled quickly round, striking heavily on his open jaws.
A horseman galloped through the grey of the winter's night, some few hundred paces from the scene of the struggle, over the pathless campagna. He pierced through the darkness towards the spot from whence the howling reached him, at short intervals, and saw a man standing, tottering, giving way, and again standing firm, as his enemies relinquished the attack, and once more stormed on him from all sides.
The horseman shuddered; he plunged the spurs into his horse's flanks, and flew towards them. The sound of the horse's hoofs reached the ear of the struggling man, but it seemed as if the sudden terror of hope deprived him of his last remaining strength; his arm sank, his brain whirled, and he felt himself torn down from behind,--tottered, and fell to the ground. Through the mists of approaching unconsciousness he heard the sound of pistol-shots, and then fainted.
When he recovered, and opened his eyes, he saw the face of a young man bending over him, on whose knee his head was resting, and whose hand was rubbing his temples with fresh-plucked wet grass. The horse stood steaming near them, and at his feet lay two dogs, writhing in the agonies of death.
"Are you wounded?" he heard asked.
"I know not."
"You live in Rome?"
"Near the Tritone."
The other helped him to rise. He could not stand. His left foot was in great pain. He was bareheaded; his cloak in rags; the coat and arm, torn and bloody; his face pale and haggard. Without speaking, he permitted himself to be supported by his preserver, who rather bore than led him the few paces to the horse; at last he gained the saddle, the other took the bridle and led him slowly towards the town.
At the first osteria outside the walls they halted. The young man called to the hostess to bring wine: when the wounded man had drunk a glassful his face became more animated, and he said:--
"You have done me a service, sir. Possibly the time may come when I shall curse it, instead of thanking you for it. But I thank you for it now. One clings to life as to other bad habits. One knows that the air is full of fever and rottenness, and the worthless steam of mankind, and yet thinks that each breath one draws in is a good thing."
"You are inclined to speak ill of mankind."
"I never knew one who did not take me for a fool if I spoke well of them. Pardon me. You are not a Roman?"
"I am a German."
"Bless God for it."
They reached the gate in silence, and turned into the Piazza Barberini. The wounded man pointed to a small house in the corner of the place, ruinous and dark. When the horse stopped before the humble door, its rider let himself slide off before the other could assist him, but then sank helplessly down. "It is worse than I thought." he said; "do me one kindness more, and help me in,--here is the key." The young man supported him, called to a boy to hold the horse, and to a loiterer to open the door. It was quite dark within, the damp cold struck unpleasantly upon them. He bore him as directed, to the left, into a large bare room.
"Where is your bed?" asked the German.
"Where you will; but I would rather lie over there by the wall. This brave old Palazzo! They are going to pull it down in the spring; I fancy that it will not have the patience to wait for them."
"And you still remain here?"
"It is the cheapest way of getting buried," said the man, drily. "I can play the host here gratis."
In the mean time, the boy had struck fire, and lighted the little brass lamp that stood in the window. The young man helped the wounded one to a coverlid spread on some straw, and covered him scantily enough with his tattered cloak. With a deep sigh the powerful frame sank down, and the eyes closed. The German gave the boy money and directions, and then went out without leave-taking, sprang up on his horse, and rode hastily away.
In about a quarter of an hour he returned, bringing with him a surgeon. Whilst the latter examined and bound up the wounds on arm and leg, which the wounded man permitted him to do without a murmur escaping him, the young German looked around the room: it was bare, and the plaster had fallen in large masses from the walls. The joists of the ceiling stood naked and blackened, the wretched window let in the cutting night air, there was but little furniture. Meanwhile the boy brought in an armful of wood, and made a fire on the hearth. As it gleamed up redly some dusty clay figures and plaster casts became visible in the corner. A large dolphin which bore a dead boy on its back, a Medusa in relief, colossal, the hair, not yet vivified into serpents, curled wildly around the sorrow-laden brow. He could not remember that he had ever seen this rendering in an antique. Casts from the arms, bust, and feet of a young girl, amongst hasty sketches in clay, stood and lay in confusion. On a table were the different kinds of apparatus used by cameo-cutters, and some sticks with half-finished works, for the most part Medusa heads, resembling the great one, but with different degrees of passion and grandeur. Uncut shells, casts of gems, and casts in glass and plaster, lay in a box near them.
