The masses of the downs were gray and shadowy; there was only a faint streak of red in the eastern sky, and the whitened stones of the piazza had that peculiar look of stillness which transfigures familiar places seen at early dawn, when Dino came out of the house in which he had spent the night.
The cool sweet air tasted pleasantly to his feverish lips; he stood bareheaded for a moment, drawing in a long deep breath of freshness before he struck into the path which was to lead him back to Leghorn. But early as it was, there was already some one stirring before him. As he passed the church a slender figure wrapped in a dark shawl moved hastily forward from behind one of the pillars, and a trembling voice said, 'Dino!'
He started as if he had been shot.
'Italia! Italia!youthere—at this hour!'
He sprang up the steps towards her, and they met just under the fading wreaths of yesterday's festival.
They stood there grasping both one another's hands; it was difficult to say which face looked the paler and more agitated.
'I wanted to speak to you,' she said presently, without lifting her eyes to his. 'Sora Catarina told me you would have to go back to town at daybreak——'
'Yes?' he said, after waiting for a moment.
'I had something to say to you. Because I—I was sitting by the window last night,—it was so hot in there,—and I heard——'
'You heard?'
She drew her hands away from him very gently.
'Don't you see, Dino, that I know it all? I heard what you and my father said.'
He caught hold of one of her hands again, and grasped it between both his own. 'Italia!—oh, my poor child, my poor little girl, to think that you should have heard that! You know I did not mean to hurt you, dear. You know, Italia! you do know, that I love you.'
A wave of colour passed over her white cheek. Her eyelids trembled, but she did not look at him.
'I heard—what you said,' she repeated in a very low voice.
He pressed her hand more tightly.
'Italia—I——'
The utter hopelessness of it all overcame him; the impossibility of explaining anything. His fingers relaxed he turned away and leaned against one of the rough stone columns. 'You are quite right. There is no reason why you should believe me. But I thought you would,' he said, with a burst of passionate despair.
A quiver passed over her face as he released her hands; she drew them under her shawl, and stood facing him. It was a moment of horrible suffering to Dino before she spoke.
'I do believe you. Please do not be unhappy about that. I cannot understand it—altogether; but I do believe you—Dino,' she answered gently. She hesitated a little in speaking, and her voice faltered over his name. She added more firmly: 'That is what I wanted to say to you. Please do not be unhappy about me. My father—my father wanted you to say that you would give up other things, things you care for, for my sake. But I do not wish it. I only want you to do what is best; what will make you more happy.'
'Happy!' echoed Dino with a groan.
'Yes, Dino, happy. Happier at least than you would have been if you—if you had not found out your mistake in time. It was a mistake that you loved me best,' said Italia bravely, crushing her poor little hands tightly together beneath her shawl; 'but I know it was not your fault. I know you did not mean to hurt me.'
'I would rather—I would rather have died than hurt you! Yet I deserve every word that your father said. I deserve a thousand times more. I had no right to speak to you when I did. I must not—I cannot ask you to marry me, Italia.'
Her head drooped a little. 'I know it,' she said, almost in a whisper, 'and that is why I do not want you to blame yourself for what has happened. If you have promised things to other people—— My father always said that one must keep one's word.' She turned her face away abruptly. 'I am glad that—that I was not mistaken in everything. I am glad to know that you did love me.'
'More than my life!' said Dino, with a solemn ardour. She looked so simply noble in her sorrow, he could have knelt before her as before a saint.
She drew in her breath sharply with a half sob. 'That is what I wished to say to you. Do not be troubled when you think of me. I shall always trust you. If—if we could have gone on caring for one another, I should always have been your friend as well as your sweetheart. At least—whatever other people claim from you—there can be no harm in my still being your friend; perhaps it may make you glad sometimes to know that there is one person who trusts you.'
She let her hands fall to her side, and drew a step farther back with an action full of the gentlest dignity. 'Will you go now, Dino? I would rather that you went.'
'I will go. Will you not look at me once more, Italia?'
She hesitated for a second or two, and then, slowly, she lifted her large dark eyes. Her white face above the straight sombre folds of her mantle made her seem like the pale ghost of the radiant Italia of yesterday. His heart gave a great throb of love and passionate pity.
'My poor little girl, how I have hurt you! My poor little child!'
'Don't be sorry,' she said faintly, her eyes filling suddenly with tears. She tried to smile, but her lips only quivered pitifully. She could not speak: she lifted her arm and pointed to the stair.
When he looked back she was kneeling with clasped hands before the image of the Madonna above the closed church door.
*****
The air was very fresh and cool. The early morning dew was lying thickly on the soft powdery dust of the high road, and on the short crisp turf of the downs. As Dino reached the turning in the path the first red light of the rising sun touched the black belfry above the church, and glittered here and there on some of the higher windows in the village. Far below him, seen between the folding of the downs, a white mist was lying over the motionless gray plain of the sea.
Afterwards, he could never remember very distinctly what he had done with himself that day. There was nothing to call him back to Leghorn. There seemed nothing to call him back anywhere. Until Valdez should summon him, he was powerless to act: had he not committed himself, his life, his future, had he not delivered it all over, bound hand and foot, into the inexorable grasp of those men? And what did it matter how or when it was disposed of?
