Vestigia. Vol. I.

''Tis a pretty dress. Have I never seen you in it before? but you always look the same in my eyes, and whatever I see you wear is what I like the best,' Dino answered, looking at her fondly. He put out his hand and touched the sleeve of her cotton frock. 'You will wear this the day we go to Monte Nero – '

'For the pilgrimage? ah, yes. And this year we must take poor Lucia with us. And the Sora Catarina; – it would not be like Monte Nero if you and your mother were not with us. Do you remember the first time we went there together, Dino? I was twelve years old.'

'And you carried your doll into the church for the benediction; I remember – '

'Ah, but it was a very pretty doll. It was the old Marchesa gave it to me, one day your mother had taken me with her to the palazzo. I remember it so well: I had never been in such a big room before, and when Sora Catarina left me alone I was frightened, and I cried. And then the Marchesa herself came in and spoke to me. She had a long train to her gown that rustled, and it had gold things on it, like the dress of the Madonna. And when she dropped her handkerchief I picked it up for her. It was fine, oh, so fine! and white, like a cobweb, and it smelt of flowers.'

'Why did she not give you that instead of a doll? I would not have taken the doll. I despise dolls,' said Palmira, lifting up her little pale face again from her book.

'As if I had ever been as wise as you, you little monkey. Oh, Dino, I know I have been very idle all the week. And it seems so ungrateful to you after all your trouble. But I can't write, I really can't. I am like father, all my fingers are thumbs,' said Italia mournfully, shaking her head and looking down on her lap at her little sunburned hands. 'But you are not vexed with me? really not? I did not mean to disappoint you, Dino.'

'No, dear; I am sure of that. But now let us see these famous exercises. Perhaps they are not quite so bad.'

She gathered up all the books and brought them to him instantly, standing beside him with perfect docility as he turned over the blotted pages. 'Of course you write so beautifully yourself,' she said. And at that young De Rossi gave a sudden start. 'Indeed I had forgotten. When I am with you I can think of nothing else. But, Italia, there was something – I knew there was something I wanted to tell you – and, what will Sor Andrea say? For I have left the office.'

'Oh, Dino!'

'Not that I mind that so particularly; but what will your father say? I came down to consult with him about it. I – '

'There he is!' said Italia, quickly turning her head at the sound of a heavy step, and adding hastily: 'Do tell him, Dino – tell him everything; you know how good he is' – she sprang to open the door.

The first person to enter, blown into the room, as it seemed, by a stronger gust of wind, was a small, thin woman of about forty or forty-five. Her face and shoulders were closely muffled in a woollen shawl, which Italia promptly removed and threw into a corner.

'Dear Lucia, how good of you to come to us on such a horrible night – '

'If you would not mind – if you will give it to me I will fold it up properly; things get so easily worn,' the new-comer murmured, looking apologetically at them all. And then she put up both her hands – the thin, white hands of a sewing woman – and patted the bands of her shining black hair; her dress, too, was black, and scrupulously neat, with many shining beads and buttons upon it.

'I am so glad to see you,' Italia repeated, looking down at the little woman with an indescribable friendliness and compassion in her own kind eyes.

'Ay, it was rough work getting here for the poor little woman. I left her for half a minute while I stopped to look at the boat, and per Bacco! she came in ahead of me in the race. I could not find her out there in the dark; I thought she had been blown clean away, I did,' observed Sor Drea with a loud, good-natured laugh. He fastened the door and came up slowly to the fireside, – a short, strongly-built figure, with a decided lurch in his walk. He came up and laid his hand upon Italia's shoulder. 'Well, my little girl? Ah! this now is what I like,' the old man said, glancing over with a broad, cordial smile at Dino; 'this is the sort of thing that does a man's heart good, to come in and find supper ready, and a good fire, and all the old faces. Who wants to eat alone? Alone? Why, one isn't comfortable alone even in Paradise; one needs an angel or two if it was only just for company. The blessed saints, they know better than to live separate, they do.'

'How do you know, father?' asked Italia, with a laugh.

'Perhaps I've met them. Perhaps I've had an angel or two to live with – there's no telling,' said her father, looking down at her fondly. 'Ask the youngster over there. Why, Lord bless you, my girl, when I was his age – But there, there, a sound man is a young man, and the only old men are the dead ones. What's the matter with the lad? What ails you, boy? Surely no one here can have been vexing you? You can't have been quarrelling with my little girl?' But at that —

'Quarrelling with Italia!' and 'Father!' they both protested in one breath.

