The Patriot Part 17

And in his happiness he played the music of triumph, full of joy and of cries. For at that moment it seemed to him he possessed the soul of this woman in its entirety, whereas sometimes, even though convinced that she loved him, he seemed to feel in her that lofty reason, towering serene and cold, above love itself, and far beyond the reach of his enthusiasms. She would often place her hands upon his head, and from time to time kiss his hair softly. She was aware of her husband's doubts, and always protested that she was all his, but in her heart she knew he was right. There was in her a tenacious, fierce sense of intellectual independence which withstood love. She could judge her husband calmly, recognising his imperfections, but she felt he was not capable of doing the same, felt how humble he was in his love, in his boundless devotion. She did not think she was unjust to him, she felt no remorse, but she was touched with loving pity when she pondered these things. Now she guessed the meaning of this joyous musical outpouring, and, deeply moved, she embraced Franco and the piano became suddenly silent.

Uncle Piero's slow, heavy step was heard on the stairs; he was returning from his St. Bernard.

It was eight o'clock, and the usual _tarocchi_-players, Signors Giacomo and Pasotti, had not yet arrived, for in September Pasotti himself became a regular visitor at Casa Ribera, where he pretended to be in love with the engineer, with Luisa, and even with Franco. Franco and Luisa suspected some duplicity, but Pasotti was an old friend of the uncle's, and must be tolerated out of respect to him. As the players failed to appear Franco proposed to his wife that they should go out in the boat to enjoy the moon. First, however, they went to see Maria, who was asleep in her little bed in the alcove, her head drooping towards her right shoulder, one arm under her pillow, and the other resting across her breast. They looked at her and kissed her smiling, and then the silent thoughts of both flew to Grandmamma Teresa, who would have loved her so dearly. With serious faces, they kissed her once more. "My poor little one!" said Franco. "Poor, penniless, Donna Maria Maironi!"

Luisa placed her hand upon his mouth. "Be quiet!" said she. "We are fortunate, we who are the penniless Maironis."

Franco understood, and did not answer at once, but presently, when they were leaving the room to go to the boat, he said to his wife, forgetting one of his grandmother's threats, "It will not always be thus."

This allusion to the old Marchesa's wealth displeased Luisa. "Do not speak of it to me," she said. "I would not soil my fingers by touching that money."

"I was thinking of Maria," Franco observed.

"Maria has us. We can work."

Franco was silent. Work! That was one of the words that chilled his heart. He knew he was leading a life of indolence, for were not music, books, flowers, and a few verses now and then, merely vanities and a waste of time? And he was leading this life almost entirely at the expense of others, for how could he possibly have managed with only his one thousand Austrian lire a year? How could he have maintained his family? He had taken his collegiate degree, but without deriving the slightest profit from it. He doubted his own ability, felt himself too much of an artist, too foreign to forensic wiles, and he was well aware that the blood of earnest labourers did not flow in his veins. His only hope was in a revolution, a war, in the freedom of his country. Ah! When Italy should be free, how well he would serve her, with what great strength, what joy! This poetry he had indeed in his heart, but he lacked the energy, the constancy to prepare himself by study for such a future.

While he was rowing away from the sh.o.r.e in silence, Luisa was wondering how it was that her husband could pity the child because she was poor.

Did not this sentiment stand in contradiction to Franco's faith, to his Christian piety? She recalled Professor Gilardoni's categories. Franco believed firmly in a future life, but in practice he clung pa.s.sionately to all that is beautiful and good in this earthly life, clung to all its lawful pleasures, including cards and dainty dinners. One who obeyed the precepts of the Church so scrupulously, who was so careful to abstain from flesh on Fridays and Sat.u.r.days, to listen to a sermon every Sunday, should conform his daily life far more strictly to the evangelical ideal. He should rather fear than desire riches.

"A pleasant sail to you!" Uncle Piero called out from the terrace, catching sight of the boat and Luisa seated in the prow in the moonlight. Opposite black Bisgnago all Valsolda, from Niscioree to Caravina lay spread out in the glory of the moon; all the windows of Oria and of Albogasio, the arches of Villa Pasotti, the tiny white houses of the most distant villages, Castello, Casarico, S. Mamette, Drano, seemed to be gazing as if hypnotised, at the great, motionless eye of the dead orb in the heavens.

