Vestigia Volume Ii Part 2

'Nay, child, nay. It 'ud be a poor business if one's courage did not hold fast in the right place. It 'ud be like fastening one's boat up with a rotten cable, there'd be no depending upon anything then. But it was a night, that. A man who doesn't live at sea doesn't know the meaning of a prayer. Not that we had much time for speaking; but it seemed to come natural to think of the Holy Virgin then,--just as I thought of you, sleeping in your little bed.'

He looked at the picture again. 'Ay. We brought off the men and a fine bit of salvage; I mind me how pleased the old master was when I went up to the Villa to tell him about it. He was in his bed, I remember, and he wore a thing with a frill round his face, like a woman's night-cap. He was finely pleased. Everybody used to say he was going to leave me something in his will--something over and above my wages--as a sort of thank you. Your mother used to count upon it, poor soul! and so did I for a bit--I should have taken it kindly of the old master, I should, if he had remembered it at the last. We knew each other many a year.'

Dino and Italia exchanged a meaning glance.

'And if it were to come now, father? that would be better still; you could get a new boat,' she said, with a smile of irrepressible pleasure.

'Nay, child, the will was proven long ago. If there was ever any money coming to me--and the old master used to say there was, he used to say so--it stuck in the lawyers' hands years ago, like a boat aground. It never made any difference in my way o' remembering the old master. It would be but a poor look-out if one could serve the same master faithfully for twenty years--and I so used to him, knowing just what he meant when he swore the loudest--it 'ud be but a poor look-out if it only meant losing one's liking at the end of it. 'Tis a weak friends.h.i.+p that's so ready to call for the blessed sacraments at the first little knock on the head;--that's my way o' thinking.'

It was growing dusk, outside as well as in when they left the dim church, with its smell of fresh crushed bay-leaves underfoot mingling with the stale incense smoke, in a way which always carried Dino's memory back to very early days, when his father was still a trifle undecided about the exact relations of Church and State, and not unwilling to give his little boy the treat of staring at the lighted candles of the festa. The remembrance of his dead father's face rose vividly before him, and he lingered for an instant behind the others at the door, looking back.

As he hurried on to rejoin Italia old Drea touched him on the shoulder.

'The women will go to bed early, but I want you to come out a bit with me after supper, lad. I want to have a talk with you,' he said.

CHAPTER III.

BY THE LIGHT OF A TORCH.

They came out of their lodging, an hour later, into the deserted square. Lights were flaring in nearly every window, and in every house was to be heard the rattling of bottles and plates, and men's voices calling for more wine. But it was quiet enough out here, under the stars, in the empty piazza, where the last booths were being closed for the night.

They strolled over to the lower part of the square, and sat down upon the parapet; Drea was lighting his pipe.

'Look here, lad,' he began abruptly. The match in his hand went out, he felt for another in all his pockets, swearing the while at the mischance.

'May the devil fly away with all fine clothes, say I. For why should a man change his coat any more than his skin? I've worn this jacket every festa for the last twelve years, and I never yet could learn the trick o' its inside.'

'I've got lights,' said Dino.

'Nay, lad, where there's a way out there's a way in. I'll not be beat by it, thanking you kindly.'

He puffed at his pipe thoughtfully before he spoke again.

'It's a good many years now since the first time I came up here. Lord, how the years go! I mind me---- Your mother was a young woman then, Dino; no older than my little girl there, and I was a wild young fellow. Well, well; it seems more than one lifetime ago. I'm getting to be an old man now, my Dino. It gave me a start the other night to hear our young master speak of it, but it's true enough for all that.'

'Perhaps it is. But you never seem old to me, Sor Drea.'

'I've had my turn at it, lad; I can't complain. But maybe the Captain was right about my settling down; maybe he was right. I don't suppose I can be far off sixty. The old master lived to be seventy-two, he did; but then he lived like a wax image packed in cotton wool. And when a man's knocking about day and night, why, Death needs no lantern to find him.'

He took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it.

'There isn't much to leave behind me, lad. Only the old boat, and Italia. She'll miss me, will my little girl. She's wonderful fond of her old father. But you'll look after her; you'll be good to her, Dino?'

There was no answer.

'You see, it isn't as if I were leaving her to strangers. But I've been fond o' you, boy, since you were that high; when you used to come to play with her in the old boat, and I used to sit and watch you and wish I had a little curly-headed chap like you, that 'ud grow up and help me about the nets. My girl's a good girl; but a boy 'ud have been different.'