For the moment, he felt so indifferent to all that concerned himself that, had Valdez been there before him, he would not have asked him a single question. That he was to forfeit his life in this proposed attempt was so much a foregone conclusion he did not even think of it. He could have sworn that he had never thought of it once since that first branding instant of revelation; but the conviction of it had eaten its way into him until it had become a part of his slightest, most involuntary action. When he spoke of 'next year,' 'next month,' when he used the very word 'to-morrow,' he checked himself like a man on the verge of betraying a secret; it seemed to him so incredible that he alone, among all the living, breathing creatures about him, should stand unobserved, encompassed by the very shadow of death. When his mother looked at him suddenly he felt that she must read his sentence on his face. At times he was filled with a dull wonder at their blindness; it was like slowly sinking in a quicksand while they stood near, looking on with smiling eyes.
Scarcely more than a week had passed since the blow first struck him. He was, as yet, benumbed, paralyzed by the icy clasp of the inevitable. He was isolated; cut off suddenly from all his past; the possibility of revolt had not yet occurred to him; the craving for life, mere life, had not awakened; all his experiences had changed at the same moment; he had not had time to grow accustomed to the new conditions, to realise the inextricable inescapable claims of habit. He was like a man shipwrecked, and keeping a precarious footing upon some slippery rock in mid-ocean; his actions, his preoccupations, were so many temporary measures. He was engrossed in the present precisely because he had no future.
Could he have been asked, that is, more or less, the account he would have given of himself. But in truth, he did not realise the situation. And how could he?—while the young blood ran easily and warmly in his veins, and the morning air tasted freshly, and there was no sense of physical effort in scaling the steepest crest of these hills. The very fulness of his life deceived him. He thought himself resigned to lose all because he could not—he was incapable of comprehending the final loss of anything. For the present, his youth, his sense of vitality, were lying dormant, silenced and motionless like that sleeping sea.
But indeed he was not conscious of himself this morning. He walked for hours, steadily, determinedly; stopping at the top of every hill to look back at the country beneath him with a blank mechanical stare. He could never remember of what he had been thinking, or if he had been thinking of anything at all. There was nothing left of this day in his memory but a confused recollection of wide grassy spaces where the wind was the only thing living, and the face of a shepherd to whom he spoke about mid-day, and the sight of many fields planted with vines.
The man's face came back to him, later, a vivid and detached image, like the fragment of a fever dream. It was after twelve o'clock when Dino passed him, sitting on the side of a hill, eating his dinner of sour black bread, with his sheep scattered about him, and his dog lying at his feet. Dino might have passed without seeing him had it not been for the dog, who started up, growling. And then, at sight of the bread, the young man remembered suddenly that he had not tasted food that day. The shepherd had merely lifted his eyes for a moment, but without speaking or interrupting his meal. Dino threw himself on the sun-warmed grass a few paces farther on; in the very action of lying down he realised his fatigue. He shut his eyes for an instant or two, then he said with some impatience:
'Eh,buon' uomo!are you accustomed to so many strangers, then, that you hav'n't a single word left to say?'
There was a perceptible pause, and then, 'Are you speaking to me, sir?' the man inquired slowly.
Dino laughed.
'My good fellow, do you suppose I am talking to your dog? He did his best by barking; do you think I expected him also to wish me good morning?'
The shepherd looked at him reflectively. It was a strange idea, but then people who came from a distance often expected strange things to happen. He turned his eyes slowly upon the dog; there was something reassuringly unchangeable in the cock of that ear and the accustomed wag of that stumpy tail.
'He does not speak.È un cane', he remarked tranquilly.
'And so am I, or at least I ambestia, which is all very much the same thing, for not telling you sooner that I am hungry. I am very hungry. I've eaten nothing all day. Will you give me a piece of your bread?'
He spoke slowly and clearly, and the familiar words found an immediate response. The man stooped forward, drew the long knife out of the leathern sheath which hung from his waist under the sheepskin cloak, and placing his loaf of bread between his feet on the ground before him, he cut it into two pieces. He handed one of them to Dino.
The young man looked at him with a bright smile breaking like light across his face. 'I can't pay you for it. I have not a soldo in my pocket.'
The man continued to hold out the lump of bread.
'Ye said ye was hungry,' he observed presently, and then, as Dino took the loaf with a quick 'Thank you,' his countenance brightened. Here at last was something intelligible. He watched the disappearance of the black morsel with a feeling of sympathy, which was shared in another degree by the bright-eyed mongrel at his feet.
When the last crumb was finished he rose slowly and moved away a few paces to where a patch of dark furze bushes made a cool hiding-place for a small wooden keg of spring water. He brought the little barrel to Dino under his arm, and held it for him with both hands, while the young man took a long drink with his lips against the bung-hole. Then the shepherd drank also, while his dog fawned thirstily at his feet.
'What good water. Do you bring it up here with you?' Dino asked.
The other nodded his head affirmatively.
'It comes from down there. From the Padrone's well in the courtyard.
'And who is the Padrone?' Dino questioned lazily. The food and drink had rested him. He lay on his back on the warm turf with half-shut eyes. A vague soft wind wandered over the grass, and caressed his face and hair; all about him on the hill-side was a small continuous sound of tinkling bells, and the steady crop, cropping of the sheep. 'Whoisyour Padrone?' he repeated in a sleepy voice.
The man looked at him in a slow puzzled way. 'Mah! ... è il Padrone nostro,' he said after a pause.
He thrust the iron end of his long shepherd's staff into the ground, and leaned upon it with both hands. His face was of the serious Dantesque-Florentine type: a puritanic face, with pointed beard and long straight black hair. He kept his hands spread out flat, resting his weight upon the palms of them; the finger-nails showed like white spots in contrast to the sun-burned skin.
