Vestigia. Vol. II.

He pressed his lips to her hair again without speaking.

'Dino! say you do!'

'I do love you, my Italia. I do love you. God knows how much.'

'Dear Dino. I thought you knew that I could always be like a friend to you, like your little sister, whatever happened. But ah, this is better! I am so happy, Dino. And it is such a beautiful world; it seemed so hard to think that we were always to be hurt in it, always apart and miserable; and the happiness all about us, only we shut out from it, you and I.'

She raised her head. 'Do you know, dear, I could not imagine how you would come back to me? No! don't tell me, you can tell me some other time; to-morrow perhaps; now, I don't want to know. But I imagined – I don't know why, it was very foolish – I imagined there would have to be all sorts of talking, explanations first. It is so wonderful, Dino, happiness is always so much – so much – what shall I say? so much happier that one can possibly foresee it. I never thought of – this. And yet it was so simple.' She had slipped one of her little hands in his, and was pressing his fingers tightly over hers with her other hand, with the contented air of a happy child. 'But, do you know, you frightened me when you first called out, my Dino?'

'Did I frighten you, Italia?'

She lifted her head quickly, letting his hand fall. The suppressed tone of his voice had pierced her heart with its suggestion of untold suffering.

'Dino!'

She held her face close to his, trying to look into his averted eyes. 'Dino, you are unhappy about something? Is it – Oh!' – she shrank suddenly away from him and her face grew rigid and her lips trembled. 'Is it – my Dino, forgive me for saying such a thing! – is it that there has been some mistake – again? Is it that – that – oh, Dino! that you did – not – mean —this?'

The miserable words dropped out slowly, one by one.

Whatever punishment he merited by his lack of generous self-control he tasted in its full bitterness in that hour. After what seemed a long long interval of crushing condemning silence she got up very quietly. Dino rose to his feet at the same moment. As the buoy rocked he would have put out his hand to steady her, but the wild look of anguish on her dear face held him motionless. He did not dare to touch her. He covered his eyes with his hands.

Presently she said, 'We cared for each other even when we were little children. Perhaps that is why it seems so – strange, that you could do this to me.'

Her voice began to tremble. Her fingers turned cold; she held them clasped tightly together. So many images, so many memories out of the past, rushed back in one confusing flood upon her; she could find no words, no relief, from pain. All the bewilderment and the misery uttered themselves together in an appeal for help:

'Speak to me, Dino!'

Then he uncovered his face and spoke.

'Italia, before God! until I met you here to-night, by chance, I never thought to take you in my arms on this side Heaven. I cannot tell you what this thing is which has come between us. Your father chooses to believe that it is because I am a republican, because I hold opinions which he thinks mad and wicked, that I will not promise to give up all else and – marry you. He thinks that I have deceived you – that I have acted basely. Italia' – he lifted up his eyes and looked at her – 'I cannot tell you what it is which separates us. I cannot. Only – it would be better for you if you had never seen me. I wish to God that you had never seen me. I must go away very soon, away from Leghorn and the people I have known all my life. And I go away remembering that I have ruined your happiness. Yet I loved you, Italia. I loved you better than my own soul.'

There was a moment's silence; then she spoke very quietly:

'Dino. My father remembers when they threw an Orsini bomb at the procession carrying the blessed sacraments out of the cathedral. He saw a priest killed, and some women and children. And it was the republicans who did it. My father saw it. He saw it done.'

'Dear Italia,' said Dino sadly, 'surely you do not think that I approve of such an act? There are bad men in every place; men who hide their own selfishness and folly under every high ideal, and bring it to discredit. They are like the moths who feed on the coverings of the holy vessels on the altar. Whatever I do with myself it shall not be for my own gain.'

His voice changed a little, and he added, 'But perhaps you will not believe that of me? perhaps you will never believe any good of me again?'

She seemed scarcely to understand what it was he said.

'Dino!'

She stretched out both hands with a sob. It was like the cry of a frightened child for mercy. 'Dino, take me back, take me with you. I must be with you. It doesn't matter about all the rest.'

