Volume I Part 9 (2/2)

'Father thought of going for you; then he said you would be tired--you had a hard day yesterday. And Sora Catarina would not know yet of your arrangement; she would have been frightened if you had been fetched away suddenly in the middle of the night.'

She glanced quickly at him, and added, 'I am glad they did not go for you; you look so tired this morning, Dino, as if you had not slept.'

'I did not sleep--much,' he said absently.

He threw his arm up and laid his head against it. His face was almost on a level now with the blue ripple of the water. There was a handful of loose straw floating about among the piles: he watched it come and go as the current sucked in under the landing-stage. What was the good of thinking--of remembering? Why had Italia alluded to last night?

Was he never to forget it for five minutes?

He sat up abruptly, brus.h.i.+ng the hair out of his eyes; but as he moved she spoke.

'Won't you give me the book now, Dino?' She bent her head down over it: 'I did not mean to vex you; I did not mean to tease you when you are so tired.'

She looked so like a child submitting to some half-understood reproof that Dino could scarcely restrain the impulse of mingled tenderness and adoration which made him long to take her in his arms and kiss her.

But he forced himself to answer lightly: 'What nonsense, little one; as if anything you did could vex me!' He looked about him: 'I suppose I ought to be going now. There is no telling when Sor Drea will be in if he has taken the nets; but I wish you would sing to me--just one song before I go.' He took the book away from her and closed it gently.

'After all, you are right; it is better to have music than to do one's lesson on such a morning. Sums are made for different weather, are they not, Italia _mia_? For days when the _libeccio_ blows, and one does not mind wasting a whole morning over one terrible bit of multiplication.'

'Oh, but even I am not quite so bad as that,' said Italia quickly. 'I had only just brought out my book when you came; before then I had been talking to the signor Padrone.'

'What!' said Dino, in quite an altered voice. He noticed the change himself, but he could not prevent it; it was all he could do to ask the question quietly, 'Has--has the Marchese Gasparo been here?'

'Surely,' said Italia, looking at him with some surprise; 'he came here about an hour ago to speak about the boat to my father. He wants to take a party of his friends out for a sail.' She added: 'I thought you knew he had been here; he told me he had met you.'

'No, I did not know it,' said Dino, speaking between his teeth.

All the radiant sweetness of the day seemed blotted out before him. It was very well for that child there innocently to accept this fiction about the boat; but did not he, Dino, understand Gasparo better? A dozen stories of the handsome Captain's powers of fascination flashed back across him. He thought of the woman to whom he had carried the letter that very morning. The letter! It was a trick to get him out of the way; that was why Gasparo had turned that friendly smiling face upon him, and talked of 'old times,' of 'days when they were boys together,' and all the while he was planning this visit to Italia--d.a.m.n him!

He forgot all about Italia's presence. With a sudden prophetic feeling he seemed looking straight ahead into the future. He could see exactly what would happen, such an old, old story; and to think that such misery could even come near Italia, his little playfellow, his little girl. If he had only known in time; if he had warned that strange lady when he spoke to her this morning, that would indeed have been fighting Gasparo with his own weapons! And then he remembered the tone of her voice when she spoke to him; to him, a man, not a girl, thrown upon her mercy. 'When the waves beat too fiercely against the sh.o.r.e the rock breaks them,' she said. And he was to go away, he had sworn it, and it was in such hands that he was to leave the future of Italia!

He had been silent so long that she thought him very tired. Perhaps he was depressed, too, about this sudden change in his fortunes. His mother might have been finding fault with him; Italia was always a little afraid of the Sora Catarina, who was a.s.sociated in her mind with dark reproving looks and a generally grave and joyless view of life.

It was always a matter of secret wonder to her when she heard her father allude to the days when Dino's mother had been a young and handsome girl. In her heart Italia could never imagine her looking otherwise than imperious and miserable. It seemed quite probable now that she should be the cause of Dino's look of unhappiness.

'I think you would be pleased to hear one thing,' she said gently.

'Signor Gasparo was talking to me this morning about my father. You know the old Marchese always used to say that he should leave my father something in his will because of the service he did that night when the steamer was wrecked. You know, Dino; when we were children. And Signor Gasparo says that since his father forgot to put it into his will in writing, it makes no difference at all. He is going to speak to the lawyers and to the Signora Marchesa about it, and my father will have the money just the same. It is a great deal of money, three hundred francs, in gold. Father can buy a new boat with it--dear father! Are you not glad, Dino?' She was silent for a moment, and then, for the first time, a shadow came across her face. 'I thought you would be so glad. That was half the pleasure of it,--the telling you,' she said rather wistfully.

'I _am_ glad,' Dino answered, in a harsh mechanical voice.

And then the blank look of disappointment on the sweet face bending over him struck him like a pang. He sat up, rubbing both hands over his head, and ruffling up his thick curly hair. 'My Italia, you must know without my telling you if I am glad to hear of any good fortune coming to you or to Drea. But you must be patient with me this morning, _carina_. I have things to vex me; and I am very weary.'

'Poor Dino! It is my fault for tiring you. But I will sing to you now. That will rest you better than anything else,' she said soothingly, gazing down at him with frank loving eyes.

Dino smiled faintly. This sudden reawakening of thought was like the clutch of a physical pain. 'Sing to me with your guitar. That is more formal. It is more like making a stranger of me,' he said, answering her look. As she moved away he shut his eyes, and buried his face again on his folded arm. The last hope was gone. After this what would be the use of warning Drea? The simple loyal-hearted old man was as incapable of tempering his grat.i.tude for a gift, with a criticism of the giver's motives as the veriest child. His little store of wisdom held no formula for such a case. It would be next to impossible to make him believe in any form of treachery connected with the handsome open-handed young master; and, even if it were possible, Dino foresaw only too clearly what would be the first--the immediate result. For had he not pledged himself to care for and protect Italia? And what more natural than that her father should turn to him in this emergency?

He lay so quiet that Italia believed him to be half asleep. She looked down at him two or three times as she sat there tuning her guitar; but as he did not move she did not speak to him. Presently she began to sing.

She sang song after song; odds and ends of old ballads; love-catches such as the peasants sing to themselves while the sheep are grazing; full rythmical s.n.a.t.c.hes of modern Greek she had learned from wandering sailors. She sang softly, _a mezza voce_, with an exquisite liquid tenderness in her voice, like the lowest notes of a brooding bird.

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