Vestigia. Vol. II.

'Ay, twenty years. I've lived there for twenty years,' Valdez murmured, looking back at the shining curve of the white houses beside the sea.

'Shall you go back immediately? I mean – after Rome?' Dino asked presently, taking up the oars.

Valdez glanced at him keenly. 'Maybe I shall, lad. There's no telling. I'll see you safely to the end of your journey first.' After a pause he added, 'We'll wait till it gets dark, and then walk on to Bocca d'Arno. I know a man there will give us a bed to sleep on. And then we can separate for a day. I will carry the revolver up with me to Rome and wait for you there. The review is not till Friday; your best plan is to go home first for a day. And it's safer if I have the pistol with me. The police might take it into their heads to have you watched and searched at the last moment. You can't tell. And a little extra precaution costs nothing.'

'Why should you think the police suspect anything?'

Valdez shrugged his shoulders.

'Chi lo sa? Everything and nothing. There were men I could not account for at the door of your house when I came out yesterday. And that young Marchese friend of yours, I had some words with him in the street. He spoke of your getting into dangerous company. But it may be only my fancy; who can tell?'

As they drew near Pisa the country stretched before them a flat ploughed plain, of a pale reddish brown, crossed by interminable lines of furrows. There was not a sign of life anywhere about. The light sandy soil of the plain stretched to the far horizon like an expression of unrequited labour; for where the green rows of maize had already pierced the ground the crop promised to be poor and thin and stunted. The country was extraordinarily silent. There was not even a lark singing under that low-roofed sky. The dark line of pine-trees where the king's preserves begin were all blown one way, and only the wind seemed alive, a full and rioting scirocco wind blowing with insolent unconcern across these empty fields, as though mocking at their record of patient and unsuccessful toil.

The two men left their boat at the last bridge, just outside the city gates. Valdez was familiar with every turning of the Pisan streets. He led the way now, without hesitating, to a small dingy shop not far from the Duomo, where the revolver was soon purchased, Valdez insisting upon going in alone to buy it.

And then for hours they sauntered up and down the quiet thoroughfares, over the bridges, along the quay by the yellow Arno. The deadly stillness of the place weighed with a sort of physical oppression upon Dino. The hours stretched themselves out until he could scarcely believe that it was only in the first freshness of this same morning that they had turned their backs upon Leghorn. He was in a state of half weary, half dreamy unconsciousness, like a man under the influence of some strong opiate. Emotion was dulled and deadened. He talked constantly to his companion all through that long spring afternoon; he found amusement and occupation in speculating about the passing faces. Anything was better than the silence which threatened him with the awakening of that dull pain, which, whenever he ceased speaking, seemed to make a new clutch at his heart.

It was dusk when they left the small suburban cafe where they had eaten supper, and passed under an old archway into the high-road which leads to the sea. But, late as it was, they were not the only travellers afoot and bound for Bocca d'Arno. They had walked scarcely a quarter of a mile before they overtook two peasant women, a mother and daughter, on their way home from making purchases in the town, and presently, as they all four walked abreast along the country road, they fell into converse together. Valdez began questioning the elder woman about the crops. Then he asked her if she sent her children to the communal schools.

'Che! schools! yes, indeed! that was a likely idea, to carry the bimbi four miles there and four miles back every morning that God sends us.'

The old democrat looked grave. 'And are there many children who cannot read in the paese, my good woman?'

'Eh, Signore! There is my second cousin, the guardia of the forest, he is an old man now; he has been there all his life, and he gets fifty-six centesimi a day, to support himself and his family. It is likely, is it not? that he should trouble his head if the children cannot read the books? and they are good children.'

'How many has he?'

'E – e – h! tanti! Now, two of the boys are grown up enough to work in the wood as foresters. And that helps. He doesn't poach, my cousin,' the woman said regretfully, turning her sensible face towards Valdez; 'another man would, si capisce. But my cousin – he cannot see well. And then he misses the game he shoots at. He has no luck about him – not enough to make you wink your eye.'

She walked on a few yards and added, 'The Padrone! ah, yes, that is another sort of weaving! The Padrone is a banker in the city: when he comes to shoot, he brings his luncheon with him in his pocket; two hard-boiled eggs; that's for fear he should leave any bones behind him. Is it not true, Isola?'

