Vestigia. Vol. II.

There was a letter waiting at home for Dino. 'It stands there on the dresser; give it to your brother, child. One of Lucia's little nephews brought it, maybe half an hour after you were gone,' Sora Catarina said.

'It was Beppi brought it, Dino. He came with it on his way to school. He likes going to school; I asked him, and he said, "Yes." Mother, why don't I go to school? I wish I went to school,' said Palmira, in a complaining tone.

'School indeed! and a nice place you would find it, bambina mia. Nay, you be content to stay where you are looked after and get plenty to eat. Gesu Maria! 'tis all very well for such as Lucia's nipotini, poor children—'twill maybe take their minds off their hunger, learning to read. But learning's a poor sauce to empty plates in my opinion.'

'Doesn't Beppi have anything to eat but empty plates?' asked Palmira, opening wide her eyes. She added, after a moment's reflection, 'But you gave him some white bread to-day, mother. I saw you do it.'

'Nay, eat your dinner, child, and talk afterwards. Don't you see your brother is reading?' said Sora Catarina, in a lowered tone, passing her two hands over the little girl's hair under pretence of adjusting her pinafore.

The letter was from Valdez. All the time he had spent in walking home Dino had been thinking of Valdez, planning about him, rehearsing in his own mind the words of some wild appeal which was to free him once for all from the intolerable burden laid upon his life. Last night seemed so far away. He had passed through a whole world of emotion since then. He had put Italia between himself and his promises to those men; he had made himself responsible for her happiness, and it was impossible, even Valdez with all his fanaticism must see that—it was impossible she should be made to suffer for him. Out-of-doors there, looking at Maso's good-natured simple face, with old Drea's cheery voice in his ears, it had somehow seemed such an easy natural thing that matters should arrange themselves. But this note was like a death-warrant. Before he opened it he knew there was no hope: the shadow had closed around him.

There were but three lines:

'I have reason to fear we are watched. Do not try to see, or communicate with, me until you hear again. Be prudent and patient: you will hear in good time. The child who brings this lives in my house, and is a safe messenger.'

There was no signature.

Dino crushed the note up in his hand with an impulse of personal enmity. He turned away from the window and took his seat at the table without a word, but no effort of self-control could keep his lips from turning white, or alter the fixed look of pain about his eyes.

'The letter was from Pietro Valdez, surely? Was it bad news, figliuolo? What has happened, in the name of all the blessed saints!' said Sora Catarina, clasping her hands and looking at him.

He made an effort to smile as he said, 'Nothing, mother; it's nothing. Valdez only writes to say I shall not see him; he will be busy for a day or two.'

'And is it not seeing that man could make your face go the colour of a piece of linen bleaching in the sun? Nay, figliuolo mio, I am not one of those people who think they are seeing through a wall when all the time they are looking at their own reflections in a looking-glass. 'Tis nothing an old man could write you would turn your face that colour.' She lowered her voice. 'Tell me the truth, Dino. You have been having a quarrel with Italia?'

'No, indeed, mother,' said Dino, pushing away his plate and standing up. He could not swallow the food before him. He could see that his mother was not convinced by his denial, but it was easier to leave her under any delusion rather than to submit longer to the worry of a cross-examination. He took refuge in saying, 'I am not well; my head aches. I don't want any dinner. I shall go and lie down.'

'Yes, my Dino, yes. Lie down. Santissima Vergine, that it may not be the fever!' said Sora Catarina, crossing herself devoutly.

She kept going to the door of his room to look at him at intervals all the afternoon. About six o'clock Maso called with a long message from old Drea. The Marchese Gasparo had hired the boat for a three days' trip to Viareggio. If Dino was coming, he was to be ready immediately: the wind was fair, and Drea proposed to start before seven. 'He said I was to tell you the boat would be back on Saturday night, in time for Monte Nero,' Maso concluded, looking carefully into the crown of his hat and shaking it, as though to assure himself that he had forgotten there no part of his commission.

He waited for Dino at the door, and they walked down to the pier together. Gasparo was standing smoking a cigar at the head of the steps under a gas-lamp. He nodded cheerfully to Dino. 'That's right, old fellow. Glad you are coming,' he said. The two men were with him whom Dino had seen at the door of the 'Giappone' that morning.

They seemed to have many friends at Viareggio. The Bella Maria was kept in constant readiness, for there was no telling at what hour a message might not come down from some neighbouring villa, to be followed shortly by a company of pleasure-seekers bound for a sail. On one occasion Dino saw a face he knew among the cloaked and furred figures whom Gasparo was handing so carefully on board.

There was an unsteady wind that afternoon, and the boat was heavily laden: it was some time before Dino could look away from his task of watching the uncertain half-filled sails, but when at last the breeze struck them fully and the Bella Maria ran out of harbour on a long smooth tack, he could not resist his wish to see if he too had been recognised.

The Contessa must have been watching him, for the moment he turned his head their eyes met. He took off his woollen cap hastily, without speaking. She kept her dark eyes fixed steadily upon him for a moment.

'You have taken my advice then? This is wiser than building barricades,' she said in a low voice.

She looked as if she might have added something more, but at that moment Gasparo, who was sitting beside her sheltering her from the sun by holding up her parasol,—Gasparo leaned forward and repeated some remark.

The Contessa laughed. 'You think so, vraiement? It is not my experience. I find it is not only the virtues which require a certain elbow-room in which comfortably to expand. Some people fight against their own selfishness in this world, but mostly they fight the selfishness of their neighbours.'

'And why not? After all, it's other people's selfishness that one objects to,' said Gasparo gaily.

'And that is only out of disinterestedness,' struck in another man, who had not yet spoken. 'You are too severe upon us, Contessa. One never tires of virtue.'

She lifted her delicate eyebrows inquiringly.

'Well—not of other people's virtue: one tires of one's own perhaps.'

'But it's so seldom one has the chance of that,' added Gasparo lightly, pulling with one hand at the fringe of the big parasol. He had distinctly heard what had been said to Dino; but now, as his eye rested upon him, he nodded in a half-careless, half-friendly manner. 'She's going better now. We shall get more wind beyond the breakwater, eh, lad?'

'Yes, sir,' said Dino, putting on his cap again and going forward to coil away a loose rope.

Everything he had noticed in the last day or two made him feel safer about Gasparo. The young Marchese was an excellent sailor; he was absorbed in his present amusement; the two young men had not exchanged a word unconnected with the management of the boat.