Old Drea laughed good-humouredly. 'Well, well; 'tis a young sailor who does not keep ready for a change in the fairest wind. There's no such great harm in a friendly bit of a quarrel. And, bless you, lad! you and the girl there are too like brother and sister not to have found that out long before. There's no such great harm done, I tell you. Women, they are like caterpillars; they curl up if you do but touch them, but they go creeping on.'

Italia and De Rossi exchanged glances. 'Father,' the young girl began; she hesitated for a moment. 'Father!' She went up to him and took one of his hard and knotted hands into both of her own, looking up into his face with the sweetest look of entreaty. 'Indeed you are always right, dear, and our poor Dino is in trouble,' she said simply. 'He has left – he has been sent away from his office, and he has come to his oldest friends. You are not going to be angry with him, father?' Her sweet eyes were full of tears.

'The fact is, there has been a row about a demonstration. I don't know if you heard about it. It was last month, when they were enlisting the new recruits. And some of the republican clubs got up a counter procession and marched down the Via Grande with flags, and cheered Garibaldi. And then there had been a skirmish with the police – nothing very serious, but still – It was a foolish business altogether,' the young man confessed, hanging his head.

'Foolish? By – I call it by another name than foolish!' the other man broke out with sudden passion. 'Nonsense, Italia; let me speak. What does a woman know about such matters? I tell you it was a piece of rank mutiny aboard ship. You ought to have been clapped into irons, every man of you; and so you would have been if I'd had ought to do with you. So you would have been. What, sir; do you mean to tell me that you – you, a lad I've known, ay, and been fond of too, since you were a little chap as high as my knee, – do you mean to tell me, Dino, that you've been and joined a company of shouting fools with nothing better to do than insult the Government that pays and keeps 'em?'

'If the Government paid me the Government got my work in return,' says the young man, turning very red; 'and I was not the only one. I was only carrying out my club's orders.'

'Then I say, damn your club, sir!'

'Father!'

'Gesu Maria! Gesu Maria! ah, those men!' sighed Lucia under her breath, and grasped Palmira's shoulder convulsively. The child shook herself free with a contemptuous movement. 'Let me be. What are you afraid of? Look at Italia,' she said quietly, turning her small pale face and great eyes full upon the young girl. De Rossi, too, had turned towards her.

'Perhaps I'd better go now, sir. I am sorry I came in. I am sorry I troubled you,' he began in a formal voice. 'I ought, I suppose, to apologise – '

'Oh, damn your apologies!' said Sor Drea, starting up to his feet again, and taking a hasty turn across the room. 'Be a man, can't you? What is the use of apologising – of – of apologising, per Bacco! for what you are perfectly ready to do again – for what you mean to do again? Apologies! – yes – they're cheap enough in every market; – a good wind to torn sails. I believe in actions myself; in doing your duty by your masters and betters, and not hurting the people who love you, – not in fine gentlemen apologies – damn 'em,' said the old man, bringing his knotted hand down heavily upon the table, and glaring from under his shaggy eyebrows at Dino with an unspoken world of troubled reproach in his keen old eyes.

There was a moment of silence, and then, 'Father, dear?' said Italia beseechingly, going up to him and slipping her arm about his neck.

'Ay, ay, my little girl. You're a good girl, I know it. A good girl, though I say it as shouldn't. But not even you – you can't think I am going to put up with this sort of nonsense from a youngster like that, a fellow who comes to talk to me of – '

'Who comes to ask advice of his oldest friends. And in your own house, father.'

'Oh, Lord help us!' said old Drea with a groan.

'And if you knew the whole of the story as I know it – I mean why it is that he has lost his place to-day. Stop, Dino. I know it is a secret, but I think it is a secret which I ought to tell my father. If you knew why he was sent away,' said Italia, in her sweet low voice, looking with beaming eyes full of affection from one man to the other. 'It is quite true what Dino told you about the procession, father, but there is more than that. There was another man in Dino's office who joined in the procession too. And they could not find out who it was, and they wanted Dino to tell them his name. And he would not. And that is why he had to leave.'