Franco drew the oars into the boat. "Sing," said he.

Luisa had never studied singing, but she possessed a sweet mezzo-soprano voice and a perfect ear, and had learned many operatic airs from her mother, who had heard Grisi, Pasta, and Malibran, during the golden days of Italian opera.

She began the air from _Anne Boleyn_:

Al dolce guidami Castel natio.

The song of the soul which at first descends, little by little, and finally, in greater sweetness gives itself up to its love, to rise again, locked in his embrace, in an impulse of desire towards some distant light which shall complete its happiness. She sang, and Franco, carried away, fancied that she longed to be united to him in that lofty region of the soul from which she had, until now, excluded him; that in this perfect union, she longed to be guided by him towards the goal of his ideals. A sob rose in his throat, and the rippling lake, the great tragic mountains, those eyes of things fixed upon the moon, the very light of the moon itself, everything, was filled with his indefinable sentiment. And so, when beyond the broken image of the orb, silver lights flashed for a moment as far as Bisgnago, and even into the shadowy gulf of the Doi, he was moved, as if they had been mysterious signals concerning him, which lake and moon were exchanging, while Luisa finished the verse:

Ai verdi platani, Al cheto rio Che i nostri mormora Sospi ancor.

Pasotti's voice called from the terrace--

"_Brava!_"

And Uncle Piero shouted--

"_Tarocco!_"

At the same moment they heard the oars of a boat coming from Porlezza, and a ba.s.soon mimicked the air of _Anne Boleyn_. Franco, who had seated himself in the stern of his boat, started to his feet, crying delightedly--

"Who goes there?" A fine, big, ba.s.s voice answered him--

Buona sera Miei signori, Buona sera, Buona sera.

They were his friends from the Lake of Como, the lawyer V. of Varenna and a certain Pedraglio of Loveno, who were in the habit of coming to make music openly, and discuss politics in secret; this was known only to Luisa.

They called from the terrace--

"Well done, Don Basilio!--Bravo, ba.s.soon!" And in the interval the voice could be heard of some one who was begging to be excused from _tarocco_: "No, no, most gracious Controller, it is late! The time is too short; really too short. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Indeed you must excuse me. I cannot, I cannot. Most wors.h.i.+pful Engineer, I appeal to you!"

But they made the little man play, promising that they would not go beyond two games. He puffed very hard, and sat down to the little table with the engineer, Pasotti, and Pedraglio. Franco seated himself at the piano, and the lawyer placed himself beside him with the ba.s.soon.

Between Pasotti and Pedraglio, two terrible quizzers, poor Signor Giacomo pa.s.sed a short half-hour which was full of tribulation. They did not leave him alone a minute. "How goes it, _Scior Zacomo_?--Badly, badly! _Scior Zacomo_, are there no friars walking about in slippers?--Not one. And the bull, how is the bull, _Scior Zacomo_?--Stop, stop--A most accursed beast, eh?--Yes, indeed, Sir. And the servant, _Scior Zacomo_?" "Hus.h.!.+" exclaimed Pasotti at this impertinent question of Pedraglio's. "Be prudent. On this point Signor Giacomo is having a great deal of trouble, through the indiscretion of certain individuals." "Let us not discuss it, most gracious Controller, let us not discuss it!" Signor Giacomo exclaimed, writhing all over, and the engineer advised him to send his tormentors to the devil. "But how is this, _Scior Zacomo_," Pasotti went on, undaunted, "don't you call that little priest indiscreet?" "I call him an a.s.s!" Signor Giacomo answered angrily. Then Pasotti, smiling and triumphant, because this joke was really of his own making, ordered Pedraglio to be quiet, and started the game afresh, although Pedraglio was bursting with curiosity to hear the story.

Franco and the lawyer were studying a new composition for piano and ba.s.soon, continually making mistakes and beginning over again. Presently Signora Bianconi came in on tiptoe that she might not interrupt the melody. No one noticed her entrance save Luisa, who made her sit down beside her on the little sofa near the piano.

