Vestigia. Vol. I.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CIRCOLO BARSANTI

The wind, which blew so freshly in from sea across the open space of the parade, was moaning like a wild thing, trapped and caged, in the narrow streets behind the Duomo, towards which Dino was now taking his way, with a mind full of doubt and rage and suspicion. Italia – God bless her! – at least her last words had been of him. But to think of her now was also to remember the young Marchese's look at her, the poor child! as she took his ring: his laugh as he had turned away by the quay. The remembered sound of that laughter made Dino clench his teeth and break out into some wild bitter imprecation. 'I am like Palmira,' he said to himself scoffingly. 'I can't even hate him, and he knows it. I too wish he had never come back, because – because I liked him so!'

As he walked on his mind was full of remembrances of their old days together, when he and Gasparo had been playmates, companions, and always with that difference between them. They had quarrelled scores of times before now, and yet the old charm had never lost its power: Dino was always ready to be brought back by a look, a word, the first word of apology or regret. Regret! was it not enough for him to feel that his dear old comrade counted upon him, wanted him still, despite all his newer friends? 'I let him whistle me back at his good pleasure, like a woman, like a dog,' he told himself moodily, and even as he said it he felt in his heart that he would let himself be called back again. Nor was he the only one: there was not one human being out of all the little circle which made up his world who did not in some degree conspire to pet and spoil the young Marchese. 'I'm a hundred times cleverer than he is,' Dino reflected for the hundredth time. 'Ay, and better read, better educated. I can feel and understand a thousand things, books, ideas, emotions, which are so many dead letters to him. And what does it all amount to? What good is it? At four-and-twenty I'm dependant on old Drea's good-nature for a chance of earning my living by doing a common sailor's work, while he– Why, if he were to change places with me here to-night, by to-morrow he would be the most popular man in Leghorn. Fortune is as much at his beck and call as any of the rest of us. And now there's Italia – '

He thought how she too would recognise the prestige of the young soldier's successes, and in what a different spirit! How often in their long talks together had they arrived at the same conclusions, but by what divergent ways? What was careless ease in her, in Dino was pure recklessness: on the one side was the freedom of unconcern, and opposed to it the freedom of desperation. And how could it well be otherwise? He was sensitive, imaginative, unlucky. And he took life hard. He could never make her understand his view of it; it was not in her temperament to understand it. 'While the sun is shining it can't be dark; and she lives in the sunshine – my darling!' he thought, with a sudden revulsion, a rush of tender feeling. And she had bid the child 'take care of Dino.' He smiled to himself as he crossed over, out of the moonlight, into the great shadow of the cathedral wall.

The café to which he was going, and where his club met, stood at the corner of two of the narrowest streets, a small, low room, lighted from the ceiling by a row of gas jets in the form of a cross. On three sides, against the wall, were large mirrors in tarnished frames; a narrow divan covered with faded red velvet ran all around the room, and in front of this was ranged a series of small marble-topped tables; three or four men were seated there, drinking coffee and playing a game of dominoes.

There was nothing at first sight to distinguish the place from any other establishment of the same rank and kind. It was a shabby second-rate café, of the stereotyped pattern; and even the police did not take much interest in it, although it was true that the landlord professed republican – or at least liberal – political sentiments. But in a seaport town that was to be expected; and if Jack ashore preferred drinking his glass of vermouth with the conviction that all men are free and equal – so long as they can pay for what they are consuming – why, it was not to be wondered at if the owner of a small public-house could be found to agree with him. The 'Cross of Savoy' was shrewdly suspected to be the headquarters of one of the branch Societies belonging to the great net-work of the Circoli Barsanti. But then, again, these said Circoli, founded early in the '70's, to commemorate the name of a certain Sergeant Barsanti, accused, whether falsely or not, of having caused the death of his commanding officer during a trifling mutiny in the barracks at Padua, and himself accordingly tried and sentenced and shot; these very Circoli, were they not existing under Government permission, if not patronage? And if Government chose to ignore the fact that some freak of popular opinion had made of the murdered sergeant a popular hero and martyr, with a name that was useful to conjure by – in a word, if the authorities saw fit to connive at the existence of these breathing-holes, these safety-valves, so to speak, of the public discontent, how in the name of common-sense were the Leghorn police to be justified in interfering? And what, in direct consequence, could be more assured than the peace of mind and general prosperity and safety of Signor Prospero Neri – respectable householder and landlord – actually seated at one of his own tables, drinking some of his own coffee with an air of confidence in, and enjoyment of, the beverage which was more than equivalent to a testimonial?

