Vestigia Volume I Part 7

He stood so for a second amidst frantic shouts of applause, with one hand outstretched. To Dino's eyes he looked like some demi-G.o.d mastering a whirlwind. And then all of a sudden the br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.s slipped from his nerveless hand, and was dashed into a thousand pieces.

He watched it fall with a half-bewildered laugh; he staggered, and clutched at the table; a sudden red mark discoloured his smiling mouth, and he fell heavily forward, face downwards, without a word or a groan.

He had broken a blood-vessel; he was still insensible as they carried him back to his home through the dark and empty streets; and Dino walked beside the litter and held his father's hand. His wife met them at the door with Palmira, who was then a baby, in her arms. Her face seemed turned to stone as she listened to Valdez's explanations. Only, as they laid her husband gently down upon his bed, and uncovered his face, a quick spasm contracted her rigid mouth, and she stooped and kissed the dying man upon his forehead.

'I knew it would come. It had to come,' she said drearily. And after that she scarcely spoke again, turning away from all consolation, and seeming to find relief only in the few practical cares which were left to her.

And so, like some impatient wave breaking too far from sh.o.r.e, whose troubled existence reaches its climax in but one instant of wasted force, in the midst of a sea where every wave which lifts itself must fall, so Olinto died, and his idle raving was hushed, and his place knew him no more. Of mourners he had few or none; it was only to his boy that he left so much as a memory. That was almost the lad's entire heritage, that and the friendship of Pietro Valdez.

As little Dino grew up every other detail of his life seemed to change about him, as things do change in the lives of people too poor to order their surrounding circ.u.mstances. The Marchesa came less and less often to the Villa Balbi; he had lost the familiar companionship of his foster-brother; of his first childish recollections there was only old Drea left, and the dear face of Italia, to illuminate the past. But, whatever else was altered, he had never lost sight of Valdez. Indeed, since that night the man seemed to have taken a strange fancy to the boy; as the years went on those two were always more and more together; an arbitrary friendship, in which one was ever the leader and teacher and guide.

Even to Dino there was always a certain mystery about Valdez, but it was the mystery of pure blankness; there were no secrets about him, chiefly because he seemed to own no history. He never willingly spoke of himself, or alluded to former acquaintances or habits. If he had any one belonging to him, if he had ever been married, no one precisely knew. He never spoke to women, or appeared interested in them. He lived alone, where he had lived for twenty years, in two small rooms in one of the narrowest streets of Leghorn. His wants were few and unchanging, and the money which he earned amply sufficed for them. In his working hours he followed his trade, as he called it, with the sober exact.i.tude and indifference of a machine. He was a Spaniard by birth, and a Protestant by conviction; and he believed in a coming universal republic as he believed in the rising of the sun. After a dozen years of companionship that was the most that Dino knew of him.

As he paced up and down there by the sea, a hundred confused images and impressions came floating back out of that past to Dino. His father's face, and the unforgotten sound of his voice,--Sor Checco, Gasparo, Drea, dear old Valdez, and those men at the cafe to-night, and the scene this morning at the office, and the scene at the banquet, that other night, long ago,--how long ago it seemed! It was as if some storm-wave breaking over his life and soul had stirred the very depths of old remembrance, until he could scarcely distinguish the actual from the past, the living from the dead. They were all mixed up with the darkness and the wind and the sense of the restless seething water about him.

When he thought of Italia he stopped short. He could not, he _would_ not think of Italia--not then. He could bear nothing further to-night, he told himself, with a curious sense of relief and quiet. The measure was full; he could realise nothing more. And, indeed, beyond great pain as beyond great joy, there is this mysterious region of rest.

Great pa.s.sions end in calm, as the two poles are surrounded by similar s.p.a.ces of silent, ice-locked sea.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MORNING AFTER.

A woman's anxiety is always awake, always asking. She entreats to know in direct proportion to her dread of the coming knowledge. How could it well be otherwise, while her life is one frail tissue of delicate probabilities, in the midst of which she waits, like a spider in its net, for the possible gifts of fate? And the web may glisten as it will in the sunlight; it makes but a poor shield against a blow.

