Four Phases of Love Part 9

"It was necessary, and high time that I was brought to my senses! and, as I said, it is of no consequence--do not talk of forgiveness. You have done me good, and I thank you for it. And now go to rest, and there--there is your handkerchief--you can take it with you now."

He offered it to her, but she stood still and seemed to struggle with herself; at last, she said, "You have lost your jacket on my account, and I know that you had the money for the oranges in your pockets. It struck me just now--I cannot replace it at once, for I have not sufficient, and if I had it would belong to my mother; but here I have the silver cross that the painter laid on the table the last time he was with us; I have never seen it since, and do not care to keep it longer in my box. If you sell it--it is well worth a couple of piastres, my mother said--it would help to repair your loss, and what may be wanting I will try to gain by spinning at night, when my mother is asleep."

"I shall not take it!" he said, shortly, pus.h.i.+ng back the glittering cross she had taken from her pocket.

"You _must_ take it," she cried; "who knows how long you may be laid up with your hand? There it lies, and I will never set my eyes on it again!"

"Then throw it into the sea!"

"It is no present that I make you--it is only what you have a right to, and what I owe you."

"A right to! I have no right to anything from you! If you should happen to meet me in future, do me one kindness--do not look at me, that I may not think that you are putting me in mind of how I have offended you.

And now--good night!--and let it be the last."

He laid her handkerchief in the basket, placed the cross on the top of it, and closed the lid. When he looked up and saw her face, he started.

Large, heavy tears rolled over her cheeks--she let them run their course unheeded.

"Maria Santissima!" he cried. "Are you ill? You tremble from head to foot!"

"It is nothing," she said--"I will go home:" and turned towards the door. Then a burst of weeping overcame her; she pressed her forehead against the doorpost, and sobbed loud and vehemently. Before he could reach her, she turned suddenly round and cast herself upon his neck. "I cannot, cannot bear it," she cried, and clung to him like a dying man to life. "I cannot bear to hear you saying kind words to me, and telling me to leave you, with all the fault on my conscience! Beat me--trample me under your feet--curse me--or, if it be true that you love me _still_, after all the ill that I have done you, then take me and keep me, and make of me what you will, but send me not thus away from you----" Fresh vehement sobs interrupted her.

He held her awhile in his arms, stricken dumb. "If I love you still!"

he cried. "Holy Madonna! do you think that all my heart's blood has run out of that little wound? Do you not feel it beating in my breast, as if it would spring out, and to you? If _you_ only say it to try me--or from pity to me--there, go, and I will even forget this too! You shall not think that you are indebted to me because you know what I suffer for you."

"No!" she said, firmly, raising her forehead from his shoulder, and gazing pa.s.sionately in his face with her wet eyes--"I love you; and if I only say it _now_, I have long feared and fought against it--and now will I change, for I can no longer bear to look at you when you pa.s.s me in the street: and now I will kiss you too," she said, "that you may say if you doubt again, 'She has kissed me!' and, Lauretta kisses no one but the man she takes as her husband."

She kissed him thrice, and then freed herself from his arms, and said, "Good night, darling! Now sleep, and heal your hand; and do not come with me, for I fear no one now--but thee!"

Therewith she glided through the doorway, and disappeared in the shadow of the wall; but he looked long through the window, and over the sea, over which all the stars seemed trembling.

The next time the little Padre Curato emerged from the confessional, by which Lauretta had been a long time kneeling, he laughed quietly to himself. "Who would have thought it," he murmured, "that G.o.d would so soon have taken pity on this strange heart? And I was blaming myself for not having attacked the demon of obstinacy more fiercely! But our eyes are too short-sighted for the ways of Heaven! And now, may G.o.d bless them both, and let me live till Lauretta's eldest boy can go to sea in his father's place."

Ay! ay! ay! La Rabbiata!

"BY THE BANKS OF THE TIBER."

CHAPTER I.

It was late in January. The first snow hung upon the mountains, and the sun, shrouded by mists, had only melted away a narrow band around their feet. But the waste of the campagna bloomed like spring. Only the sombre boughs of the olive trees, that here and there followed in rows the gentle undulations of the plain, or surrounded some lonely cabin, and the frosted scrubby bushes that grew about the road, still showed the effects of winter. At this time of the year the scattered herds are collected within hurdles, near the huts of the campagnuoli, which are generally placed under the shelter of some hillock, and scantily enough protected from the weather by straw piled up from the ground; whilst those amongst the herdsmen who can sing or play the bagpipe have left, to wander about Rome as pifferari, to serve the artists as models, or to support their poor frozen existences by some similar industry.

The dogs are now the herds of the campagna, and sweep through the deserted waste in packs, maddened by hunger, and no longer restrained by the herdsmen, on whose poverty they are only a burden.

Towards evening, when the wind began to blow more strongly, a man emerged from the Porta Pia, and wandered along the carriage-road which runs between the country houses. His cloak hung carelessly from his st.u.r.dy shoulders, and his broad grey hat was pushed back from his forehead. He gazed towards the mountains till the road became more enclosed, and only permitted him a narrowed glance of the distance between the garden walls.

The confinement seemed to oppress him. He lost himself again dejectedly in the thoughts to escape which he had sought the free air. A stately cardinal tripped by with his suite without his observing or greeting him. The carriage following its master first reminded him of his omission. From Tivoli rolled carriages and light vehicles, full of strangers, who had taken a fancy to see the mountains and cascades under snow. He cast not a glance at the pretty faces of the young Englishwomen, with whose blue veils the tramontane played. Hastily he turned from the road, sideways to the left, along a field-path which first ran past mills and wine-shops, and then led out into the midst of the waste of the campagna.