Those three last days had seemed to Dino to pass like a dream. After his sedentary habits of life between the four walls of an office, the mere fact of being always out-of-doors and always actively employed would have sufficed to change all his impressions. He was intoxicated with fresh air, with sunlight, and the exhilarating sense of energetic work. 'There's no life like it, lad; no life like it,' old Drea told him more than once. 'Other men may make a better living, I'm not denying it; but to be content with what one gets in this world is to be the master of it. When you're as old as I am you'll find that you can't put one foot in two shoes, boy; it's a good plan to know what you want and be contented with it when you've got it—a rare good plan.'

'If only wanting were enough to get it,' said Dino bitterly.

'Lad, lad! Bisogna dar tempo al tempo—give time time enough to work in. But you youngsters are all alike; you expect to smell fried fish before the nets are even cast into the water.'

'That 'ud be a poor look-out for supper,' observed silent Maso with a grin.

'What! were you listening to what I was saying? Then I'm bound you'll be whistling for a wind before long, my boy;—you know the old saying, when you see a donkey listening it's a sign the weather is changing,' retorted old Drea, shifting his pipe in his mouth and giving vent to a dry chuckle.

But presently, as Maso moved away, Dino looking up found the old man's keenly-inquiring glance fixed full upon him.

'We've known each other a good many years, and each of us knows pretty well what timber the other's boat is built of. Without wasting breath, boy,—is there anything troubling you?'

Dino doubled up his fist and struck one of the rowlocks tighter into its place. 'Oh! every one is more or less troubled,' he said evasively.

'Ay; but there's a difference, there's a difference, boy. Little worries, Lord bless you! they're everywhere. And they're like a grain o' sand in your eye, no use to any mortal man, out or in. But real trouble's a different thing. I'm not saying there's no use in it, or even that a man ought to hope to escape it; it's only a fool would expect the wind always to be blowing from the same point o' the compass. And a real sorrow—an old sorrow—I've known it to act like ballast. It's heavy; ay; but it trims the boat. There's many a man wouldn't sail so straight about his day's work if there wasn't some dead weight o' that sort at his heart to steady him.'

He was silent for a moment, and then once more he looked with a kindly affectionate glance at the young man's flushed and averted face. 'I'm not asking for more than you want to tell, lad. When a real friend has got two eyes to look at you with, sometimes the best service he can do you is to keep one o' them shut. There's nothing easier than to sail when the right wind's blowing; you'll tell me all about it fast enough when the time comes. Andiamo! corraggio, ragazzo! It's a poor business looking at the sun with a cloudy face.'

He gave a searching look at the horizon, 'We'll be in in half an hour more if the wind holds—we'll have her snug in harbour before sunset. And then, hey! for a clear sky to-morrow and a day at Monte Nero. To-morrow'll be the finest day we've had this week, and I'm glad o't, I'm glad o't. I don't like having my little girl disappointed.' He turned his head towards the sunny semicircle of houses of the distant city. 'She'll be waiting there now to see us come in, che Dio la benedica!'

Dino, too, was secretly preoccupied with the prospect of that approaching meeting. He was the first to see her as they ran the long oars out to pull the boat in across the smooth water of the inner port. He saw her scarlet handkerchief, a spot of colour a long way off beneath the shadow of the bridge. She was standing in the same place as when he had last seen her, and it was like a good omen that he should have been the first to discover her at that distance.

She spoke first of all to her father, but as she put her little hand into his Dino was exquisitely conscious of the quick tremor of joy which made her heart beat at his touch. There was irresistible delight in the mere fact of being near her. And there was no lack of brightness now in the face which turned towards her, or in the voice which wished her 'Good-night!'

'Until to-morrow, Dino,' she said, following him to the foot of the stone steps.

'A domani, cara!'

There was a bright fire and a welcome waiting for him in the old room at home. He stood before the blaze talking for several moments before he crossed the room to look at the shelf above the dresser where the letters were put.

'Are you expecting anything? There are no letters for you, my Dino; no, not even one little letter. Are you sorry? Do you mind?' Palmira asked, rather anxiously.

He stooped to kiss her. 'No, little one. I was only looking. I don't really want it at all,' he said laughingly.

It seemed like another good omen that there should be no news from Valdez.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE WAY UP.

The small stone-paved piazza of Monte Nero was crowded with men, women, and children, gathered together for the yearly pilgrimage of the Madonna. On one side of the square a flight of stone steps led up to the door of the church: the heavy leather curtain was rolled up half its length and fastened back to be out of the way of the coming procession; and massive wreaths of flowers and fruit swung from cornice to cornice above the open door. It was too early in the year as yet for many bright-coloured flowers, but the wreaths were white with the bloom of the first almond trees that had blossomed, and long rows of ripe oranges and lemons, threaded like beads upon a cord, were fastened in festoons about the old gray stones. The gold and softest pinky white looked very pretty hanging high up in the afternoon sunlight above the heads of the people.

It wanted a good hour and a half yet to the time appointed for the procession, and the cafe which stood on the opposite side of the square, and the open-air booths which clustered about its lower end, were alike full of eager, laughing, pushing, hungry holiday-making folk. The most correct place to be recognised in by one's friends was, doubtless, at one of those small green tables in the shade in front of the caffettiere's; but for that matter there were people enough everywhere, people all over the place, not to mention the two constant streams, one ascending and one returning, up and down, the worn old steps of the church. These were composed for the most part of women, leading small dressed-up children by the hand. The men were content to wait outside until the church bell itself should put an indisputable end to the little friendly glasses of bitter vermouth and the gossip. They stood about in groups, a sunburned hardy lot of fishermen and sailors, for the Santissima Madonna of Monte Nero is known to be the especial friend and patron of seafaring men; the church is crowded with votive offerings, rude pictures of sinking barks and drowning men, and always, in the corner, the glorified vision of the Virgin descending upon the waters to bless and save. The ceilings of some of the side chapels are completely hidden from view by rows of these representations.

Monte Nero itself can hardly be said to deserve its name of a mountain, being nothing in fact but a high grass-grown hill, rising behind the city of Leghorn and commanding a superb view of the sea. Near the top the country presents the appearance of a succession of grassy downs, across which a narrow path takes a short cut from the winding carriage road to the summit, and at this particular moment Lucia and Italia were walking hand in hand along this pathway, while Dino followed on the grass at Italia's side. The old people had remained in the carretella with Palmira.

'I don't think much of your plan of chartering a ship to get out before the voyage is half over, children. But do as you like, ragazzi, do as you like. What, you too, Lucia? Nay, I gave you credit for more sense than that, my woman. You'll not find Sora Catarina here getting out of a comfortable carriage to walk up a devil of a hill.'

'But Lucia is perfectly right. Some one must go with Italia. It would not look well if she were to be met walking alone with a young man,' interposed Sora Catarina very decidedly.

'E—e—h, buon anima mia, the scandal would be bigger than the sin.'

Catarina looked at him a little scornfully. 'You were different once; long ago. I wonder if there is anything that you would really trouble yourself about now, Andrea?'

