Vestigia. Vol. II.

by George Fleming

WITH VALDEZ.

The sun was not more than half an hour high in the east when Valdez and Dino started in their boat to row up the disused canal to Pisa. It was a mild gray morning. A pearly-tinted scirocco sky hung low above the flat country beyond Leghorn; on either side were stretches of bare ploughed land; the only colour was in the thick fringe of tall yellow reeds which bordered the canal, and on the scarlet-stained leaves of the water plants and brambles which had survived the winter, hidden deep under the faded bents of last year's grass, in sheltered nooks below the overhanging banks.

It would have been easy to tow the boat: there was a narrow path trodden out along the margin by the feet of the men who still dragged the slow weight of their flat-bottomed barges, laden with barrels of oil and sacks of corn, in preference to sending the merchandise to Pisa by the new line of railway. But Dino liked better the labour of rowing against the sluggish current. The monotonous action soothed him like the reiteration of old words which carried pleasant memories. He felt more himself with the oars in his strong young hands; and the long regular sweep of the blades was like a visible sign of the vigour and force of his determination. About nine o'clock it felt very warm upon the water. The March sun shining behind the thin gray veil of mist, filled the sky with a diffused whitish glare,—and there was no escaping it, no possibility of shadow. By the time he had rowed eight or ten miles Dino was glad enough to act on Valdez's suggestion, and run the boat to land under the shelter of some drooping alders. They stretched themselves out luxuriously on the short new grass, where a point of smooth ground projected for a few feet from the bank. The water gurgled with a cool liquid sound as it hurried past them, and the air was sweet with the smell of bruised herbs. There was a tuft of scented thyme growing by Dino's feet. He plucked off a leaf or two and held them in his hand while he said:

'It is pleasant being here, Valdez.'

'Ay, lad.'

'I like rowing. I like everything which implies being out-of-doors,—doing something and being no one in particular. If I had to live over again, Valdez, I'd have more to do with men than books.'

'You may be right there, lad, there's no saying. After all, a man's personal experience is the only reality; the rest is mere hearsay.'

Dino crushed the aromatic herbs closer within his hands, and rubbed them over his face. 'Valdez!' he said abruptly, 'that man over there,—in Rome,—you know whom I mean—I know nothing about him; he has done me no harm.'

'No, lad. And I see what you mean. But that's just the puzzling part of it—when things pull both ways. But there must come a time in a man's life when he ceases to ask himself questions, when he must give up even wanting to know how well he may be doing the work that's been set before him, or else the work doesn't get itself done. For, look you, lad, in a way, what is absolutely bad is nearly as satisfactory as what is absolutely good. It's black or white; and a man—a man, I say—can understand either. But it's the thing between—it's life—which upsets our calculations.'

'It's so damned hard to know that, do what one will, one can never get any credit for it. If you stake your life on any desperate attempt to make things a little better, people always imagine it was your own choice, you liked doing it. They don't ask what it was that made you give up the pleasantness; if you get credit for anything, it's only credit for a morbid taste for being wretched.'

'Credit from society? credit for what you do? why, lad, who gives credit for anything now, except the tradesmen? And they are not in society,' said Valdez, with a short laugh. He pulled the brim of his shabby felt hat farther down over his eyes. 'Society cheapens life. Makes it full of small interests, small triumphs, small, bitter disappointments. I've been through it; I've seen enough of it in my day.'

'Valdez,' said Dino, looking at him rather curiously, 'you must have been leading a very different sort of life before you came to Leghorn? You yourself must have been very different?'

'Ay, lad, a different sort of fool, most likely. There's a variety in fools, or life would be too monotonous. I've been among a good many people in my time,' he added in his deepest voice; 'but all that's past now. Past and forgotten. And what's over is safest let alone. It's twenty years now since I've been tuning pianos. 'Tis a good trade; and one must live somewhere.'

He rolled over on the damp grass, and thrust one arm up under his head. 'You have had a good deal to do with making me stay there so long, my Dino. I was a lonely man; it has made a wonderful difference to me that feeling that, at any minute, you might be coming in and out, making a noise, knocking about in the old rooms; they would seem quiet enough without you. You made a wonderful difference.'