'He is very rich, our Padrone,' he added slowly, after a longer interval. 'He has one hundred and forty thousand francs of his own,l'una sull' altra.' He stared at the ground as if he saw the money lying there in piles: 'Cento quaranta mille lire, l'una sull' altra.' For fully half an hour he did not speak again.
Dino lay upon the grass and watched him. An insane desire, a fantastic whim, born of no conceivable reason, prompted him to inform this half-brutalised peasant of his real object and intentions. He was seized with a wild craving to explain it all, to tell the shepherd who he was, what he proposed to do, and how he—he, Dino de' Rossi,—that young fellow lying on his back in the sun, that idler in a workman's dress, without a soldo in his pocket, was in very truth a messenger of Fate, a condemned man, the future assassin of a king.
He looked at the silly sheep all about him, at the peaceful country, at the peasant's patient and serious face. The grim humour of the situation filled him with a sort of desperate inhuman enjoyment. He felt possessed of a mocking devil. He opened his lips to speak, and then, quite suddenly, he rolled over on his face and lay there motionless for many minutes, with his head buried in his arms. He was asking himself if he were going mad.
Presently he rose to his feet. Before leaving he thrust his hand into the pocket of his coat and brought out a handful of cigars.
'Take these, my good fellow. I wish I had something else to give you. But if you cut them up with your knife you can smoke the tobacco in that pipe of yours.'
The shepherd put out his hand, examined the gift deliberately, then thrust it inside his jacket without speaking.
'Addio, buon' uomo.'
'Addio!'
When Dino had got a dozen paces off the other man moved, and called upon him to stop.
'Well, what is it?'
'Grazie, sapete!' the shepherd said, and held up one of the cigars. Dino waved his hand in recognition.
'Addio, signore!'
'Addio!'
The moment that spot where he had tasted human companionship was hidden from him by a folding of the hill, instantly, the old spell was upon him. But he walked less quickly now than in the morning; the recollection of Drea's words was farther away; the thought of Italia oppressed his heart with a sort of physical pain; he couldfeelit; but the first unbearable moment of anguish was over, there was a certain languor of exhaustion mingling with all his sensations.
About six o'clock he found himself near the path by which they had crossed the field on the way to the pilgrimage yesterday. Some instinct told him that Italia would not pass that way again. He followed the track to the edge of the high road. There was a plantation of young grape-vines on the opposite side of the highway; he crossed over and lay down among the long weeds and grass at the bottom of the dry ditch.
He had not long to wait. Two or three vehicles passed him, cabs from Leghorn, and open carts, all crowded with the returning holiday-makers, and presently—here they were!
He saw Drea first; the old man sat in front beside the driver, his woollen cap was pulled down over his eyes; he looked neither to right nor left. The women were talking, Lucia holding a large green umbrella over them as if to shield them from the dust. Palmira was sitting at the back, her head resting against Italia's shoulder. The child said something, and as they passed Dino saw Italia turn her dear pale face to answer;—he saw her smile.
There was something in the action, in the mere fact of her smiling, which made him realise as never before all that her sweet love might have meant to him. He saw the detail of the coming years. Beyond the grief and the shock which he knew his end would bring to her, he looked forward; he saw her going on with life, growing older, growing happy again,—a new happiness, in which the old days had no share. The thought of Italia living without him; the vision of long days in summer when the sky would be as blue to her and the wind as sweet as in the past summers which had beentheirs; the prophetic knowledge of what must be, of what would be, pressed slowly and heavily upon him, a horror of great darkness. Curiously enough, what he regretted most, what filled him with the most passionate sense of isolation and loss, were the very slightest details of life; the small familiar interests, the old childish remembrances, and little customs, and the young companionship of foolish joyous laughter. It all seemed so dear, so living to him now. And he too was so young.
Poor Dino! He sat there, twisting the long, tough weeds between his fingers without even seeing them, until the sound of approaching voices startled him. He looked up. There were two men walking among the vines, examining the fresh shoots. One was a labourer, the other a fat Tuscanpropriétaire, dressed in a sort of loose gray jacket, like a dressing-gown; he had a gray cap on his head, and wore spectacles.
Dino watched him idly for a moment, the idea passing through his mind that this was probably the rich Padrone of the sheep he had left behind him on the hill-side.
After a while the men moved away, and then the silence became unbearable. Dino felt that he ought to be going back to Leghorn, he felt the claim of Sora Catarina's anxiety; but he could not decide to go back among all those people, who knew him and who would speak to him.
He crossed over the field again, and strolled off to the edge of the down. The moon was rising above the sea. Presently it appeared over the edge of the great grassy slope, white, spent, a visionary thing. The luminous sky was still full of a pink glow in the west; behind this ghostly visitant it had turned to an opaque blue. The great shoulder of the hill made a gray surface of foreground.
Little by little the colour came creeping back into the grass, the moon grew metallic in texture, first golden, then of a coppery red; the down immediately beneath it telling in this half light as a mass of green washed with bronze. Here and there the deep shadow of a patch of gorse made a fantastically-shaped spot of darkness upon the turf. The quick flight of a whirring insect was distinctly audible in this still air; now and then, from very far off, sounded the cry of some belated bird.
Over moving water the moon may be an enchantress, a weaver of potent spells, but it is on the downs she dominates—the still mistress of the night, of the lonely empty country and the lonely empty sky.
Yet Dino noted nothing of the beauty around him. He was not in despair now, he was not even suffering; he was worn out, inert, it was as if the apathy of death had fallen upon his soul.
Four days later the Marchese Gasparo was on his way to Andrea's boat-house.
