Vestigia Volume Ii Part 1

Vestigia.

by George Fleming.

CHAPTER I.

INCIDENTAL.

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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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-gla.s.s.

'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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 Sat.u.r.day night, in time for Monte Nero,' Maso concluded, looking carefully into the crown of his hat and shaking it, as though to a.s.sure 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 amus.e.m.e.nt; 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 pa.s.s 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, s.h.i.+fting 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 compa.s.s. 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_!'