Volume I Part 2 (2/2)

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 s.h.i.+vered 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 pa.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 compa.s.s 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 impa.s.sive 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 gla.s.s. '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 s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.sociations 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, pus.h.i.+ng away his gla.s.s 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.'

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