if I am absent. Come, one kissa more."
"No; wait till to-morrow, you great baby. Go away now, and do your best
to be good."
"Alla righta; if you give to me one little song."
"Truly?"
"Truly, Anita mia. I desire indeed, this hour, the mandolin. But no
matter: sing. All is quiet: see! it can begin."
Then the girl's thin bird-like voice soared alone, not in any expected
love-lyric of the seaport streets, but in a Christian folk-song of
artless beauty.
"All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road.
"The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road:
All in the April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.
"The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak human cry:
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.
"Up in the blue, blue mountains,
Dewy pastures are sweet,
With rest for the little bodies,
And rest for the little feet.
"But for the Lamb of God,
Up on the hill-top green,
Only a Cross of shame,
Two stark crosses between!
"All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs:
I thought on the Lamb of God."[1]
There was a pause after. Then Openshaw sighed. He knew they were in
each other's arms, the morning heaven blessing them; but with him it
was spiritual darkness, and bitter evenfall. A boat passed below, the
oarsmen curious; and the young loiterers on the old wharf stood apart.
"My angel, my sainta!"
"Hush! It is twelve already; I must be off."
"Ah, the time is so short! Cruel!"
"Dear, you are nicest when you are good."
"Behold, I am."
At last the farewells and vacancy; and then footsteps making towards
the angle of the wall. Mr. Openshaw's stately head, crowned with the
abundant glossy black and gray which gave it such distinction in a
land of bald pates, arose upon the surprised view of the new-comer.
He, on his part, with no question as to a gentleman's supposed
midday slumbers, stooped, and offered Mr. Openshaw his hat. The two,
confronted, smiled a little; both tall, aquiline, clean-shaven.
"I thank you. Perhaps you would rather have me say, _molte grazie_. You
are an Italian, are you not?"
The other, wonderingly, but with native grace, assented. "I am a
Florentine." How he said it! Where did he get that gypsy princeliness,
his clear pallor, the nameless magic that takes the heart?
"You speak English fairly."
"I have been in youra country long."
"And I in yours, many years ago." Now Openshaw was dallying, and
consciously. What impelled him to open sociabilities with such an one,
he did not know. This stripling of another grade reminded him dimly
of something, and teased his eye. "What a bearing the fellow has!" he
thought again. Having snapped every tie with his own life, he could
afford to be interested in that of others. He took pleasure in the
diverting accent and idiom, and the abandon with which the loose, rough
clothes were worn.
"Florence is the most beautiful of cities. You ought almost to go
back." It relieved his heart somehow, the foolish commonplace, as might
the colloquy about the weather among aristocrats in the tumbrils of
the French Revolution. All time hung a mortal weight upon his hands;
nor did the un-Americanized stranger seem to be in a hurry. But now he
started a little.
"Go back? Santa Maria! I suffer: I go back so soona that I can!" As he
spoke, with the soft round harp-like Tuscan tone which the east wind
of New England had not rasped, he glanced around apprehensively. "With
money, nexta month, I sail on the sea, and I arrive."
"Well, that might be worse," said the elder man, indulgently. "May I
ask your name?"
"Ralph Power."
"Ralph Power? That is not an Italian name."
"Sir, I know. My mother, she have the marriage name Potenza. Rodolfo,
that is mine. I translate the two, and that is Ralph Power, whicha make
it easy for the tongue of many."
Mr. Openshaw had drawn his hand over his eyelids, as if feeling the
sting of memory.
"What do you do for a living here?"
"I serva the market. Once I assist to builda boats for the Capitan,
but now he work no more; the beautiful Anne, she is his daughter. Ah,
signor!" Ingenuously, boyishly, he sighed.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-two."
"How many questions I have asked you! I am afraid I have kept you from
your duties. Pray go now."
The other bowed, and turned townwards. But Openshaw felt on the instant
a sort of loneliness. "Rodolfo!" he exclaimed, "do me the favor to
spend this." He slipped a coin into an uninviting hand, partly, as he
would have said himself, from natural depravity, partly, from the sheer
luxury of his own incognito, and that of giving away to a young man
what no young man could inherit. "It may help you out of your trouble.
Trouble is very hard to bear, sometimes."