Valdez laughed, and the girl walking beside Dino opened her blue eyes frankly and looked up in his face. 'That is true what my mother says. But you are not like your friend there, you do not care for the schools?'

She was pretty, even in this dim light it was easy to see how pretty, with a round babyish face and crisp fair hair. She wore a bright cotton handkerchief knotted over her head, and in her hand she carried a large bundle.

'No. I am not so wise as my friend. But at least I am good for some things,' said Dino, smiling down at her. He put out his hand, 'If you will trust me with it, we are going the same way. I can carry your bundle.'

The peasant girl drew back. 'Nay. What should you do that for?' she objected quickly. Then after a pause for reflection she suggested, 'Perhaps that is the fashion in the country that you come from, to carry other people's burdens?'

'Surely.'

'Guardate! But that is quite different. No one would do it here; not even the sposo?

'Are you going to be married soon, Isola? I think I heard your mother call you Isola.'

'Ah, yes; Isolina; that is what they call me. I shall not be married until next Carnival. It is a long time off, but what would you have? When one is poor one must learn to make oneself small enough to pass through the cat's hole. That is what I tell my Pio.' She ended with a laugh, a clear ringing bird-like sound.

'Tell me about him,' said Dino, smiling sympathetically, with a sense of pure comradeship in her youth, such as he had never felt before. All that was living and joyous and young asserted its claim over him; he looked across the road at the two middle-aged faces of their companions with an exaggerated perception of what they had outlived. Life, young buoyant life, seemed the one thing to be valued. He was sick of tragedy. What he wanted was easy youthful laughter, and the warm bright satisfaction of being. The innocent chatter of this little peasant girl satisfied him better than all the theories about all the universe. He listened in a sort of vague dream to the rippling flow of her talk. When she ceased speaking he yielded to the impulse that was strong within him; he told her about Italia. What he said was very little, only that he and his sweetheart were parted; he put it in the simplest words which she would understand.

She listened; then she turned her bright face towards him, glowing with spirit and brave interest. 'Oh,' she said, 'I know what it is like, for there was a time, one week, when they would not let me speak to my Pio.'

She talked to him now of herself as to an old friend; with the unhesitating frankness of a child; the young man was strangely touched and pleased by her simple confidence.

When the footpath grew narrower she walked on in front of him. She walked well, with an easy carriage; her firm bare ankles gleamed in the moonlight below the hem of her short cotton gown; her loose wooden shoes made a short quick tapping at each step which she took.

The night was very warm and still. On one side of the road the Arno flowed past silently; the pale light in the sky was reflected upon its glassy surface as upon a sheet of metal; it looked like a river of lead. As the moon rose a faint wind stirred softly among the budding branches of the lime-trees which edge the fields, and the delicate shadows of the moving stems fell upon ploughed land. In each isolated farmyard the hay-ricks, cut close for last winter's fodder, assumed a curiously velvety texture as the moonlight rested on their blanched and weather-beaten tops.

As they drew nearer the mouth of the Arno the spreading pines of the Gombo made a dark line against the sky to their right and across the river. The fields grew wider; the night was full of a new sound which was not the sound of the wind. Dino listened more intently; his quick ear could distinguish the muffled beat of the waves upon the sandy shore.

Presently they reached the borders of the wood; the footpath ended; the soil grew sandy underfoot. At the turning of the road there were lights burning in some cottages. The peasant women stopped at the door of one of the houses.

'Good-night,' Isolina called out in her friendly voice; 'good-night again; and thank you for the civil company.'

She disappeared amidst a rapturous chorus of welcome from the farmyard dogs. She had brought to Dino a charmed hour of forgetfulness; he watched her turning away from him with an air of regret.

Later, as they lounged upon the beach, smoking their pipes in the still moonlight, Valdez said, laying his hand affectionately upon Dino's shoulder, 'I liked hearing you laugh with that little girl to-night, my lad. You were such a light-hearted lad in the old days. You're fretting now. Courage! my Dino, courage! There are no depths for a brave heart from which hope cannot mount; hope which outlasts gold and the grave. And, for a man, whatever the consequence of his action may be, even to have meant well, is sufficient excuse in the eyes of the woman who loves him. Excuse? it's a vindication which, nine times out of ten, will make her end by asking him to forgive her suspicion.'

