Daphne: An Autumn Pastoral Part 13

"Wait, a.s.sunta," she said quietly, when she had finished, and she disappeared among the trees. In a minute she came back with three crimson roses, single, and yellow at the heart.

"Will you take them with your wreaths for me to the Madonna?" she said, putting them into a.s.sunta's hand. "I am more thankful than either one of you."

CHAPTER XVI

a.s.sunta had carried a small tray out to the arbor in the garden, and Daphne was having her afternoon tea there alone. About her, on the frescoed walls of this little open-air pavilion, were grouped pink shepherds and shepherdesses, disporting themselves in airy garments of blue and green in a meadow that ended abruptly to make room for long windows. The girl leaned back and sipped her tea luxuriously. She was clad in a gown that any shepherdess among them might have envied, a pale yellow crepy thing shot through with gleams of gold. Before her the Countess Accolanti's silver service was set out on an inlaid Florentine table, partially protected by an open work oriental scarf.

Upon it lay the letter that had come an hour before, and the Signorina now and then feasted her eyes upon it. Just outside the door was a bust of Masaccio, set on a tall pedestal, gra.s.s growing on the rough hair and heavy eyelids. Pavilion and tea-table seemed an odd bit of convention, set down in the neglected wildness of this old garden, and Daphne watched it all with entire satisfaction over her Sevres teacup.

Presently she was startled by seeing a.s.sunta come hurrying back with a teacup and saucer in one hand, a hot water jug in the other. The rapid Italian of excited moments Daphne never pretended to understand, consequently she gathered from a.s.sunta's incoherent words neither names nor impressions, only the bare fact that a caller for the Countess Accolanti had rung the bell.

"He inquired, too, for the Signorina," remarked the peasant woman finally, when her breath had nearly given out.

"Do you know him?" asked Daphne. "Have you seen him before?"

"But yes, thousands of times," said a.s.sunta in a stage whisper. "See, he comes. I thought it best to say that he would find the Signorina in the garden. And the Signorina must pardon me for the card: I dropped it into the tea-kettle and it is wet, quite wet."

a.s.sunta had time to note with astonishment before she left that hostess and caller met as old friends, for the Signorina held out her hand in greeting before a word of introduction had been said.

"I am told that your shepherd life is ended," remarked Daphne, as she filled the cup just brought. Neither her surprise nor her joy in his coming showed in her face.

"For the present, yes."

"You have won great devotion," said Daphne, smiling. "Only, they all mistake you for a Christian saint."

"What does it matter?" said Apollo. "The feeling is the same."

"a.s.sunta knew you at once as one of those in her calendar," the girl went on, "but she seems to recognize your supernatural qualities only by lamplight. I am a little bit proud that I can detect them by day as well."

Her gayety met no response from him, and there was a long pause. To the girl it seemed that the enveloping sunshine of the garden was only a visible symbol of her new divine content. If she had looked closely, which she dared not do, she would have seen that the lurking sadness in the man's face had leaped to the surface, touching the brown eyes with a look of eternal grief.

"I ventured to stop," he said presently, "because I was not sure that happy chance would throw us together again. I have come to say good-by."

"You are going away?"

"I am going away," he answered slowly.

"So shall I, some day," said Daphne, "and then moss will grow green on my seat by the fountain, and San Pietro will be sold to some peddler who will beat him. Of course it had to end! Sometimes, when you tread the blue heights of Olympus, will you think of me walking on the hard pavements of New York?"

"I shall think of you, yes," he said, failing to catch her merriment.

"And if you ever want a message from me," she continued, "you must look for it on your sacred laurel here on the hill by Hermes' grave. It is just possible, you know, that I shall be inside, and if I am, I shall speak to you through my leaves, when you wander that way."

Something in the man's face warned her, and her voice became grave.

"Why do you go?" she asked.

"It is the only thing to do," he answered. "Life has thrown me back into the old position, and I must face the same foes again. I always rush too eagerly to s.n.a.t.c.h my good; I always. .h.i.t my head against some impa.s.sable wall. I thought I had won my battles and was safe, and then you came."