And now he paused for a moment, breathing deeply, and enjoying the freedom of the broad wintry sky. The shrouded sun gleamed redly over all, lighted up the ruins of the aqueduct, and tinged with rose the snow on the Sabine hills.

Behind him lay the town. Not far from him a clock began to strike, but lightly, through the opposing wind. It made him restless; as though he wished to prevent the least sound of life from reaching him, and he strode onward. He soon left the narrow path, which swept up and down the waves of the plain, swung himself over the rails which had guarded the pasturing herds during the summer, and buried himself still deeper and deeper in the solitary darkness.

A stillness reigned there as deep as that on a sleeping sea. One could almost hear the rustle of the crows' wings as they floated over the waste. No cricket chirped, no ritornella of the home-returning market-woman reached his ear from the distant road. It pleased him. He struck his staff against the hard earth, and rejoiced in the sound with which she answered him. "She does not say much," he said, in the dialect of the lower cla.s.s of Romans; "but she means honestly, and cares in silence for her babbling children who trample her under their feet. Would I never needed to hear their voices again, these windy rogues; my ears are sore with their smooth phrases! As if I were nothing--as if I knew not better on what those things depend, about which they love to chatter--because I only know how to create them!

"And yet I live on them, and must keep a good countenance when they sniff and sneer at my work. Accidenti!" He cursed on his beard--an echo answered him: he looked, startled around; no hut, no hillock was there within a circle of half a mile, and he could not believe in the neighbourhood of man. At last he stepped onward, and thought "A gust of wind mocked thee!" Then suddenly it sounded again, nearer and clearer.

He stood and listened keenly. "Am I near a cabin, or a fold where the cattle are lowing? It cannot be--it sounded differently--it _sounds_ differently; and now--now"--and a shudder shook his whole frame. "It is the dogs," he said slowly.

The cry came nearer and nearer, hoa.r.s.e as that of wolves; no barking or yelping, but a snarling howl, which the voice of the wind swept together into one uninterrupted, terrible melody. A paralyzing power seemed to exist in it, for the traveller stood motionless, his mouth and eyes rigidly open, his face half turned towards the side from which the battle-cry of the raging brutes swelled towards him.

At last he shook himself with fierce determination. "It is too late!

they have long had the scent; and in this twilight I should fall before the tenth step if I tried to fly. Well, like a dog have I lived! and now, to be destroyed by my fellows!--there is sense in it! If I had a knife I would make it easier for my guests; but this"--and he tried the strong iron spike of his staff--"if there be but few of them, who knows whether my hunger may not survive theirs?"

He threw his cloak around him, so as to have his right arm free, and to form with its many folds a sort of protection to his left, and grasped his staff. With cold-blooded determination he examined the ground on which he stood. He found it free from gra.s.s, stony, and hard. "They may come!" he said, planting himself firmly upon his feet. He saw them now, and counted them in the gloaming. Five he counted, and then a sixth.

They rave like fiends from h.e.l.l--long-limbed, skeleton brutes! "Wait!"

and he raised a heavy stone; "we must declare war according to custom."

Therewith he hurled the stone at the nearest, twenty paces from him. A redoubled howling answered--the pack was checked for a moment. One of them lay struggling on the ground.

"Armistice!" said the man. His lips trembled, his heart throbbed heavily against his left arm, which grasped his cloak spasmodically; but the lids over the keen eyes winked not. He saw his enemies break forth again, and their eyes glared through the darkness. They came on in couples, the largest first. A second stone rebounded from the bony chest of one of the leaders, and the ravening brute sprang, hoa.r.s.ely snarling, against the dark form. A thrust, and he fell backwards on the sward, and the staff, whirled quickly round, striking heavily on his open jaws.

A horseman galloped through the grey of the winter's night, some few hundred paces from the scene of the struggle, over the pathless campagna. He pierced through the darkness towards the spot from whence the howling reached him, at short intervals, and saw a man standing, tottering, giving way, and again standing firm, as his enemies relinquished the attack, and once more stormed on him from all sides.

The horseman shuddered; he plunged the spurs into his horse's flanks, and flew towards them. The sound of the horse's hoofs reached the ear of the struggling man, but it seemed as if the sudden terror of hope deprived him of his last remaining strength; his arm sank, his brain whirled, and he felt himself torn down from behind,--tottered, and fell to the ground. Through the mists of approaching unconsciousness he heard the sound of pistol-shots, and then fainted.

When he recovered, and opened his eyes, he saw the face of a young man bending over him, on whose knee his head was resting, and whose hand was rubbing his temples with fresh-plucked wet gra.s.s. The horse stood steaming near them, and at his feet lay two dogs, writhing in the agonies of death.

"Are you wounded?" he heard asked.

"I know not."

"You live in Rome?"

"Near the Tritone."

The other helped him to rise. He could not stand. His left foot was in great pain. He was bareheaded; his cloak in rags; the coat and arm, torn and b.l.o.o.d.y; his face pale and haggard. Without speaking, he permitted himself to be supported by his preserver, who rather bore than led him the few paces to the horse; at last he gained the saddle, the other took the bridle and led him slowly towards the town.

At the first osteria outside the walls they halted. The young man called to the hostess to bring wine: when the wounded man had drunk a gla.s.sful his face became more animated, and he said:--

"You have done me a service, sir. Possibly the time may come when I shall curse it, instead of thanking you for it. But I thank you for it now. One clings to life as to other bad habits. One knows that the air is full of fever and rottenness, and the worthless steam of mankind, and yet thinks that each breath one draws in is a good thing."

"You are inclined to speak ill of mankind."