Lucia Rudini Part 4

The soldiers hurried to their billets and got together their kits. The square buzzed and hummed with excitement and the guns kept up a steady ba.s.s accompaniment.

The bugle sounded a different order every little while. Some of the more prudent women went home and began packing their household treasures, but for the most part every one stayed in the market-place and argued shrilly.

"Come!" Lucia exclaimed, catching Maria's hand. "We can watch them march off from the top of the wall by the gate."

They ran quickly through the side streets, and by taking many turns they at last reached the broad top of the wall, which they ran along until they were just above the north gate.

"Here they come!" Maria exclaimed. "I can hear them."

The paved streets of the town rang with the heavy tramp, tramp of men marching, and before long they appeared before the gate. The order to walk four abreast was given. The men took their places, and then at a brisk pace they marched through the old gate, a sea of bobbing black hats and c.o.c.k feathers.

The townspeople followed to cheer them excitedly. Lucia and Maria leaned dangerously over the edge of the wall in their attempt to recognize the familiar faces under the hats.

The soldiers looked up and called out gayly at sight of Lucia. She had taken off her flowered kerchief and was waving it excitedly. The wind caught her dark hair and blew it across her face, and her bright skirts in the suns.h.i.+ne made a vivid spot of color against the stone wall. The men turned often to look back at her as they marched along the wide road.

Maria did not lift her eyes from the sea of hats beneath her. She was waiting for one face to look up. At last she had her wish. Roderigo's place was towards the end of the column; when he walked under the gate he looked up and smiled. It was a sad smile, full of regret.

Without exactly meaning to, Maria dropped the flower she was wearing in her bodice. Roderigo caught it and tucked it, Neapolitan fas.h.i.+on, behind his ear, then he blew a kiss to Maria and marched on.

Lucia watched the little scene. She was half amused and half contemptuous. Her little heart under its gay bodice was filled with a fine hate that left no room for pretty romance.

CHAPTER IV

LOST

When the soldiers had climbed out of sight into the mountains, Maria walked slowly back to find her mother, and Lucia after a hurried good-by ran home to tell Nana and Beppino the news.

She was far more worried over the possible order to evacuate than she would admit. As their cottage was the farthest north on the road, it would be the nearest to the Austrian guns. Personally Lucia scorned the very idea of the Austrian guns, but she could not help realizing the danger to Nana and Beppino and Garibaldi. She was still undecided what to do when she reached the cottage.

Nana Rudini was standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her withered old hand, and staring intently in the direction that the soldiers had taken.

"Did you see the troops, Nana?" Lucia asked cheerfully. "They were a fine lot, eh? I guess they will be able to stop the enemy from coming any nearer."

"Nearer?" queried Nana, "what are you saying?"

"We have had bad luck," Lucia explained. "Tavola has been captured, and our soldiers are retreating. In town they say we may have to evacuate before to-morrow."

The old woman received the news without comment, but a look of despair came into her usually bright eyes, and for the moment made them tragic.

Long years before, when Austria had crossed the mountains and entered Cellino, she had been a young girl. Now in her old age they were to come again, and there was no reason to hope that this time they would be less brutal in their triumph than they had been formerly. The memory of their brutality was still a vivid one.

"We will leave at once," she said at last, and her decision was so unexpected, that Lucia gasped in surprise.

"Leave? But, Nana, where will we go? What will become of our things?"

she exclaimed. "Surely we had better wait at least until we are ordered out."

"No, we will leave at once," Nana replied firmly. "The order may come too late, as it did before. What do those boys who swagger about in men's places know about the enemy? There is not one that can remember them. But I, old Nana, have known them and their ways, and I say we must go at once."

Lucia looked at the new light of determination in her grandmother's eyes, and realized with a shock of surprise that to protest would be useless.

"Where is Beppi?" she asked. "I will go and find him."

"With the goats," Nana replied. "Call him, I will go in and start packing."

Lucia ran around the house and off to the sunny slope where she had left Beppi a few hours before. She saw the flock of goats grazing, and called, "Beppino mio, where are you?"

No one answered her. She hurried on, believing him to have fallen asleep.

"Beppi!" she shouted, "I have something exciting to tell you. Stop hiding from me."

She waited, but still no answer came.

In a sudden frenzy of fear she began running aimlessly up and down the hillside, and looking down into the tall gra.s.ses, but there was no sign of Beppi. There were no trees or houses in sight, no place that he could hide behind, nearer than the mountain path at the foot of the valley.

Lucia looked about her despairingly, then she went over to the goats.

Garibaldi was not there.

"She has strayed away, and Beppi has gone after her," she said aloud in relief, and returned to the cottage.

Nana nodded when she explained. She was busy tying up the household treasures in sheets, and Lucia helped her.

Every few minutes she would go to the door and call, but Beppi did not reply. The afternoon wore on slowly and a bank of rain clouds hid the sun. Lucia's confidence gave way to her first feeling of terror, and Nana was growing impatient.

"Where can he be?" Lucia exclaimed. "I am frightened, he has been gone so long."

Nana shook her head. "He was off after the soldiers, I suppose," she replied. "He is always disobeying--no good will come to him and his naughty ways."

Lucia's eyes flashed.

"He is not naughty," she protested angrily, "and he may be lost this very minute. Anyway I am going to find him and I am not coming home until I do. If you are afraid to stay here go to Maria, she and aunt will look after you, and when I find Beppi I will meet you there."

Nana Rudini protested excitedly, but Lucia did not wait to hear what she said. She ran out of the house and down the road towards the footpath. She had no idea of where she was going, but fear lead her on. Beppi, her adored little brother, and Garibaldi were lost, and she was going to find them.

At the end of the road she paused and looked ahead of her. The sky was dark with rain-clouds and thunder rumbled in the west, an echo of the guns. Lucia took the path that she had taken early that morning, and as she climbed up the steep ascent she called and shouted. Her own voice came back to her from the flat rocks ahead, but there was no sound of Beppi.

Instead of going on to the little plateau where she left her pails, she branched off to the left. It was hard climbing, and after repeated shouts of "Beppi," she sat down and tried to think.

Big drops of rain were beginning to fall, and with the sun out of sight the fall air was damp and cold. She pulled her thin shawl around her shoulders and s.h.i.+vered.

"If Garibaldi ran away she came up here; she always does," she argued to herself. "She loves to climb, and she must have come this way in the hope of finding gra.s.s. Up above, and a little over to the left, there is a sort of sheltered spot. Perhaps--" she did not finish the thought, but jumped up and started to climb.

She hunted until she discovered a way to find the spot. It was not difficult, for she knew every foot of the mountains from long a.s.sociation. But Beppi was not to be seen, nor was Garibaldi. Lucia stopped, discouraged. Fear and helplessness were getting the better of her, and she would most likely have given way to the tears she so despised had her eye not caught sight of a tuft of fur on the ground.

She seized upon it eagerly. It was without doubt part of Garibaldi's s.h.a.ggy coat.

With a cry of joy she started off up the tiny trail that led higher up into the rocks.

"Beppi, Beppi!" she called, and stopped. Still no answer, but she was not discouraged for the guns were making so much noise that she realized her voice could not carry any great distance.