'Well, there's my little girl. There isn't much else, I suppose,' said Drea good-naturedly. 'You know the saying we have, we sailors,—a wide shoe and a full belly, and take the storms as they come. That's my way of thinking.'

'Ah,' murmured Catarina, drawing her shawl more closely about her.

They had been young together, these two. Catarina could remember a time when to be alone with her, as now, would have been the measure of happiness to the hopeful, ardent young lover whom the slow years had changed into this weather-beaten old man. To a woman's eyes there is always an atmosphere of youth left about any man who has made love to her, no matter how the years have passed since then. And it made no difference to her secret feeling of reproachfulness that she herself had perhaps much to answer for in this general lowering of Andrea's estimate of life. A woman betrays and remembers where a man betrays and forgets. And at that particular moment faithfulness seemed to Catarina to sum up all the virtues.

In autumn the morning freshness of the wood lingers late: there is something of the coolness of the dawn in the pine shadows long after the fruitful warmth has fallen upon the fields. And in some natures, growing old, there is left somewhat of this same touch of virginal freshness and charm. I think it is oftenest the case with women who have been unhappy in their youth—who have missed the placid midsummer fruition of content. They bear in their hearts an eternal unsatisfied belief in the spring.

She looked at Italia and Dino walking away across the sunny grass slopes: it seemed not so many years since she too had been walking there, going on the same errand to the same old church. She watched them with eyes grown bitter with a dreary sense of loss: it was like watching the mocking phantom of her own youth.

But to them the day seemed lengthening out into uncounted hours of pleasure. The sky was cloudless. The spring wind blowing over their faces held a magic of its own. 'Come and walk on the grass, Sora Lucia. Never mind the path—there is no place in the world like these downs. The air changes as it blows over the grass; it is like some one breathing; like a breath that comes and goes,' said Dino, taking off his hat and turning to face the wind. 'Look at the sea now. How far it is below us,' said Italia, stopping too and looking back.

'What a sea-bird it is,' he said, meeting her eyes with a smile of happy confidence. 'What would you do if you had to live inland, Italia?'

'Oh, I could not do it. I should stifle. I am always thirsty where I cannot hear the sound of the waves.'

'How can you possibly tell where you may have to live, figlia mia? It is true one does not go away from one's own town if one can help it, but a girl before she is married is like a bit of thistle-down, who can tell which way the wind will blow her?' asked Lucia in her subdued voice. She, too, was dressed for the festa, and her neat black gown contrasted with the blue and scarlet of the girl's holiday dress, much in the same fashion as her thin face, with its unvarying look of decent disappointment, served as a background for the young radiance of the face by her side. 'How can you tell whom your father will wish you to marry? It might be some one who came from a long way off,—like Dino's friend, the Signor Valdez, who lodges in our house. He comes from a country where they do not speak Italian, for all he looks so like a Christian.'

'I have not seen old Valdez lately,' Dino began.

If he wished to ask any questions Lucia spared him the trouble.

'He is a kind man that,—the blessed saints reward him,' she said, with a sudden fervour. 'And to think how long it took us to find it out,—and the world is hard enough, God knows, without one shutting one's mouth the days it rains comfits. But, via! we knew he was a stranger from over sea. What would you? when he said "buon giorno" or "felicissima notte" as one passed him on the stairs it was like a bear growling; it did not sound like real Italian. Many and many a day have I gone away to my work with the old nonna locked in our room, and my heart in my mouth, not knowing if it were better to leave her there, with all the children, and not a soul to go near them in case of fire. And me never so much as dreaming of asking Signor Pietro to stop sometimes when he passed the door to give them a look. Ah, he is a good heart, he is. And, as for his never speaking, well, there's evil talking enough in the world, God knows! a man can do worse things with his tongue than keep it quiet. As for those children, they are fairly bewitched; there's that Beppi, he follows Signor Pietro about like his shadow. It's Signor Pietro who pays now for his schooling, and such a bright lad as it is! You should have seen him the other day when Signor Pietro told him first about his going off on a journey. Nothing would content the boy but bringing back his geography book from the school to show the nonna all the places.'

'Does—does Pietro talk of going away, then?' asked Dino, his heart beating faster.

'See that, now! and you such friends. But I always knew that Signor Pietro could keep his own counsel. Perhaps it's a way they have over there in the countries he comes from. Yes, he is going away. To Pisa first, and then perhaps to Rome. He says he wants a holiday, and no wonder. Cose lunghe diventan serpe,—drag a thing out long enough and it becomes like a snake. And it's two years or more since he has had a day's outing from Leghorn.'

They had been sitting down to rest on the short dry turf as she talked, but now, as they rose to climb the last shoulder of the hill, her sharp black eyes were turned scrutinisingly upon Italia. She gave some slight ejaculation of surprise. 'Vergine Santissima! Italia, you have lost your ring—your beautiful ring. What a misfortune! Madonna mia, what a misfortune!

Italia blushed scarlet. 'No, I have not lost it. I did not put it on,' she answered hurriedly. And then, after a moment's consideration, 'Old things are best,' she said in her sweet full voice; 'I did not want a new gift,—I told my father I did not want it. He will keep it for me, he will give it to me to wear when I am married.'

'And you will wear it that day, my Italia?' asked Dino, looking at her and speaking in a very low tone, yielding yet this once more to the perilous delight of saying what he would have said, what he would have had the right to say, if only he could have hoped to escape from all the consequences of his past actions. The instinctive conviction that this proposed journey of Valdez's was in some way connected with the disposal of his own future gave Dino a still more intense longing to grasp at present happiness. He knew that he was acting ungenerously; yet, as the girl turned her face shyly towards him,—her red silk handkerchief tied about her head in peasant fashion made a soft shade about her temples and her little ears, coming down in front in a bright silken fold across her low forehead, hiding all her hair, and giving an almost Oriental look to the dark straight eyebrows and the dark lustrous eyes. The wind and the sun had brought a soft pink colour into her pale oval-shaped cheeks.

She was really looking very beautiful as she said, 'Why make plans for the future, my Dino? Surely we are very happy; we do not want things to change. The old things are the best. Why, even this pilgrimage to-day,—one would always care to come, of course, just to show the Holy Mother that one is grateful,—but it would be so different, it would be so sad, if we were to forget the other years that went before. This is the happiest year of them all, I know, yet I should not like not to have the memory of the times we have been here as little children. I like the old gate there at the top because that is the spot where we have always waited; I could open it myself quite easily, but I like to remember the days when it seemed to me wonderful that you could unfasten the lock. It is like that picture of my father's shipwreck,—you know, Dino,—the ex voto up there in the chapel. When I was a child I believed it had all happened exactly like that. Now I know it was painted by a man who has never even seen my father, but it makes no difference. I could never care for a fine new picture as I do for the old one.'

