Part 6 (1/2)

It was very early morning, and there was no shooting, for a southwesterly gale had been blowing all night, and the birds pa.s.sed far inland. All along the beach, for twenty-five miles in an unbroken line, the surf thundered in, with a double roar, breaking on the bar, then gathering strength again, rising grey and curling green and cras.h.i.+ng down upon the sand. Then the water opened out in vast sheets of crawling foam that ran up to the very foot of the bank where the scrub began to grow, and ran regretfully back again, tracing myriads of tiny channels where the sand was loose; but just as it had almost subsided, another wave curled and uncurled itself, and trembled a moment, and flung its whole volume forwards through a cloud of unresisting spray.

It had rained a little, too, and it would rain again. The sky was of an even leaden grey, and as the sun rose unseen, a wicked glare came into it, as if the lead were melting; and the wind howled unceasingly, the soft, wet, southwest wind of the great spring storms.

Less than a mile from the sh.o.r.e a small brigantine, stripped to a lower topsail, storm-jib, and balance-reefed mainsail, was trying to claw off sh.o.r.e. She had small chance, unless the gale s.h.i.+fted or moderated, for she evidently could not carry enough sail to make any way against the huge sea, and to heave to would be sure destruction within two hours.

The scrub and brushwood were dripping with raindrops, and the salt spray was blown up the bank with the loose sand. Everything was wet, grey, and dreary, as only the Roman sh.o.r.e can be at such times, with that unnatural dreariness of the south which comes down on nature suddenly like a bad dream, and is a thousand times more oppressive than the stern desolation of any northern sea-coast.

Marcello and Aurora watched the storm from a break in the bank which made a little lee. The girl was wrapped in a grey military cloak, of which she had drawn the hood over her loose hair. Her delicate nostrils dilated with pleasure to breathe the salt wind, and her eyelids drooped as she watched the poor little vessel in the distance.

”You like it, don't you?” asked Marcello, as he looked at her.

”I love it!” she answered enthusiastically. ”And I may never see it all again,” she added after a little pause.

”Never?” Marcello started a little. ”Are you going away?”

”We are going to Rome to-day. But that is not what I mean. We have always come down every year for ever so long. How long is it, Marcello?

We were quite small the, first time.”

”It must be five years. Four or five--ever since my mother bought the land here.”

”We were mere children,” said Aurora, with the dignity of a grown person. ”That is all over.”

”I wish it were not!” Marcello sighed.

”How silly you are!” observed Aurora, throwing back her beautiful head.

”But then, I am sure I am much more grown up than you are, though you are nineteen, and I am not quite eighteen.”

”You are seventeen,” said Marcello firmly.

”I shall be eighteen on my next birthday!” retorted Aurora with warmth.

”Then we shall see who is the more grown up. I shall be in society, and you--why, you will not even be out of the University.”

She said this with the contempt which Marcello's extreme youth deserved.

”I am not going to the University.”

”Then you will be a boy all your life. I always tell you so. Unless you do what other people do, you will never grow up at all. You ought to be among men by this time, instead of everlastingly at home, clinging to your mother's skirts!”

A bright flush rose in Marcello's cheeks. He felt that he wanted to box her ears, and for an instant he wished himself small again that he might do it, though he remembered what a terrible fighter Aurora had been when she was a little girl, and had preserved a vivid recollection of her well-aimed slaps.

”Don't talk about my mother in that way,” he said angrily.

”I'm not talking of her at all. She is a saint, and I love her very much. But that is no reason why you should always be with her, as if you were a girl! I don't suppose you mean to begin life as a saint yourself, do you? You are rather young for that, you know.”

”No,” Marcello answered, feeling that he was not saying just the right thing, but not knowing what to say. ”And I am sure my mother does not expect it of me, either,” he added. ”But that is no reason why you should be so disagreeable.”

He felt that he had been weak, and that he ought to say something sharp.