He took out his bread and cheese and a melon he had bought that morning, and disposed himself to eat his dinner. He had often partaken of a more sumptuous meal, but never had he eaten with so glorious a prospect at his feet.
A little lateen-sailed boat stole out from beneath the olives and gained the sea; and as Tony watched her, he thought if he would only have been a fisherman there, and Alice his wife, how little he could have envied all that the world has of wealth and honors and ambitions. His friend Skeffy could not do this, but he could. He was strong of limb and stout of heart; he could bear hardships and cold; and it would be so fine to think that, born gentleman as he was, he never flinched from the hardest toil, or repined at the roughest fare, he and Alice treasuring up their secret, and hoarding it as a miser hoards his gold.
Ay, down there, in that little gorge, with the pine-wood behind and the sea before, he could have passed his life, with never a longing thought for the great world and its prizes. As he ran on thus in fancy, he never heard the sound of footsteps on the road above, nor noticed the voices of persons talking.
At last he heard, not the words, but the tone of the speakers, and recognized them to be English. There is that peculiar sound in English utterance that at once distinguishes it from all other speech; and Tony, quite forgetting that his high-peaked Calabrian hat and massive beard made him far more like an Italian brigand than a British gentleman, not wishing to be observed, never turned his head to look at them. At last one said, “The little fishing-village below there must be Levante. John Murray tells us that this is the land of the fan palm and the cactus, so that at length we are in Italy.”
“Do you know—shall I confess it,” said the other, “that I am not thinking of the view, beautiful as it is? I am envying that peasant with his delicious melon on the rock there. I am half tempted to ask him to share it with me.”
“Ask him, by all means,” said the first speaker, laughing.
“You are jesting,” replied the other, “but I am in sober earnest. I can resist no longer. Do you, however, wait here, or the carriage may pass on and leave us behind.”
Tony heard nothing of these words; but he heard the light footsteps, and he heard the rustle of a woman's dress as she forced her way, through bramble and underwood, till at last, with that consciousness so mysterious, he felt there was some one standing close behind him. Half vexed to think that his isolation should be invaded, he drew his hat deeper over his eyes, and sat steadfastly gazing on the sea below him.
“Is that Levante I see beneath that cliff?” asked she, in Italian,—less to satisfy her curiosity than to attract fris attention.
Tony started. How intensely had his brain been charged with thoughts of long ago, that every word that met his ears should seem impregnated with these memories! A half-sulky “Si” was, however, his only rejoinder.