'Anima mia!' said Dino passionately, bending a little towards her, as she stood, leaning with folded hands against the old wooden gate. When she ceased speaking there was something almost childlike in the serene unconcern of her face. But there was nothing hard, nothing self-engrossed, in this insouciance of Italia's. It was merely the expression of a nature accustomed to a large and frank acceptance of daily life—a genuine indifference to petty devices. This fisherman's daughter, in her little cotton frock, had something in her of the wide-eyed serenity of an elder world; she had inherited from her father something of his cordial simplicity—'a princely disregard of little things.'

It was only a minute or so before the carretella overtook them by the gate: they all entered the crowded piazza together.

The three women hurried away to look after the room which had been promised them for their night's lodging, but only a very few minutes were past before they too were back in the piazza, for now the bells, which had been silent all afternoon, were pealing together with a short and merry stroke. The procession was about to begin.

Inside the dusky church there was an unwonted shuffling of little feet; a wavering of lights clutched by uncertain little hands; an anxious movement to and fro of black-robed frati, marshalling and adjusting the unruly lines of brown and flaxen heads. It was the children's part of the procession; and more than one woman in the crowd felt her heart swell and her eyes grow moist as she watched them, poveri angeli! A long broken line of small human creatures, in brightest holiday dress, and each with its burning taper, following the great golden Cross as it passed solemnly, borne on men's shoulders, out of the gloomy aisles, out under the wreaths of spring blossom, and down the steps into the warm afternoon light. That was perhaps the prettiest sight of all, as the twinkling tapers grew dim in the sunshine. And then came rows of young white-robed choristers, and the impassive faces of the officiating priests; the low sunlight burned like a jewel upon the tinselled stoles, and the reds and purples of the vestments were vivid and deep like the colour of garden flowers. The blue cloud of incense rose straight up, with scarcely a waver above the bent heads of the kneeling crowd, as the Blessed Sacrament was slowly carried around the piazza. The afternoon was windless, and the people so hushed, that even from the farther side of the square the priests' solemn chanting was distinctly audible, and the warning tinkle of the bell.

The last to descend the steps were a white-robed company of Brethren of the Miserecordia, with masked faces and hands hidden away under the long folds of their garments. They passed like a little company of the sheeted and forgotten dead, between the gay ranks of the holiday-makers; and, as they emerged from the shadows, the bells rang joyously overhead, a peal which set them rocking from side to side, in a visible triumph, in the old open belfry.

This was a sign that the procession was ended. There was an instant rush for the now empty church; there was just time to visit the holy pictures before supper, and if one had any especial prayer to offer, why, it was but natural to expect a little prompter attention from the saints, who might easily be supposed to be still looking down approvingly upon what was going on in their honour.

Drea and his party were among the first to re-enter the shadowy portal. There was scarcely light enough now in the side chapels to distinguish any unfamiliar object, but the old fisherman walked straight to where his own ex voto offering had hung these many years.

'Ah! that was a night, if you like; that was a night to remember!'

'Were you frightened, father?' said Italia, speaking in a whisper, not to disturb the people kneeling all about them, and asking the same question she had asked in this same place, at every recurring festa of the Blessed Madonna, since the first time she had been brought there, a small wide-eyed creature clinging to her father's hand.

'Nay, child, nay. It 'ud be a poor business if one's courage did not hold fast in the right place. It 'ud be like fastening one's boat up with a rotten cable, there'd be no depending upon anything then. But it was a night, that. A man who doesn't live at sea doesn't know the meaning of a prayer. Not that we had much time for speaking; but it seemed to come natural to think of the Holy Virgin then,—just as I thought of you, sleeping in your little bed.'

He looked at the picture again. 'Ay. We brought off the men and a fine bit of salvage; I mind me how pleased the old master was when I went up to the Villa to tell him about it. He was in his bed, I remember, and he wore a thing with a frill round his face, like a woman's night-cap. He was finely pleased. Everybody used to say he was going to leave me something in his will—something over and above my wages—as a sort of thank you. Your mother used to count upon it, poor soul! and so did I for a bit—I should have taken it kindly of the old master, I should, if he had remembered it at the last. We knew each other many a year.'

Dino and Italia exchanged a meaning glance.

'And if it were to come now, father? that would be better still; you could get a new boat,' she said, with a smile of irrepressible pleasure.

'Nay, child, the will was proven long ago. If there was ever any money coming to me—and the old master used to say there was, he used to say so—it stuck in the lawyers' hands years ago, like a boat aground. It never made any difference in my way o' remembering the old master. It would be but a poor look-out if one could serve the same master faithfully for twenty years—and I so used to him, knowing just what he meant when he swore the loudest—it 'ud be but a poor look-out if it only meant losing one's liking at the end of it. 'Tis a weak friendship that's so ready to call for the blessed sacraments at the first little knock on the head;—that's my way o' thinking.'

It was growing dusk, outside as well as in when they left the dim church, with its smell of fresh crushed bay-leaves underfoot mingling with the stale incense smoke, in a way which always carried Dino's memory back to very early days, when his father was still a trifle undecided about the exact relations of Church and State, and not unwilling to give his little boy the treat of staring at the lighted candles of the festa. The remembrance of his dead father's face rose vividly before him, and he lingered for an instant behind the others at the door, looking back.

As he hurried on to rejoin Italia old Drea touched him on the shoulder. 'The women will go to bed early, but I want you to come out a bit with me after supper, lad. I want to have a talk with you,' he said.

CHAPTER III.

BY THE LIGHT OF A TORCH.

They came out of their lodging, an hour later, into the deserted square. Lights were flaring in nearly every window, and in every house was to be heard the rattling of bottles and plates, and men's voices calling for more wine. But it was quiet enough out here, under the stars, in the empty piazza, where the last booths were being closed for the night.

They strolled over to the lower part of the square, and sat down upon the parapet; Drea was lighting his pipe.

'Look here, lad,' he began abruptly. The match in his hand went out, he felt for another in all his pockets, swearing the while at the mischance.

'May the devil fly away with all fine clothes, say I. For why should a man change his coat any more than his skin? I've worn this jacket every festa for the last twelve years, and I never yet could learn the trick o' its inside.'

'I've got lights,' said Dino.

'Nay, lad, where there's a way out there's a way in. I'll not be beat by it, thanking you kindly.'

He puffed at his pipe thoughtfully before he spoke again.

'It's a good many years now since the first time I came up here. Lord, how the years go! I mind me—— Your mother was a young woman then, Dino; no older than my little girl there, and I was a wild young fellow. Well, well; it seems more than one lifetime ago. I'm getting to be an old man now, my Dino. It gave me a start the other night to hear our young master speak of it, but it's true enough for all that.'

