When Toni came to complete the trio, their happiness was complete; and for three years after her birth the little house on the hill-side was the home of joy and love and all the pleasant domestic virtues and graces.
When the child was three years old, the elder Antonia, herself only a girl, died, after twenty-four hours' fever; and in one black hour Roger paid for all the sunny days with which Fortune had so lavishly endowed him.
When at length he summoned up resolution to face the future he determined, with a passionate desire to carry out his young wife's unspoken entreaty, to devote himself to his child; and with this intention he stayed on bravely in the little home from which the sunshine had departed.
For nearly six years they lived together in the tiny village near Naples; and gradually the pall began to lift from the young man's spirit, and the sunshine and the flowers, the blue sky and sea, and the snow-capped mountains made their appeal once again to the warm, ardent soul which sorrow had darkened.
During these six years father and daughter had lived frugally, almost as the peasants lived; yet with a daintiness, an order, which were unknown to the peasants. The little Antonia—Toni, as they called her—grew straight and strong as she played on the mountain slopes, or ate the simple meals of grapes and bread and goat's flesh provided for her by the old housekeeper, Fiammetta, who ruled both the pretty child and the handsome young father with a rule of iron which yet made life a very well-ordered and gracious existence.
But when Toni had almost reached her ninth birthday the change came. The good old priest died; and with the death of his sole friend Roger Gibbs found life in the village impossible.
Truth to tell, it was a marvel he had borne it so long. Only a numbing blow such as he had received could have stunned his faculties into acquiescence with this sleepy, uneventful existence; and now, suddenly, his soul awoke from its peaceful slumber and demanded life, and yet more life.
Italy became all at once unendurable. The nomad spirit was aroused, and nothing would satisfy the man but a fresh start in life's pilgrimage.
His little daughter, too, must be educated; and although he loved the child with all the concentrated passion of a man who has lost the woman of whom the child is his only memento, he yet felt that the time had come when he must shake himself free from the trammels of domesticity and live once again the life of a man in some free, wild, adventure-filled land.
A month after Father Pietro's death Roger and his little daughter Antonia were in England. The father's first object was to seek out his brother Fred and see if he and his wife would take charge of the child for a short time; and this he found both Fred and his comely spouse very willing to do. There were other children in the home who were only too ready to welcome the pretty little Toni; and after a stay of some weeks in the noisy Brixton house Roger Gibbs had bidden his little daughter farewell, and had gone forth once more, this time as assistant purser on a liner, a post to which one of his former employers had assisted him opportunely. It was a chance to see more of the world, and the man embraced it gladly enough, though it would certainly prove irksome in the end.