A LAST CHANCE.
Drea did not speak until they stood all three in the shelter of the familiar low-ceilinged room. Then he said, 'I should like to be alone with Dino.'
He waited until Italia had closed the door of the inner chamber behind her. He waited, standing in the firelight, his powerful knotted hands hanging loosely beside him; his gray head bowed upon his breast. All the fire had gone out of the old man; he looked broken-down.
Presently he spoke.
'I did not expect to see you here again, but perhaps it's as well—it's as well.'
He stopped, and fumbled in his pocket for his old pipe. He lighted it automatically, and there was something in the action which seemed to make him feel more like himself.
'I've been troubled, lad; sore troubled,' he said, not looking at Dino, but staring straight before him at the blazing wood upon the hearth. 'Sore troubled. It's like a storm out of a clear sky. First you, lad; first you, and then the young master. I counted upon you to help me take care of the little girl, Dino.'
He spoke with long pauses between his words.
'Your father was my friend once, an' I trusted him, an' he betrayed me. I never told you before; it didn't seem fair-like; but he betrayed me. He thought to take everything for himself. But you can't get happiness i' this world without doing something for it; it isn't enough to be willing to rob others. There's no cheap way o' cheating Heaven, lad; a man can't buy Heaven at half-price.'
He sat still for a few minutes breathing heavily. Then he rose, and, taking up the candle, he crossed the room, and unlocked the door of a small cupboard, in which Dino had always known him to keep his few valuables; his certificate from the captain of the shipwrecked steamer; his dead wife's silver-mounted rosary, and whatever money he happened to possess. He returned holding in his hand the embroidered portfolio full of banknotes which Gasparo had left with Italia.
'Some o' it has to be taken back to the young master. But there's three hundred francs in there, lad, o' my very own. I earned it fairly; and the old master always meant it to be mine. Three hundred francs! It's a deal o' money that. I don't know as I ever saw so much money together before.'
He smoothed the folded notes with eager trembling fingers.
'It's all yours, lad; all of it. Take it and pay off these men as have got the hold on you. It's a deal o' money that—three hundred francs. More than a man could put by in five years' saving. I never could save nothing myself. They'd do many things for that, they would. You can pay 'em off easy.'
And then, as Dino made not the smallest movement to grasp the proffered money, 'Here, take it, boy,' he repeated, trying to thrust the little roll of notes into the young man's clenched hand. 'Take it; it'll be more than made up to me if you are good to my little girl.'
It was impossible to make him understand that the money could make no difference.
'It's three hundred lire, that's what it is. Three hundred lire,' he said doggedly; 'and I earned it, fair, that night o' the wreck. I never thought then it would have to go to pay off rascals; but I'd do more than that, I would, to please the little girl.'
But at last Dino's persistent refusal roused the old man to something more like anger. 'If you won't, you won't. It 'ud have been more above-board to have said it from the beginning.—If you must drown yourself, at least drown yourself i' the deep sea. That's my way o' thinking.—You could talk there all night; it's easy work talking. Colla lingua in bocca si va a Roma—a man can get as far as Rome if he has a tongue in his mouth. But it proves nothing; it proves nothing.'
He pushed the bank-notes across the table, flattening them out under his strong fist. 'There 'tis. And now take it or leave it, for there 'tis before you. You can choose.'
Dino rose and reached his hat. 'There are many things you will understand better later on, Sor Drea,' he said simply. Then he looked all about the room. 'I'll not see this again. And I've been very happy here. If ever the time should come when you think you judged me harshly, you'll be glad to remember that, perhaps,—that I thanked you and wished you well at the very last.'
And then as the old man still sat silent, with bowed head, 'Will you shake hands with me before I go, Sor Drea?' Dino said, coming nearer. He looked very noble at that moment standing there, with the firelight shining full upon his young resolute face.
But Andrea never lifted up his eyes.
'The devil teaches a man how to do things but not how to hide 'em. I thought you was an honest lad at one time, Dino,—I did,' he said bitterly; and let him go without another word.
Drea sat there for a long time after he heard that closing of the outer door. By and by Italia re-entered the room. She came and went softly, busying herself with the preparation of her father's supper. Presently she came near the fire and knelt before it, screening her face with her outspread fingers from the blaze while she watched the boiling water in the kettle out of which she would presently make the coffee.
She was observing her father furtively under shelter of her fingers, and before long she turned a little and rested her cheek against his knee.
'You must be tired, father, and hungry. And you have let your pipe go out; poor father!' she said in a deep tone of loving anxiety.
'Ay, child.'
Andrea shifted the pipe slowly to his other hand and laid his disengaged fingers fondly upon the girl's thick hair.
There was a silence between them while the water bubbled and hissed upon the hearth. But as Italia stooped to lift the saucepan Drea checked her. He said:
'I've done what I could, child; what I could.'
'Yes, father.'
'His father was the same sort before him. I never told you, but Sora Catarina there, she was my sweetheart once, when we were all young together. And his father was my friend, and he took her away from me. And I was fond of her then, I was.'
Italia drew his hard hand down against her cheek, and kissed it softly, without speaking.
'Ay. I was fond of her once—main fond. And 'twas partly for that, perhaps, I always had a sort o' fancy for the lad. I never could bear to be hard on him. An' he's disappointed me. It's i' the breed, my girl; a bad breed, and you can't alter that with wishing. You can't turn a porpoise into a dolphin, no matter how long you leave him in the water.'
As still she made no answer, he added more insistingly:
'I'd have saved you from this if I could, my pretty. I did all I knew how. But you can't get a grip on the anchor when there's no bottom but only shifting sand. Faithlessness—— Look here, girl, it's like poison in one's daily bread.' He stroked her cheek tenderly, 'My girl, it's poison, you can't live on it.'
Then Italia lifted up her head.
'Dino is not faithless,' she said gently.
'Girl, no one believes in him. Not a soul. Not even the young master—and they were boys together.'
'I do, I believe in him, father.'
She knelt with clasped hands gazing at the fire, and all the ardour and devotion of her impassioned soul sounded in her soft girlish voice. For the moment she felt superior to all suffering, uplifted to a region of feeling which knows neither lassitude nor reluctant pain. And such love makes all things easy; it floods dry places; it drowns the slime and weeds. It is good, no doubt, to be strong; it is wiser to be the master of our fortunes than their slave. The truth is obvious enough. But we are not all strong, God knows; let us still be thankful for that divine gift of pity,—tender and loving pity,—the heritage of the outcast; that last possession of the disinherited, of the unsuccessful; who, owning this, shall yet know something, even on this earth, of the very kingdom of heaven.
After a while she rose to her feet; she laid her gentle hand upon the old man's shoulder. 'Come, father. Come to your supper. You are so tired, dear; you must let me take care of you. For the harder things are, father, the more we will need each other's love,' Italia said.