'I know it; but it won't save Italia from suffering,' said Dino quickly.

Valdez was silent. Then he said, 'Did it never occur to you that there is a chance, just a chance, of your getting away after all? Think of the crowd and the confusion. And if you once get outside of Rome the Society will soon find means of taking you safely beyond the frontier. There is always that chance, you know.'

'I don't believe it,' said Dino, turning away abruptly.

But the words haunted him – 'There's always a chance' – 'always a chance;' they rang their changes upon his brain far into the wakeful night. Once, towards morning, unable to sleep, he rose and groped his way to the door of the hut belonging to Valdez's friend and host. The shore stretched before him, and the moonlight on the wild sea grass. When the moon went under a cloud the wet sand by the edge of the receding wave was of a bright steely blue; far away near the horizon the light still shone, a streak of burnished silver, upon the tranquil sea.

Valdez was sleeping quietly; Dino went back and threw himself down by his side.

It was late when the young man awoke. The little hut was empty; his companion had gone hours before, leaving behind him a message, a few scribbled words, to say that the fishing-smack which was to take Dino back, by another route, to Leghorn, might be expected to call at Bocca d'Arno towards sunset that same afternoon.

There was food and water in the hut. It was one of those small thatched cabins, built for the use and shelter of the owners of the great stationary nets suspended from beams and worked by means of a crank, of which there are several by the mouth of the river.

Dino spent the long day in the woods. It was a lovely morning when he first went out, with a touch of April sweetness in the air. It is a wild and silent shore. The flat-topped pines grow to the very verge of the sand-hills. On the sea side the forest ends in a thick undergrowth of dark-spreading juniper bushes, which fill the hollows of the dunes and mingle with the thistles and the tough salt grass. And the wood itself is always filled with the sound and savour of the sea. Before a storm the white-winged gulls flit wildly in and out between the pine tops. There is fine white sand underfoot beneath the moss and the fallen needles, and thick growths of all strong-stemmed aromatic sea-loving plants; blue rosemary, and tufted heather, and great golden-crested reeds. Dino lying in one of those sheltered hollows, with closed eyes, could scarcely distinguish between the melancholy murmur of the trees overhead and the sleepy murmur of the restless waves. The very air had its mingled breath of salt and spiciness, of the sea and the resinous pines.

By Monte Nero all nature had seemed dead in his eyes; the downs there had been nothing more to him than an empty hillside, a dull background to his own dominant existence. But here, in this still wood – perhaps because of his very surrender of that existence – there was infinite charm and interest in every moment of the long calm hours. He felt himself a mere spectator watching the natural life of things. He found occupation for half a morning in seeing the warm spring sunshine creep across the straight pine stems; in looking up at the tender blue of the sky above him; in listening to the myriad small noises of the woods; bird notes, and the tapping of the wood-peckers, the hum of insects, the cracking and stirring of the branches, and the rustling furtive tread of shy four-footed creatures, young rabbits, and bright-eyed squirrels, or the quick darting of green lizards across the thin, short grass.

Once he reflected, 'They will say in the papers, afterwards, the prisoner passed a day before his crime concealed in the woods at Bocca d'Arno. "Concealed in the woods!" But will it mean this to them?' He looked down, between his elbows, at a patch of greenest moss; a miniature pine-tree, some three inches high, raised itself proudly above the other small plants, and a couple of shiny-backed beetles wandered up and down its stem. Dino felt in his pocket for crumbs, and strewed them before the insects, but the motion of his hand frightened them away. Presently a company of red-headed ants came up out of the ground and attacked the provisions. Two of the ants fought one another for a particular crumb. Dino watched their movements with the intensest interest. When they had vanished – 'The prisoner passed the day before committing his atrocious crime concealed in the woods of Bocca d'Arno,' he repeated solemnly, and he laughed aloud.