If he were aware of expecting anything in return, from a poor Italian,
it was the usual ecstatic thankful benediction of poor Italians in
like luck. Once he had lived among them on their own soil; he knew the
simple-hearted, engaging, vagabond breed through and through. But this
specimen of it flushed and scowled, while trying to seem courteous; and
his would-be benefactor was puzzled. As they stood opposite, they were
of equal height; for the younger had drawn himself up a good inch.
"I am afraid you are proud. You have picked that up in New England."
Rodolfo answered resentfully: "Sir, I have the blood of New England
also, and it is for me the destiny to earn my money, most of all after
what I promise to the beautiful Anne."
As he said it, warming thus into his very self, the eyes of Openshaw,
watching him, were dazzled, as one may be who crosses an alcove towards
a door in plain sight, and finds that seeming door a mirror. A little
alarum-bell rang in his brain. He shuddered, for all the forces within
him were rallying together: triumph, hate, revenge, deadly delight;
things he had not known were possible to him swarmed into his spirit
with a clang. He recognized, at a stroke, that this vagrant youth,
this common workman, looking at him with no smile now, bore a violent
resemblance to himself. He searched for details, lightning-quick,
and devouringly. Yes! there were the dark, fine, pendulous hair, the
small, close ear, the strong nose and jaw, even the large, slender
hand toil had hardly scarred, the back of it smooth and hard as veined
marble; how like the Openshaw hand, plain in the old Lely portrait,
plainer yet in the Stuarts, on the melancholy walls of his own home!
And what followed? The voice, significant, prophetic, of the demon of
self-preservation in his ear: "This may be the man who killed George
Wheeling. This must be the man. Impeach him; clear yourself!" Openshaw,
in his calmer mood, a few moments back, had measured the character
before him. Whatever else it was, it was not astute. He foresaw no
trouble in worming the secret out of him.
"Very well," he replied, as if æons on æons of thought had not passed
since he spoke last. "I will take the gold-piece back, on your own
condition: I will see that you earn it. Have you business on hand?"
"Oh, no. The venerable butcher, the fever kills him; we bury him, and
locka the door for all day." Rodolfo was sullen yet.
"Then, will you kindly go into the square, buy me cheese, pilot bread,
two quart bottles of Sauterne, and two glasses, and return by way of
Daniels Street? I shall be waiting at the landing. I should like to
hire a boat for an hour, and have you row me up river. Will you do so?"
The lad hesitated. Finally, touched, or put upon his mettle by a
seeming confidence, he set out, with the greenback in his pocket
which Mr. Openshaw had given him. The latter, at this pause in their
colloquy, was made aware that he was suffering keenly. He had exceeding
self-control; his successes in life had sprung from it. But every
mastered nerve in his body, having already undergone so much, and
having so much to undergo, was humming like a beehive. He could not
stand still. He wandered about, meeting few pedestrians, across Water
Street, up Manning Street to Puddle Dock with its liberty pole, and
again past the graveyard, lingering wherever he could command a view of
the broad glorious anchorage, tragic with the exposed ribs of rotting
ships. Into the happier neighborhoods near, he would not penetrate;
this one had been happy too, when he was a child. There he saw but
visions of greatness gone, of comfort broken, and an hour ago, could
have laid his cheek to the old flaggings, and wept. But he had now a
terrible just purpose, and for that he must save his strength.
He was at the landing later than Rodolfo, who sat in a white wherry
ballasted with his purchases, the oars already in hand. Openshaw rested
his cane on the gunwale, and stepped quietly into the stern; they
backed out of the cramped spaces, and shot away. The surface of the
harbor was dimpling, little by little, with the great hidden swirls
of the turning tide; deceptively glassy between its deflected banks,
it gleamed like the thin ice which forms in November, and over which
boys send pebble after pebble, and laugh to hear them chirruping. But
Rodolfo had learned long since how to cajole the fierce Piscataqua;
and tacking artfully by St. John's Point, he labored through the end
arch of the great bridge, and gained the blue highway beyond. A train
thundered overhead. Two women in the footpath, leaning over the rail,
stared fixedly at the little boat, and from one sensitive face to
the other, and again at their contrasted attire. They were Rodolfo's
neighbors, and pleased that he had fallen in with a gentleman.
The cruisers were not back within the hour, nor within three hours.
The whole world was to change strangely for them both, meanwhile.
