L'Arrabiata and Other Tales Part 3

He was alone in his two little rooms, and began to pace them up and down. Cooler than upon the dead calm sea, the breeze blew fresh through the small unglazed windows, which were only to be closed with wooden shutters. The solitude was soothing to him. He stopped before the little image of the Virgin, devoutly gazing upon the glory round the head (made of stars cut out in silver paper). But he did not want to pray. What reason had he to pray, now that he had lost all he had ever hoped for?

And this day appeared to last for ever. He did so long for night! for he was weary, and more exhausted by the loss of blood, than he would have cared to own. His hand was very sore: seating himself upon a little stool, he untied the handkerchief that bound it, the blood, so long repressed, gushed out again; all round the wound the hand was swollen high.

He washed it carefully; cooling it in the water; then he clearly saw the marks of Laurella's teeth.

"She was right," he said--"I was a brute and deserved no better. I will send her back the handkerchief by Giuseppe, to-morrow. Never shall she set eyes on me again."--And he washed the handkerchief with greatest care, and spread it out in the sun to dry.

And having bound up his hand again, as well as he could manage with his teeth and his left hand, he threw himself upon his bed, and closed his eyes.

He was soon waked up from a sort of slumber, by the rays of the bright moonlight, and also by the pain of his hand; he had just risen for more cold water to soothe its throbbings, when he heard the sound of some one at his door; "Who is there?" he cried, and went to open it: Laurella stood before him.

She came in without a question, took off the handkerchief she had tied over her head, and placed her little basket upon the table;--then she drew a deep breath.

"You are come to fetch your handkerchief," he said: "you need not have taken that trouble. In the morning, I would have asked Giuseppe to take it to you."

"It is not the handkerchief;" she said, quickly; "I have been up among the hills to gather herbs to stop the blood; see here." And she lifted the lid of her little basket.

"Too much trouble," he said not in bitterness;--"far too much trouble; I am better, much better; but if I were worse, it would be no more than I deserve. Why did you come at such a time? If anyone should see you?--You know how they talk! Even when they don't know what they are saying."

"I care for no one's talk;" she said, pa.s.sionately: "I came to see your hand, and put the herbs upon it; you cannot do it with your left."

"It is not worth while, I tell you."

"Let me see it then, if I am to believe you."

She took his hand, that was not able to prevent her, and unbound the linen. When she saw the swelling, she shuddered, and gave a cry:--"Jesus Maria!"

"It is a little swollen," he said; "it will be over in four and twenty hours."

She shook her head. "It will certainly be a week, before you can go to sea."

"More likely a day or two, and if not, what matters?"

She had fetched a bason, and began carefully was.h.i.+ng out the wound, which he suffered pa.s.sively, like a child. She then laid on the healing leaves, which at once relieved the burning pain, and finally bound it up with the linen she had brought with her.

When it was done; "I thank you," he said; "and now, if you would do me one more kindness, forgive the madness that came over me; forget all I said, and did. I cannot tell how it came to pa.s.s, certainly it was not your fault; not yours. And never shall you hear from me again one word to vex you."

She interrupted him: "It is I who have to beg your pardon. I should have spoken differently. I might have explained it better, and not enraged you with my sullen ways. And now that bite!--"

"It was in self-defence--it was high time to bring me to my senses. As I said before, it is nothing at all to signify. Do not talk of being forgiven, you only did me good, and I thank you for it; and now,--here is your handkerchief; take it with you."

He held it to her, but yet she lingered; hesitated, and appeared to have some inward struggle--at length she said; "You have lost your jacket, and by my fault; and I know that all the money for the oranges was in it. I did not think of this till afterwards. I cannot replace it now, we have not so much at home;--or if we had, it would be mother's;--but this I have; this silver cross. That painter left it on the table, the day he came for the last time--I have never looked at it all this while, and do not care to keep it in my box; if you were to sell it? It must be worth a few piastres, mother says. It might make up the money you have lost; and if not quite, I could earn the rest by spinning at night, when mother is asleep."

"Nothing will make me take it;" he said shortly; pus.h.i.+ng away the bright new cross, which she had taken from her pocket.

"You must," she said; "how can you tell how long your hand may keep you from your work? There it lies; and nothing can make me so much as look at it again."

"Drop it in the sea, then."

"It is no present I want to make you, it is no more than is your due, it is only fair."

