Vestigia. Vol. II.

'Anima mia!' said Dino passionately, bending a little towards her, as she stood, leaning with folded hands against the old wooden gate. When she ceased speaking there was something almost childlike in the serene unconcern of her face. But there was nothing hard, nothing self-engrossed, in this insouciance of Italia's. It was merely the expression of a nature accustomed to a large and frank acceptance of daily life – a genuine indifference to petty devices. This fisherman's daughter, in her little cotton frock, had something in her of the wide-eyed serenity of an elder world; she had inherited from her father something of his cordial simplicity – 'a princely disregard of little things.'

It was only a minute or so before the carretella overtook them by the gate: they all entered the crowded piazza together.

The three women hurried away to look after the room which had been promised them for their night's lodging, but only a very few minutes were past before they too were back in the piazza, for now the bells, which had been silent all afternoon, were pealing together with a short and merry stroke. The procession was about to begin.

Inside the dusky church there was an unwonted shuffling of little feet; a wavering of lights clutched by uncertain little hands; an anxious movement to and fro of black-robed frati, marshalling and adjusting the unruly lines of brown and flaxen heads. It was the children's part of the procession; and more than one woman in the crowd felt her heart swell and her eyes grow moist as she watched them, poveri angeli! A long broken line of small human creatures, in brightest holiday dress, and each with its burning taper, following the great golden Cross as it passed solemnly, borne on men's shoulders, out of the gloomy aisles, out under the wreaths of spring blossom, and down the steps into the warm afternoon light. That was perhaps the prettiest sight of all, as the twinkling tapers grew dim in the sunshine. And then came rows of young white-robed choristers, and the impassive faces of the officiating priests; the low sunlight burned like a jewel upon the tinselled stoles, and the reds and purples of the vestments were vivid and deep like the colour of garden flowers. The blue cloud of incense rose straight up, with scarcely a waver above the bent heads of the kneeling crowd, as the Blessed Sacrament was slowly carried around the piazza. The afternoon was windless, and the people so hushed, that even from the farther side of the square the priests' solemn chanting was distinctly audible, and the warning tinkle of the bell.

The last to descend the steps were a white-robed company of Brethren of the Miserecordia, with masked faces and hands hidden away under the long folds of their garments. They passed like a little company of the sheeted and forgotten dead, between the gay ranks of the holiday-makers; and, as they emerged from the shadows, the bells rang joyously overhead, a peal which set them rocking from side to side, in a visible triumph, in the old open belfry.

This was a sign that the procession was ended. There was an instant rush for the now empty church; there was just time to visit the holy pictures before supper, and if one had any especial prayer to offer, why, it was but natural to expect a little prompter attention from the saints, who might easily be supposed to be still looking down approvingly upon what was going on in their honour.

Drea and his party were among the first to re-enter the shadowy portal. There was scarcely light enough now in the side chapels to distinguish any unfamiliar object, but the old fisherman walked straight to where his own ex voto offering had hung these many years.

'Ah! that was a night, if you like; that was a night to remember!'

'Were you frightened, father?' said Italia, speaking in a whisper, not to disturb the people kneeling all about them, and asking the same question she had asked in this same place, at every recurring festa of the Blessed Madonna, since the first time she had been brought there, a small wide-eyed creature clinging to her father's hand.

'Nay, child, nay. It 'ud be a poor business if one's courage did not hold fast in the right place. It 'ud be like fastening one's boat up with a rotten cable, there'd be no depending upon anything then. But it was a night, that. A man who doesn't live at sea doesn't know the meaning of a prayer. Not that we had much time for speaking; but it seemed to come natural to think of the Holy Virgin then, – just as I thought of you, sleeping in your little bed.'

He looked at the picture again. 'Ay. We brought off the men and a fine bit of salvage; I mind me how pleased the old master was when I went up to the Villa to tell him about it. He was in his bed, I remember, and he wore a thing with a frill round his face, like a woman's night-cap. He was finely pleased. Everybody used to say he was going to leave me something in his will – something over and above my wages – as a sort of thank you. Your mother used to count upon it, poor soul! and so did I for a bit – I should have taken it kindly of the old master, I should, if he had remembered it at the last. We knew each other many a year.'

Dino and Italia exchanged a meaning glance.

'And if it were to come now, father? that would be better still; you could get a new boat,' she said, with a smile of irrepressible pleasure.

'Nay, child, the will was proven long ago. If there was ever any money coming to me – and the old master used to say there was, he used to say so – it stuck in the lawyers' hands years ago, like a boat aground. It never made any difference in my way o' remembering the old master. It would be but a poor look-out if one could serve the same master faithfully for twenty years – and I so used to him, knowing just what he meant when he swore the loudest – it 'ud be but a poor look-out if it only meant losing one's liking at the end of it. 'Tis a weak friendship that's so ready to call for the blessed sacraments at the first little knock on the head; – that's my way o' thinking.'