There was no brighter appearance in the street that day than the countenance of this young soldier as he walked briskly along, with alert glances, his head well up, and his mind full of pleasant thoughts, which every now and then made his handsome face flush with an unconscious gleam of interest and amusement. Life was full of interesting things to Gasparo—and flattering things as well. Only this morning he had heard from the Colonel of his regiment that he had been selected to act as one of the King's body-guard on the occasion of the approaching review at Rome. He had the letter now in his pocket. His mother, too, had been unexpectedly generous of late in the matter of supplies; at the present moment he had quite a little stock of crisp bank-notes carefully stowed away in that inner pocket. Altogether he felt himself in a brilliant and successful vein of luck.
It seemed almost a pity that so much confident good-humour should be exposed to any unwelcome shock or jar, and it was with a distinct feeling of annoyance that, as he turned out of the noisy Via Grande into the quieter expanse of the quay, his quick eyes recognised a familiar figure in the person of a short, middle-aged man coming slowly towards him.
They were too near to one another for any affectation of ignorance to seem possible. Gasparo looked sharply up and down the street, then, with a peremptory nod and a careless greeting of 'Well, Valdez!' attempted to pass on.
Unfortunately the driver of a heavy cart laden with white blocks of Carrara marble had also selected that especial moment in which to cross into one of the narrower streets. The road was completely blocked by the unwieldy mass of stone and the four straining white oxen. The two men would be forced to wait at the same corner; Gasparo took in the awkwardness of the situation at a glance.
'I hear that you have called three times at my house for the purpose of seeing me,' he said; 'I have no objection to your calling there, not in the least. That is a matter for you to settle with my servants who answer the door, But if you have any hope of the Contessa Paula taking you back on my recommendation, why, I may as well tell you now, my good man, that it was on my recommendation that you were dismissed.'
'So I understood from the signora Contessa herself,' Pietro Valdez answered quietly; 'and that is precisely why I did myself the honour to call upon you, Marchese Balbi. It interested me to know your reasons for what you had done.'
'And pray, what leads you to suppose that I should think of giving you a reason for whatever I may think fit to do?' Gasparo demanded, with a short, scornful laugh.
Valdez shrugged his heavy shoulders; he seemed to consider that the question required no answer. 'The signora Contessa Paula had engaged me as her music master at a fixed salary for six months. I gave her perfect satisfaction. It interests me to know what arguments you used to secure my dismissal,' he repeated, with absolute self-command.
'I might, if I had chosen, have told her that you were an insolent scoundrel. As it happens, your impertinent republican theories were quite sufficient. We do not choose to assist socialists to live; neither I nor my friends.'
Valdez bowed gravely. 'That is what I wished to know. I have only to thank you, sir, for the information.' Then he smiled. 'I did not know—I was not aware that you did me the honour of interesting yourself in my political convictions.'
Gasparo's look of negligent scorn was fast passing into an expression of quicker anger. He contemplated Valdez in silence for a moment, then he said sharply: 'You are uncommonly mistaken if you think I care a rap how you get yourself into the hands of the police. You're safe to do that sooner or later. But I do mind about your leading Dino de Rossi into mischief. You've got him turned out of one place already through your infernal rubbishing nonsense; you had better be careful how you do it again.'
Valdez laughed.
'I've known Dino de' Rossi since he was a little chap of ten years old. He's a good fellow is Dino; and very loyal to his friends. Will the signor Marchese excuse my suggesting that it might be well if all Dino's friends were equally loyal to him?'
'And what the devil do you mean by that, sir?' said Gasparo, facing around abruptly and speaking in a fiercely challenging tone.
'This is the direct way to the house of old Drea, the fisherman, whose daughter is Dino's sweetheart. I have had the pleasure of seeing her: she is a very good, modest, innocent young girl. But there are other boatmen in Leghorn, signor Marchese; men to whom it might matter less in the end if you took to frequenting their houses every day.'
'I——Perdio!if I thought you knew what you were saying—— If I considered you anything but a meddlesome fool, I would——'
He raised his eyes, looking about him as if in search of some term strong enough to express his meaning, and it so chanced that his gaze fell upon the rubicund countenance of our old acquaintance of the Telegraph Office, the leather merchant, Sor Giovanni.
The first syllables which the young Marchese had spoken in an angry tone had reached that worthy tradesman's ears as he stood peaceably behind his own counter; but as his sense of wonder grew great with what it fed on, he had insensibly edged nearer and nearer to the scene of the encounter, until there he stood in his own doorway, both thumbs thrust into the band of his leather apron, his fat cheeks and glassy eyes fairly beaming with gratified curiosity.
A very little thing appealed to Gasparo's light-hearted sense of the ridiculous. He burst now into a fit of most unaffected laughter.
When he recovered himself he had lost the thread of his discourse.
'You may be sure of one thing, my man: the Countess Paula's is not the only house you have lost bythismorning's work,' he said dryly; and he turned on his heel and walked away whistling.
'By my blessed patron, San Giovanni! I should not like to be inyourshoes, friend Pietro,' observed the fat leather merchant in an awed voice, gazing up the street with profound respect at the Marchese Gasparo's receding figure. 'I should not choose to be inyourshoes, not I.Iknow the young gentleman,—Livornese born and Livornese bred. It's no joke, let me tell you, to get on the wrong side of the account book with a Balbi.'
'Well, well,' said Valdez, half impatiently; 'it's only another example of the surprising contagion of folly. There were not fools enough in the world this morning apparently, and I have taken care to add one more to the number. 'Tis not a hanging matter; that's the best one can say for it. And so good-day to you, Sor Giovanni.'
