'You never knew him well. You never understood him.'
Old Drea took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it carefully. 'Perhaps not,' he said.
'You never understood him. You thought he was aping the manners and customs of his betters, when all the while—poor father! But let that pass. He taught me one thing, at any rate, for which I am more thankful to him every day that I live. He taught me that there are wants and wishes in a man—yes, and rights too—that are too strong to be choked off with a good dinner, and too old to be taught to drop curtsies to every fine dress and fine title they may chance to come across. I'll have nothing to do with it all, for my part—nothing. And I've told my mother so. If she chooses to depend upon the old Marchesa's protection, well and good. Perhaps it suits a woman's nature to sit through rainstorms waiting for the sun to shine. I know nothing about it. I only know it doesn't suit me. I went into that office to please my mother, and I'm ashamed of having been in there. I'm ashamed of having held my tongue for three years for the sake of wearing a black coat and having the office boy answer, "Yes, sir!" when I told him to fetch me a glass of water. They were quite right to turn me out for taking part in that demonstration: it was a foolish thing in itself, but what it meant wasn't foolish. And it meant more than they knew. As for myself,' the young man added vehemently, with a sudden flush all over his pale dark face, 'I agree with my father, if I had the power. I would make every title in Europe a thing to put into a museum, along with the other dead things in the dust. I am a Republican.' He looked straight across the table at Sor Drea. 'I am a red Republican,' he repeated.
'Ah!' said Italia quickly, and turning, laid her hand in mute appeal upon her father's arm.
But he only patted the little hand kindly, looking back at Dino with more of amusement than surprise in his keen old eyes. 'Ay, lad. We've all been young in our time,' he said simply. 'Things never struck me in that fashion; but there! it's all a matter of chance, like having the fever. Perhaps if they'd fastened me up in a black coat and tied me by the leg to a desk when I was a youngster like you, things 'ud have seemed different to me. I might have been longer finding out for myself that the sun goes on shining just the same if you keep your own umbrella shut or open. The good God lets us do, but he doesn't let us overdo. Mind that. There's things that are settled for us; settled before we were born; but it takes a baby a good while to make quite sure that the walls of the house can't be got to move by its pushing at 'em—that's one way I used to keep my little girl there quiet when she was a mite of a thing, so high, when she used to cry to come and sit beside me in the boat while I was cleaning the fish, and believed she was making the water rock her by shaking the rudder with her soft little fingers. Ay, so she did—so she did.'
He puffed slowly away at his pipe as if he had finished speaking. But when Dino leaned forward as if about to reply, the old man checked him with a warning movement of his finger. He was evidently ruminating some plan, for presently he added:
'I'm not blaming you for what you've done, lad—though, Lord, Lord, what a chap the one must be who let you do it! But there—it takes all sorts of days to make up one week. And I'm not saying you are not as well out o' that place as in it. There are some men that it's cheaper to lose 'em than to find 'em;—ay, and places too. The bread of service is baked with seven crusts;—it's not suited to every man's stomach. Look, my Dino,' the old man added slowly. 'We are all friends here—Lucia and all of us. And I've known you, man and boy, since you and the child there used to play i' the old boat together. I never had a son of my own, but if I had had there 'ud be two of us to keep, and two of us to look after the little girl; that 'ud be all the difference. And if you're minded, now you're out of other work, if you're minded to come and have a try at it, lad, why, there's my hand on it. There's plenty wouldn't let another man set his foot in their boat unless they could clap a plaister o' stamped paper on the spot he first stepped on, but that's not my way o' thinking. An old ox keeps a straight furrow. We don't need 'greements, you and I. We'll just have Sora Lucia there to witness, and there's my hand on it if it pleases you to say "Done!"'
The three silent spectators of this scene had been listening to what was said in feminine fashion, watching the faces of the two men rather than their words, and now, as they clasped hands across the supper table, Italia could no longer control her excitement. Her hands turned cold: she rose from her seat: she went up to Lucia and threw her arms about the good little woman's neck.
'There, my little girl, there. It's nothing to cry about,' the old father said tenderly. He turned to Dino. 'There's two of us to look after her and take care of her now.'
'So help me, God, I will,' the young man answered passionately. He looked at Italia full in the face.