Volume Ii Part 4 (2/2)
'It comes from down there. From the Padrone's well in the courtyard.
'And who is the Padrone?' Dino questioned lazily. The food and drink had rested him. He lay on his back on the warm turf with half-shut eyes. A vague soft wind wandered over the gra.s.s, and caressed his face and hair; all about him on the hill-side was a small continuous sound of tinkling bells, and the steady crop, cropping of the sheep. 'Who _is_ your Padrone?' he repeated in a sleepy voice.
The man looked at him in a slow puzzled way. '_Mah! ... e il Padrone nostro_,' he said after a pause.
He thrust the iron end of his long shepherd's staff into the ground, and leaned upon it with both hands. His face was of the serious Dantesque-Florentine type: a puritanic face, with pointed beard and long straight black hair. He kept his hands spread out flat, resting his weight upon the palms of them; the finger-nails showed like white spots in contrast to the sun-burned skin.
'He is very rich, our Padrone,' he added slowly, after a longer interval. 'He has one hundred and forty thousand francs of his own, _l'una sull' altra_.' He stared at the ground as if he saw the money lying there in piles: '_Cento quaranta mille lire, l'una sull' altra_.'
For fully half an hour he did not speak again.
Dino lay upon the gra.s.s and watched him. An insane desire, a fantastic whim, born of no conceivable reason, prompted him to inform this half-brutalised peasant of his real object and intentions. He was seized with a wild craving to explain it all, to tell the shepherd who he was, what he proposed to do, and how he--he, Dino de' Rossi,--that young fellow lying on his back in the sun, that idler in a workman's dress, without a soldo in his pocket, was in very truth a messenger of Fate, a condemned man, the future a.s.sa.s.sin of a king.
He looked at the silly sheep all about him, at the peaceful country, at the peasant's patient and serious face. The grim humour of the situation filled him with a sort of desperate inhuman enjoyment. He felt possessed of a mocking devil. He opened his lips to speak, and then, quite suddenly, he rolled over on his face and lay there motionless for many minutes, with his head buried in his arms. He was asking himself if he were going mad.
Presently he rose to his feet. Before leaving he thrust his hand into the pocket of his coat and brought out a handful of cigars.
'Take these, my good fellow. I wish I had something else to give you.
But if you cut them up with your knife you can smoke the tobacco in that pipe of yours.'
The shepherd put out his hand, examined the gift deliberately, then thrust it inside his jacket without speaking.
'_Addio, buon' uomo_.'
'_Addio!_'
When Dino had got a dozen paces off the other man moved, and called upon him to stop.
'Well, what is it?'
'_Grazie, sapete!_' the shepherd said, and held up one of the cigars.
Dino waved his hand in recognition.
'_Addio_, signore!'
'_Addio!_'
The moment that spot where he had tasted human companions.h.i.+p was hidden from him by a folding of the hill, instantly, the old spell was upon him. But he walked less quickly now than in the morning; the recollection of Drea's words was farther away; the thought of Italia oppressed his heart with a sort of physical pain; he could _feel_ it; but the first unbearable moment of anguish was over, there was a certain languor of exhaustion mingling with all his sensations.
About six o'clock he found himself near the path by which they had crossed the field on the way to the pilgrimage yesterday. Some instinct told him that Italia would not pa.s.s that way again. He followed the track to the edge of the high road. There was a plantation of young grape-vines on the opposite side of the highway; he crossed over and lay down among the long weeds and gra.s.s at the bottom of the dry ditch.
He had not long to wait. Two or three vehicles pa.s.sed him, cabs from Leghorn, and open carts, all crowded with the returning holiday-makers, and presently--here they were!
He saw Drea first; the old man sat in front beside the driver, his woollen cap was pulled down over his eyes; he looked neither to right nor left. The women were talking, Lucia holding a large green umbrella over them as if to s.h.i.+eld them from the dust. Palmira was sitting at the back, her head resting against Italia's shoulder. The child said something, and as they pa.s.sed Dino saw Italia turn her dear pale face to answer;--he saw her smile.
There was something in the action, in the mere fact of her smiling, which made him realise as never before all that her sweet love might have meant to him. He saw the detail of the coming years. Beyond the grief and the shock which he knew his end would bring to her, he looked forward; he saw her going on with life, growing older, growing happy again,--a new happiness, in which the old days had no share. The thought of Italia living without him; the vision of long days in summer when the sky would be as blue to her and the wind as sweet as in the past summers which had been _theirs_; the prophetic knowledge of what must be, of what would be, pressed slowly and heavily upon him, a horror of great darkness. Curiously enough, what he regretted most, what filled him with the most pa.s.sionate sense of isolation and loss, were the very slightest details of life; the small familiar interests, the old childish remembrances, and little customs, and the young companions.h.i.+p of foolish joyous laughter. It all seemed so dear, so living to him now. And he too was so young.
Poor Dino! He sat there, twisting the long, tough weeds between his fingers without even seeing them, until the sound of approaching voices startled him. He looked up. There were two men walking among the vines, examining the fresh shoots. One was a labourer, the other a fat Tuscan _proprietaire_, dressed in a sort of loose gray jacket, like a dressing-gown; he had a gray cap on his head, and wore spectacles.
Dino watched him idly for a moment, the idea pa.s.sing through his mind that this was probably the rich Padrone of the sheep he had left behind him on the hill-side.
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