'Well! it's over now,' said Dino, pulling up a tuft of grass and hurling it far into the water. 'It's gone like that.'

'Lad, you take things too hardly. I'm an older man than you, and I tell you you should believe in happiness. The flower of life is a gift, Dino, without money and without price. The supreme gifts of the gods can neither be discussed nor deserved. Believe in happiness; expect it; make room for it in your life. Have faith. Faith moves mountains. And happiness is of the swift-footed immortals, and descends only on the garlanded altars of her worshippers.'

The old man was curiously roused out of his usual reticence and quiet. As they got into the boat again a pale gleam of sunlight pierced through the gray vapour overhead and rested on the distant buildings and spires of Leghorn.

'Ay, twenty years. I've lived there for twenty years,' Valdez murmured, looking back at the shining curve of the white houses beside the sea.

'Shall you go back immediately? I mean—after Rome?' Dino asked presently, taking up the oars.

Valdez glanced at him keenly. 'Maybe I shall, lad. There's no telling. I'll see you safely to the end of your journey first.' After a pause he added, 'We'll wait till it gets dark, and then walk on to Bocca d'Arno. I know a man there will give us a bed to sleep on. And then we can separate for a day. I will carry the revolver up with me to Rome and wait for you there. The review is not till Friday; your best plan is to go home first for a day. And it's safer if I have the pistol with me. The police might take it into their heads to have you watched and searched at the last moment. You can't tell. And a little extra precaution costs nothing.'

'Why should you think the police suspect anything?'

Valdez shrugged his shoulders.

'Chi lo sa? Everything and nothing. There were men I could not account for at the door of your house when I came out yesterday. And that young Marchese friend of yours, I had some words with him in the street. He spoke of your getting into dangerous company. But it may be only my fancy; who can tell?'

As they drew near Pisa the country stretched before them a flat ploughed plain, of a pale reddish brown, crossed by interminable lines of furrows. There was not a sign of life anywhere about. The light sandy soil of the plain stretched to the far horizon like an expression of unrequited labour; for where the green rows of maize had already pierced the ground the crop promised to be poor and thin and stunted. The country was extraordinarily silent. There was not even a lark singing under that low-roofed sky. The dark line of pine-trees where the king's preserves begin were all blown one way, and only the wind seemed alive, a full and rioting scirocco wind blowing with insolent unconcern across these empty fields, as though mocking at their record of patient and unsuccessful toil.

The two men left their boat at the last bridge, just outside the city gates. Valdez was familiar with every turning of the Pisan streets. He led the way now, without hesitating, to a small dingy shop not far from the Duomo, where the revolver was soon purchased, Valdez insisting upon going in alone to buy it.

And then for hours they sauntered up and down the quiet thoroughfares, over the bridges, along the quay by the yellow Arno. The deadly stillness of the place weighed with a sort of physical oppression upon Dino. The hours stretched themselves out until he could scarcely believe that it was only in the first freshness of this same morning that they had turned their backs upon Leghorn. He was in a state of half weary, half dreamy unconsciousness, like a man under the influence of some strong opiate. Emotion was dulled and deadened. He talked constantly to his companion all through that long spring afternoon; he found amusement and occupation in speculating about the passing faces. Anything was better than the silence which threatened him with the awakening of that dull pain, which, whenever he ceased speaking, seemed to make a new clutch at his heart.

It was dusk when they left the small suburban cafe where they had eaten supper, and passed under an old archway into the high-road which leads to the sea. But, late as it was, they were not the only travellers afoot and bound for Bocca d'Arno. They had walked scarcely a quarter of a mile before they overtook two peasant women, a mother and daughter, on their way home from making purchases in the town, and presently, as they all four walked abreast along the country road, they fell into converse together. Valdez began questioning the elder woman about the crops. Then he asked her if she sent her children to the communal schools.

'Che! schools! yes, indeed! that was a likely idea, to carry the bimbi four miles there and four miles back every morning that God sends us.'