Master Prospero's peace of mind was naturally a matter of some importance in his own estimation; and yet – such a difference can be obtained in the final result by so small a change of the point of sight – within a few yards of his complacent head, in an inner room divided from the café proper by a swinging door, painted over with cupids and arabesques, a discussion was going on at that very moment which would have filled that worthy host with horror and dismay.

Three men were seated in that inner sanctum about a small round table; above their heads a gas jet, turned up too high, flared unnoticed in the draught; there were glasses on the table before them, and a dingy carafe of water, and a pack of cards. But they had not been playing. Their attitude seemed chiefly one of expectation.

After a longer silence than had hitherto fallen upon them – a silence during which the wind was distinctly audible, rattling at the window-shutters, and they could hear an occasional laugh and the click of glasses in the outer room, – 'Who was it made the appointment with him? Was it you, Pietro Valdez?' asked the oldest man present. He spoke slowly, and with a strong German accent.

The man addressed looked up from his occupation of rubbing his moistened finger around the brim of his glass and thereby producing a series of minor musical notes. 'Ay,' he said; 'I told him.'

And then, after a pause, 'I'll answer for the lad,' he added slowly.

'Do you mean for his coming to-night, – or altogether?' the German asked abruptly, fixing a pair of piercing light blue eyes upon his interlocutor.

Valdez picked up his empty glass; looked into it; then put it down with a sudden movement upon the table.

'I mean – altogether,' he said gravely.

The other two men exchanged glances.

'Per Bacco! I wouldn't do it! no, not for my own flesh and blood brother, – not I!' cried the third man present, bringing the open palm of his hand lightly down upon the table before him. It was noticeable that they all three moved and spoke with a certain caution and in the quietest tones possible. 'I would not do it. I wouldn't answer for – '

The German checked his rising voice with a look. 'I have taken note of what you are prepared to do, friend Valdez. You are prepared?' he added sharply, with another searching glance.

Pietro Valdez lifted his melancholy eyes from the table before him and stared the speaker straight in the face. Then his head dropped again, and he shrugged his shoulders wearily: 'I am prepared – yes. But I look like joking, don't I? It is so probable that I should select this occasion for a jest!'

'I ask your pardon, signor Valdez. I will make a note of what you have said.'

'Ay, notes, notes. But I see nothing done,' broke in little Pierantoni irrepressibly. 'It is all very well to say the people can wait. Santa Pazienza! the people have waited. They are getting tired of waiting now. Once, the lower down you ground them the better they submitted. We know all that – at Naples. But it's a mistake to grind a man, or a people, down too far; – 'tis so easy to grind all the humanity out of them and leave only the beast. And some beasts have teeth, and object to being baited.'

He got up and sat down again, holding his hands straight out before him and shaking his ten hooked fingers with a gesture as if he were sowing corn. 'If you shoot at the Czar of all the Russias – well, 'tis a kind of logic. You pit one autocrat against the other: Death against the Imperial Will: and the best man wins. And there's no more unanswerable argument than a rifle ball. It was our lords and masters taught us that long ago – at the Paris barricades. I say, if you shoot the Czar you prove nothing new. But to fire at a popular Prince – To take a man at the apex of his power, in the midst of his people, to teach him that there's no popularity, no moderation, no amount of good nature, or good intentions, or good luck even, that can alter the eternal justice of things – That's not stabbing at a King: it's putting your knife into the Institution; cutting the throat of royalty itself – and not merely royalty as a political institution, but royalty as a symbol of social inequality. Is it vengeance? I protest that it is no more an act of vengeance than the sentence of a judge. Have we not tried them, these Kings? Cristo Santo! have we not tried 'em and found 'em wanting? Is it a murder? do you call it murder when a man shoots down a bandit – an outlaw – with a price upon his head? And they are outlaws,' he added with a short laugh. 'Ay, and they wear their crowns for a purpose. 'Tis a shining target at the least – '

'Bene.' The German contemplated him for a moment with an air of faint amusement; then rose slowly from his place at table and moved with a cat-like step towards the door. He stooped his shaggy head and looked long and deliberately through the keyhole at the various occupants of the adjoining room. 'Bene. 'Tis all safe. But eloquence like our Pierantoni's is apt to attract – crowds,' he said, looking up again with a sudden peculiarly simple and artless smile.