"I think there is no danger," said the surgeon, at last. "Let them get some ice, and make the boy sit up and keep the bandages cool during the night. They have treated you roughly, Senor Carlo! But what on earth induced you to wander about the campagna at this time of night, and this time of year?"
"This obstinate rascal, the chimney," answered the artist, "he refused to do his duty unless one stuffed his throat with faggots. I was out of temper with my old Palazzo, Señor Vottore, and felt inclined to give him a kick or two, to warm us both; and so I thought it better to run away before it came to blows between us."
"You are ill looked after here," said the good-natured little man, wiping his spectacles, which had become suddenly dimmed. "My wife shall send you another coverlid, and I will see you again tomorrow. Sleep will soon come, and he is the doctor who beats us all."
The young man accompanied him to the door, and spoke a few words with him in the passage.
"I only know him by name," said the doctor. "He goes his own strange misanthropical way. Prefers sitting in the wine-shop with the lowest faccini, and squanders what he earns. But there is not a man in Rome who is his equal at a cameo. He inherits it from his father, Giovanni Bianchi, who has long been dead."
"Are his wounds really not dangerous?"
"If he only spares himself and not the ice. He has limbs of iron, or he could not have made head so long against the brutes. Five, do you say? The fool-hardy man! But that is just one of his tricks. Well, well, he will sleep now. Dispel your anxiety, Señor Theodore."
He was already asleep, when Theodore returned to his room, although he had turned his face towards the blazing fire. Theodore studied him long. He was very handsome, though the nose was a little too thin; his hair here and there sprinkled with grey; his beard untended; from between the breathing, half-opened lips gleamed the white teeth. When Theodore raised the cloak to place fresh ice on the wounds, he perceived the great strength of his limbs.
He sent the boy away, after he had brought a fresh supply of wood and ice, and ordered him to return in the morning. He then drew a chair to the side of the hearth, and seated himself, wrapped in his cloak, to watch. It was about ten o'clock, the bright night reigned without over the deserted square, and the slender stream from the fountain plashed lightly into the Triton's shell. From a neighbouring house he heard a girl's voice, singing:--
"Chi sa se maiTi soverrai di me!"
"Chi sa se maiTi soverrai di me!"
The refrain of an old sorrowful song. Then it ceased, but hummed wordless within him still.
He fancied himself again at the edge of the abyss at Tivoli, on the footway opposite the cascades, which in wintry scantiness gushed down from their many mouths. They walked, but not arm in arm, near each other; he and that fair girl and her lively little companion, who hastened unweariedly along the narrow, toilsome path.
"We ought to have returned with your parents, Mary," she said more than once in English; "indeed, we ought to do so now. Look, child! there they are up above by the cascade, and will soon be sitting comfortably by the fire in the sibyl, and here the wind is cutting our very noses off; yours is quite red already; dear me! how cold you look, child! The wind blows so chilly across the water too. You said that it would, sir, and warned us fairly; but our pet must have her fancies. Bless me, we have seen the view in the autumn already, and in the summer too, and then rode safely and comfortably down the path that we are half stumbling, half sliding down now."
"It is not much farther, dear Miss Betsy," said the girl, laughing, "and the path will improve. Our friend offered you his arm; why did you refuse it?"
The little woman drew closer to her, and said softly, "My dear Mary, what a question to ask! you know that I have my reasons for declining to be helped down hills by unmarried young gentlemen! when one slips and holds him tight to save oneself from falling, he might take each pinch for a proof of affection; you quite shock me, child!"
Mary smiled almost imperceptibly; then she went calmly on her way. Her dark bonnet hid all her face from the young man except the waving brown curls.
"It was intended as no mere compliment, sir." she said, glancing unembarrassed towards him; "when my father confessed that your absence had caused him pain: if I remember rightly, you have only called on us four times since my poor brother's death."
"Four times!" he cried; "and have you counted them?"