Signora Peppina with her cordial good-nature, her long tongue, and her foolishness was irritating to Franco, but not to Luisa. Luisa liked her, but she was careful on account of Carlascia. From her garden Peppina had heard that "lovely song," and then the ba.s.soon and the greetings; she had imagined there was going to be music, and she was "so madly fond of music, you know!" There was that lawyer who "blows into that s.h.i.+ny thing," to say nothing of Don Franco with those fingers of his "that seem bewitched." To hear the piano played with such precision was as good as hearing a barrel-organ, and she was "so awfully fond" of barrel-organs! She added that she had been afraid she should disturb them, but that her husband had encouraged her to come. And she asked if that other gentleman from Loveno did not play also; if they were going to stay long; and observed that both must be pa.s.sionately fond of music.

"I'll be even with you, you rascal of a Receiver," thought Luisa, and she proceeded to stuff his wife with the most ridiculous tales of the melomania of Pedraglio and the lawyer, inventing more and more as she grew more and more angry with those odious persons against whom one was obliged to defend one's self by lying. Signora Peppina swallowed all the stories scrupulously down to the very last, accompanying them with gentle notes of pleased wonder: "Oh, how strange!--Just fancy!--Just think of that!" Then, instead of listening to the diabolical dispute going on between the piano and the ba.s.soon, she began to talk of the Commissary, saying he intended to come and see Don Franco's flowers.

"He may come," said Luisa, coldly.

Then Signora Peppina, taking advantage of the storm Franco and his friend were raising, risked a little private speech, which would have cost her dear had her Carlascia overheard it, but fortunately that faithful mastiff was asleep in his own bed, his night-cap drawn well down over his ears.

"I am so devoted to these dear flowers!" she began. It was her opinion the Maironis would do well to pet the Commissary a little. He was one of the Marchesa's intimates, and it would be awful if he should take it into his head to cause them trouble. He was a terrible man, this Commissary! "Now my Carlo barks a little, but he is a good creature; the other one doesn't bark, but--you understand?" She herself knew nothing about it, had not heard anything, but if, for example, that lawyer and the other gentleman had come for something else than music, and the Commissary should find it out----! Then the Lord have mercy on us!

The moon was dragging its splendour across the lake towards the western waters; the game had come to an end, and Signor Giacomo was preparing to light his little lantern, in spite of Pasotti's remonstrances. "A light, _Scior Zacomo_? You are mad! A light with such a moon!" "At your service," Puttini replied. "In the first place there is that accursed Pomodoro to cross, and then--_cossa vorla_--the moon nowadays! Besides I must tell you it is the August moon, for although we are in September, still the moon belongs to August. Well, once upon a time, my dear sirs, August moons were fine and big, as large as the bottom of a cask at least; now they are no better than moonlets, good-for-nothing moons----no, no, no." And his lantern lighted, he departed with Pasotti, the impertinent Pedraglio accompanying them as far as the gate of the little garden, with his usual fire of antiphones about the bull and the servant. Then the little man turned towards the cavernous streets of Oria, greatly comforted by Pasotti's exclamations: "Ill-bred people, _Scior Zacomo_! Vulgar people!" exclamations uttered in a tone calculated to reach the others, and add to their amus.e.m.e.nt.

A loud gape from the engineer put Signora Peppina to flight. A few minutes later, having drunk his cup of milk, Uncle Piero took leave of the company in verse--

Tall laurel trees and myrtle sweet upon Parna.s.sus grow, May night upon you, worthy Sirs, great happiness bestow.

The two guests also asked for a little milk, but Franco, who understood their Latin, went for an old bottle of the wine from the small but excellent vineyard of Maine.

When he returned Uncle Piero was no longer present. The dark, bearded lawyer, the picture of strength and placidity, raised both hands silently, summoning Luisa and Franco, one to either side of him. Then he said softly, in his voice like a violoncello, warm and deep--

"Great news!"

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Franco, opening his eager eyes wide. Luisa turned pale, and clasped her hands in silence.

"Yes, indeed!" said Pedraglio calmly and seriously, "we have succeeded!"

"Speak out! Speak out!" Franco begged. The lawyer answered him:

"We have Piedmont allied with France and England! To-day war with Russia, to-morrow with Austria! Are you satisfied?"

With a sob Franco sprang to embrace his friends.

The three stood clinging to one another in silence, pressing close in the intoxication of the magic word: War! Franco forgot that he still held the bottle. Luisa took it from him. Then he tore himself impetuously from the other two, rushed between them, and seizing each round the waist, dragged them into the hall like an avalanche, repeating: "Tell all, tell all, tell all!"