"Nothing from you can be due to me, and hereafter when we chance to meet, if you would do me a kindness, I beg you not to look my way. It would make me feel you were thinking of what I have done. And now good night, and let this be the last word said."

She laid the handkerchief in the basket, and also the cross, and closed the lid. But when he looked into her face, he started;--great heavy drops were rolling down her cheeks; she let them flow unheeded.

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

"It is nothing," she said; "I must go home;" and with unsteady steps she was moving to the door, when suddenly a pa.s.sion of weeping overcame her, and leaning her brow against the wall, she fell into a fit of bitter sobbing. Before he could go to her, she turned upon him suddenly, and fell upon his neck.

"I cannot bear it," she cried, clinging to him as a dying thing to life--"I cannot bear it, I cannot let you speak so kindly, and bid me go, with all this on my conscience. Beat me! trample on me, curse me!

Or if it can be that you love me still, after all I have done to you, take me and keep me, and do with me as you please; only do not send me so away!"--She could say no more for sobbing.

Speechless, he held her a while in his arms. "If I can love you still!"

he cried at last. "Holy mother of G.o.d! Do you think that all my best heart's blood has gone from me, through that little wound? Don't you hear it hammering now, as though it would burst my breast, and go to you? But if you say this to try me, or because you pity me, I can forget it--you are not to think you owe me this, because you know what I have suffered for you."

"No!" she said very resolutely, looking up from his shoulder, into his face, with her tearful eyes; "it is because I love you;--and let me tell you, it was because I always feared to love you, that I was so cross. I will be so different now--I never could bear again to pa.s.s you in the street, without one look! And lest you should ever feel a doubt, I will kiss you, that you may say, 'she kissed me:' and Laurella kisses no man but her husband."

She kissed him thrice, and escaping from his arms: "And now good night, amor mio, cara vita mia!" she said. "Lie down to sleep, and let your hand get well. Do not come with me; I am afraid of no man, save of you alone."

And so she slipped out, and soon disappeared in the shadow of the wall.

He remained standing by the window; gazing far out over the calm sea, while all the stars in Heaven appeared to flit before his eyes.

The next time the little curato sat in his confessional, he sat smiling to himself: Laurella had just risen from her knees after a very long confession.

"Who would have thought it?" he said musingly; "that the Lord would so soon have taken pity upon that wayward little heart? And I had been reproaching myself, for not having adjured more sternly that ill demon of perversity. Our eyes are but shortsighted to see the ways of Heaven!"

"Well, may G.o.d bless her I say! and let me live to go to sea with Laurella's eldest born, rowing me in his father's place! Ah! well, indeed! L'Arrabiata!"

COUNT ERNEST'S HOME.

COUNT ERNEST'S HOME.

While I was at College, I chanced, one summer, to fall into habits of frequent and intimate intercourse with a young man, whose intellectual countenance and refinement of character never failed to exercise a winning influence, even upon the most cursory of his acquaintance.

I may call our connection intimate; for I was the only one of our student set, whom he ever asked to go and see him, or himself occasionally visited. But in our relations, there was nothing of that wild, exuberant, often obtrusive kind of fraternizing, affected by our studious youth. From that, we were as far, when we parted in the autumn, as we had been on our first walk by the Rhine; when the same road, and the same delight in the marvellous beauty of the spring scenery before us had first introduced us to each other's notice.

Even of his worldly circ.u.mstances, I had learned but little. I had heard that he came of an ancient and n.o.ble house;--that his boyhood had been pa.s.sed at his father. Count ----'s castle, under the direction of a French tutor, with whom he had then been sent to travel; and finally, at his own express desire, to college. There, he had ascertained, what he had long suspected; viz.: that in each and every branch of regular instruction he was totally deficient--Upon which, straightway he shut himself up with books and private tutors;--suffered the tumult of loose Burschen-life to sweep by him, without once lifting his eyes from his task;--and by the time I knew him, he had got so far as to rise every morning with the Ethica of Aristotle, and to lie down, at night, with a chorus of Euripides.

Not a shade of pedantry;--not a taint of scholastic rust,--was left to clog the free play of his mind, at the close of all those years of sharp-set study.--Numbers of industrious people work, because they do not know how to live. But his life was in his work;--he took science in its plenitude, with all his faculties at once. He acknowledged no intellectual gain, that did not tend to elevate his character, or stood at variance with his mental instincts.