She threw herself into his arms, pressing her cheek against his, clasping his hands closer about her neck; speaking in short hurried sentences, her soft voice broken with sobs.

'Dino – it could not be again, you know. The dear Madonna would not let you go away from me again. Because, you know, my Dino, I could not bear it. I could not. And no one is expected to do what is impossible. It isn't that I'm not willing, Dino. I would do anything you told me to, anything. But if you asked me to lift a weight that was too heavy for me, I might want to do it, but I could not do it, could I? I should not be strong enough. And I am not strong enough for this – I am not strong enough.'

She kept her face buried on his arm as if she were trying to hide away from what she dreaded. 'Dino. It is such a happy world, dear. I could be so happy. See! even if you had to give up something, some ideas that you care for. My father says all young men have ideas about – about politics and all that – which they change as they get older. And even if you do not change. What does it matter? what does any of the rest of it matter? Dino – !'

He had his arm about her; he could feel her shaking from head to foot with heavy passionate sobs.

'Italia,' he said, 'stop crying. My dear. My poor, poor little child. I can't stand this. Right or wrong, I cannot stand it. It is too much to ask of me. Valdez may do what he pleases, I – ' He bent his head and pressed his lips fervently upon her warm loosened hair. 'Italia, I had promised. I had sworn to do something. But I break my oath. Look! I give it all up – for your sake. Look at me, Italia. They will call me a traitor; but I shall not have betrayed you.'

Poor little Italia! She was very weary. She could not speak for many minutes the choking sobs would force themselves out despite all her efforts to conquer them. She let herself rest passively in his arms, while he called her by every tender name he could devise. But presently the tears were fewer; she checked herself; she lifted up her head and looked at him; her eyes were full of love, but the far-away look in them meant even more than that; they were shining with the enthusiasm of high resolve.

'Forgive me, my Dino. I ought to be stronger – I meant to be stronger. I meant to help you, not to make hard things harder for you to bear. Forgive me. I will not do it any more.' She drew herself gently away from him, and he made no effort to detain her. Her voice grew steadier as she went on speaking. 'You could not do that. You could not be a traitor. Not even for us to be happy together. And it would not be happiness, Dino; there would always be a black cloud between us and happiness. It is not as if we did not know the difference between faith and falsehood, Dino. We do know.'

'I will not, so help me, God! I will not be false to you,' he said roughly.

'My Dino.'

'Italia, why cheat ourselves with words? what is faith or falsehood? what does it all matter if faith means leaving you, and falsehood your making my life a heaven? I love you: the rest is nothing. As for duty – who knows what is duty? Your father thinks it is my duty to stay with you. And another man bids me go. Why should I go? I promised; but is telling you that I loved you no promise? does it imply nothing? Do you tell me to go when I love you?'

'Yes, Dino,' said Italia simply; 'because you love me.'

She took his clenched hand in both of hers, and smoothed out the fingers with a great tenderness.

'Dear, I am not clever like you; I don't understand things. But I believe you. Dino, if it were for another man, and not for yourself, that you had to decide this thing – '

He drew away his hand, and looked away from her across the rippling sea. The breeze was freshening a little; there were long rents of darkness overhead where the fog was breaking, and showing the blue of the sky.

'Dino,' the persuasive voice went on, 'you might deceive yourself, not knowing, but you would not deceive me – your old playmate – your little sweetheart, who trusts you – trusts you against all the world. Dino, tell me. Have you the right to break this promise?'

'No,' he said in a half whisper. Then he added, 'But I would, if you told me to.'

'Yes, Dino. But you would not do it now.'

There was a long silence between them, then he asked abruptly:

'Will your father come back here to fetch you?'

'Yes, dear.'

She had been sitting quite still, watching with saddest eyes the dimpling motion of the water. But his speaking seemed to recall her to herself; she sighed heavily, and stooping, picked up her fallen handkerchief, and knotted it about her throat. Then she pushed her loosened hair back from her temples, smoothing it down with the palms of both hands in a way which was familiar to her: he had watched her do it a hundred times before. She looked up at him, and their eyes met in a long solemn gaze of unspeakable pity and love.

After a moment he took her hand in his very gently and raised it to his lips.