The little Neapolitan leaned half-way across the table, his black eyes flashing. 'Per Cristo!– you suspect some one? some – traitor?'

'Traitors? 'tis a word you are fond of using, you Italians. I look at things differently. Why should we expect a new experience in life from that of other men? A man lives with his enemies; if he is lucky, he may meet with his friends.' He looked at Valdez as he spoke: he was always looking at Valdez, who bore his scrutiny with the most unaffected unconcern. 'As for suspecting, I suspect, – every one,' he said. 'It is my business to suspect. And for convenience sake I begin with the suspicion of our worthy landlord.' And, with a quick side-glance, he added lightly, 'Valdez, you see, our friend Valdez does not answer for him.'

'Nay,' said Valdez slowly, 'I say nothing for or against him. He is one of those men in whom necessity is the mother of virtue. He'll walk straight enough if you watch him carefully. He won't run off the line so long as there are no corners.'

At this the German made some inarticulate sound of assent, and for a time again relapsed into silence. Finally, as some neighbouring clock struck the hour of eleven, he looked up with another grunt. 'This place closes in half an hour. The young man is not coming,' he said.

'He will come,' Valdez repeated calmly.

'Per Bacco! if he doesn't – '

But even as Pierantoni opened his lips to speak the gaily-painted door behind him opened quickly and softly, and was as softly shut.

'Am I late?' asked Dino, looking all about him.

There was more curiosity than excitement in the expression of his face.

'I thought you told me it was to be an especially important sort of meeting? Why, where are the others? There's no one here!' he said, in a hurried aside to Valdez as he drew up a chair and took his place at the table beside his friend. Pierantoni's face he knew by sight already, but he gazed at the stranger present with considerable interest and wonder, noting each personal peculiarity of his appearance, his careless dress, his broad shoulders and large very white hands; he wore a large and valuable ring upon one of them, and there was an ugly scar, the red mark of an old wound, across his wrist. Dino could not keep his eyes from it. He had always longed to see this man. The German leaned back quietly in his chair.

'Your name is Bernardino de Rossi. You are Livornese by birth, – twenty-four years old. You have belonged to this Society for nearly three years, having been introduced and vouched for by Signor Pietro Valdez, here present. And for the last four years – for the last five years, if I mistake not,' he hesitated for an instant and appeared to consult his memory, 'you have held a position in the Telegraph Office of Leghorn. I believe I am right in all these particulars?'

'Perfectly right. It is nearly five years. I was nineteen when I went into the office,' said Dino promptly, though not without a little inward astonishment. What had this meeting then to do with him? and why had Valdez not spoken more clearly? But he was soon to know.

'And three weeks ago a slight disturbance – a regretable disturbance – connected with a small demonstration in favour of General Garibaldi, took place. The procession was dispersed by the police, but not before you had been recognised as being implicated in it. In consequence of this, and partly, also, because of your refusing to give up the name of one of your fellow-clerks who was known to have been there with you, you were unfortunately dismissed from your post this morning. I say unfortunately because, for some few weeks at all events, you will now be placed under police surveillance. You should have been more careful, sir!' the speaker concluded brusquely.

This man had the power of assuming at will an indescribable air of ease and authority. All traces of his former manner of lounging good-nature had vanished. His voice even was changed. He spoke now with the clearness and rapidity of a man accustomed to undisputed command. 'You should have been more careful, sir. You have lessened your chance of being useful.'

Dino felt himself going red and white by turns.