'Perhaps it is. But you never seem old to me, Sor Drea.'

'I've had my turn at it, lad; I can't complain. But maybe the Captain was right about my settling down; maybe he was right. I don't suppose I can be far off sixty. The old master lived to be seventy-two, he did; but then he lived like a wax image packed in cotton wool. And when a man's knocking about day and night, why, Death needs no lantern to find him.'

He took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it.

'There isn't much to leave behind me, lad. Only the old boat, and Italia. She'll miss me, will my little girl. She's wonderful fond of her old father. But you'll look after her; you'll be good to her, Dino?'

There was no answer.

'You see, it isn't as if I were leaving her to strangers. But I've been fond o' you, boy, since you were that high; when you used to come to play with her in the old boat, and I used to sit and watch you and wish I had a little curly-headed chap like you, that 'ud grow up and help me about the nets. My girl's a good girl; but a boy 'ud have been different.'

He was silent for a moment; then he put his pipe back into his mouth and gave a slight chuckle. 'There's no basket without its handle; that's sure enough. I've got 'em both now, girl and boy too. I was an old fool not to have thought of it sooner; but it's difficult to see that the children have grown up, when you remember them so high. Well, lad, I give you joy, I do. She's very fond o' you. There's only one thing I want to speak to you about. It's all plain sailing before you then.'

'And what is that?' asked Dino, very quietly.

His face was in shadow, but there was that in his voice which startled the old man with a foreboding of coming trouble. He leaned forward, peering anxiously into the darkness. 'Eh? what's that, lad, what's that you're saying?'

'You say there is one thing you wish to speak to me about before—before I can be affianced to Italia. I ask you what it is.'

'Nay, my Dino, I said nought about being affianced, if that's what's troubling you. Not but what I could easily find another husband for her; there's Maso, now; as honest a lad as ever hauled at a rope, and a good bit o' money too, all in the bank. But what does that matter? I've never promised her to you; but it would be but a poor sort o' friendship that only depended upon words. I've done more than give you my promise, lad; I've trusted you, I have.'

'Good God!' said Dino, under his breath, looking up with blank eyes at the clear starlit sky above him.

'There's no need for many words to settle it.' He hesitated; and then went on with sudden fluency as if the long meditated speech were forcing its own way out. 'See here, lad. It's not so much more than a week since you lost your place because o' that infernal tomfoolery of a procession. I'm not casting it up at you, my boy; not I. But there 'tis; you made a mistake. It might have been a worse one, for you meant no harm, and as things go it's all turned out for the best. I wouldn't have cared to marry my little girl to a writing fellow, and you've got the make of a sailor in you, lad; I always said it. When God Almighty shuts one door in an honest man's face, if you look about you you'll see He's opened another. But it might ha' turned out different.'

He lowered his voice, and added: 'I don't blame you, but I've kept my ears open, and there are things said about you that I don't like; I don't like. When a man lets his net down to the bottom he's sure to catch mud. I saw your father do it. He called himself a republican too. You must give it up, my Dino.'

'I can't do that,' said Dino, in a very low voice.

The words implied so much to himself that he could scarcely believe in the reality of things—he felt involved in the fantastic irony of a dream—when Drea burst out laughing, good-naturedly.

'Why, lad, you don't understand me? Where are your wits? I am speaking Italian, mi pare. It isn't to oblige me I want you to give up that confounded club of yours, and all the nonsense that goes with it. It's so that you can marry Italia. Why, lad, one would think that I was torturing you instead of telling you how to marry your sweetheart. You one o' those damned radical rogues, my Dino, the little chap I taught how to handle an oar? Come, come, lad, drop the nonsense. It's being shut up between four walls that put it into you, I'll go bail. Politics! Lord bless you! a capful o' wind will soon blow 'em out of you. They're like weevils in a biscuit, they eat all the good; you can't get rid o' them too quickly.'

'Drea, it is you who will not understand. You are unjust; you have always been unjust to my father. But his ideas are mine. I will not——' he stopped, with a horrible sense of sinking at his heart. What were these ideas to which he professed himself so willing to sacrifice all the rest? But it was imperatively necessary to make Drea understand the situation. 'I cannot give up my—my convictions. For no reason in the world. Not even to marry Italia.'

There was an instant of terrible silence.

'Are you mad, boy?' demanded Drea, in a sort of subdued growl.

'I am not mad,' Dino answered.

It was a relief to look forward to an explosion of the old man's anger; anything—anything rather than that tone of affectionate trust.

'I am not mad. I don't know why I'm not. I'm unhappy enough for that, or for anything else,' he said, wearily.

'Unhappy——!'

The old man checked himself, breathing hard.

One of the last vendors of cakes and sweetmeats had gone, leaving his torch of tarred stick to flare itself away in the empty piazza. Drea sat rigid, his eyes fixed upon that spot of light. But he was too deeply moved to keep quiet: the old habit of affection was strong upon him; it was stronger than his pride. 'I would not have believed it of you, Dino. But you'll think better of it, lad; you'll think better of it. One thinks that one has only to pick and choose in life when one is young. When a boat is running straight before the wind any fool can steer her. Later on you begin to find out that things have their own consequences; you might as well ask for a fish without its bones as for a life without trouble. I didn't expect this, though. If it were anybody but you, lad; you that I've knowed from a boy.'

'I—I can't stand this,' said Dino, huskily.

He got up to his feet and walked away a few paces. The old man followed him.

'Lad!——'

He laid his heavy hand upon Dino's shoulder. ''Tis easier to make wounds than to heal 'em. I don't want to be hard on you, God knows. 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 God,' 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 passionate inarticulate ejaculation 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'ÂME

The masses 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 passed 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 passed 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 passionate despair.

A quiver passed 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 noble 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 passionate 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.

*****

The air was very fresh and cool. The early morning dew was lying thickly on the soft powdery dust of the high road, and on the short crisp turf of the downs. As Dino reached the turning in the path the first red light of the rising sun touched the black belfry above the church, and glittered here and there on some of the higher windows in the village. Far below him, seen between the folding of the downs, a white mist was lying over the motionless gray plain of the sea.

Afterwards, he could never remember very distinctly what he had done with himself that day. There was nothing to call him back to Leghorn. There seemed nothing to call him back anywhere. Until Valdez should summon him, he was powerless to act: had he not committed himself, his life, his future, had he not delivered it all over, bound hand and foot, into the inexorable grasp of those men? And what did it matter how or when it was disposed of?