"We must often hear the number from him. 'Since I lost Edward,' he says frequently, 'I care to talk to no one who has not known him; how can they ever learn to knowme?' Then he always refers to you, and praises you, and misses you so much."
"I confess," said Theodore, "that the kindness and heartiness with which your parents greeted me when we met here, surprised and affected me very much; and I too have wanted companionship this winter more than formerly. In the one before, which was my first, I drew back from nothing which pressed itself forward and promised to be advantageous. I see now that I have only lost. The society here is in contradiction to the place. It feels it itself, and as it still desires to be something, it is obliged to overstrain itself: that is discordant and neutralizes the productive disposition of thoughtful men like myself; so now I live only for myself, or for some few who have fared no better than I have, and yet from my youth up I have been accustomed to find permanent happiness in pure family existence alone."
"You have been long away from your parents?"
"I have lost them." he said gently; "they both died in the same week; then I went over the Alps, and God knows whether I shall ever return!"
They passed beneath the light shadow of the olive plantation--the path was perfectly dry--over them, amongst the branches, the sun glanced from the fleeting snow, which it had thawed upon the leaves, till they had glimmered as from a soft spring shower. The little friend was in the best possible humour, and talked of her wanderings about Rome. People suspected that she was writing a book about Rome. However that might be, it was clearly proved that she had done such violence to her well-grounded opinions, as to permit it to be reported that she had explored the baths of Caracalla with an entirely unknown and youthful Italian, and had not even refused his offer of protection to her own house.
"Do you believe, Mary," she cried now, "that I could easily make up my mind never to see my dear old England again? You know that at first we did not intend to stop here a single month. For you must know, sir, that I come of an old family, and my first ancestor fell at Hastings, winning his bit of land for himself and his descendants. And so my little bit of England is as much mine as the big one of a great landowner; and who likes to leave his own behind him? And yet who knows whether I might not be induced to pass the rest of my life here, if it were not dishonourable to forget one's fatherland, even though it forgets us and the good service our forefathers have done it?"
"I do not know." answered Theodore, laughing, "you only do old England a service if you conquer a bit of Rome for yourself, and so tread in the footsteps of your forefathers."
"You are pleased to be witty!" she said, and gave him a light tap with her fan. "But even suppose that I were of an age which made your joke more appropriate, do you seriously think--supposing that there was any foundation for your innuendo, and any oneshouldtrouble himself about me,--do you think, I repeat, that English and Italian, or more properly Roman character, would in the long run, be able to get on together?"
"You know, my dear Miss Betsy, that love works wonders, fills up valleys and pulls down mountains. As far as merecharactergoes, I am not afraid. If the sentiments agree, what may the heart not do? I have seen more marriages rendered unhappy by difference of taste, than from difference of feeling. But what Roman would not share in your taste for everything Roman, for example?"
"You are right," she said; "at the bottom, love is a matter of taste." Then she drew her green veil over her face, and seemed to wish to be left to her own reflections.
The two young people went a little in advance, for they heard Miss Betsy beginning to talk half aloud to herself, as was often her custom, and they had no wish to overhear her dreamings. "Good creature!" said Mary, with her gentle voice; "the journey has quite unsettled her. She always used to have strange ideas, but in England they took an innocent political direction; but with her first step on the continent arose this strange fancy of inventing experiences, which has already indeed given us much anxiety on the journey, but which has perhaps as often afforded an excuse for a hearty laugh."
"This fantastic state of being must have suited her charmingly when she was younger," said Theodore; "older people generally discover that they have quite enough to do to meet adventures as they happen, and are by no means inclined to seek them. It is to be hoped that she will soon be as little in earnest with her new Roman friend, as he seems to have been with her from the beginning."
"I saw them both returning home. He was a good-looking man, with rather insolent, but still fine eyes, and much younger than she is."
"What restrained you from giving an opinion on the question which Miss Betsy proposed?" asked Theodore, after a pause.
"Which one?"
"Whether individuals of different nations are suited to each other?"
Mary was silent for a while. "The more people want from each other," she said, at last, "and the more they wish to give each other, the closer the connection between them ought to be--at least, I think so."