'There, there. Say no more, child, say no more. I spoke too soon and forgot to listen. My words were like so many kittens that are born in such a hurry they're born blind. No offence, lad. There, shake hands over it. Lord bless you; and so you wouldn't tell 'em that other chap's name – not to save your own place, eh? Ay, that was right, boy, that was right. But Lord, Lord, what a chap that one must be who let you do it.'

'He's a mere boy. He doesn't know any better. And it does not matter so much to me. I was not so anxious to stay – only on my mother's account,' said Dino slowly.

'Ay, she'll be fine and disappointed, she will. She takes things hard, does Sora Catarina. She always did from a girl. Have you told her yet, Dino?'

'Yes,' he said, glancing over at Italia.

'Ay, she'll be disappointed, she will,' the old man repeated slowly, wrinkling his brow, and looking at the fire, while he fumbled absently in the pocket of his pea-jacket for his pipe. 'So you came and told my little girl here all about it, eh, Dino?'

'I told Italia.'

'Yes, and he told me not to repeat it to any one,' added Italia quickly.

'Ay, ay. I'll warrant you he did. Ah, he's young yet is the lad; he's young,' said Drea with a quiet chuckle. 'When you find a woman who keeps a secret for you, my Dino, you may rest pretty certain she's got some of her own to look after. And even then you need not think yours will last her. Ah, they're a queer rigged craft are women, and a secret is the ballast they think first about throwing overboard if there's ever such a capful o' wind to make the sea a bit roughish. Your mother's the only she-thing in petticoats I've ever seen who can hold her tongue still between her teeth – and even she can only do it by not speaking. They're a queer rigged craft, and no mistake, eh, Sora Lucia? isn't that your experience? You'll have a deal to do with their tempers in the way of your business, I'll be bound.'

'Well, Sor Drea, it's rather like the pins and needles – there are all sorts. And it just makes the difference how much you can pay for them,' said the little woman primly, smoothing down the neat cuff of her sleeve.

'Lucia likes women better than men; they walk about the room without making a noise; and they understand about trimmings,' remarked Palmira, with a toss of her head.

'Eh, little one, and who asked your opinion? Little girls should be seen, you know, seen and not heard of – not heard of,' said the old man in a voice of affected rebuke. He put out his hand, and the child came up to him instantly, nestling against his shoulder, and rubbing her thin little cheek on the rough sleeve of his coat. 'I don't mind, I'm not afraid, if you do make a noise,' she said softly in his ear.

'Nay, nay, child. But you should mind. Little girls must mind what is going on about them, else how are they ever to learn their manners before they grow up?' said Sor Drea, still in an admonitory tone, but patting the little face near him as he spoke with a smile which the child understood better than his words. And then he looked about him, 'Well, Dino – Italia, my girl! – and how about our supper? are we not ready for that birthday supper yet?' he said aloud.

Italia had moved away, and was standing beside the window. She was perfectly aware that Dino had followed her there, but some sudden new shyness kept her silent and wondering at herself. She had pushed back the scanty curtain, and stood leaning her forehead against the coolness of the window-pane. Outside all was darkness, and one heard the sound of the breaking waves. It was a rough night, she thought to herself: and tried to say it, but somehow she could not speak: the words stuck in her throat, and would not frame themselves. In that singular moment she seemed to be leading a double life; – the old existence was there, the old safe habit of home and her father's voice heard beside the fire; and here – here was something different, an unknown feeling of oppression – an anguish of self-consciousness, pierced with sudden flashes of a new unfamiliar joy. And yet this was only Dino, whom she had known all her life; Dino, her old tyrant and protector and playfellow —

'You are not angry now? My father did not mean all that he said; he did not mean to be unkind – to you,' she said abruptly, turning her face still farther away and looking out into the blackness.

There was no answer for a moment, and her heart began to beat faster.

'It is – it is a very rough night,' she said in a still lower voice, the words forcing themselves out at last. And then she turned her head slowly towards him.

She did not lift her eyes to his face, but she was aware that he moved. He had been leaning one arm against the window-frame; her own hands were clasped together and resting upon the ledge. She saw him move his arm – and felt the warm pressure of a strong hand laid upon both of hers. She stood quite still, breathing very softly.

'Italia!'