For the moment, he felt so indifferent to all that concerned himself that, had Valdez been there before him, he would not have asked him a single question. That he was to forfeit his life in this proposed attempt was so much a foregone conclusion he did not even think of it. He could have sworn that he had never thought of it once since that first branding instant of revelation; but the conviction of it had eaten its way into him until it had become a part of his slightest, most involuntary action. When he spoke of 'next year,' 'next month,' when he used the very word 'to-morrow,' he checked himself like a man on the verge of betraying a secret; it seemed to him so incredible that he alone, among all the living, breathing creatures about him, should stand unobserved, encompassed by the very shadow of death. When his mother looked at him suddenly he felt that she must read his sentence on his face. At times he was filled with a dull wonder at their blindness; it was like slowly sinking in a quicksand while they stood near, looking on with smiling eyes.

Scarcely more than a week had passed since the blow first struck him. He was, as yet, benumbed, paralyzed by the icy clasp of the inevitable. He was isolated; cut off suddenly from all his past; the possibility of revolt had not yet occurred to him; the craving for life, mere life, had not awakened; all his experiences had changed at the same moment; he had not had time to grow accustomed to the new conditions, to realise the inextricable inescapable claims of habit. He was like a man shipwrecked, and keeping a precarious footing upon some slippery rock in mid-ocean; his actions, his preoccupations, were so many temporary measures. He was engrossed in the present precisely because he had no future.

Could he have been asked, that is, more or less, the account he would have given of himself. But in truth, he did not realise the situation. And how could he?—while the young blood ran easily and warmly in his veins, and the morning air tasted freshly, and there was no sense of physical effort in scaling the steepest crest of these hills. The very fulness of his life deceived him. He thought himself resigned to lose all because he could not—he was incapable of comprehending the final loss of anything. For the present, his youth, his sense of vitality, were lying dormant, silenced and motionless like that sleeping sea.

But indeed he was not conscious of himself this morning. He walked for hours, steadily, determinedly; stopping at the top of every hill to look back at the country beneath him with a blank mechanical stare. He could never remember of what he had been thinking, or if he had been thinking of anything at all. There was nothing left of this day in his memory but a confused recollection of wide grassy spaces where the wind was the only thing living, and the face of a shepherd to whom he spoke about mid-day, and the sight of many fields planted with vines.

The man's face came back to him, later, a vivid and detached image, like the fragment of a fever dream. It was after twelve o'clock when Dino passed him, sitting on the side of a hill, eating his dinner of sour black bread, with his sheep scattered about him, and his dog lying at his feet. Dino might have passed without seeing him had it not been for the dog, who started up, growling. And then, at sight of the bread, the young man remembered suddenly that he had not tasted food that day. The shepherd had merely lifted his eyes for a moment, but without speaking or interrupting his meal. Dino threw himself on the sun-warmed grass a few paces farther on; in the very action of lying down he realised his fatigue. He shut his eyes for an instant or two, then he said with some impatience:

'Eh, buon' uomo! are you accustomed to so many strangers, then, that you hav'n't a single word left to say?'

There was a perceptible pause, and then, 'Are you speaking to me, sir?' the man inquired slowly.

Dino laughed.

'My good fellow, do you suppose I am talking to your dog? He did his best by barking; do you think I expected him also to wish me good morning?'

The shepherd looked at him reflectively. It was a strange idea, but then people who came from a distance often expected strange things to happen. He turned his eyes slowly upon the dog; there was something reassuringly unchangeable in the cock of that ear and the accustomed wag of that stumpy tail.

'He does not speak. È un cane', he remarked tranquilly.

'And so am I, or at least I am bestia, which is all very much the same thing, for not telling you sooner that I am hungry. I am very hungry. I've eaten nothing all day. Will you give me a piece of your bread?'

He spoke slowly and clearly, and the familiar words found an immediate response. The man stooped forward, drew the long knife out of the leathern sheath which hung from his waist under the sheepskin cloak, and placing his loaf of bread between his feet on the ground before him, he cut it into two pieces. He handed one of them to Dino.

The young man looked at him with a bright smile breaking like light across his face. 'I can't pay you for it. I have not a soldo in my pocket.'

The man continued to hold out the lump of bread.

'Ye said ye was hungry,' he observed presently, and then, as Dino took the loaf with a quick 'Thank you,' his countenance brightened. Here at last was something intelligible. He watched the disappearance of the black morsel with a feeling of sympathy, which was shared in another degree by the bright-eyed mongrel at his feet.

When the last crumb was finished he rose slowly and moved away a few paces to where a patch of dark furze bushes made a cool hiding-place for a small wooden keg of spring water. He brought the little barrel to Dino under his arm, and held it for him with both hands, while the young man took a long drink with his lips against the bung-hole. Then the shepherd drank also, while his dog fawned thirstily at his feet.

'What good water. Do you bring it up here with you?' Dino asked.

The other nodded his head affirmatively.

'It comes from down there. From the Padrone's well in the courtyard.

'And who is the Padrone?' Dino questioned lazily. The food and drink had rested him. He lay on his back on the warm turf with half-shut eyes. A vague soft wind wandered over the grass, and caressed his face and hair; all about him on the hill-side was a small continuous sound of tinkling bells, and the steady crop, cropping of the sheep. 'Who is your Padrone?' he repeated in a sleepy voice.

The man looked at him in a slow puzzled way. 'Mah! ... è il Padrone nostro,' he said after a pause.

He thrust the iron end of his long shepherd's staff into the ground, and leaned upon it with both hands. His face was of the serious Dantesque-Florentine type: a puritanic face, with pointed beard and long straight black hair. He kept his hands spread out flat, resting his weight upon the palms of them; the finger-nails showed like white spots in contrast to the sun-burned skin.

'He is very rich, our Padrone,' he added slowly, after a longer interval. 'He has one hundred and forty thousand francs of his own, l'una sull' altra.' He stared at the ground as if he saw the money lying there in piles: 'Cento quaranta mille lire, l'una sull' altra.' For fully half an hour he did not speak again.

Dino lay upon the grass and watched him. An insane desire, a fantastic whim, born of no conceivable reason, prompted him to inform this half-brutalised peasant of his real object and intentions. He was seized with a wild craving to explain it all, to tell the shepherd who he was, what he proposed to do, and how he—he, Dino de' Rossi,—that young fellow lying on his back in the sun, that idler in a workman's dress, without a soldo in his pocket, was in very truth a messenger of Fate, a condemned man, the future assassin of a king.

He looked at the silly sheep all about him, at the peaceful country, at the peasant's patient and serious face. The grim humour of the situation filled him with a sort of desperate inhuman enjoyment. He felt possessed of a mocking devil. He opened his lips to speak, and then, quite suddenly, he rolled over on his face and lay there motionless for many minutes, with his head buried in his arms. He was asking himself if he were going mad.