It was growing dusk, outside as well as in when they left the dim church, with its smell of fresh crushed bay-leaves underfoot mingling with the stale incense smoke, in a way which always carried Dino's memory back to very early days, when his father was still a trifle undecided about the exact relations of Church and State, and not unwilling to give his little boy the treat of staring at the lighted candles of the festa. The remembrance of his dead father's face rose vividly before him, and he lingered for an instant behind the others at the door, looking back.

As he hurried on to rejoin Italia old Drea touched him on the shoulder. 'The women will go to bed early, but I want you to come out a bit with me after supper, lad. I want to have a talk with you,' he said.

CHAPTER III.

BY THE LIGHT OF A TORCH

They came out of their lodging, an hour later, into the deserted square. Lights were flaring in nearly every window, and in every house was to be heard the rattling of bottles and plates, and men's voices calling for more wine. But it was quiet enough out here, under the stars, in the empty piazza, where the last booths were being closed for the night.

They strolled over to the lower part of the square, and sat down upon the parapet; Drea was lighting his pipe.

'Look here, lad,' he began abruptly. The match in his hand went out, he felt for another in all his pockets, swearing the while at the mischance.

'May the devil fly away with all fine clothes, say I. For why should a man change his coat any more than his skin? I've worn this jacket every festa for the last twelve years, and I never yet could learn the trick o' its inside.'

'I've got lights,' said Dino.

'Nay, lad, where there's a way out there's a way in. I'll not be beat by it, thanking you kindly.'

He puffed at his pipe thoughtfully before he spoke again.

'It's a good many years now since the first time I came up here. Lord, how the years go! I mind me – Your mother was a young woman then, Dino; no older than my little girl there, and I was a wild young fellow. Well, well; it seems more than one lifetime ago. I'm getting to be an old man now, my Dino. It gave me a start the other night to hear our young master speak of it, but it's true enough for all that.'

'Perhaps it is. But you never seem old to me, Sor Drea.'

'I've had my turn at it, lad; I can't complain. But maybe the Captain was right about my settling down; maybe he was right. I don't suppose I can be far off sixty. The old master lived to be seventy-two, he did; but then he lived like a wax image packed in cotton wool. And when a man's knocking about day and night, why, Death needs no lantern to find him.'

He took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it.

'There isn't much to leave behind me, lad. Only the old boat, and Italia. She'll miss me, will my little girl. She's wonderful fond of her old father. But you'll look after her; you'll be good to her, Dino?'

There was no answer.

'You see, it isn't as if I were leaving her to strangers. But I've been fond o' you, boy, since you were that high; when you used to come to play with her in the old boat, and I used to sit and watch you and wish I had a little curly-headed chap like you, that 'ud grow up and help me about the nets. My girl's a good girl; but a boy 'ud have been different.'

He was silent for a moment; then he put his pipe back into his mouth and gave a slight chuckle. 'There's no basket without its handle; that's sure enough. I've got 'em both now, girl and boy too. I was an old fool not to have thought of it sooner; but it's difficult to see that the children have grown up, when you remember them so high. Well, lad, I give you joy, I do. She's very fond o' you. There's only one thing I want to speak to you about. It's all plain sailing before you then.'

'And what is that?' asked Dino, very quietly.

His face was in shadow, but there was that in his voice which startled the old man with a foreboding of coming trouble. He leaned forward, peering anxiously into the darkness. 'Eh? what's that, lad, what's that you're saying?'

'You say there is one thing you wish to speak to me about before – before I can be affianced to Italia. I ask you what it is.'

'Nay, my Dino, I said nought about being affianced, if that's what's troubling you. Not but what I could easily find another husband for her; there's Maso, now; as honest a lad as ever hauled at a rope, and a good bit o' money too, all in the bank. But what does that matter? I've never promised her to you; but it would be but a poor sort o' friendship that only depended upon words. I've done more than give you my promise, lad; I've trusted you, I have.'

'Good God!' said Dino, under his breath, looking up with blank eyes at the clear starlit sky above him.

'There's no need for many words to settle it.' He hesitated; and then went on with sudden fluency as if the long meditated speech were forcing its own way out. 'See here, lad. It's not so much more than a week since you lost your place because o' that infernal tomfoolery of a procession. I'm not casting it up at you, my boy; not I. But there 'tis; you made a mistake. It might have been a worse one, for you meant no harm, and as things go it's all turned out for the best. I wouldn't have cared to marry my little girl to a writing fellow, and you've got the make of a sailor in you, lad; I always said it. When God Almighty shuts one door in an honest man's face, if you look about you you'll see He's opened another. But it might ha' turned out different.'

He lowered his voice, and added: 'I don't blame you, but I've kept my ears open, and there are things said about you that I don't like; I don't like. When a man lets his net down to the bottom he's sure to catch mud. I saw your father do it. He called himself a republican too. You must give it up, my Dino.'

'I can't do that,' said Dino, in a very low voice.

The words implied so much to himself that he could scarcely believe in the reality of things – he felt involved in the fantastic irony of a dream – when Drea burst out laughing, good-naturedly.