He was silent for a moment; then he put his pipe back into his mouth and gave a slight chuckle. 'There's no basket without its handle; that's sure enough. I've got 'em both now, girl and boy too. I was an old fool not to have thought of it sooner; but it's difficult to see that the children have grown up, when you remember them so high. Well, lad, I give you joy, I do. She's very fond o' you. There's only one thing I want to speak to you about. It's all plain sailing before you then.'

'And what is that?' asked Dino, very quietly.

His face was in shadow, but there was that in his voice which startled the old man with a foreboding of coming trouble. He leaned forward, peering anxiously into the darkness. 'Eh? what's that, lad, what's that you're saying?'

'You say there is one thing you wish to speak to me about before--before I can be affianced to Italia. I ask you what it is.'

'Nay, my Dino, I said nought about being affianced, if that's what's troubling you. Not but what I could easily find another husband for her; there's Maso, now; as honest a lad as ever hauled at a rope, and a good bit o' money too, all in the bank. But what does that matter?

I've never promised her to you; but it would be but a poor sort o'

friends.h.i.+p that only depended upon words. I've done more than give you my promise, lad; I've trusted you, I have.'

'Good G.o.d!' said Dino, under his breath, looking up with blank eyes at the clear starlit sky above him.

'There's no need for many words to settle it.' He hesitated; and then went on with sudden fluency as if the long meditated speech were forcing its own way out. 'See here, lad. It's not so much more than a week since you lost your place because o' that infernal tomfoolery of a procession. I'm not casting it up at you, my boy; not I. But there 'tis; you made a mistake. It might have been a worse one, for you meant no harm, and as things go it's all turned out for the best. I wouldn't have cared to marry my little girl to a writing fellow, and you've got the make of a sailor in you, lad; I always said it. When G.o.d Almighty shuts one door in an honest man's face, if you look about you you'll see He's opened another. But it might ha' turned out different.'

He lowered his voice, and added: 'I don't blame you, but I've kept my ears open, and there are things said about you that I don't like; I don't like. When a man lets his net down to the bottom he's sure to catch mud. I saw your father do it. _He_ called himself a republican too. You must give it up, my Dino.'

'I can't do that,' said Dino, in a very low voice.

The words implied so much to himself that he could scarcely believe in the reality of things--he felt involved in the fantastic irony of a dream--when Drea burst out laughing, good-naturedly.

'Why, lad, you don't understand me? Where are your wits? I am speaking Italian, _mi pare_. It isn't to oblige me I want you to give up that confounded club of yours, and all the nonsense that goes with it. It's so that you can marry Italia. Why, lad, one would think that I was torturing you instead of telling you how to marry your sweetheart. _You_ one o' those d.a.m.ned radical rogues, my Dino, the little chap I taught how to handle an oar? Come, come, lad, drop the nonsense. It's being shut up between four walls that put it into you, I'll go bail. Politics! Lord bless you! a capful o' wind will soon blow 'em out of you. They're like weevils in a biscuit, they eat all the good; you can't get rid o' them too quickly.'

'Drea, it is you who will not understand. You are unjust; you have always been unjust to my father. But his ideas are mine. I will not----' he stopped, with a horrible sense of sinking at his heart.

What were these ideas to which he professed himself so willing to sacrifice all the rest? But it was imperatively necessary to make Drea understand the situation. 'I cannot give up my--my convictions. For no reason in the world. Not even to marry Italia.'

There was an instant of terrible silence.

'Are you mad, boy?' demanded Drea, in a sort of subdued growl.

'I am not mad,' Dino answered.

It was a relief to look forward to an explosion of the old man's anger; anything--anything rather than that tone of affectionate trust.

'I am not mad. I don't know why I'm not. I'm unhappy enough for that, or for anything else,' he said, wearily.

'Unhappy----!'

The old man checked himself, breathing hard.

One of the last vendors of cakes and sweetmeats had gone, leaving his torch of tarred stick to flare itself away in the empty piazza. Drea sat rigid, his eyes fixed upon that spot of light. But he was too deeply moved to keep quiet: the old habit of affection was strong upon him; it was stronger than his pride. 'I would not have believed it of you, Dino. But you'll think better of it, lad; you'll think better of it. One thinks that one has only to pick and choose in life when one is young. When a boat is running straight before the wind any fool can steer her. Later on you begin to find out that things have their own consequences; you might as well ask for a fish without its bones as for a life without trouble. I didn't expect this, though. If it were anybody but you, lad; you that I've knowed from a boy.'

'I--I can't stand this,' said Dino, huskily.

He got up to his feet and walked away a few paces. The old man followed him.

'Lad!----'

He laid his heavy hand upon Dino's shoulder. ''Tis easier to make wounds than to heal 'em. I don't want to be hard on you, G.o.d knows.