The old democrat looked grave. 'And are there many children who cannot read in the paese, my good woman?'

'Eh, Signore! There is my second cousin, the guardia of the forest, he is an old man now; he has been there all his life, and he gets fifty-six centesimi a day, to support himself and his family. It is likely, is it not? that he should trouble his head if the children cannot read the books? and they are good children.'

'How many has he?'

'E—e—h! tanti! Now, two of the boys are grown up enough to work in the wood as foresters. And that helps. He doesn't poach, my cousin,' the woman said regretfully, turning her sensible face towards Valdez; 'another man would, si capisce. But my cousin—he cannot see well. And then he misses the game he shoots at. He has no luck about him—not enough to make you wink your eye.'

She walked on a few yards and added, 'The Padrone! ah, yes, that is another sort of weaving! The Padrone is a banker in the city: when he comes to shoot, he brings his luncheon with him in his pocket; two hard-boiled eggs; that's for fear he should leave any bones behind him. Is it not true, Isola?'

Valdez laughed, and the girl walking beside Dino opened her blue eyes frankly and looked up in his face. 'That is true what my mother says. But you are not like your friend there, you do not care for the schools?'

She was pretty, even in this dim light it was easy to see how pretty, with a round babyish face and crisp fair hair. She wore a bright cotton handkerchief knotted over her head, and in her hand she carried a large bundle.

'No. I am not so wise as my friend. But at least I am good for some things,' said Dino, smiling down at her. He put out his hand, 'If you will trust me with it, we are going the same way. I can carry your bundle.'

The peasant girl drew back. 'Nay. What should you do that for?' she objected quickly. Then after a pause for reflection she suggested, 'Perhaps that is the fashion in the country that you come from, to carry other people's burdens?'

'Surely.'

'Guardate! But that is quite different. No one would do it here; not even the sposo?

'Are you going to be married soon, Isola? I think I heard your mother call you Isola.'

'Ah, yes; Isolina; that is what they call me. I shall not be married until next Carnival. It is a long time off, but what would you have? When one is poor one must learn to make oneself small enough to pass through the cat's hole. That is what I tell my Pio.' She ended with a laugh, a clear ringing bird-like sound.

'Tell me about him,' said Dino, smiling sympathetically, with a sense of pure comradeship in her youth, such as he had never felt before. All that was living and joyous and young asserted its claim over him; he looked across the road at the two middle-aged faces of their companions with an exaggerated perception of what they had outlived. Life, young buoyant life, seemed the one thing to be valued. He was sick of tragedy. What he wanted was easy youthful laughter, and the warm bright satisfaction of being. The innocent chatter of this little peasant girl satisfied him better than all the theories about all the universe. He listened in a sort of vague dream to the rippling flow of her talk. When she ceased speaking he yielded to the impulse that was strong within him; he told her about Italia. What he said was very little, only that he and his sweetheart were parted; he put it in the simplest words which she would understand.

She listened; then she turned her bright face towards him, glowing with spirit and brave interest. 'Oh,' she said, 'I know what it is like, for there was a time, one week, when they would not let me speak to my Pio.'

She talked to him now of herself as to an old friend; with the unhesitating frankness of a child; the young man was strangely touched and pleased by her simple confidence.

When the footpath grew narrower she walked on in front of him. She walked well, with an easy carriage; her firm bare ankles gleamed in the moonlight below the hem of her short cotton gown; her loose wooden shoes made a short quick tapping at each step which she took.

The night was very warm and still. On one side of the road the Arno flowed past silently; the pale light in the sky was reflected upon its glassy surface as upon a sheet of metal; it looked like a river of lead. As the moon rose a faint wind stirred softly among the budding branches of the lime-trees which edge the fields, and the delicate shadows of the moving stems fell upon ploughed land. In each isolated farmyard the hay-ricks, cut close for last winter's fodder, assumed a curiously velvety texture as the moonlight rested on their blanched and weather-beaten tops.

