Vestigia Volume Ii Part 10

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 impa.s.sioned 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 la.s.situde 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, G.o.d 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s, 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 d.a.m.ned 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s 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 G.o.ds 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.

'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 amus.e.m.e.nt and occupation in speculating about the pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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.'