'There was no other choice, your – your – sir! I mean,' he said after a moment. 'The man you speak of – he's no friend of mine – depended upon my holding my tongue. I was bound as a gentleman not to betray him.'

'The Society has nothing to do with your being, or not being, a gentleman, sir!' the great man interrupted sharply, and looking at Dino with not unkindly eyes. 'You will attend to what I say, if you please, as at present you are merely wasting my time in this matter.' He glanced across at Valdez, and then tapped the table before him thoughtfully with his finger-tips: it was the hand on which he wore his great signet ring, and the brilliants which surrounded it glittered oddly enough among the heaps of tobacco ash and burnt-out matches which littered the mean little table.

'H – m,' he said thoughtfully; and turning his eyes abruptly upon De Rossi, 'You know who I am?' he demanded. 'Ah – I see you do. Well, that simplifies matters. You will understand how it is that I am giving you these orders. I suppose there is no need of my reminding you of the new – the special engagements you entered into on the day following the little émeute we have spoken of – ?'

'Ah!' said Dino, suddenly straightening himself upon his chair.

Valdez lifted his eyes quickly, then let them drop again. The lad was beginning to understand.

'You and one other man placed yourselves on that occasion on the Society's list of volunteers. I don't know how much you meant by doing so, but that's not my affair. You would not have been accepted if you had not been considered a fit person – and properly vouched for. It seemed hardly probable at the time that any very especial service would be demanded from you, but of course you took your chance of that. I have known men wait for years and years without getting such a chance; but you are to be congratulated, young man, you are more fortunate than they.'

There was a dingy carafe standing in its little saucer on the centre of the table. Dino reached over and poured himself out a glass of water; he swallowed it down at a gulp. Then he leaned deliberately back in his chair. He had turned very pale, and his eyes were shining.

'What is there to be done, sir? I'm ready,' he said quietly.

The German looked at him grimly enough for a moment, and then for the first time his face relaxed into its wonderful child-like smile.

'Schön,' he said approvingly. Then, with a sudden reassumption of his former manner, 'Have you any present means of support? What are you going to do with yourself at once?' he demanded.

Dino told him.

'Very well then. For the next fortnight you will go about your work in the boats, and you will be careful to give cause of suspicion to no one. You observe that I say to no one. If you have a – a mädchen whom you fancy yourself in love with, you will remember that the Society does not admit of rivals. At the end of the fortnight you will be sent to Rome, means being provided for your journey. And in the meantime you will not show yourself again at this club. Whatever orders you may need will reach you through Signor Valdez.'

There was a moment's pause. 'And – and what am I to do in Rome when I get there?' Dino asked presently. His lips had turned dry again: he found a certain difficulty in speaking.

'You will leave Leghorn on the 11th or 12th of next month. On the 13th of April His Majesty, King Humbert, will hold a grand review of his troops in the new quarter of the Macao, near the railway station. The Queen will be present at the ceremony with the court and the young Prince. The King will appear riding at the head of his staff. You will take up your place in the crowd at the corner nearest the Royal carnages. His Majesty will pass you twice – coming and going; the second time he passes – '

They had all drawn nearer the small table as he went on speaking in lower and lower tones; and now the four faces were very close together.

'And then?' Dino tried to say, but his lips only moved. He had no voice in which to frame the words.

'Signor Valdez is nearest to you. Tell him, Valdez,' the German said peremptorily, and threw himself back in his chair.

And then Dino felt Valdez's warm breath in his ear. He heard certain words which, for a moment, seemed to convey no meaning. He looked straight across the room at the foolish painted door through which he had entered. He felt thirsty again – that intolerable thirst! and the gas flickered and made a curious sound – like a whistle; and – and —

He stood up suddenly in his place, and stared at the three impassive faces before him. They were all watching him.

'My God!' he said in a broken whisper; 'great God! you want me to assassinate the King!'

CHAPTER V.

RETROSPECTIVE

In less than half an hour he had left the place. Valdez accompanied him as far as the café door, but there, with scarcely the exchange of a word, they parted.

