Vestigia Volume Ii Part 3

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 G.o.d,' 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 pa.s.sionate inarticulate e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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'aME

The ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate despair.

A quiver pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sionate 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.