The order of what Langdon Openshaw had intended to say and do came to
naught, because what happens to happen is lord over the strongest human
will. He had prepared his cunning questionings, as if to force his
own fate, forgetting that the aggregation of outer circumstance which
we call fate is itself an irresistible vortex; the trapper, and not
the trapped. Up stream, by Frank's Fort, under a sapphire sky, while
as yet little had been said, he found that his watch had run down,
and he asked for the correct time. Rodolfo set him right from a cheap
timepiece. As he handled it, there appeared, linked to the guard, an
artistic bit of bronze, a tiny Renaissance figure, with bow and hound,
the blown draperies minutely fair. Openshaw saw it, and the whole
universe was not so manifest to him as that small ominous curio within
it.
"The Diana! On your soul, where, how, did you get that?" It was
familiar to him; he knew it, though he had not seen it for more than a
score of years. The rower dropped it back into his breast, definitely.
"It is mine, and dear to me. My mother who gave it, she is dead."
"Did you say your mother's name was Potenza? Was it Agata Potenza?
Agata Boldoni once?"
"Yes."
There was a thronging pause.
"When did she die?"
"It was sixa years ago; I proceed to America."
"Have you brothers and sisters?"
"I have, in Italy, twin brothers, older; their lame-a father, Niccola
Potenza, live with them. But he is notta mine."
Quick, loud, sure, the queries and the answers fell, like the
hammer-strokes of a coffin in the making.
"Your father was--?"
"How can I know? They tell me he was vera handsome, vera rich, and from
this America. _Malfattore!_ He steal away, and I am born after; and she
see him not in her life, I see him not in mine."
The crew had apparently hurt the passenger, for the latter heaved
against the thwarts.
"Once more. Was your mother ever married to your father?"
Rodolfo knit his brows, and set his teeth. "No."
For a long, long time there was no sound but the little singing keel
on its joyous flight, and Openshaw's head was hidden in his hands.
Rodolfo, of his own vigorous accord, took the way of Dover Bridge,
across the noble inland bay, and branched up the shallowing Oyster.
There by the bank, in the stiller solitudes, he shipped his oars, and,
reaching forth, touched the bowed shoulder, not without compassion.
"_Illustrissimo_, look up! Tell me." Then did Openshaw begin, steadily,
but hardly above his breath, intent the while on the image of his own
youth before him, as if from that only he might draw courage to confess.
"I have a dear friend who, when he was no older than you are now,
went to Italy. He spent his best years in a delusion, for he thought
then he might become a great painter. His character, such as it was
and is, turned to the things of good report; he was an orphan, with
a competence; but he had had no home, and no moral training. Being
something of a recluse, he developed late and slowly. At a time when
the storm-clouds in most young men's lives are lifting, his were
surcharging themselves, and getting ready to burst. On his thirtieth
birthday, in Ferrara, he--"
"In Ferrara, yes!" broke the eager interruption.
"He persuaded another man's wife to run away with him. She was a
peasant, very young and innocent, with a sweet pensive Perugino face;
she had been his model, up to her marriage with Niccola Potenza."
There was a sharp affirmative breath from the listener.
"Niccola Potenza was a cooper, with good prospects. He was considered
quite a match for the girl; but he turned out to be dull, silent, and
preoccupied. Little Agata was romantic; and her thoughts ran easily
back to my friend. The fault was, assuredly, all his. He thought that
he loved her, and so, indeed, he did; although he loved better, alas,
the adventure and the rebellion. At any rate, he took her away boldly
from her husband and her babes, and set up life in his old studio, in
Florence. The cooper, sworn to revenge himself, had nearly hunted my
friend down, when on Easter Day he fell from a crowded and festooned
inn-balcony, and broke his thigh. Somehow, after that, his fury failed
him; and he sank, under his misfortune, into a sort of apathy. Things
went wrong also with the lovers. Agata kept only for a while her soft,
joyous, docile ways, and then grew restless and wretched, with the
canker of a good heart spoiled, which nothing on earth can cure. She
would spend hours in the chapel near by, her face covered, thinking and
weeping; and then she would go back to her little household tasks, and
move about in my friend's sight, her pale penitent face driving him
wild more effectually than any audible reproach could have done. Of
course he saw what was in her soul: the struggle between her foolish
passion for him, and mortal home-sickness for the inner peace which
had attended her old honorable life. He, on his part, resented the
moral awakening in her, and stamped down both her conscience and his
own. Against the voice within which bade him, since he had done her
an irretrievable wrong, to take the legal burden of it upon himself,
and make her his wife in America, arose his tyrannous social cowardice.