'My good, good little Italia.'

They sat in silence, like two children, holding each other's hands.

*****

After what seemed a long time there was the sound of oars in the distance, and then the shadowy outline of Drea's boat. Dino drew her gently to him. 'It is good-bye, child, God keep you,' he said huskily. Their lips met in a kiss which held the very passion of loss.

In another moment he had stepped from the buoy into his own boat. He went to meet Andrea.

'I have been with Italia. If you like I will listen to anything you have to say to me. But not here. I will follow you to your house,' he said.

He followed at a little distance across the tranquil bay.

CHAPTER VIII.

A LAST CHANCE

Drea did not speak until they stood all three in the shelter of the familiar low-ceilinged room. Then he said, 'I should like to be alone with Dino.'

He waited until Italia had closed the door of the inner chamber behind her. He waited, standing in the firelight, his powerful knotted hands hanging loosely beside him; his gray head bowed upon his breast. All the fire had gone out of the old man; he looked broken-down.

Presently he spoke.

'I did not expect to see you here again, but perhaps it's as well – it's as well.'

He stopped, and fumbled in his pocket for his old pipe. He lighted it automatically, and there was something in the action which seemed to make him feel more like himself.

'I've been troubled, lad; sore troubled,' he said, not looking at Dino, but staring straight before him at the blazing wood upon the hearth. 'Sore troubled. It's like a storm out of a clear sky. First you, lad; first you, and then the young master. I counted upon you to help me take care of the little girl, Dino.'

He spoke with long pauses between his words.

'Your father was my friend once, an' I trusted him, an' he betrayed me. I never told you before; it didn't seem fair-like; but he betrayed me. He thought to take everything for himself. But you can't get happiness i' this world without doing something for it; it isn't enough to be willing to rob others. There's no cheap way o' cheating Heaven, lad; a man can't buy Heaven at half-price.'

He sat still for a few minutes breathing heavily. Then he rose, and, taking up the candle, he crossed the room, and unlocked the door of a small cupboard, in which Dino had always known him to keep his few valuables; his certificate from the captain of the shipwrecked steamer; his dead wife's silver-mounted rosary, and whatever money he happened to possess. He returned holding in his hand the embroidered portfolio full of banknotes which Gasparo had left with Italia.

'Some o' it has to be taken back to the young master. But there's three hundred francs in there, lad, o' my very own. I earned it fairly; and the old master always meant it to be mine. Three hundred francs! It's a deal o' money that. I don't know as I ever saw so much money together before.'

He smoothed the folded notes with eager trembling fingers.

'It's all yours, lad; all of it. Take it and pay off these men as have got the hold on you. It's a deal o' money that – three hundred francs. More than a man could put by in five years' saving. I never could save nothing myself. They'd do many things for that, they would. You can pay 'em off easy.'

And then, as Dino made not the smallest movement to grasp the proffered money, 'Here, take it, boy,' he repeated, trying to thrust the little roll of notes into the young man's clenched hand. 'Take it; it'll be more than made up to me if you are good to my little girl.'

It was impossible to make him understand that the money could make no difference.

'It's three hundred lire, that's what it is. Three hundred lire,' he said doggedly; 'and I earned it, fair, that night o' the wreck. I never thought then it would have to go to pay off rascals; but I'd do more than that, I would, to please the little girl.'

But at last Dino's persistent refusal roused the old man to something more like anger. 'If you won't, you won't. It 'ud have been more above-board to have said it from the beginning. – If you must drown yourself, at least drown yourself i' the deep sea. That's my way o' thinking. – You could talk there all night; it's easy work talking. Colla lingua in bocca si va a Roma– a man can get as far as Rome if he has a tongue in his mouth. But it proves nothing; it proves nothing.'

He pushed the bank-notes across the table, flattening them out under his strong fist. 'There 'tis. And now take it or leave it, for there 'tis before you. You can choose.'

Dino rose and reached his hat. 'There are many things you will understand better later on, Sor Drea,' he said simply. Then he looked all about the room. 'I'll not see this again. And I've been very happy here. If ever the time should come when you think you judged me harshly, you'll be glad to remember that, perhaps, – that I thanked you and wished you well at the very last.'

