Vestigia. Vol. II.

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 am bestia, 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. 'Who is your 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 could feel it; 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 been theirs; 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 Tuscan propriétaire, 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.

CHAPTER V.

CHOOSING

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 by this morning'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 in your shoes, 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 in your shoes, not I. I know 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 he did, – 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!'