Presently he rose to his feet. Before leaving he thrust his hand into the pocket of his coat and brought out a handful of cigars.

'Take these, my good fellow. I wish I had something else to give you. But if you cut them up with your knife you can smoke the tobacco in that pipe of yours.'

The shepherd put out his hand, examined the gift deliberately, then thrust it inside his jacket without speaking.

'Addio, buon' uomo.'

'Addio!'

When Dino had got a dozen paces off the other man moved, and called upon him to stop.

'Well, what is it?'

'Grazie, sapete!' the shepherd said, and held up one of the cigars. Dino waved his hand in recognition.

'Addio, signore!'

'Addio!'

The moment that spot where he had tasted human companionship was hidden from him by a folding of the hill, instantly, the old spell was upon him. But he walked less quickly now than in the morning; the recollection of Drea's words was farther away; the thought of Italia oppressed his heart with a sort of physical pain; he could feel it; but the first unbearable moment of anguish was over, there was a certain languor of exhaustion mingling with all his sensations.

About six o'clock he found himself near the path by which they had crossed the field on the way to the pilgrimage yesterday. Some instinct told him that Italia would not pass that way again. He followed the track to the edge of the high road. There was a plantation of young grape-vines on the opposite side of the highway; he crossed over and lay down among the long weeds and grass at the bottom of the dry ditch.

He had not long to wait. Two or three vehicles passed him, cabs from Leghorn, and open carts, all crowded with the returning holiday-makers, and presently—here they were!

He saw Drea first; the old man sat in front beside the driver, his woollen cap was pulled down over his eyes; he looked neither to right nor left. The women were talking, Lucia holding a large green umbrella over them as if to shield them from the dust. Palmira was sitting at the back, her head resting against Italia's shoulder. The child said something, and as they passed Dino saw Italia turn her dear pale face to answer;—he saw her smile.

There was something in the action, in the mere fact of her smiling, which made him realise as never before all that her sweet love might have meant to him. He saw the detail of the coming years. Beyond the grief and the shock which he knew his end would bring to her, he looked forward; he saw her going on with life, growing older, growing happy again,—a new happiness, in which the old days had no share. The thought of Italia living without him; the vision of long days in summer when the sky would be as blue to her and the wind as sweet as in the past summers which had been theirs; the prophetic knowledge of what must be, of what would be, pressed slowly and heavily upon him, a horror of great darkness. Curiously enough, what he regretted most, what filled him with the most passionate sense of isolation and loss, were the very slightest details of life; the small familiar interests, the old childish remembrances, and little customs, and the young companionship of foolish joyous laughter. It all seemed so dear, so living to him now. And he too was so young.

Poor Dino! He sat there, twisting the long, tough weeds between his fingers without even seeing them, until the sound of approaching voices startled him. He looked up. There were two men walking among the vines, examining the fresh shoots. One was a labourer, the other a fat Tuscan propriétaire, dressed in a sort of loose gray jacket, like a dressing-gown; he had a gray cap on his head, and wore spectacles.

Dino watched him idly for a moment, the idea passing through his mind that this was probably the rich Padrone of the sheep he had left behind him on the hill-side.

After a while the men moved away, and then the silence became unbearable. Dino felt that he ought to be going back to Leghorn, he felt the claim of Sora Catarina's anxiety; but he could not decide to go back among all those people, who knew him and who would speak to him.

He crossed over the field again, and strolled off to the edge of the down. The moon was rising above the sea. Presently it appeared over the edge of the great grassy slope, white, spent, a visionary thing. The luminous sky was still full of a pink glow in the west; behind this ghostly visitant it had turned to an opaque blue. The great shoulder of the hill made a gray surface of foreground.

Little by little the colour came creeping back into the grass, the moon grew metallic in texture, first golden, then of a coppery red; the down immediately beneath it telling in this half light as a mass of green washed with bronze. Here and there the deep shadow of a patch of gorse made a fantastically-shaped spot of darkness upon the turf. The quick flight of a whirring insect was distinctly audible in this still air; now and then, from very far off, sounded the cry of some belated bird.

Over moving water the moon may be an enchantress, a weaver of potent spells, but it is on the downs she dominates—the still mistress of the night, of the lonely empty country and the lonely empty sky.

Yet Dino noted nothing of the beauty around him. He was not in despair now, he was not even suffering; he was worn out, inert, it was as if the apathy of death had fallen upon his soul.

CHAPTER V.

CHOOSING.

Four days later the Marchese Gasparo was on his way to Andrea's boat-house.

There was no brighter appearance in the street that day than the countenance of this young soldier as he walked briskly along, with alert glances, his head well up, and his mind full of pleasant thoughts, which every now and then made his handsome face flush with an unconscious gleam of interest and amusement. Life was full of interesting things to Gasparo—and flattering things as well. Only this morning he had heard from the Colonel of his regiment that he had been selected to act as one of the King's body-guard on the occasion of the approaching review at Rome. He had the letter now in his pocket. His mother, too, had been unexpectedly generous of late in the matter of supplies; at the present moment he had quite a little stock of crisp bank-notes carefully stowed away in that inner pocket. Altogether he felt himself in a brilliant and successful vein of luck.

It seemed almost a pity that so much confident good-humour should be exposed to any unwelcome shock or jar, and it was with a distinct feeling of annoyance that, as he turned out of the noisy Via Grande into the quieter expanse of the quay, his quick eyes recognised a familiar figure in the person of a short, middle-aged man coming slowly towards him.

They were too near to one another for any affectation of ignorance to seem possible. Gasparo looked sharply up and down the street, then, with a peremptory nod and a careless greeting of 'Well, Valdez!' attempted to pass on.

Unfortunately the driver of a heavy cart laden with white blocks of Carrara marble had also selected that especial moment in which to cross into one of the narrower streets. The road was completely blocked by the unwieldy mass of stone and the four straining white oxen. The two men would be forced to wait at the same corner; Gasparo took in the awkwardness of the situation at a glance.

'I hear that you have called three times at my house for the purpose of seeing me,' he said; 'I have no objection to your calling there, not in the least. That is a matter for you to settle with my servants who answer the door, But if you have any hope of the Contessa Paula taking you back on my recommendation, why, I may as well tell you now, my good man, that it was on my recommendation that you were dismissed.'

'So I understood from the signora Contessa herself,' Pietro Valdez answered quietly; 'and that is precisely why I did myself the honour to call upon you, Marchese Balbi. It interested me to know your reasons for what you had done.'

'And pray, what leads you to suppose that I should think of giving you a reason for whatever I may think fit to do?' Gasparo demanded, with a short, scornful laugh.