As Catarina busied herself about her ordinary household work that next morning there were faint new lines of care about her close shut mouth, and the orbits of her eyes were darkened as if with sleeplessness and long watching. But, whatever had troubled her, she made no direct mention of it to Dino,--setting his belated breakfast before him carefully but in silence. It was not until he pushed aside his plate and stood up, reaching mechanically for his hat, ready to go out, that she admitted to herself that if she wanted an explanation she must ask for it; or seemed to notice his movements, and even then it was only to say indifferently,

'Shall you be home to dinner? Or do you mean to stay at Drea's? is that a part of your new arrangements?'

'Nay, but, mother, I am sorry to have given you so much more trouble.

The fact is I--I over-slept myself this morning. When I came in last night I was more tired than I knew,' said Dino cheerfully.

'Ay, when you came in! When you did come! It was after ten o'clock when you brought home that blessed child, so worn out with the wind and what not that she fell asleep on my knee, bless her little heart!

before I had fairly time to get her clothes off. And after that I sat up for three hours in that chair, Dino. It was striking one by the Duomo clock before I went to bed.'

She turned to the dresser by the wall and began reaching down plate after plate, and looking at each one as she wiped it. 'I had this china before you were born; the signora Marchesa took me with her to choose it--and it was my wedding present from the Villa--sent down by one of the footmen the day after I was married. I was sitting by that window when it was brought in--a great heavy basket that the man could hardly lift upon the table--only your father helped him. And there was never a piece of it broken until you knocked down the saucer the day I asked you to help me with the cups. But it's ungrateful work taking care o' things that just end by being used by others who don't see any difference. There's a plenty o' people in the world have got brighter eyes for looking at their sweethearts with than for looking after their husband's house. Palmira tells me that my boy, my young master, is at home again, Dino?'

'Ay, signor Gasparo's here.'

'And went to see Sor Drea on his very first evening! He used to come to me. _Guarda questa_! But young men will be young men. And 'tis true that Andrea has sense enough to look after that girl of his.

She's given _you_ enough encouragement----'

'Mother!' said Dino in his severest voice; a voice which secretly awed her.

He faced around suddenly, and stood looking at her as she moved to and fro.

'Mother! it is not generous, it is not kind, to speak of Italia in that fashion. And you know it hurts me. I love her,' he said, his voice changing. 'Of course I love her. I don't care who knows that I love her. But encouragement! I don't know what you mean. Encouragement from Italia! She has never thought of such a thing; she would not know what you meant----'

'Eh, don't tell me, lad. I've been a girl myself. 'Tis a poor dog that doesn't know when he's wagging his own tail,' cried Catarina bitterly, stooping to wipe the dust off the leg of a chair with the corner of her ap.r.o.n. She made a busy pretence of it for a moment or two, and then her hands dropped helplessly; she stood up and looked at her tall son. 'An' so you love her;--you love that little girl! You never told me of it before, lad.'

'But, mother dear, you never asked me. I always thought you knew it.

It was plain enough. And how was I to guess you wanted to be told? I have never even told--her,' the young man said.

'And _she_ was to come first? Nay, 'tis but natural. The young birds build new nests. Ah, but, Dino! Dino! I've lost you. I've lost my own boy----'

Her voice broke: she turned abruptly away, and hid her gray head upon her clasped hands.

'But, mother dear,--dearest mother!'

He stood with one hand on her shoulder, looking down at her bowed head with a curiously-blended feeling of distress over her grief and impatience at its unreasonableness: 'Mother! After all, you must have expected it sooner or later: it is but natural----'

'Yes, lad. I know. 'Tis as you say: 'tis natural,' Catarina said meekly; and then she turned her face away again with a sob and a feeling of utter inevitable loneliness. How could the lad understand?

He was young, and she was growing old; and to him what was natural was easy, and to her it was hard. That was all the difference.

She swallowed something in her throat, a lump which seemed to choke her, and stood up. '_Poverino_! I won't tease you any more: don't be vexed with me, lad,' she said soothingly, looking into his perplexed face with a quivering smile. She put up her hand to brush off an imaginary speck of dust from his coat. 'Nay, 'tis no wonder if people love you. Go, my Dino, go to--her,' she said; and as Dino bent his head and kissed her, 'It's because I am sending him away,' she thought, bitterly enough.

'And how about Monte Nero, mother? The pilgrimage, you know. Italia was asking about it last night,' he said cheerfully, glad to see her beginning to accept things more placidly.

'Ay, lad, I'll think of it; but go now, go. I will not--I cannot--I mean, do as you please. Make all your plans, and I will help you carry them out. It's what I'm good for now, I suppose. I must learn not to stand in your way--and hers.'