He dared not; he had a depraved but intelligent dread of discord and
incongruities. And so, as many another man as weak has done, he served
his æsthetic sense, and threw honor to the winds. He was never, I
think, wilfully unkind to Agata; his selfishness would seem to me now
less diabolic had he tried to estrange her from him. But as soon as
their first apprehensive year together had passed, without any talk
on the subject, he left her. Before he took his train, that night in
May, my friend drew up a paper for poor Agata's maintenance. The sum
was small, but much more than she had been accustomed to call her own.
I know he had no forewarning of--of his child; he provided for her
alone." Mr. Openshaw was speaking with some difficulty. "When were you
born?"
"On the feast of San Stefano, the twenty-sixta of December, eighteen
hundred sixta-five."
Rodolfo had been listening under a strain keener than that of physical
deafness. The more nervously overwrought of the two at this particular
moment, he was likewise the more restrained. A certain question was
hot in his throat. Though he had not understood all of Mr. Openshaw's
melancholy monologue, he had apprehended the heart of it only too well.
But he said nothing further.
A flock of pioneer blackbirds, in delirious chatter, were gathering
overhead for their autumn migration, darkening the narrow sky-space
with their circling wings. Openshaw looked up.
"Those birds go from pole to pole to find--what? So did he. His youth
was killed in him; and before long, nevertheless, he was cheerful and
active again, and courted by the world. He came home to his own honest
and normal life, and after a while he married. He had no tidings of
Agata, and had actually resolved once to try to find her, when he heard
what must have been a false report, that she had died; and he did not
doubt it, for he used to see her faithful patient little face in all
his dreams. From what I have learned of late, I believe that he is
most miserable, and near his own end. He does not deserve to hear of
her last days. But if by letting me know, you can punish him through
me, do not spare him. I will not, I promise you."
Rodolfo sat in the boat, immovable, the thin leaves of the bowery
wild-grape flapping overhead, and flickering him with elfin light and
shade. "My mother," he began in a low voice, "did the best: the grace
of God was in her. Niccola was sick; the trade was gone, and then was
mucha poverty. With me in her amiable arms, she return on the feet to
Ferrara, and petition him; and, lo! the good cripple man, he pardon.
There us four in one family, we flourish. The American money she could
notta help, go among all till all are grown; she die of the fever sixa
year ago, with many candles and masses for her soul; and because it is
notta fit that my brothers spend on me, I ask Niccola's blessing, and
come to America. That is the end."
Openshaw inquired presently, when he could do so: "Had you any
education, as a child? Can you read and write, Rodolfo?"
"No." He sat sheepishly for a moment, then seized his oars.
"How have you prospered over here? Have you been able to save a little?
You spoke of wishing to return."
Rodolfo quivered. "It musta be."
"Why so?" There was genuine tenderness in the two words.
"There is nothing of hope for me. I am in a greata fix. I leave, I go;
I cannot stay. I have a sin also. Only my beloved, she know how it was
I transgress, so thatta perhaps my guilt is not for eternity."
Openshaw laid the tip of his stick upon the rowlock, with authority.
"Do not start yet; let the boat drift. You must be hungry with this
long exercise. Pray pass me those things near you, and the wine; and
while you lunch, I hope you will be as frank with me, Rodolfo, as I
have been with you.... I look upon it as a miracle of mercy that at
the eleventh hour we have found each other." He knew that the young
man's blazing black eyes were full upon him. "I can help you. Only keep
nothing back." He filled one of the glasses from the fizzing bottle,
and passed it. But it was struck aside, and the cry that followed was
so sincere it gave the rudeness dignity.
"Ah! No, no, no. Sir, I touch the spiritual drink no more till I die.
I vow to Anita mia, after the terrible night. For see! The evil ones,
companions, take me on a burst in a city notta this, Hartaford,
and thieve." His voice dropped under the excitement, like a file of
infantry under fire. "They thieve a banka; and I watch, in gin so drunk
as Bacco; and when the invisible man arise pugnacious, I throttle him,
and curse, and rolla him down to the cellar. He moan and expire, so
that we go down to thieva more; but the city she hears, there is a
sound, then a sound on top of him, and we fly, fly, fly, this streeta,
that streeta, till I come back awake to this Portsmouth, and fall on my
knee to Anne, and cry tears. Ah, my sainta! she comfort me in charity,
and talk to me, and keepa me from the bad; and for penance I go vera
dry always, not to be damn. I tell it not to Niccola at home when I go;
and I pray to go soon, that the Statesa Prison notta hanga me."
