Vestigia. Vol. I.

'What!' said Dino, in quite an altered voice. He noticed the change himself, but he could not prevent it; it was all he could do to ask the question quietly, 'Has – has the Marchese Gasparo been here?'

'Surely,' said Italia, looking at him with some surprise; 'he came here about an hour ago to speak about the boat to my father. He wants to take a party of his friends out for a sail.' She added: 'I thought you knew he had been here; he told me he had met you.'

'No, I did not know it,' said Dino, speaking between his teeth.

All the radiant sweetness of the day seemed blotted out before him. It was very well for that child there innocently to accept this fiction about the boat; but did not he, Dino, understand Gasparo better? A dozen stories of the handsome Captain's powers of fascination flashed back across him. He thought of the woman to whom he had carried the letter that very morning. The letter! It was a trick to get him out of the way; that was why Gasparo had turned that friendly smiling face upon him, and talked of 'old times,' of 'days when they were boys together,' and all the while he was planning this visit to Italia – damn him!

He forgot all about Italia's presence. With a sudden prophetic feeling he seemed looking straight ahead into the future. He could see exactly what would happen, such an old, old story; and to think that such misery could even come near Italia, his little playfellow, his little girl. If he had only known in time; if he had warned that strange lady when he spoke to her this morning, that would indeed have been fighting Gasparo with his own weapons! And then he remembered the tone of her voice when she spoke to him; to him, a man, not a girl, thrown upon her mercy. 'When the waves beat too fiercely against the shore the rock breaks them,' she said. And he was to go away, he had sworn it, and it was in such hands that he was to leave the future of Italia!

He had been silent so long that she thought him very tired. Perhaps he was depressed, too, about this sudden change in his fortunes. His mother might have been finding fault with him; Italia was always a little afraid of the Sora Catarina, who was associated in her mind with dark reproving looks and a generally grave and joyless view of life. It was always a matter of secret wonder to her when she heard her father allude to the days when Dino's mother had been a young and handsome girl. In her heart Italia could never imagine her looking otherwise than imperious and miserable. It seemed quite probable now that she should be the cause of Dino's look of unhappiness.

'I think you would be pleased to hear one thing,' she said gently. 'Signor Gasparo was talking to me this morning about my father. You know the old Marchese always used to say that he should leave my father something in his will because of the service he did that night when the steamer was wrecked. You know, Dino; when we were children. And Signor Gasparo says that since his father forgot to put it into his will in writing, it makes no difference at all. He is going to speak to the lawyers and to the Signora Marchesa about it, and my father will have the money just the same. It is a great deal of money, three hundred francs, in gold. Father can buy a new boat with it – dear father! Are you not glad, Dino?' She was silent for a moment, and then, for the first time, a shadow came across her face. 'I thought you would be so glad. That was half the pleasure of it, – the telling you,' she said rather wistfully.

'I am glad,' Dino answered, in a harsh mechanical voice.

And then the blank look of disappointment on the sweet face bending over him struck him like a pang. He sat up, rubbing both hands over his head, and ruffling up his thick curly hair. 'My Italia, you must know without my telling you if I am glad to hear of any good fortune coming to you or to Drea. But you must be patient with me this morning, carina. I have things to vex me; and I am very weary.'

'Poor Dino! It is my fault for tiring you. But I will sing to you now. That will rest you better than anything else,' she said soothingly, gazing down at him with frank loving eyes.

Dino smiled faintly. This sudden reawakening of thought was like the clutch of a physical pain. 'Sing to me with your guitar. That is more formal. It is more like making a stranger of me,' he said, answering her look. As she moved away he shut his eyes, and buried his face again on his folded arm. The last hope was gone. After this what would be the use of warning Drea? The simple loyal-hearted old man was as incapable of tempering his gratitude for a gift, with a criticism of the giver's motives as the veriest child. His little store of wisdom held no formula for such a case. It would be next to impossible to make him believe in any form of treachery connected with the handsome open-handed young master; and, even if it were possible, Dino foresaw only too clearly what would be the first – the immediate result. For had he not pledged himself to care for and protect Italia? And what more natural than that her father should turn to him in this emergency?

He lay so quiet that Italia believed him to be half asleep. She looked down at him two or three times as she sat there tuning her guitar; but as he did not move she did not speak to him. Presently she began to sing.

She sang song after song; odds and ends of old ballads; love-catches such as the peasants sing to themselves while the sheep are grazing; full rythmical snatches of modern Greek she had learned from wandering sailors. She sang softly, a mezza voce, with an exquisite liquid tenderness in her voice, like the lowest notes of a brooding bird.

Once, as there came a sound of dripping oars, she broke off suddenly. A boat passed very near them, and she nodded with a smile to the stout man in the faded uniform who was seated in the bows.

'What is it?' asked Dino, without lifting his head – he too had heard the sharp click of the rowlocks.

'Dino! are you awake? And I thought you were sleeping so sweetly. Did that boat wake you then? It was nothing; only the custom-house men rowing old Captain Piero home to get his dinner. See! there he is still waving his hand to me. I see him every day; he always passes at this hour.'