And then as the old man still sat silent, with bowed head, 'Will you shake hands with me before I go, Sor Drea?' Dino said, coming nearer. He looked very noble at that moment standing there, with the firelight shining full upon his young resolute face.

But Andrea never lifted up his eyes.

'The devil teaches a man how to do things but not how to hide 'em. I thought you was an honest lad at one time, Dino, – I did,' he said bitterly; and let him go without another word.

Drea sat there for a long time after he heard that closing of the outer door. By and by Italia re-entered the room. She came and went softly, busying herself with the preparation of her father's supper. Presently she came near the fire and knelt before it, screening her face with her outspread fingers from the blaze while she watched the boiling water in the kettle out of which she would presently make the coffee.

She was observing her father furtively under shelter of her fingers, and before long she turned a little and rested her cheek against his knee.

'You must be tired, father, and hungry. And you have let your pipe go out; poor father!' she said in a deep tone of loving anxiety.

'Ay, child.'

Andrea shifted the pipe slowly to his other hand and laid his disengaged fingers fondly upon the girl's thick hair.

There was a silence between them while the water bubbled and hissed upon the hearth. But as Italia stooped to lift the saucepan Drea checked her. He said:

'I've done what I could, child; what I could.'

'Yes, father.'

'His father was the same sort before him. I never told you, but Sora Catarina there, she was my sweetheart once, when we were all young together. And his father was my friend, and he took her away from me. And I was fond of her then, I was.'

Italia drew his hard hand down against her cheek, and kissed it softly, without speaking.

'Ay. I was fond of her once – main fond. And 'twas partly for that, perhaps, I always had a sort o' fancy for the lad. I never could bear to be hard on him. An' he's disappointed me. It's i' the breed, my girl; a bad breed, and you can't alter that with wishing. You can't turn a porpoise into a dolphin, no matter how long you leave him in the water.'

As still she made no answer, he added more insistingly:

'I'd have saved you from this if I could, my pretty. I did all I knew how. But you can't get a grip on the anchor when there's no bottom but only shifting sand. Faithlessness – Look here, girl, it's like poison in one's daily bread.' He stroked her cheek tenderly, 'My girl, it's poison, you can't live on it.'

Then Italia lifted up her head.

'Dino is not faithless,' she said gently.

'Girl, no one believes in him. Not a soul. Not even the young master – and they were boys together.'

'I do, I believe in him, father.'

She knelt with clasped hands gazing at the fire, and all the ardour and devotion of her impassioned soul sounded in her soft girlish voice. For the moment she felt superior to all suffering, uplifted to a region of feeling which knows neither lassitude nor reluctant pain. And such love makes all things easy; it floods dry places; it drowns the slime and weeds. It is good, no doubt, to be strong; it is wiser to be the master of our fortunes than their slave. The truth is obvious enough. But we are not all strong, God knows; let us still be thankful for that divine gift of pity, – tender and loving pity, – the heritage of the outcast; that last possession of the disinherited, of the unsuccessful; who, owning this, shall yet know something, even on this earth, of the very kingdom of heaven.

After a while she rose to her feet; she laid her gentle hand upon the old man's shoulder. 'Come, father. Come to your supper. You are so tired, dear; you must let me take care of you. For the harder things are, father, the more we will need each other's love,' Italia said.

CHAPTER IX.

WITH VALDEZ

The sun was not more than half an hour high in the east when Valdez and Dino started in their boat to row up the disused canal to Pisa. It was a mild gray morning. A pearly-tinted scirocco sky hung low above the flat country beyond Leghorn; on either side were stretches of bare ploughed land; the only colour was in the thick fringe of tall yellow reeds which bordered the canal, and on the scarlet-stained leaves of the water plants and brambles which had survived the winter, hidden deep under the faded bents of last year's grass, in sheltered nooks below the overhanging banks.