As they drew nearer the mouth of the Arno the spreading pines of the Gombo made a dark line against the sky to their right and across the river. The fields grew wider; the night was full of a new sound which was not the sound of the wind. Dino listened more intently; his quick ear could distinguish the muffled beat of the waves upon the sandy shore.

Presently they reached the borders of the wood; the footpath ended; the soil grew sandy underfoot. At the turning of the road there were lights burning in some cottages. The peasant women stopped at the door of one of the houses.

'Good-night,' Isolina called out in her friendly voice; 'good-night again; and thank you for the civil company.'

She disappeared amidst a rapturous chorus of welcome from the farmyard dogs. She had brought to Dino a charmed hour of forgetfulness; he watched her turning away from him with an air of regret.

Later, as they lounged upon the beach, smoking their pipes in the still moonlight, Valdez said, laying his hand affectionately upon Dino's shoulder, 'I liked hearing you laugh with that little girl to-night, my lad. You were such a light-hearted lad in the old days. You're fretting now. Courage! my Dino, courage! There are no depths for a brave heart from which hope cannot mount; hope which outlasts gold and the grave. And, for a man, whatever the consequence of his action may be, even to have meant well, is sufficient excuse in the eyes of the woman who loves him. Excuse? it's a vindication which, nine times out of ten, will make her end by asking him to forgive her suspicion.'

'I know it; but it won't save Italia from suffering,' said Dino quickly.

Valdez was silent. Then he said, 'Did it never occur to you that there is a chance, just a chance, of your getting away after all? Think of the crowd and the confusion. And if you once get outside of Rome the Society will soon find means of taking you safely beyond the frontier. There is always that chance, you know.'

'I don't believe it,' said Dino, turning away abruptly.

But the words haunted him—'There's always a chance'—'always a chance;' they rang their changes upon his brain far into the wakeful night. Once, towards morning, unable to sleep, he rose and groped his way to the door of the hut belonging to Valdez's friend and host. The shore stretched before him, and the moonlight on the wild sea grass. When the moon went under a cloud the wet sand by the edge of the receding wave was of a bright steely blue; far away near the horizon the light still shone, a streak of burnished silver, upon the tranquil sea.

Valdez was sleeping quietly; Dino went back and threw himself down by his side.

It was late when the young man awoke. The little hut was empty; his companion had gone hours before, leaving behind him a message, a few scribbled words, to say that the fishing-smack which was to take Dino back, by another route, to Leghorn, might be expected to call at Bocca d'Arno towards sunset that same afternoon.

There was food and water in the hut. It was one of those small thatched cabins, built for the use and shelter of the owners of the great stationary nets suspended from beams and worked by means of a crank, of which there are several by the mouth of the river.

Dino spent the long day in the woods. It was a lovely morning when he first went out, with a touch of April sweetness in the air. It is a wild and silent shore. The flat-topped pines grow to the very verge of the sand-hills. On the sea side the forest ends in a thick undergrowth of dark-spreading juniper bushes, which fill the hollows of the dunes and mingle with the thistles and the tough salt grass. And the wood itself is always filled with the sound and savour of the sea. Before a storm the white-winged gulls flit wildly in and out between the pine tops. There is fine white sand underfoot beneath the moss and the fallen needles, and thick growths of all strong-stemmed aromatic sea-loving plants; blue rosemary, and tufted heather, and great golden-crested reeds. Dino lying in one of those sheltered hollows, with closed eyes, could scarcely distinguish between the melancholy murmur of the trees overhead and the sleepy murmur of the restless waves. The very air had its mingled breath of salt and spiciness, of the sea and the resinous pines.

By Monte Nero all nature had seemed dead in his eyes; the downs there had been nothing more to him than an empty hillside, a dull background to his own dominant existence. But here, in this still wood—perhaps because of his very surrender of that existence—there was infinite charm and interest in every moment of the long calm hours. He felt himself a mere spectator watching the natural life of things. He found occupation for half a morning in seeing the warm spring sunshine creep across the straight pine stems; in looking up at the tender blue of the sky above him; in listening to the myriad small noises of the woods; bird notes, and the tapping of the wood-peckers, the hum of insects, the cracking and stirring of the branches, and the rustling furtive tread of shy four-footed creatures, young rabbits, and bright-eyed squirrels, or the quick darting of green lizards across the thin, short grass.