'But he does not always see you singing a visitor asleep,' said Dino, sitting up rather hastily and looking after the departed boat. 'No, I was not dreaming, my Italia; unless it be a dream to feel one's whole heart and soul full of you.' The words slipped out unintentionally; an instant later he would have given anything to recall them. He felt sure she had taken in their full meaning by the very silence which fell upon her. She sat absolutely motionless; he was sure of it, but he would not trust himself to look at her. He only added, in a tone which he tried to make quite impersonal, 'I am afraid your Captain Piero will only have a poor opinion of my politeness. Do you think we could explain to him that I was not quite so insensible as I seemed?'

'I don't know,' said Italia, rising and laying down the guitar. She moved away a few steps and stood leaning against the gray buttress, her scarlet neck handkerchief making a vivid spot of colour there like a flower.

'I can see – I think I can see my father's boat,' she said, bending forward and taking hold of the edge of the bridge's arch.

'Take care!'

Dino got up and went and stood beside her.

'Don't lean too far forward, dear. Is that Drea's boat? What eyes you have, my Italia! See, the wind is against her; she will have to come in on another tack.'

The patched sail bent and dipped as he spoke. The boat seemed gliding away from them.

He looked down at her. They were standing so close together now he could see the quick rise and fall of her breath; the stirring of the wind in her roughened hair; the quivering shadow where the long lashes rested on her cheek.

One hand hung loosely by her side. He barely touched it, with fingers that trembled.

'Italia!'

What were resolutions or remembrance? All the world had faded away; there were no living presences now but himself and this girl beside him, and that far-off winged boat moving slowly towards them across the shining water. 'My Italia?' She turned a radiant face towards him. The momentary shyness which had made her leave her place was gone now; there was only left a deep look of rapture in the dark loving eyes.

'Yes, Dino. You do love me. I know it,' she said simply. She did not change her expectant attitude; but she moved her hand until the little brown fingers clasped his.

They stood so for fully a minute without speaking, their eyes fixed on the approaching boat. 'And you love me too, Italia? You will say that you love me?' Dino said in a half whisper. He had not meant to say this. He had resolved not to say it; but what was the good of prudence now? The patched sail was drawing nearer; there was only this one moment left in which fearfully to snatch at perfect joy. He held his breath lest she should delay to speak.

But Italia answered him with grave simplicity. There was not the shadow of a doubt in her heart, not a cloud upon her heaven of content. Perhaps they had never been farther apart, these two, in all their sensations, than at this first moment of supreme understanding.

'I do love you,' she said, in her clear full voice. And then at the sound of her own words she started; Dino felt the movement of her fingers in his; her eyes filled with happy tears, and the colour swept in a quick wave over her pale face and throat. 'I think I have always loved you – after my father – always, since I was a little girl, my Dino,' she said softly.

'Only – after your father, Italia?'

She hesitated; but he had asked his question an instant too late, for now the wind had really caught the flapping sail of the Bella Maria; they could see the quick movement of old Drea's hand on the tiller, and hear his voice calling out an order to Maso. In another moment the two men had brought the old brown boat cleverly alongside. Dino made a quick catch at the rope that was flung to him; there was a momentary struggle of strong-armed Maso with the heavy sail.

'Well, lad,' said Drea, standing up at his place by the helm and looking about him. 'Well, my little girl!'

'Was it a good morning's work, father?'

'Mah! … I've seen worse days, child, I've seen worse days. Mind what you are about with those nets, you Maso! That's right, lad; give him a hand. We wanted another man with us, but I've seen worse hauls for all that. You'll be ready to go out with us to-night, eh, Dino?'

'Yes, Sor Drea.'

'Ay, ay. You'd have come with us this morning fast enough, I'm thinking, but the girl there wouldn't hear of my sending for you. "He has had a hard day; he will be so tired, father," she said. Tired! Santissima Vergine! and she a sailor's daughter!' The old man chuckled, straightening his back and rubbing his stiffened shoulder joints. 'But, bless you, they're all alike, and even one's own daughter is a woman. Women! they'll pray all day for rain, and be frightened the first minute they see a cloud in the sky. – You'll get your dinner here, Maso.'

Maso, a broad-backed young fellow in a blue jacket, looked up from the wet heap of nets with a smile which showed all his white teeth. 'Ay, Sor Drea.'

'And I must be off home,' said Dino, looking at Italia.

'Ay, lad. You'll stay another time likely. There won't be too much dinner to-day for three of us,' the fisherman said simply, 'and Maso has earned his share. The chestnut is for the man who takes its shell off: that's my way o' thinking.'

'I could not stop in any case; thanking you kindly all the same, Sor Drea. I told my mother I'd be back to dinner. By the way, I was to ask you if it is all settled about our going up there?' he nodded in the direction of Monte Nero.

'Ay, ay. 'Tis settled for Sunday fast enough. Sora Catarina has only to get herself ready. We might have had worse luck, Maso; we might have had worse luck. 'Twas stiffish work with only two of us,' old Drea said, sitting down on the edge of the platform with his feet in the boat to light his pipe. 'Mah! … che volete? There's nothing like the day after a storm for finding out the colour o' the bottom o' things. There's good in every wind that blows, lad, for a man who knows how to set his sail.'

He thrust a heap of the wet shining fish aside with his foot.

'When there's not so many o' the big there's more o' the little. You know what I'm always telling you. The Devil himself, con rispetto parlando, the Devil himself has a curly tail.'

END OF VOL. I