'Wait a bit, wait a bit, now,' said solid Sor Giovanni soothingly. 'I just want to ask you a question or two now about Dino de Rossi. The Signor Marchese was speaking about young De Rossi, eh! eh! I have sharp ears, friend Pietro, and it seemed to me that there was talk of our Dino's falling into doubtful ways. That's bad, you know—very bad. I had some thought of offering him a place in my business once; he is a good accountant, I am told, and would hardly expect much of a salary if one took him in when he was under a cloud, so to speak. I thought of it the day he left the Telegraph Office, but I waited—I waited to make him the offer. There's many a man has turned up his nose over the fresh loaf at breakfast-time who was ready to say his prayers over the crust at supper. It's all a question of supply and demand. One sees these things in the way of business.'
'Ay, there's small difficulty in seeing the duty one owes to oneself in the way of business,' said Valdez in his quiet way.
'E—e—eh, friend Pietro!che volete? Half the world is for sale, and the other half in pawn; you know the saying. But about this Dino, now. He is a friend of yours? You could answer for him, eh?'
'I answer for no man, my good Giovanni. And as for this young De Rossi; I have seen him, it is true. I knew his father; but——' He shrugged his shoulders significantly.
'See there, now! and I who counted upon your telling me more about him; for I know nothing against the young man myself, nothing but that he's a little over fond of the sound of his own voice, and for that matter he's young, he's young. He's at the age when every donkey loves his own bray. I don't know any other harm in him.'
'Harm in him? No. There's no harm in a weathercock if what you want to know is which way the wind is blowing,' said Valdez carelessly, and apparently quite absorbed in arranging the heavy folds of his dark circular cloak with the green lining. In reality his mind was full of a new plan for hastening their journey to Pisa. Clearly it would not do for Dino to show himself too often in his company.
Meanwhile Gasparo was hastening towards Drea's house, with just that amount of additional pleasure in the action as would naturally follow on the sense of successful opposition to somebody else's will. As for Dino,—Gasparo saw no necessity of thinking about Dino. In any case, Dino could not afford to marry, and even if hedid,—for, in arguing a point in one's own favour, why not take both sides of the question?—even if he did marry, there were other girls in Leghorn beside this brown-eyed Italia. 'Little witch! I wonder if she guesses what she could make me do when she looks up at me with that innocent baby face of hers?' He sauntered down the steps with an expression of deepening enjoyment, a glance of expectation.
She was sitting in the old place, by the corner of the wall. Her sad face brightened a little as she looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw the young Marchese approaching her. She rose instantly, but she waited for him to speak.
'My little Italia! you look very pale. What is the matter? Has anything been troubling you?'
'I am quite well, sir, thank you. I am only tired.'
'And what has been tiring you, then? Too much pilgrimage, eh? Too many prayers in a cold church; is that not so?'
He looked at her more closely.
'You are quite sure the father has not been scolding you?'
'Oh no, sir, my father never scolds me.'
'Because I have brought something with me to restore good humour to a dozen angry fathers. See here, little one,'—it seemed at first sight a curious name to apply to that tall, slender girl with the sad eyes, but there was something childlike and unconscious about Italia's beauty which suggested the use of caressing diminutives—'see!'
He drew a small fancifully-embroidered case out of an inner pocket and opened it before her. Inside were five crisp pink bank-notes of a hundred francs each.
'There, Italiamia! You can tell your father that is what my father meant to give him,—and the other two hundred francs are for interest. Tell him he has not lost by waiting.'
'Signor Marchese!'
It was pretty to see how the colour flushed all over her face and throat, to the very border of her scarlet handkerchief. 'My father will be so happy,—and so proud,' she said shyly. She did not dare to touch the little portfolio until he tossed it gaily into her apron, and then she turned it over with a childish pleasure in the bright colours and gilt thread of the embroidery; it impressed her more than any amount of money.
'I wonder what father will do with it? He will not know what to do. We were never rich before,' she said at last, looking up at the young man who stood before her with grateful shining eyes.
Gasparo was watching her intently. His own face flushed and softened as their glances met. He tossed back his head with an air of bright decision.
'Should you like more money,—a great deal of money, which would be all yours to spend as you please. Should you like to be rich, Italiamia?'
'Oh no,' said the girl quickly. And then she laughed. 'I should not know what to do. My father always says it is not enough to have money, one must have brains to spend it. And I should be miserable. I should be like one of those ragged little sparrows over there if you put it in a fine gold cage. I should always be wanting to get back to the old ways. I think even the smallest bird must enjoy its wings.
'But suppose some one was with you in the cage? Some one who was very good to you and looked after you? Do you think you would not like it better then?' he asked in the gentlest voice. And then, as she did not answer immediately: 'Listen, my Italia. I have heard some foolish story of your betrothal to that young De Rossi,—to Dino, but it is not true; is it? You are notpromessa; your father told me so only the other day.'
He moved a little nearer, so that his handsome glowing face was very close to hers. He was very much in earnest now; inclination and the sense of opposition were firing the old rebellious Balbi blood; with that air of tender deference tempering the bright audacity of his presence, he looked the very incarnation of persuasive joy; the divine glamour of success was like an atmosphere about him; he carried himself with the compelling confidence of a young god;—it was Bacchus wooing Ariadne beside the rippling sea. 'My Italia, you are not betrothed?' he repeated softly.
Her face had turned very pale: her lips quivered.
'No.'
'Ah,' said Gasparo, drawing in his breath quickly.
