“They seemed to talk, and then the wounded bird set off at a swift run, its fellow circling above its head and uttering its cry as if it guided it. I watched them disappear, feeling as if an iron belt was drawn tight round my heart, their cries growing fainter as the deepening shadows slowly closed upon the moor.”
My host stopped, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and turning to me, said:—
“I watched them go to what of course must have been certain death for one of them, furious, with the feelings of a murderer towards the man whose thoughtless folly had been the cause of so much misery. Curse him! I watched them, impotent to help, for as you know the curlew is perhaps the wildest of our native birds; and even had I caught the wounded one to set its wing, it would have pined and died. One thing I could have done, had I but had a gun and had the light been better, I might have shot them both, and had I done so I would have buried them beside each other.
“That’s what I had upon my mind to tell you. I think the storm and the wild noises of the struggling trees outside have brought it back to me, although it happened years ago. Sometimes, when people talk about fidelity, saying it is not to be found upon the earth, I smile, for I have seen it with my own eyes, and manifest, out on that little moor.”
He filled his pipe, and sitting down in an old leather chair, much worn and rather greasy, silently gazed into the fire.
I, too, was silent, thinking upon the tragedy; then feeling that something was expected of me, looked up and murmured, “Yes.”
IV
“UNO DEI MILLE”
A veil of mist, the colour of a spider’s web, rose from the oily river. It met the mist that wrapped the palm-trees and the unsubstantial-looking houses painted in light blue and yellow ochre, as it descended from the hills. Now and then, through the pall of damp, as a light air was wafted up the river from the sea, the bright red earth upon the hills showed like a stain of blood; canoes, paddled by men who stood up, balancing themselves with a slight movement of the hips, slipped in and out of sight, now crossing just before the steamer’s bows and then appearing underneath her stern in a mysterious way. From the long line of tin-roofed sheds a ceaseless stream of snuff-and-butter-coloured men trotted continuously, carrying bags of coffee to an elevator, which shot them headlong down the steamer’s hold. Their naked feet pattered upon the warm, wet concrete of the dock side, as it were stealthily, with a sound almost alarming, so like their footfall seemed to that of a wild animal.
The flat-roofed city, buried in sheets of rain, that spouted from the eaves of the low houses on the unwary passers-by, was stirred unwontedly. Men, who as a general rule lounged at the corners of the streets, pressing their shoulders up against the houses as if they thought that only by their own self-sacrifice the walls were kept from falling, now walked up and down, regardless of the rain.
In the great oblong square, planted with cocoa-palms, in which the statue of Cabrál stands up in cheap Carrara marble, looking as if he felt ashamed of his discovery, a sea of wet umbrellas surged to and fro, forging towards the Italian Consulate. Squat Genoese and swarthy Neapolitans, with sinewy Piedmontese, and men from every province of the peninsula, all had left their work. They all discoursed in the same tone of voice in which no doubt their ancestors talked in the Forum, even when Cicero was speaking, until the lictors forced them to keep silence, for their own eloquence is that which in all ages has had most charm for them. The reedy voices of the Brazilian coloured men sounded a mere twittering compared to their full-bodied tones. “Viva l’Italia” pealed out from thousands of strong throats as the crowd streamed from the square and filled the narrow streets; fireworks that fizzled miserably were shot off in the mist, the sticks falling upon the umbrellas of the crowd. A shift of wind cleared the mist off the river for a moment, leaving an Italian liner full in view. From all her spars floated the red and white and green, and on her decks and in the rigging, on bridges and on the rail, men, all with bundles in their hands, clustered like ants, and cheered incessantly. An answering cheer rose from the crowd ashore of “Long live the Reservists! Viva l’Italia,” as the vessel slowly swung into the stream. From every house excited men rushed out and flung themselves and their belongings into boats, and scrambled up the vessel’s sides as she began to move. Brown hands were stretched down to them as they climbed on board. From every doorstep in the town women with handkerchiefs about their heads came out, and with the tears falling from their great, black eyes and running down their olive cheeks, waved and called out, “Addio Giuseppe; addio Gian Battista, abbasso gli Tedeschi,” and then turned back into their homes to weep. On every side Italians stood and shouted, and still, from railway station and from the river-side, hundreds poured out and gazed at the departing steamer with its teeming freight of men.