No one came near him. Once he heard some quick footsteps and the cheery whistle of a woodman tramping along some hidden path on his way home to dinner. And once, from between the leaves of the neighbouring alder thicket – young leaves so brightly green that they might be mistaken for flowers – there came a heavy rustling sound which excited his curiosity. He strolled over to the place, and peered in between the branches at a pair of those great melancholy-eyed white oxen common to that part of the country.

Something in the presence of those 'slow moving animals, breathing content,' reminded him of his little contadina. A sudden wish to speak to her again made him abandon his wood. Inland, a broad, wet ditch, half full of faded sea-heather, divided him from the ploughed fields. He jumped the ditch, and there, hard at work behind a hedgerow, he stumbled upon Isolina.

Her short blue gown was tucked up above her knees; her scarlet kerchief was hanging loose from her hair; she was digging away like a man, and her bright, childish face was all rosy and warm with the exertion. She nodded in the most friendly fashion to Dino as he came nearer, but time was too precious to be wasted on mere talk this busy morning. Only, as he moved away again, she held her spade suspended in the air for a moment, and her round cheeks grew pinker still as she said, 'As you pass through the farther field, will you greet my Pio for me? Give him tanti saluti, for I have not seen him to-day.'

'Shall I tell him I left you making the cat hole bigger?' asked Dino, beginning to laugh.

Her white teeth flashed. 'Tell him to dig away at his own end of it.' And presently Dino heard her voice singing as he strolled away between the moist brown furrows.

He had no difficulty in finding Pio, a short, thick-set contadino, with a smiling, good-natured face below its thatch of thick, irregularly-clipped hair, brown hair burnt red by the sun. His face was tanned to the colour of yellow bricks, except at the temples and behind the ears, where there were bits of white skin. He wore a ring on his hand, and used the most singular gestures in speaking.

Dino sat down on the edge of the ditch among the weeds and grasses to watch him at his work. Valdez would have talked of common schools, perhaps of politics; would have tried most likely to drive some faint idea of social equality and the rights of labour into this sturdy peasant with the Figaro face. The more Dino looked at him the more remote he felt from any impulse of proselytising.

This idyllic love-making, with its simple interests and its simple cares; its messages sent from field to field; – its naïveté, its sincerity, its security, – ended by plunging Dino into the profoundest melancholy. For the first time he absolutely realised what was this thing which he had undertaken. He gazed at the young fellow beside him; he noted how the strong muscles played along his back as he bent to his work, and the vigorous vital grip of his horny hand.

'Will that piece of ditching be done to-morrow?' he asked suddenly.

The contadino straightened his shoulders and kicked aside a heavy clod. 'Na – ay. I'll be at work here all o' Friday, if the master doesn't put me at something else,' he said slowly.

At work here o' Friday, and Friday was the day of the review. Dino's whiter hand was lying across his knee; he clenched the fingers together with a sudden passion, and thrust his doubled fist into his pocket. His hand, in his own eyes, had seemed the hand of a corpse.

CHAPTER X.

GOOD-BYE

Late that afternoon, as Dino sprang out of the fishing-smack on the stone steps of the landing-place at Leghorn, the first person whom his glance rested on was broad-shouldered Maso sitting on the edge of the quay with his legs and feet dangling over the water. He got up slowly as Dino came nearer, and nodded with cheerful friendliness.

'I know that boat you came in. She's a Bocca d'Arno smack, she is. The man who owns her lives at Pisa.'

'So he does, Maso.'

Dino looked rather anxiously about him. It seemed only too probable that old Drea was making one of that blue-coated group of fishermen who were sitting a dozen paces off on a coil of old ropes, criticising the craft that passed at this leisurely hour of the day, when the nets had already been looked after, and there was time for a pause and the smoking of pipes before the night work began. And Dino did not wish to meet the old man again. He shrank from having to feel once more the altered look of that face; all the old affection felt bruised and sore when he remembered it. He would have turned away now without further speech, but Maso detained him.

'Aren't you coming back to work in the Bella Maria, Dino? She's short-handed now with only Sor Drea and me. 'Twas all we could do to manage the nets this morning. I asked the Padrone if you weren't coming back soon.'