He was gazing at her with all his soul in his eyes – with a transfigured face which she had never seen before – he spoke in a new voice. 'Italia!' Was it a prayer – a command? The girl shivered from head to foot. She turned very pale, and then, slowly, she lifted up her glorious eyes full of a new resplendent light of joy, and they stood silent for a long, long moment, gazing at one another with the full, serious inquiring look of familiar souls new met in some strange heaven.

'Italia!' said her father's voice again, and she turned to him at once with a simultaneous movement of her whole being. These last moments were not a thing to be thought of now; she put them entirely on one side with a feeling of definite possession; it was something to be remembered and realised later on, when she was alone. She went up now to her father and laid her little hands upon his shoulder caressingly, with something of the sensation of having returned to him from afar. Her face was a little pale perhaps, but she smiled, and no one noticed her paleness. It is the way with the great crises of our mental experience: they pass us by in silence. Angels visit us for good or ill; the shadows of night gather deeper, or our dawn grows red with promise – and nothing has taken place which was noticeable even to very affectionate eyes. It is not all insensibility in the lookers-on. At every marriage procession, as at every funeral, there must be some person present whose chief interest lies in the trappings – in the workman-like manner in which the wheels go around a corner, and how the horses carry their heads. And life teaches that, as it teaches patience.

It was some time before anything more was said concerning Dino's prospects. When a man's daily food is the measure of his degree of success in the world, conversation at table means chiefly an interruption. So that it was some time before old Drea pushed away his plate and drew his glass nearer, rubbing the back of one hand across his lips with a deep-drawn breath of satisfaction, while with the other he fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. It was only a small flask of cheap thin country wine which stood upon the table before him, but he passed it over to Dino with an air of simple satisfaction and pride, a cordial and affectionate pleasure in his own hospitality, which might well have softened a harsher beverage.

'Drink, lad. Don't stint yourself. Wine was made for drinking. Lord, 'tis one more reason for not being a woman. Look at Italia there. You'd think an old sailor's daughter would know better than to care for any water that isn't salt-water, eh, boy? And Sora Lucia, too, sip, sipping, with her head on one side like a fly. But there, she is not to be laughed at, for a pluckier little woman – Lord, how she did fight that wind! You didn't well know which of you was running away with the other, eh, Lucia? Well, well, after all, a fly kicks as hard as it can – '

'Did Lucia kick? I should have liked to see her,' said the child Palmira, looking up. A smile like her brother's smile lit up with a sudden brightness her pale, small face.

'Indeed, Sor Drea was far too busy thinking of his boat – he knows nothing about what I did,' the little dressmaker retorted briskly, with a toss of her head, which made the black beads glisten. Her face, too, was warmed and dilated by the sense of plenty about her – the wine and fire and supper. Her black eyes shone demurely, the hollow cheeks were flushed, she had lost for the moment something of her habitual air of suppression – an air of decent disappointment with life.

The old man laughed good-humouredly. 'Hark to her – hark to the child, will you? Ay, quick and sharp, and down on you before you know where you are. She's her mother's own daughter – in all but looks. She was always a tall girl, was Catarina, and a step and an eye like a queen, an eye that went through you. But never you mind, Lucia; 'tis better to be the head of an eel than the tail of the biggest sturgeon, to my way of thinking. Ay, do your best in this world as you find it, and if any one else can do better, why, let 'em show you how 'tis done. That's my way of thinking. And now – ' he leaned back, thrusting both hands into his trousers pockets and shifting his pipe to the other corner of his mouth. 'And now about this business of yours, lad?'

Dino looked up with a start from his occupation of drawing patterns upon the table with a little heap of breadcrumbs. 'I wanted to ask your advice about that,' he began doubtfully.

'Well, ask it. Advice costs no headache, boy. You may borrow another man's compass to steer by even when he can't lend you the wind. Stop a bit, though. We'll begin with the beginning, by your leave.' His face, which time and exposure to the weather had so stiffened and tanned that it had grown well-nigh impossible to detect any of the slighter changes of expression upon it, his face looked as rigid and impassive as a piece of wood. 'It's really all over with you now at your office? no chance of making it up again with the masters? they wouldn't take you back again, eh?'