Valdez shrugged his heavy shoulders; he seemed to consider that the question required no answer. 'The signora Contessa Paula had engaged me as her music master at a fixed salary for six months. I gave her perfect satisfaction. It interests me to know what arguments you used to secure my dismissal,' he repeated, with absolute self-command.

'I might, if I had chosen, have told her that you were an insolent scoundrel. As it happens, your impertinent republican theories were quite sufficient. We do not choose to assist socialists to live; neither I nor my friends.'

Valdez bowed gravely. 'That is what I wished to know. I have only to thank you, sir, for the information.' Then he smiled. 'I did not know—I was not aware that you did me the honour of interesting yourself in my political convictions.'

Gasparo's look of negligent scorn was fast passing into an expression of quicker anger. He contemplated Valdez in silence for a moment, then he said sharply: 'You are uncommonly mistaken if you think I care a rap how you get yourself into the hands of the police. You're safe to do that sooner or later. But I do mind about your leading Dino de Rossi into mischief. You've got him turned out of one place already through your infernal rubbishing nonsense; you had better be careful how you do it again.'

Valdez laughed.

'I've known Dino de' Rossi since he was a little chap of ten years old. He's a good fellow is Dino; and very loyal to his friends. Will the signor Marchese excuse my suggesting that it might be well if all Dino's friends were equally loyal to him?'

'And what the devil do you mean by that, sir?' said Gasparo, facing around abruptly and speaking in a fiercely challenging tone.

'This is the direct way to the house of old Drea, the fisherman, whose daughter is Dino's sweetheart. I have had the pleasure of seeing her: she is a very good, modest, innocent young girl. But there are other boatmen in Leghorn, signor Marchese; men to whom it might matter less in the end if you took to frequenting their houses every day.'

'I—— Perdio! if I thought you knew what you were saying—— If I considered you anything but a meddlesome fool, I would——'

He raised his eyes, looking about him as if in search of some term strong enough to express his meaning, and it so chanced that his gaze fell upon the rubicund countenance of our old acquaintance of the Telegraph Office, the leather merchant, Sor Giovanni.

The first syllables which the young Marchese had spoken in an angry tone had reached that worthy tradesman's ears as he stood peaceably behind his own counter; but as his sense of wonder grew great with what it fed on, he had insensibly edged nearer and nearer to the scene of the encounter, until there he stood in his own doorway, both thumbs thrust into the band of his leather apron, his fat cheeks and glassy eyes fairly beaming with gratified curiosity.

A very little thing appealed to Gasparo's light-hearted sense of the ridiculous. He burst now into a fit of most unaffected laughter.

When he recovered himself he had lost the thread of his discourse.

'You may be sure of one thing, my man: the Countess Paula's is not the only house you have lost by this morning's work,' he said dryly; and he turned on his heel and walked away whistling.

'By my blessed patron, San Giovanni! I should not like to be in your shoes, friend Pietro,' observed the fat leather merchant in an awed voice, gazing up the street with profound respect at the Marchese Gasparo's receding figure. 'I should not choose to be in your shoes, not I. I know the young gentleman,—Livornese born and Livornese bred. It's no joke, let me tell you, to get on the wrong side of the account book with a Balbi.'

'Well, well,' said Valdez, half impatiently; 'it's only another example of the surprising contagion of folly. There were not fools enough in the world this morning apparently, and I have taken care to add one more to the number. 'Tis not a hanging matter; that's the best one can say for it. And so good-day to you, Sor Giovanni.'

'Wait a bit, wait a bit, now,' said solid Sor Giovanni soothingly. 'I just want to ask you a question or two now about Dino de Rossi. The Signor Marchese was speaking about young De Rossi, eh! eh! I have sharp ears, friend Pietro, and it seemed to me that there was talk of our Dino's falling into doubtful ways. That's bad, you know—very bad. I had some thought of offering him a place in my business once; he is a good accountant, I am told, and would hardly expect much of a salary if one took him in when he was under a cloud, so to speak. I thought of it the day he left the Telegraph Office, but I waited—I waited to make him the offer. There's many a man has turned up his nose over the fresh loaf at breakfast-time who was ready to say his prayers over the crust at supper. It's all a question of supply and demand. One sees these things in the way of business.'

'Ay, there's small difficulty in seeing the duty one owes to oneself in the way of business,' said Valdez in his quiet way.

'E—e—eh, friend Pietro! che volete? Half the world is for sale, and the other half in pawn; you know the saying. But about this Dino, now. He is a friend of yours? You could answer for him, eh?'

'I answer for no man, my good Giovanni. And as for this young De Rossi; I have seen him, it is true. I knew his father; but——' He shrugged his shoulders significantly.

'See there, now! and I who counted upon your telling me more about him; for I know nothing against the young man myself, nothing but that he's a little over fond of the sound of his own voice, and for that matter he's young, he's young. He's at the age when every donkey loves his own bray. I don't know any other harm in him.'

'Harm in him? No. There's no harm in a weathercock if what you want to know is which way the wind is blowing,' said Valdez carelessly, and apparently quite absorbed in arranging the heavy folds of his dark circular cloak with the green lining. In reality his mind was full of a new plan for hastening their journey to Pisa. Clearly it would not do for Dino to show himself too often in his company.

Meanwhile Gasparo was hastening towards Drea's house, with just that amount of additional pleasure in the action as would naturally follow on the sense of successful opposition to somebody else's will. As for Dino,—Gasparo saw no necessity of thinking about Dino. In any case, Dino could not afford to marry, and even if he did,—for, in arguing a point in one's own favour, why not take both sides of the question?—even if he did marry, there were other girls in Leghorn beside this brown-eyed Italia. 'Little witch! I wonder if she guesses what she could make me do when she looks up at me with that innocent baby face of hers?' He sauntered down the steps with an expression of deepening enjoyment, a glance of expectation.

She was sitting in the old place, by the corner of the wall. Her sad face brightened a little as she looked up at the sound of footsteps and saw the young Marchese approaching her. She rose instantly, but she waited for him to speak.

'My little Italia! you look very pale. What is the matter? Has anything been troubling you?'

'I am quite well, sir, thank you. I am only tired.'

'And what has been tiring you, then? Too much pilgrimage, eh? Too many prayers in a cold church; is that not so?'

He looked at her more closely.

'You are quite sure the father has not been scolding you?'

'Oh no, sir, my father never scolds me.'

'Because I have brought something with me to restore good humour to a dozen angry fathers. See here, little one,'—it seemed at first sight a curious name to apply to that tall, slender girl with the sad eyes, but there was something childlike and unconscious about Italia's beauty which suggested the use of caressing diminutives—'see!'

He drew a small fancifully-embroidered case out of an inner pocket and opened it before her. Inside were five crisp pink bank-notes of a hundred francs each.