The life had gone out of his voice, the light from his face. Looking at him Daphne saw above his temples a touch of gray in the golden brown of his hair.

"And then?" she asked softly.

"Then my hard-won control vanished, and I felt that I could stake my hopes of heaven and my fears of h.e.l.l to win you."

"A Greek G.o.d, with thoughts of h.e.l.l?" murmured Daphne.

"h.e.l.l," he answered, "is a feeling, not a place, as has often been observed. I happen to be in it now, but it does not matter. Yes, I am going away, Daphne, Daphne. You say that there are claims upon you that you cannot thrust aside. I shall go, but in some life, some time, I shall find you again."

Daphne looked at him with soft triumph in her eyes. Secure in the possession of that letter on the table, she would not tell him yet!

This note of struggle gave deeper melody to the joyous music of the shepherd on the hills.

"I asked you once about your life and all that had happened to you: do you remember?" he inquired. "I have never told you of my own. Will you let me tell you now?"

"If you do not tell too much and explain yourself away," she answered.

"It is a story of tragedy, and of folly, recognized too late. I have never told it to any human being, but I should like you to understand.

It has been an easy life, so far as outer circ.u.mstances go. Until I was eighteen I was lord and dictator in a household of women, spoiled by mother and sisters alike. Then came the grief of my life. Oh, I cannot tell it, even to you!"

The veins stood out on his forehead, and his face was indeed like the face of a tortured Saint Sebastian. The girl's eyes were sweet with sympathy, and with something else that he did not look to see.

"There was a plan made for a journey. I opposed it for some selfish whim, for I had a scheme of my own. They yielded to me as they always did, and took my way. That day there was a terrible accident, and all who were dear to me were killed, while I, the murderer, was cursed with life. So, when I was eighteen, my world was made up of four graves in the cemetery at Rome, and of that memory. Whatever the world may say, I was as guilty of those deaths as if I had caused them by my own hand."

He had covered his face with his palms, and his head was bent. The girl reached out as if to touch the rumpled brown hair with consoling fingers, then drew her hand back. In a moment, when her courage came, he should know what share of comfort she was ready to give him.

Meanwhile, she hungered to make the farthest reach of his suffering her own.

"Since then?" she asked softly.

"Since then I have been trying to build my life up out of its ruins. I have tried to win content and even gladness, for I hold that man should be master of himself, even of remorse for his old sins. You see, I've been busy trying to find out people who had the same kind of misery, or some other kind, to face."

"Shepherd of the wretched," said the girl dreamily.

"Something like that," he answered.

The girl's face was all a-quiver for pity of the tale; in listening to the story of his life she had completely forgotten her own. Then, before she knew what was happening, he rose abruptly and held out his hand.

"Every minute that I stay makes matters harder," he said. "I've got to go to see if I cannot win gladness even out of this, for still my gospel is the gospel of joy. Good-by."

Suddenly Daphne realized that he was gone! She could hear his footsteps on the pebble-stones of the walk as he swung on with his long stride. She started to run after him, then stopped. After all, how could she find words for what she had to say? Walking to the great gate by the highway she looked wistfully between its iron rods, for one last glimpse of him. A sudden realization came to her that she knew nothing about him, not even an address, "except Delphi," she said whimsically to herself. Only a minute ago he had been there; and now she had wantonly let him go out of her life forever.

"I wonder if the Madonna threw my roses away," she thought, coming back with slow feet to the arbor, and realizing for the first time since she had reached the Villa Accolanti that she was alone, and very far away from home.

CHAPTER XVII

San Pietro and Bertuccio were waiting at the doorway, both blinking sleepily in the morning air. At San Pietro's right side hung a tiny pannier, covered by a fringed white napkin, above which lay a small flask decorated with corn husk and gay yarn, where red wine sparkled like rubies in the sunshine. The varying degrees of the donkey's resignation were registered exactly in the changing angles at which his right ear was c.o.c.ked.