'Are you not going home, lad? Go home and get some sleep,' the elder man said, speaking in a tone of great kindness and friendliness. And yes, Dino admitted, he was tired. And with that they separated: but he would not go home yet. With the instinct of one born and brought up by the sea, it was to the sea he turned, naturally and unconsciously, as another man might have turned to an open window. He walked fast until he reached the low parapet which runs along the embankment of the public walk; but, once there, his pace slackened. The night was growing quiet; the wind had fallen perceptibly with the setting of the moon. There were many clouds still, but broken and moving; and clear dark spaces of the sky where the stars sparkled frostily. Below, the water was still restlessly leaping and falling beneath the low sea-wall, a dark unquiet surface crossed with long pale streaks of foam. He walked up and down, slowly, by the edge of a clump of ilex trees, his hands in his pockets, his head a little bent, in the attitude of a man who is thinking intently. Now and then, at the louder splash of some wave which broke higher than its fellows, he lifted up his face automatically and looked about him with a blank, confused stare. In truth he was feeling little more than an overwhelming sense of confusion; nothing seemed real, within or without; he was only conscious that all was changed around him, and he could not realise the blow.

Dino's strongest personal impressions, all his most treasured boyish remembrances, were in some way connected with his father, who had died young, and when the boy was not more than twelve or thirteen years of age. Any one else remembering Olinto de Rossi – had there indeed been any one left in the very least likely to speak of him – any other person would, in all probability, have summed him up briefly as a handsome, fickle, enthusiastic young man, who – having begun life with a tolerable fortune, a persuasive tongue, a singularly equable and lovable temper, and an absolute incapacity for denying himself the smallest satisfaction – had ended by dying miserably of consumption at thirty-five; having in the interval married; spent all his money; and earned for himself some measure of local notoriety as a sort of popular demagogue, a speaker and leader at democratic meetings.

Chance having thrown him, while very young, among men of determined political sympathies, he had insensibly acquired so many of their opinions, which he afterwards retailed and amplified with so much natural ingenuity and eloquence, as to have earned no slight fame for himself as a radical patriot of extreme views. In point of fact, he had taken to speech-making in the first place, almost by accident, and as he would have taken to drink, or to gambling, or to any other form of excitement which appealed to his pleasure-giving, pleasure-loving, nature. And having once begun to taste the sweets of popularity, he was fascinated by them; he required no especial convictions, the applause and admiration he received were quite enough to determine his vocation.

But it was not to be supposed that a reputation obtained in this manner could last for ever, or indeed for very long. Before many years had passed there had come a sensible diminution in the number and the fervour of De Rossi's political adherents. The elder men of his party had long since ceased to take serious notice of his impassioned prophecies; and now even the editors of the fiercest socialistic papers – the compiler of Il Lucifero of Ancona, and the gentleman who was responsible for the appearance of the Leghorn Thief– even they had begun to fight shy of their old and brilliant contributor. By the time little Dino was old enough to become his father's companion, following him about from meeting to meeting with undoubting, enthusiastic admiration and love, it is probable that the faith and awe the elder De Rossi excited in his little listener was very nearly the sum total of the credence he received.

On the whole, this defection did not depress him seriously. Perhaps he never thoroughly believed in it, or that he had in any way deserved it; one's own account of one's motives, and the way they strike a friend, often bearing much the same relation to each other as a photograph does to a portrait. Each represents the same individual; but one is fact; the other may be a poem. And from first to last Dino saw nothing but the poem; his father treating him throughout with a gentleness, a pride in his clever boy, and an amount of expansive affection, which cost him nothing, and which bound the lad to him with a more than common reverence and love. As for his wife, for Dino's mother, she was by nature a silent woman, who did not need to express all that she thought; and this, Olinto sometimes reflected, was perhaps fortunate: the view other people take of the less admirable consequences of our actions being apt to strike one as morbid. After all, her husband was never positively unkind to her. He had never purposely deceived her. He was simply an ordinary man; selfish, good-humoured, eager for any new amusement; a creature of fine moments and detestable habits. And, after all, when his wife had married him it was because she wanted to do so; because nothing else could or would satisfy her. If she had made a mistake, well! perhaps he too had had his illusions. And it is the law of life – a woman loves what she can evoke, but what she marries in a man is not his best, but his average, self.