"And even, I once knew an Englishman who had married a creole, they both took life easily and gaily. He was happy at having a handsome wife, and she appeared satisfied because he could shower wealth upon her. And yet there was always something between them, something climatic, live where they would. They were never really happy with each other."
"They were from different zones. But if they both had had northern blood----"
"It may be so; and yet I can understand it by my own feelings. I was brought up amongst the mountains, and have only accustomed myself by slow degrees to the soft Roman air. Now it is winter; without there lies the fair pure snow. When we are seated this evening with my father and mother by the fire, and the kettle sings, and I see all that belong to my life around me, I could easily beentirelyhappy. And yet I confess that it is just at that moment that the home-longing might seize me for the old country-house in England, where the old oak-trees stand before the window, and the snowy field lies behind the garden, far less beautiful than the campagna beyond them, and the English sky shrouded with heavy mist, so unlike this clear horizon, which should cheer and refresh me. Yet it is foreign, and something foreign like this might exist between people."
They had hitherto carried on the conversation in English. He now began to talk German, which she too spoke perfectly, with the exception of a slight accent.
"Permit me," he said, "to speak to you in my own language. You made me share your feelings of home-longing when you talked of your winter quietness. You put me in mind of my old German winters, which now lie so far behind me, and can never be to me again what they were. I heard again the light sound of the raven brushing through the bare branches, and breaking the dry twigs, till a fine cloud of snow fell past the window like crystal dust. My mother lay there ill on her bed for months together. She could not, and would not, longer endure the noise and bustle of the town. Before that time the old country-house had only seen summer visitors, cheerful hunters, and gay promenaders. Then it became the winter retreat where my mother recovered from her wearying journeys to the baths."
"You were with her then?"
"For the first year or two, only for a week at a time. The last winter, however, she would not let me leave her. I sat the whole day by her, worked, and talked now and then, or played her favourite airs, those simple old ballads which are now quite out of fashion. The little room opened into the garden by several tall windows. I can see my father now pacing up and down on the terrace before it, with his bear-skin cap and short pipe. He could not bear the close air of the room for long at a time. But he seldom left his post, and whoever had business with him must seek him there. Now and then he came in to us for a quarter of an hour at a time. I can never forget the look with which my poor mother used to greet him then. She had beautiful bright blue eyes."
"And she died then?"
"In the spring. My father soon afterwards. He met with an accident in riding. After my mother left us he had no rest, mounted the wildest horses, and often remained away half the day, much as I used to entreat him to spare himself I understood him. I could never free myself from a secret terror. I was in the right."
They had arrived at the foot of the path, and stood still to wait for their companion; Mary paused some steps from him, so that when he turned and looked round over the country, he had her full face towards him. The fair, bright features were clouded with sadness, and there was a moist gleaming under the drooping eyelids. When she raised them, he saw the blue eyes resting full and seriously on the landscape before her. He knew this look already. He had avoided it hitherto, for he knew the power that lay in it. Now he surrendered himself wholly to it for the first time. "Mary!" he said. She moved not nor looked towards him. Then their meditative little friend rejoined them. The conversation was resumed as they mounted the ascent to Tivoli. But Mary took no part in it.
When they left Tivoli in the early twilight, gayer from the cheerful supper, and Theodore had helped the ladies into the carriage, the old man said confidentially to him, "I will not get in until I know when we are to meet you again, my dear sir. I have an affair to settle which interests me and mine deeply, and on which I wish much to consult you. It concerns our poor Edward, and I know that you will come the sooner when you learn that we reckon on your assistance."
"Come this evening," said the mother. He promised it. When they brought him his horse, he saw an anxious expression on Mary's face. He sprang into the saddle, and gently humouring the spirited animal, rode beside the carriage for some way. Then he lagged behind, rode more slowly, and let the evening slip away without observing it. The night surprised him. He gave his horse the spur, and rode across the waste with the intention of making a short cut, and thus it was that he arrived so opportunely in Bianchi's neighbourhood.
He shook himself now, threw fresh wood upon the fire, and fixed his dark eyes thoughtfully upon it.
"What will they think," he said to himself, "at my strange absence? What willshethink? It is too late now to send a messenger, and where, indeed, could I get one? She will sit at home, and never dream of what this day may mean! Or,