Once he reflected, 'They will say in the papers, afterwards, the prisoner passed a day before his crime concealed in the woods at Bocca d'Arno. "Concealed in the woods!" But will it mean this to them?' He looked down, between his elbows, at a patch of greenest moss; a miniature pine-tree, some three inches high, raised itself proudly above the other small plants, and a couple of shiny-backed beetles wandered up and down its stem. Dino felt in his pocket for crumbs, and strewed them before the insects, but the motion of his hand frightened them away. Presently a company of red-headed ants came up out of the ground and attacked the provisions. Two of the ants fought one another for a particular crumb. Dino watched their movements with the intensest interest. When they had vanished—'The prisoner passed the day before committing his atrocious crime concealed in the woods of Bocca d'Arno,' he repeated solemnly, and he laughed aloud.

No one came near him. Once he heard some quick footsteps and the cheery whistle of a woodman tramping along some hidden path on his way home to dinner. And once, from between the leaves of the neighbouring alder thicket—young leaves so brightly green that they might be mistaken for flowers—there came a heavy rustling sound which excited his curiosity. He strolled over to the place, and peered in between the branches at a pair of those great melancholy-eyed white oxen common to that part of the country.

Something in the presence of those 'slow moving animals, breathing content,' reminded him of his little contadina. A sudden wish to speak to her again made him abandon his wood. Inland, a broad, wet ditch, half full of faded sea-heather, divided him from the ploughed fields. He jumped the ditch, and there, hard at work behind a hedgerow, he stumbled upon Isolina.

Her short blue gown was tucked up above her knees; her scarlet kerchief was hanging loose from her hair; she was digging away like a man, and her bright, childish face was all rosy and warm with the exertion. She nodded in the most friendly fashion to Dino as he came nearer, but time was too precious to be wasted on mere talk this busy morning. Only, as he moved away again, she held her spade suspended in the air for a moment, and her round cheeks grew pinker still as she said, 'As you pass through the farther field, will you greet my Pio for me? Give him tanti saluti, for I have not seen him to-day.'

'Shall I tell him I left you making the cat hole bigger?' asked Dino, beginning to laugh.

Her white teeth flashed. 'Tell him to dig away at his own end of it.' And presently Dino heard her voice singing as he strolled away between the moist brown furrows.

He had no difficulty in finding Pio, a short, thick-set contadino, with a smiling, good-natured face below its thatch of thick, irregularly-clipped hair, brown hair burnt red by the sun. His face was tanned to the colour of yellow bricks, except at the temples and behind the ears, where there were bits of white skin. He wore a ring on his hand, and used the most singular gestures in speaking.

Dino sat down on the edge of the ditch among the weeds and grasses to watch him at his work. Valdez would have talked of common schools, perhaps of politics; would have tried most likely to drive some faint idea of social equality and the rights of labour into this sturdy peasant with the Figaro face. The more Dino looked at him the more remote he felt from any impulse of proselytising.

This idyllic love-making, with its simple interests and its simple cares; its messages sent from field to field;—its naïveté, its sincerity, its security,—ended by plunging Dino into the profoundest melancholy. For the first time he absolutely realised what was this thing which he had undertaken. He gazed at the young fellow beside him; he noted how the strong muscles played along his back as he bent to his work, and the vigorous vital grip of his horny hand.

'Will that piece of ditching be done to-morrow?' he asked suddenly.

The contadino straightened his shoulders and kicked aside a heavy clod. 'Na—ay. I'll be at work here all o' Friday, if the master doesn't put me at something else,' he said slowly.

At work here o' Friday, and Friday was the day of the review. Dino's whiter hand was lying across his knee; he clenched the fingers together with a sudden passion, and thrust his doubled fist into his pocket. His hand, in his own eyes, had seemed the hand of a corpse.