It would have been easy to tow the boat: there was a narrow path trodden out along the margin by the feet of the men who still dragged the slow weight of their flat-bottomed barges, laden with barrels of oil and sacks of corn, in preference to sending the merchandise to Pisa by the new line of railway. But Dino liked better the labour of rowing against the sluggish current. The monotonous action soothed him like the reiteration of old words which carried pleasant memories. He felt more himself with the oars in his strong young hands; and the long regular sweep of the blades was like a visible sign of the vigour and force of his determination. About nine o'clock it felt very warm upon the water. The March sun shining behind the thin gray veil of mist, filled the sky with a diffused whitish glare, – and there was no escaping it, no possibility of shadow. By the time he had rowed eight or ten miles Dino was glad enough to act on Valdez's suggestion, and run the boat to land under the shelter of some drooping alders. They stretched themselves out luxuriously on the short new grass, where a point of smooth ground projected for a few feet from the bank. The water gurgled with a cool liquid sound as it hurried past them, and the air was sweet with the smell of bruised herbs. There was a tuft of scented thyme growing by Dino's feet. He plucked off a leaf or two and held them in his hand while he said:

'It is pleasant being here, Valdez.'

'Ay, lad.'

'I like rowing. I like everything which implies being out-of-doors, – doing something and being no one in particular. If I had to live over again, Valdez, I'd have more to do with men than books.'

'You may be right there, lad, there's no saying. After all, a man's personal experience is the only reality; the rest is mere hearsay.'

Dino crushed the aromatic herbs closer within his hands, and rubbed them over his face. 'Valdez!' he said abruptly, 'that man over there, – in Rome, – you know whom I mean – I know nothing about him; he has done me no harm.'

'No, lad. And I see what you mean. But that's just the puzzling part of it – when things pull both ways. But there must come a time in a man's life when he ceases to ask himself questions, when he must give up even wanting to know how well he may be doing the work that's been set before him, or else the work doesn't get itself done. For, look you, lad, in a way, what is absolutely bad is nearly as satisfactory as what is absolutely good. It's black or white; and a man – a man, I say – can understand either. But it's the thing between – it's life – which upsets our calculations.'

'It's so damned hard to know that, do what one will, one can never get any credit for it. If you stake your life on any desperate attempt to make things a little better, people always imagine it was your own choice, you liked doing it. They don't ask what it was that made you give up the pleasantness; if you get credit for anything, it's only credit for a morbid taste for being wretched.'

'Credit from society? credit for what you do? why, lad, who gives credit for anything now, except the tradesmen? And they are not in society,' said Valdez, with a short laugh. He pulled the brim of his shabby felt hat farther down over his eyes. 'Society cheapens life. Makes it full of small interests, small triumphs, small, bitter disappointments. I've been through it; I've seen enough of it in my day.'

'Valdez,' said Dino, looking at him rather curiously, 'you must have been leading a very different sort of life before you came to Leghorn? You yourself must have been very different?'

'Ay, lad, a different sort of fool, most likely. There's a variety in fools, or life would be too monotonous. I've been among a good many people in my time,' he added in his deepest voice; 'but all that's past now. Past and forgotten. And what's over is safest let alone. It's twenty years now since I've been tuning pianos. 'Tis a good trade; and one must live somewhere.'

He rolled over on the damp grass, and thrust one arm up under his head. 'You have had a good deal to do with making me stay there so long, my Dino. I was a lonely man; it has made a wonderful difference to me that feeling that, at any minute, you might be coming in and out, making a noise, knocking about in the old rooms; they would seem quiet enough without you. You made a wonderful difference.'

'Well! it's over now,' said Dino, pulling up a tuft of grass and hurling it far into the water. 'It's gone like that.'

'Lad, you take things too hardly. I'm an older man than you, and I tell you you should believe in happiness. The flower of life is a gift, Dino, without money and without price. The supreme gifts of the gods can neither be discussed nor deserved. Believe in happiness; expect it; make room for it in your life. Have faith. Faith moves mountains. And happiness is of the swift-footed immortals, and descends only on the garlanded altars of her worshippers.'

The old man was curiously roused out of his usual reticence and quiet. As they got into the boat again a pale gleam of sunlight pierced through the gray vapour overhead and rested on the distant buildings and spires of Leghorn.