Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida Part 35

He was surprised to see his dog lie quiet on the steps.

"Is he there?" he cried instinctively to the creature, which rose and came to greet him.

There was no sound anywhere.

Bruno pushed his door open.

The house was empty.

He went out again and shouted to the air.

The echo from the mountain above was all his answer. When that died away the old silence of the hills was unbroken.

He returned and took the food and the little rose-tree out of his cart.

He had bought them with eagerness, and with that tenderness which was in him, and for which dead Dina had loved him to her hurt. He had now no pleasure in them. A bitter disappointment flung its chill upon him.

Disappointment is man's most frequent visitor--the uninvited guest most sure to come; he ought to be well used to it; yet he can never get familiar.

Bruno ought to have learned never to hope.

But his temper was courageous and sanguine: such madmen hope on to the very end.

He put the things down on the settle, and went to put up the mule. The little rose-tree had been too roughly blown in the windy afternoon; its flowers were falling, and some soon strewed the floor.

Bruno looked at it when he entered.

It hurt him; as the star Argol had done.

He covered the food with a cloth, and set the flower out of the draught.

Then he went to see his sheep.

There was no train by the seaway from Rome until night. Signa would not come that way now, since he had to be in the town for the evening.

"He will come after the theatre," Bruno said to himself, and tried to get the hours away by work. He did not think of going into the city again himself. He was too proud to go and see a thing he had never been summoned to; too proud to stand outside the doors and stare with the crowd while Pippa's son was honoured within.

Besides, he could not have left the lambs all a long winter's night; and the house all unguarded; and n.o.body there to give counsel to the poor mute simpleton whom he had now to tend his beasts.

"He will come after the theatre," he said.

The evening seemed very long.

The late night came. Bruno set his door open, cold though it was; so that he should catch the earliest sound of footsteps. The boy, no doubt, he thought, would drive to the foot of the hill, and walk the rest.

It was a clear night after the rain of many days.

He could see the lights of the city in the plain fourteen miles or so away.

What was doing down there?

It seemed strange;--Signa being welcomed there, and he himself knowing nothing--only hearing a stray word or two by chance.

Once or twice in his younger days he had seen the city in gala over some great artist it delighted to honour; he could imagine the scene and fashion of it all well enough; he did not want to be noticed in it, only he would have liked to have been told, and to have gone down and seen it, quietly wrapped in his cloak, amongst the throng.

That was how he would have gone, had he been told.

He set the supper out as well as he could, and put wine ready, and the rose-tree in the midst. In the lamplight the little feast did not look so badly.

He wove wicker-work round some uncovered flasks by way of doing something. The bitter wind blew in; he did not mind that; his ear was strained to listen. Midnight pa.s.sed. The wind had blown his lamp out. He lighted two great lanthorns, and hung them up against the doorposts; it was so dark upon the hills.

One hour went; another; then another. There was no sound. When yet another pa.s.sed, and it was four of the clock, he said:

"He will not come to-night. No doubt they kept him late, and he was too tired. He will be here by sunrise."

He threw himself on his bed for a little time, and closed the door. But he left the lanthorns hanging outside; on the chance.

He slept little; he was up while it was still dark, and the robins were beginning their first twittering notes.

"He will be here to breakfast," he said to himself, and he left the table untouched, only opening the shutters so that when day came it should touch the rose at once and wake it up; it looked so drooping, as though it felt the cold.

Then he went and saw to his beasts and to his work.

The sun leapt up in the cold, broad, white skies. Signa did not come with it.

The light brightened. The day grew. Noon brought its hour of rest.

The table still stood unused. The rose-leaves had fallen in a little crimson pool upon it. Bruno sat down on the bench by the door, not having broken his fast.

"They are keeping him in the town," he thought. "He will come later."

He sat still a few moments, but he did not eat.

In a little while he heard a step on the dead winter leaves and tufts of rosemary. He sprang erect; his eyes brightened; his face changed. He went forward eagerly:

"Signa!--my dear!--at last!"

He only saw under the leafless maples and brown vine tendrils a young man that he had never seen, who stopped before him breathing quickly from the steepness of the ascent.

"I was to bring this to you," he said, holding out a long gun in its case. "And to tell you that he, the youth they all talk of--Signa--went back to Rome this morning; had no time to come, but sends you this, with his dear love and greeting, and will write from Rome to-night. Ah, Lord!

There was such fuss with him in the city. He was taken to the foreign princes, and then the people!--if you had heard them!--all the street rang with the cheering. This morning he could hardly get away for all the crowd there was. I am only a messenger. I should be glad of wine.

Your hill is steep."

Bruno took the gun from him, and put out a flask of his own wine on the threshold; then shut close the door.

It was such a weapon as he had coveted all his life long, seeing such in gunsmiths' windows and the halls of n.o.blemen: a breech-loader, of foreign make, beautifully mounted and inlaid with silver.

He sat still a little while, the gun lying on his knees; there was a great darkness on his face. Then he gripped it in both hands, the b.u.t.t in one, the barrel in the other, and dashed the centre of it down across the round of his great grindstone.