'Mother!'

'I-- Don't mind me, my Dino. Don't be angry with your old mother, my own boy. It was only a--a surprise. I shall be all right when you come back; for you will come back to dinner, my Dino? I am good for that much: I can take care of you still.'

She followed him to the door, and then went and stood by the open window, shading her eyes from the bright March sun, to watch him as he pa.s.sed down the street. Perhaps he would turn his head and look up.

But no. From that height she could not distinguish his face; she felt a pang of idle regret at the thought; he seemed to get so soon beyond her reach. After a while she went into her son's room, and opened all his drawers, and began to turn over his possessions. She folded an old coat which she found on the back of a chair: she folded it carefully.

I am not sure that she did not kiss it. Everything belonging to him with which she had anything to do was kept in the most scrupulous order, and she wanted to find something to mend, some work which she could do for him.

There was a small faded photograph, a portrait of his father, hanging over the young man's bed. She went and looked at it as it hung against the wall, then took it down and stood with it in her hand. It was the likeness of a man who had been in every way a disappointment in her life; but she was not thinking of that now. The faded face looked at her out of the past with its easy confident smile. She only remembered the first year or two after her marriage, and her young husband's kindness to her, and his first pride and pleasure in their boy. 'If _he_ had not gone there would have been some one left to understand,'

she thought. Her own personal life seemed ended: she gazed with the strangest pang of regret and companionship at this fading likeness of the dead face she had loved in her youth. What if afterwards he had neglected her? At least he had come to her once of his own accord, for her own sake--and they had been young together.

She felt herself quite alone, this austere and self-contained woman--alone in a world which could never change for the better now; in which each new morning would only bring new deprivations in place of fresh joys.

Dino had dressed himself in workman's clothes that morning. Drea did not expect him yet, but it was just possible there might be something which wanted doing in the boat. It was such a bright fresh morning after the storm; a morning to make young hearts beat lightly and young blood run fast with a quick sense and joy of dear life. But as he turned mechanically down the busy Via Grande he saw nothing of all this. His mother's words, the way in which she had taken it for granted that if he loved Italia, Italia must love him, and how there could be but one possible solution to their lives, all that would have been so natural, so full of hope and radiant happiness last month, last week--last week? only yesterday, only one day ago! And now; oh, the bitter irony of fate! it was he himself who had forged the chain which bound him. He cursed his own folly. Why could he not have been contented? was he not deeply enough involved before then? why could he not have let that last crowning piece of madness alone?

The look of the commonplace crowd around him, the presence of those scores of hurrying, interested, contented, busy men, the very look of the shop windows, all things seemed to conspire together to discredit and ridicule the devoted side, the dramatic side, the only possible side, of his situation. In a world like this--a world of common-sense and convenience and keen enjoyments, a world of sunlight and youth and possibilities, to choose deliberately, at four-and-twenty, to throw away all one's future, all one's love, all one's life in doing--_that_.

d.a.m.n it! Even to himself he would never mention that accursed plan, he would never think of it.

He thrust his hands deeper into the great pockets of his rough jacket, and threw up his head defiantly, as he glanced about him. And each house he pa.s.sed, each soldier, each policeman, each lamp-post even--every visible sign of peace and law and order--seemed a tangible ironical comment on his folly. And why, in G.o.d's name, had he done this thing? He remembered so well that evening--it was after their demonstration had been dispersed by the police, and he was hot with a sense of battle, and wild with excitement, with bitter baffled indignation. It had seemed so easy a thing then to pledge away his future. He had done it without consulting Valdez--suddenly, madly, on the desperate impulse of the moment. He had done it in a moment of mental crisis; because he was imaginative, because he believed in the cause, heart and soul, because he had been a fool. And as he said that to himself some old words of Pietro Valdez came back to him with sudden force out of some old forgotten talk of theirs. 'How can any one believe in your highest emotions?' he heard the familiar voice asking him, 'how can you expect any one to believe in your highest emotions if you question them yourself?'

The softest wind blew in his face and he did not feel it, the sunlight rested on him, the sky was blue and white; but he had ceased to look even at the pa.s.sers-by. He felt like a man awakened from a dream, when a hand touched him, and a voice spoke in his ear, and he looked up and recognised the Marchese Gasparo.

'Hallo, old boy, are you asleep? are you dreaming? what the devil is the matter with you?'