'Why, lad, you don't understand me? Where are your wits? I am speaking Italian, mi pare. It isn't to oblige me I want you to give up that confounded club of yours, and all the nonsense that goes with it. It's so that you can marry Italia. Why, lad, one would think that I was torturing you instead of telling you how to marry your sweetheart. You one o' those damned radical rogues, my Dino, the little chap I taught how to handle an oar? Come, come, lad, drop the nonsense. It's being shut up between four walls that put it into you, I'll go bail. Politics! Lord bless you! a capful o' wind will soon blow 'em out of you. They're like weevils in a biscuit, they eat all the good; you can't get rid o' them too quickly.'

'Drea, it is you who will not understand. You are unjust; you have always been unjust to my father. But his ideas are mine. I will not – ' he stopped, with a horrible sense of sinking at his heart. What were these ideas to which he professed himself so willing to sacrifice all the rest? But it was imperatively necessary to make Drea understand the situation. 'I cannot give up my – my convictions. For no reason in the world. Not even to marry Italia.'

There was an instant of terrible silence.

'Are you mad, boy?' demanded Drea, in a sort of subdued growl.

'I am not mad,' Dino answered.

It was a relief to look forward to an explosion of the old man's anger; anything – anything rather than that tone of affectionate trust.

'I am not mad. I don't know why I'm not. I'm unhappy enough for that, or for anything else,' he said, wearily.

'Unhappy – !'

The old man checked himself, breathing hard.

One of the last vendors of cakes and sweetmeats had gone, leaving his torch of tarred stick to flare itself away in the empty piazza. Drea sat rigid, his eyes fixed upon that spot of light. But he was too deeply moved to keep quiet: the old habit of affection was strong upon him; it was stronger than his pride. 'I would not have believed it of you, Dino. But you'll think better of it, lad; you'll think better of it. One thinks that one has only to pick and choose in life when one is young. When a boat is running straight before the wind any fool can steer her. Later on you begin to find out that things have their own consequences; you might as well ask for a fish without its bones as for a life without trouble. I didn't expect this, though. If it were anybody but you, lad; you that I've knowed from a boy.'

'I – I can't stand this,' said Dino, huskily.

He got up to his feet and walked away a few paces. The old man followed him.

'Lad! – '

He laid his heavy hand upon Dino's shoulder. ''Tis easier to make wounds than to heal 'em. I don't want to be hard on you, God knows. I'll give you another chance, lad. Perhaps you've gone too far with those scoundrels to break off short i' this way – without with your leave or by your leave. Perhaps I was unreasonable to expect it. For the devil shows a man plain enough how to get into a mess like that, but he leaves him to steer his own way out. You might feel it upon your honour not to break wi' them without a word o' warning; and honour's a delicate stuff, if you handle it you soil it in the touching. I've been an old fool; I ought to have thought of all that sooner. But I'll give you another chance, lad. Look here. We'll let things stay as they are for the present. I won't keep you from seeing her; and I'll give you three months' time to free yourself from all this black business. Perdio! 'tis a fair offer. Promise me that in three months you will come and ask me for Italia, and there's my hand on it. Why, lad, I couldn't have trusted my little girl to any man but you.' He spoke in the old cordial voice again, with a cheery ring in the brave words.

'Oh my God,' said Dino, turning away from him, 'what am I to do to make this man understand?'

Andrea's arm fell to his side. He groaned, and put up his other hand to his forehead as if he had received a blow. 'It can't be, lad – I tell you it can't be,' he said in a broken voice.

A party of holiday-makers came out of a house at some distance, crossing the piazza at its farther end. The women were laughing and chattering as they went by. A young man called loudly for silence, and began to play the refrain of a love-song upon his mandoline. The swift, audacious tripping of the music came back to them from a long distance through the stillness of the night, and then again all was quiet.

Andrea took a quick step forward. He seized the blazing remnant of the torch from its hole in the wall, and waved it suddenly before Dino's eyes. The young man gave an involuntary start backwards.

'Oh, don't be frightened,' said Drea, with an odd laugh, 'I am only looking at your face. I feel as if I had never seen it properly. I want to remember the look of a man who cares more for the good opinion of a pack o' lying scoundrels than he cares for his oldest friends; a man who could teach my girl to love him; who could steal her heart from her; who could bear to look on at all her pretty little ways, and she all the while not knowing. I'm an old man, and perhaps I don't understand,' he said, with bitter simplicity, 'But I have lived sixty years in this world, and I've been honest. I never betrayed a trust.'

He let the torch fall on the stones between them. The light shone full upon his white hair.

'I loved you like my son, Dino. I would not change places with you to-night.'

As he turned away Dino sprang forward with some passionate inarticulate ejaculation of despair. 'Andrea! – Drea – don't, don't leave me like this. Drea! you are the oldest, the best friend I've ever had; you can't believe. – You must be mad not to see how I love her – '

The old man half paused, then shook his hand with a gesture of unbelief.

'If it had been anybody but you, lad – you, that I've knowed from a boy – '

He entered the darkened house, shutting the door behind him.

It had only taken a few minutes; the voices of the women were still audible, and the sound of the mandoline.

CHAPTER IV.

LA MORT DANS L'ÂME

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! you there – 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?