The boy responded readily to this,
As mid-day drew on clear, became their guide,
Up to that quite pretentious hostelry,
Half glad, half ’fraid his master there to see,
But ignorant how fate strode by his side,
And how it seldom seems to go amiss.
XXIX
That afternoon Sordino sought his place
Among the garden-trees, a rustic seat,
Which during gloomy days had stood alone,
But now again the sun so brightly shone,
Inviting him to this belov’d retreat,
Though it had lost the summer’s tender grace.
And whom should here his pensive eyes behold,
But one of whom he at that moment thought,
And as he met her quite astonished gaze,
Surprise brought strong emotions to his face,
He knew not what strange magic this had wrought,
His heart beat fast, his hands grew clammy cold.
She smiled, and greeted him in his own tongue,
Then wist he that it was no mere illusion,
But Stella, yea, the Stella of his dreams,
So strange, so sweetly strange, it ever seems
To lonely lovers such a rapt confusion,
When that which separates aside is flung.
And yet it did not give to him the joy
Of one who knows why his beloved came;
He wondered much, but did not dare to ask,
His self-control became a subtle mask,
Which hid the raging of the inward flame,
That might again a newborn hope destroy.
A woman’s eye can look through lover’s feint,
Behind his mask she sees the naked soul,
And laughs with mingled sympathy and scorn,
She suffers not because he is forlorn,
And rather likes to see him prostrate fall
Before her feet, as if she were a saint.
And Stella knew, it racked Sordino’s mind
Why she was there, but only this she told:
“My father and myself last night arrived
In London harbor, but the fog contrived
To keep us captives in the vessel’s hold,
Until this morn, when we this place did find.”
“How found ye it?” Sordino dared to question.
“A lad who said his master’s lodging here,
Did guide us, and, methinks I see him there.”
Sordino turned and saw the boy’s despair,
And called him in a tone that felled his fear,
He came, and was forgiv’n without confession.
And Stella took his hand and stroked his head,
Sordino wishing that he was the lad,
He found a coin and told him to be gone,
And like the earth from which the fog was blown,
The boy felt in his heart relieved and glad,
And brushed his master’s clothes and made his bed.