Her thick dark hair was loosely twisted into a heavy knot; and pinned back just above the nape of her neck. One long waving lock had escaped from its fastening, and lay across her shoulder. The young man looked at it, and then just lifted it with the tip of a finger.
'One of my ancestors married an Infanta of Spain. But I am Gasparo Balbi; I can do what I choose, and nothing can alter that. A Balbi does as he pleases.' He put his hand against her cheek and turned the averted face towards his own, very gently. 'Look at me, Italia. Don't you know that you can make me commit any sort of folly when you look at me with those big eyes of yours? My little Italia, next week I shall have to go away, back to Rome. But I care too much for you,—very much too much,—to leave you as I found you, you little sorceress! Now listen. Before I go I want you to promise me that some day you will marry me. Do you hear, Italia? I want you to say that some day, very soon, you will be my wife.'
'Oh, no—no!' she said, in a frightened whisper, keeping her eyes fixed upon him and starting back.
'But I say—yes!' repeated Gasparo smiling. Now that the die was cast, he could scarcely understand how he had hesitated; she was so simple, so sweet, so well worth the winning—in any fashion—this brown-eyed daughter of the people.
He would have taken her hand, but she drew back and stood against the old stone buttress of the bridge. Her face had grown grave with the expression it wore when she was singing. She shrank back, her two little sunburnt hands hanging down and clasped tightly before her.
'Signor Marchese——'
She hesitated for an instant, and her eyelids dropped. 'It is—it is very good of you to take so much trouble about me. But what you say is quite impossible. I could never marry you, never. I am not a lady, and I don't want to be rich or—or—anything.'
Then the colour rushed back to her cheeks, and she lifted her head and looked at him full in the face.
'You have been very good to my father,—and to me, sir. And I knew you when we were all children, so you will forgive me if I take a liberty. Inevershould care for you, sir: I love Dino. We are not betrothed'—her eyes filled with tears,—'he can never marry me; and he and my father have quarrelled. Perhaps I shall never see my Dino again. But I do love him,—dearly,' she said, with a half sob.
When Gasparo had gone the sobs came fast and faster. Life had suddenly grown full of confusing pain; it was bewildering. And Dino seemed so far off. She knelt before her bed, in the little inner chamber, and pressed her hands hard before her face in the effort to recall the very sound of his voice when he spoke to her. She tried to feel again the warm strong pressure of his hand upon hers. And she loved him so! she loved him so! the poor child repeated to herself over and over. Howcouldhe bear to leave her? howcouldhe let anything come between his love and her?
But after a while the sobs grew quieter: she still knelt, gazing straight before her with an expression of sweet and ardent belief upon her tear-stained face. The words he had spoken at the church door had come back to her. 'You know I never meant to hurt you, dear. Italia, you do know that I love you.' She said them over in a whisper, like a prayer, looking up at the little picture of the Madonna above her bed. No other words would come, but surely our pitiful Lady of Sorrows would hear and understand.
She was not altogether to be pitied, this grief-stricken Italia. For to her, at least, in time, could come that great reward,—the sense of having lived a faithful life; in which the first indeed could be the last; a life wherein no loved thing has been forgotten, and memory and belief are alike sacred.
When Drea came home from his morning's work he found everything in order. His dinner was ready for him beside the fire. He ate it in silence; seeming to take very little notice of his daughter's white cheeks and heavy-lidded eyes. But as he sat smoking his pipe after dinner, he put out his rough hard hand as she passed by in front of him, and drew her down gently upon his knee.
'Don't fret, my little girl; don't fret now,' he said tenderly, and stroked her ruffled hair.
Then he added cheerfully. 'Come now! you said the young Padrone was going to make me a present. Let us hear about it. Good Lord, it must be a matter of twenty years since any one has thought of making me a present.—And I'll tell you what, my girl. It's full moon to-night. If you like, I will take you out in the boat with me, when I go to look after the nets. And so courage, my little one, courage! Lord bless you! it's only in a storm one can find out who's a good sailor. And so cheer up for—what's an old father good for if it isn't to keep those pretty eyes from getting red with crying? And the good God lets a man do, but He doesn't let him overdo. He's no fool, is Dino. We're not at the end of the matter yet.'
There was no difficulty in arranging for that journey to Pisa. As soon as it was settled that they were to go by water, to row themselves the fifteen miles of the old disused canal, Dino volunteered to have the skiff in readiness at a moment's notice. 'I want to be away from here. The sooner we start, the sooner it's all over, the better pleased I shall be,' the young man insisted impatiently.
Ever since his return from Monte Nero he had done nothing but urge upon Valdez the necessity of some immediate action; if it were only to go on this trip to the next town to secure the purchase of the revolver, at least that would be something accomplished. A curious restless gloom had fallen upon Dino's open countenance. It was as if he could never quite free himself from the scathing bitterness of old Andrea's reproaches. He longed for action, definite action, however distasteful. Each slow bright day which passed seemed a long space of painful suspense until he stood cleared in the old fisherman's eyes. 'He may think me a madman if he pleases. He can never think of me again as a coward,' the young man told himself bitterly. Valdez could understand nothing of this sudden change in him.
'You puzzle me, lad—and you lack patience.'
'Patience!' repeated Dino, 'and what for pray? I have read in some book that it is faith, and not prudence, which has power to move mountains. What does anything else matter so long as we have the faith?'
Valdez looked at him very gravely.
'You are sneering, my Dino. And I find that, as a rule, people who distrust or deny their own emotions are justified by many of their subsequent actions in the lack of faith. Don't do it, boy. Not to believe in others,'—the old republican's eye flashed,—'not to trust in others, is to reduce life to a mean habit,' he said.