'Why, as for that,' said Dino hastily, 'I would not go back if they all came here together, in a body, to ask me.' He looked across the table at Italia. 'I am an eel's head too, sir, – like Lucia there,' he said smiling. 'I've been a sturgeon's tail long enough. I'm tired of being wagged when I'd rather be quiet.'

'And so you want to show your teeth, you young rascal!' called out Drea, with another great laugh, and filling up his glass. 'Nay, lad, but it is a pity you were not bred for a sailor. You've a good notion of your own, too, about handling a boat. But your mother would never have heard of it, not she. Bless you! she's been up too much to the Villa to see the old Marchesa – by her leave and meaning no offence – to listen to reason. That's the way with women: they want a bit of every shining thing they see. And nothing's too good for them. It's my belief they'd use diamonds to fasten up their sleeves with if they could get at 'em, and think nothing of it.'

'I know we should want to begin by fastening up yours, father,' said Italia in her soft gentle way. Her glance met Dino's as she spoke, and she looked down again with smiling lips and cheeks grown suddenly red.

'Your mother was always a proud woman, always,' the old man went on meditatively, staring at the blue rings of smoke curling up from his pipe. 'She took life hard. And she meant to make a gentleman of you from the first. She was proud; that is why she married your father. And she did not want you down on our level. She meant to make a gentleman of you, you see – '

'A fine gentleman!' Dino burst out eagerly. 'Sor Drea, is this fair? Have I ever had, have I ever wanted, other friends than you? I don't know what you mean by talking about different levels; but Italia knows – you ought to know – if I have ever done anything to deserve to have this said to me. Why, all the happiness I have ever had in my life I have had here,' he said, with a quick comprehensive glance around him at the old familiar walls. All the associations of his boyhood seemed lurking in those shadowy corners. 'I can understand that you are not particularly well satisfied with me now. I'm not particularly well satisfied with myself. It's not a brilliant look-out for the future. But why shouldn't I work as well as another man? They never found any fault with my work in that infernal office. Why, even the head clerk there – Sor Checco – he hates me – if he owned a donkey he would call it Dino for the pleasure of kicking it; but even he could never find fault. There's plenty to be done. My mother, now, her one idea is to go up to the Villa to talk to the Marchesa – '

'Ay, 'tis a good plan – a good plan. Look there, now! I should never have thought of that. But she has a head on her shoulders, has your mother,' the old man said admiringly, clapping the palm of his hand down heavily upon the table. 'Fill up, boy, fill up, and we'll drink good luck to her going. That's right and as it should be. For one works for the masters here as one prays to the saints in Heaven, and they know best what's wanted in both places. Lord bless you! if one had to stop to discuss matters with 'em, there'd be no time left to work in. That's my way of thinking. Commando, chi pol e obidisca chi deve. 'Twould be a poor way of travelling if all the crew wanted to steer.'

'Why, as to that – ' began Dino, pushing away his glass impatiently. 'Look here, Sor Drea. You were speaking of my father a moment ago. I was very fond of my father – '

'Ay, lad,'

'You never knew him well. You never understood him.'

Old Drea took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it carefully. 'Perhaps not,' he said.

'You never understood him. You thought he was aping the manners and customs of his betters, when all the while – poor father! But let that pass. He taught me one thing, at any rate, for which I am more thankful to him every day that I live. He taught me that there are wants and wishes in a man – yes, and rights too – that are too strong to be choked off with a good dinner, and too old to be taught to drop curtsies to every fine dress and fine title they may chance to come across. I'll have nothing to do with it all, for my part – nothing. And I've told my mother so. If she chooses to depend upon the old Marchesa's protection, well and good. Perhaps it suits a woman's nature to sit through rainstorms waiting for the sun to shine. I know nothing about it. I only know it doesn't suit me. I went into that office to please my mother, and I'm ashamed of having been in there. I'm ashamed of having held my tongue for three years for the sake of wearing a black coat and having the office boy answer, "Yes, sir!" when I told him to fetch me a glass of water. They were quite right to turn me out for taking part in that demonstration: it was a foolish thing in itself, but what it meant wasn't foolish. And it meant more than they knew. As for myself,' the young man added vehemently, with a sudden flush all over his pale dark face, 'I agree with my father, if I had the power. I would make every title in Europe a thing to put into a museum, along with the other dead things in the dust. I am a Republican.' He looked straight across the table at Sor Drea. 'I am a red Republican,' he repeated.