Such is the equilibrium between the infinite and folly, that at this
juncture, as he recalled afterwards, Mr. Openshaw was eating his
cheese. He answered, marvelling at his own composure.
"I read about it in the newspapers. You are in great danger, my poor
boy. Now listen. There is a ship sailing for Genoa from New York next
Saturday; and on her I wish you to engage your passage. That will give
you a week to adjust your little affairs here; and you must, moreover,
see your excellent sweetheart, and persuade her to marry you and go
with you. Will you do that?"
Rodolfo opened his fine eyes very wide, and then closed them. "Oh,
voluptuous as it would be, I cannot. The Capitan he make Anne deny
me until I shall have many riches. She is a handmaid of domestic
service on Pleasanta Street; but the old one, he is proud for her, and
with the mosta reason in all the world. I shall coop with thesea my
brothers cooping always in Ferrara, and do my parta with my soul. For
bye-and-bye we make a marriage; and then she will be content to live in
the sympathetic Italy, where safeness is for me."
"But we mean to mend all that, Rodolfo. Your father, whom I know very
well, is growing old, and has a great deal of property with no one to
share it. The least he can do for you (I am sure he feels that), is to
put you out of the reach of want. He will not ruin you, nor throw you
into temptations of a kind other than those you have undergone; for you
are his son, and as such he must love you. But he will hope to hear by
next spring, that you have bought a farm and vineyard, and that your
kind kins-people at home, and your wife, sometimes pray for him; yes,
and for me. Trust me; we need say no more about it. He will have it all
settled by law as soon as he is able, but certainly within a month."
He passed his hand over his hair, absently, and resumed. "You will go
across the ocean now; and if my friend lives, he may come to you; but
he may not live, and he may not come. It is his punishment not so much
to lose you, or what you might, after all, be to him, as to recognize
that his awful breach of duty has established between you what I may
call, perhaps, in the long run, an incompatibility." Poor Openshaw, on
the rack of his own candor, groaned aloud.
Once more they were crossing Greenland Bay, and the lone and lovely
miles seaward. Rodolfo crept up quietly to his strange benefactor, who
was absently gazing far away, so quietly that the wherry moved not a
muscle under him.
"It is you," he said. "The 'friend' is a made-up. I know. _Padre, si!_"
He threw his arms about Mr. Openshaw, his old hatred melted away,
and lay there on his knees like a little boy, sobbing, sobbing. "It
is for nothing at all," he explained with his endearing semblance of
good-breeding; "but the gentle goodaness of God. The beautiful Anne,--O
you musta see her, and letta yourself be thank in so harmonious the
voice of seventeen! she will taka me. Behold, I am so vera, vera
happy." Quite overcome, he did not even raise his head when he was
spoken to.
"Am I forgiven, Rodolfo? Can you forgive me for your poor mother's
sake?"
For answer, the lad covered the hand he held with kisses of southern
fervor, and pressed into it the little delicate charm from his
watch-string.
At the touch of it, the tyranny of yesterday and to-morrow, and all
his suffering present and to come, departed from Openshaw. A divine
felicity began now to possess him; he was grateful, he was at peace;
whatever his retribution was to be, he embraced it, in spirit, like
a bride. In his revery, he seemed to stand before the everlasting
tribunal, with inscrutable truth on his lips: "Of this that was mine
I was heedless. Because of my heedlessness, Poverty and Ignorance and
Inferiority and Exile took him by the hand, and led him to the pit.
He is rescued from the worst; he will cling to the highest which he
sees, with an elected soul to help him; but what he might have been
he can never be. It was I that sowed; let it be mine to reap. The
indelible blood that is shed is on my hands, not on his. Visit Thy
wrath upon me, for here is it due. With body and soul, will, sense, and
understanding, from first to last, in every fibre of my being, I affirm
me accountable for this thing." To the tribunal on earth, its magnate
of unblemished reputation had no explanation to offer. He foresaw only
his arraignment, and the words with which to clinch it: "Gentlemen of
the jury, I plead guilty."