They were sitting in Dino's own room, and the young man's gaze wandered restlessly over the walls; it seemed as if he were trying to learn by heart the position of each small familiar object.
'Why, it is like a bit of the old days back again, Valdez, to hear you lecture one!'
'Ay, lad.'
The elder man was following out his own train of thought. 'Perhaps I ought not to be so much surprised at the way it is taking hold of you. Until one is two or three and twenty one thinks of oneself: after that one is preoccupied with life, its combinations and its issues. And life is the bigger thing of the two.'
He stood up and laid his sensitive, long-fingered, musician's hand upon Dino's shoulder. 'Then that is settled. Bring the boat around to-night; and we start early in the morning,' he said slowly. He looked hard into Dino's face, and his lips worked as if on the point of adding something. But whatever it was the words remained unspoken. He turned away, and a moment later Dino heard him wishing Sora Catarina a grave 'Buon giorno!' as he passed through the outer room.
Later in the day Dino had spoken to his mother about his intention of absenting himself for an expedition of two or three days to Pisa. To his surprise Sora Catarina made not the least objection.
He postponed telling her until the last possible moment, acting in this on the opinion he had once heard Drea express about an angry woman's scolding. 'When a woman's got a tongue in her head, the wise man never speaks to her until he's putting his hat on; for it's no matter how hard the wind blows so long as it blows from astern.' But Catarina had not justified this prevision.
It was easy to see that she had something on her mind from the anxious glances which she kept casting in her son's direction, but it was not until he was just at the door and ready to start that she laid down her knitting resolutely, and said:
'My Dino, do you think your mother has gone blind? If you won't speak, I must. But things were different once. When you were a little lad,—it doesn't seem so long ago to me as to you, my boy,—you didn't wait for me to call you when you had hurt yourself. You were quick enough in coming to your mother when anything was paining youthen. And a woman loses enough in seeing her children grow too big for her arms to hold 'em;—there's no need of their hearts outgrowing her as well.'
She spoke in a plaintive tone, her voice growing more and more complaining as she went on with her remonstrance; and as she ended she shut her lips tightly and took up her knitting again with an injured expression. 'Whatever you may choose to say, Dino, your mother is not blind.'
'Nay, mother, that is the last thing I should think of saying. But what is it now? You must not take fancies in your head about me, mother. I've not been complaining of anything, you know.'
'Oh, if it's a fancy in my head of course that's the end of it! I've nothing more to say; if it's a fancy that it's more than a week now since I've seen you sit down to eat your dinner like a Christian, as if you knew whether the dish before you were boiled beef or a boiled bone. And perhaps it's my fancy, too, those black rings under your eyes, and the new trick you've learnt of sighing!' She threw her knitting down upon the table, and crossed the room to where Dino was standing.
'My own boy, do you think I can't see that you are breaking your heart about that little girl, that Italia? And it's of no use, my Dino: believe your old mother in this. Her head is turned; she won't have a word more to say to you. There's no harm in the girl, but her head is turned.'
She hesitated for a moment, watching him anxiously. 'Dino! you know if I care for my other boy, my young master, that I nursed and looked after till I hardly could tell which I was fondest of, him or you. But, my Dino, he goes too often to Andrea's, does Gasparo. And that girl takes after her mother—a poor washy, big-eyed thing, who never knew if her soul was her own to pray for until she'd asked her husband. And the girl takes after her mother.'
'You said once you would not speak hardly of Italia again, mother.'
'I said once—I said once!Santa pazienza!it would be a fine task to remember the things one has said once. And besides, I'm saying nothing against her; the Lord keep me from it. Girls! I've been a girl myself. And you know our Leghorn saying—when you want to marry a girl off 'tis easy work doing it; with four rags and four tags you can send the devil from one house into another. But, my Dino, listen.' She laid her hand rather timidly on the cuff of his coat sleeve; what she was going to say would displease him, and she wanted to propitiate him—not to seem as if she too were concerned in his disappointment. 'My Dino, at Monte Nero, we were speaking, between us women, of the young Marchese. And Lucia said she wondered if he would be thinking of marrying soon; she's like all other old maids is Lucia; she can't see a man in the next street without wondering what he thinks about marriage. And Italia looked up; you know that innocent sort o' way of hers; and "Oh no," she says, "Sora Lucia. Oh no," she says. "The Marchese Gasparo is not in love with any of those fine ladies he knows. He told me so, only yesterday," says she. And then I just looked at her. "And pray how did he come to be speaking to you about anything of the kind?" I asked her. And perhaps I spoke a little sharp, for she turned very red, and then she looked at me with her big eyes without speaking, as if I was a painted image of one of the blessed saints. And then she said, "He told me because he was speaking of what his mother wished him to do." His mother! That would be the Signora Marchesa. And it's a proper thing surely that a little chit like that should know more about my old mistress than I do. Yes. "He was speaking of what his mother wished him to do." His mother indeed! not even the Signora Padrona, or the Signora Marchesa, but "his mother!"—that is what she said.'
Dino remained silent.
'Ah,' Catarina went on, merging her particular grievance in that general sense of relief to be found in indiscriminate complaint, 'ah, it's small wonder perhaps that the young master has never been near his old nurse, or given me so much as a "good morning," since the day he came back to Leghorn. And so fond of his old Catarina as he used to be! I remember him when he had the fever; not a spoonful of medicine would he touch if Catarina was not there to give it to him. But things change in this world, they do; it's a pity, while they're about it, they don't sometimes change for the better. There'd be more change i'that.'