'Ay; and what did he say?' asked Dino, rather eagerly. It would be a comfort still to know that his old friend could speak kindly of him.

Taciturn Maso took off his round cap and scratched his thick, curly hair with an air of consideration. 'Well, I dunno,' he said dubiously. 'He swore at me for being a fool, as far as I can remember. But that wasn't much of an answer – that wasn't. An' yet somehow I didn't seem to miss nothing.'

'But didn't he say anything? Try and remember, Maso; there's a good fellow. Didn't he say: "Oh, Dino is going away," or, "Dino has other business to attend to?" He must have said something, you know.'

'Well, he did swear at me. I told you that already. But, good Lord! some people are never satisfied unless the words come in shoals, like the mackerel when the sharks are driving 'em ashore. An' it's Maso here, and Maso there, till I want to put my head in a bucket o' salt water; I do. That's why I like Italia to speak to me,' he added reflectively. 'She never says too much, and her words are sort o' pretty, like the sea in a calm, when the water is just dozing and making a pleasant noise.'

'Have you seen her? – have you seen Italia to-day, Maso?' asked Dino, his heart beginning to beat faster.

'Oh, ay; that's why I came here to wait for you. I saw your boat; I knew her by the cut of her sails before she was fairly round the point yonder. But I'd ha' brought her in on a shorter tack if I'd had the steering of her —I should.'

'What – what was it Italia wished you to tell me?' asked Dino, making a strong effort to control his impatience and not excite the wonder of the honest, slow-witted young fellow by his side.

'It wasn't so much of a message after all, when I think o' it. I say, Dino, you know Sora Lucia? She lives at the top of that big house in the Via Bianchi.'

'I know – I know.'

'Well, you were to go there, now, this afternoon. Sora Lucia wants to speak to you. That was what Italia told me. She told me twice. But, Lord, I'm not such a stupid as that. I can remember what she says fast enough.'

'Very well, then; I'll go now,' said Dino, feeling rather disappointed. Still it was possible that the little dressmaker might have some message for him. He turned back to inquire of Maso how it was that Italia knew of his return so exactly.

'Nay, how should I know?' retorted Maso reproachfully. 'You don't suppose I asked her, do you?'

He stood on the quay staring after young De Rossi with a look of the most sincere admiration dawning in his big blue eyes. Dino was in some sort of serious scrape, he reflected gravely. Else why didn't he come back to the old boat? And to have time, and opportunity, and invention enough to get into a serious scrape was in itself a distinction in honest Maso's eyes. It was almost like being a gentleman. They got into lots o' trouble, did the Padroni.

'It all comes of his having an eddication,' he pondered enviously, leaning against the parapet and looking at Dino's back.

It was not far to the corner house in the Via Bianchi. Dino went slowly up the many stairs; it was impossible to say what he expected, but his heart beat very fast as he stopped before Lucia's door, and at first he was not sure, he could not tell, if there had been any answer to his knock.

'Avanti, Avanti. Come in; I cannot leave the work,' a woman's voice repeated briskly, and he opened the door. The first glance showed him that the big room was empty of what he most desired. There was no one in it but Lucia, who was standing with her back to him engaged in pressing down the folds of a gown with a hot iron.

'Oh. So that's you, Dino; is it?' she said brusquely, without turning her head.

'I came as soon as I got your message. I have only just returned from Bocca d'Arno, Sora Lucia; and I met Maso on the quay.'

'Oh. 'Twas Maso that told you; was it? See there now. And I who always took him for a sort of two-legged sea-calf, with only just sense enough in him to fall in love with Italia.'

'Maso! that fellow!'

'Well, well. I am not talking Latin, am I? Santa Vergine, it would be a fine world if all the men in it were to keep their eyes shut because a certain young man – Basta. I understand what I mean.'

She nodded her head several times, and took up another iron, holding it carefully near her face to determine the exact degree of heat.

Dino sat and looked at her in silence. The clock ticked loudly on its shelf, and the dozing cat, awakening to the fact of the presence of a visitor, stretched itself two or three times sleepily, and then made a spring and perched itself on the young man's knee. He rubbed the creature's head mechanically until it purred. Then he put it down gently on the ground and stood up.