Dino smiled faintly. 'Well, well, mother! there's no good fretting over what can't be helped. Don't worry yourself, that's the most important.'
'Ah, don't worry! that's a man's way all over. As if one sent out to the market to buy trouble, for fear of not having enough at home! But it's easy work telling your mother not to worry, Dino, when she sees you going about with such a look on your face.'
'Nay, mother, suppose we let my face take care of itself.' He mastered his impatience with an effort, and added, 'If you would only believe me you would not make yourself so unhappy. Italia and I understand one another perfectly.'
'Well, if that's what you and she call a perfect understanding, 'tis a pity you don't try mistaking one another for a little. It might make you both look a bit happier. It was more like a funeral, coming home the other day, than anything else thatIcould give a name to. Not that I'm ever i' the right.'
Sora Catarina ended with a stifled sob. She had known from the beginning that no good could come of speaking of this matter to Dino. He was like his father; he might act from impulse, but he would never change his purpose for any one's asking. And now that she had spoken, it all happened precisely as she expected. She went on crying quietly, with a feeling of having only succeeded in verifying her own lack of influence.
But Dino was more deeply affected than appeared on the surface. Like a great many over-sensitive people, who dread and foresee pain, he often denied its very existence; but the pain remained. The idea of Gasparo's growing intimacy with Italia haunted him like an impending sense of evil. A wild plan of warning old Drea, of insisting upon seeing and speaking to him, began to assume more and more of the character of a resolve in the young man's mind. But if he went there to-night Italia would be at home; he could not expose himself to be insulted before Italia; and to-morrow he was going away. There was no use in writing, Drea could only read his own name.
Dino's mind was full of these considerations as he walked down to the Old Port. It was a foggy night, the full moon just rising over the hill-tops shone through a thick white veil; but his plan was only to secure the boat to-night, and row it across the Port to the mouth of the canal. He would leave it moored there for the night; and he knew every inch of the harbour, the fog could make no difference.
It made this difference, that, coming out into the air again from the small stove-heated room where he had been sitting longer than he expected, engaged in bargaining with the owner of the boat, the singular beauty of the night came upon Dino like a revelation.
It was an absolutely white night; the fog hung low above the water. Overhead the full moon shone in a clear blue transparent sky. From the land the harbour looked enshrouded in a clinging cloud; but to any one on the level of the water the fog appeared as a resplendent and glorified vision, a lower heaven of luminous vapour, under which the dark oily-looking sea lay motionless, like a thing asleep. Twenty paces off the largest ship in port only loomed indistinctly, the merest ghost of a vessel, dim, shadowy, unsubstantial; the red and green lights in the rigging were indistinguishable a dozen yards away. They sprang suddenly into visible existence, piercing the whiteness like living jewels, as the boat neared the ship's side. The air was strangely sonorous; the faintest sounds—the laugh of a sailor in the forecastle, or the distant thud of an oar—were exaggerated out of all natural proportion. It was impossible to judge of distances; everything was white, shining, impalpable. On the darkest night there would have been at least some gleam of a signal lantern to steer by; but this was like being lost on enchanted seas of light.
'Una notte stregata; a white night is a witch's night,' said the sailor lad who came down to the steps at the landing to bring Dino the oars for his boat. 'Keep your eyes open, comrade, or you'll be running into something before you've time to sing out anAve.'
'Ay, ay,' answered Dino cheerfully, stepping into his skiff and pushing her off from shore.
He paddled gently along; the soft moist air was pleasant upon his heated face, and there was no reason for hastening; until to-morrow there was nothing more to be done. The strange appearance of the night was so alluring he felt tempted to make a wider circuit before fastening up his boat. He turned the prow in the direction of the outer sea-wall, away from the shipping, just dipping his oars into the water with a scarcely conscious motion.
He was rowing in the direction of a certain large red buoy, upon whose broad surface he and Italia had often played as children, when to be left there by Drea while the old fisherman went to look after his nets was to be left in possession of a wonderful floating island, a country which no one else claimed, and where the little playmates reigned supreme.
The place was so much associated with the thought of her that, as he drew nearer, it was scarcely strange to Dino to hear what seemed a far-off echo of Italia's singing; he listened to the full contralto notes as if in a dream. It was all a part of the white magic of the night.
His boat moved noiselessly forward; the round outline of the buoy rose close before him. The sound of the low singing had stopped; but was there not something darker, the outline of a seated figure, upon that floating surface?
He looked hard, standing up in his boat, and of a sudden all the dreamy mystery of enchantment vanished. This was no dream, no phantom; it was Italia herself—Italia! his Italia, whom he loved. The quick blood tingled to his finger-tips. He called to her, and fastened his boat alongside, and sprang upon the buoy; it was all the work of an instant.
'Italia!' he said, 'Italia! Italia!'
She gave a little cry, and started to her feet, and looked at him. She stretched out her hands; her heart beat in wild irregular throbs; a contraction passed over her face; she did not know herself if she were laughing or crying.
He made some inarticulate exclamation and knelt suddenly at her feet. Her silken handkerchief had fallen to the ground, it had been warm about her throat; he covered the handkerchief with kisses.
Then he looked up at her as she stood above him steadying herself with one hand upon his shoulder. He held out his arms, and she bent her head without speaking, and their mouths met in a kiss.
The movement had given a sudden impulse to their floating pedestal; it swung violently for one instant from side to side, then the oscillations grew less rapid. The white radiance of the night seemed to close more heavily in about them. There was no sound or motion but in the quiet lapping of the waves.