"The letter, then, relates to the Signorina. She is well?"
"Yes, she is well now. She is in our native Italy."
Jackeymo raised his eyes involuntarily toward the orange-trees, and the
morning breeze swept by and bore to him the odor of their blossoms.
"Those are sweet even here, with care," said he, pointing to the trees.
"I think I have said that before to the Padrone."
But Riccabocca was now looking again at the letter, and did not notice
either the gesture or the remark of his servant.
"My aunt is no more!" said he, after a pause.
"We will pray for her soul!" answered Jackeymo, solemnly. "But she was
very old, and had been a long time ailing. Let it not grieve the Padrone
too keenly: at that age, and with those infirmities, death comes as a
friend."
"Peace be to her dust!" returned the Italian. "If she had her faults, be
they now forgotten forever; and in the hour of my danger and distress,
she sheltered my infant! That shelter is destroyed. This letter is from
the priest, her confessor. You know that she had nothing at her own
disposal to bequeath to my child, and her property passes to the male
heir--mine enemy."
"Traitor!" muttered Jackeymo; and his right hand seemed to feel for the
weapon which the Italians of lower rank often openly wear in their
girdles.
"The priest," resumed Riccabocca, calmly, "has rightly judged in
removing my child as a guest from the house in which my enemy enters as
lord."
"And where is the Signorina?"
"With that poor priest. See, Giacomo--here, here--this is her
handwriting at the end of the letter--the first lines she ever yet
traced to me."
Jackeymo took off his hat, and looked reverently on the large characters
of a child's writing. But large as they were, they seemed indistinct,
for the paper was blistered with the child's tears; and on the place
where they had not fallen, there was a round fresh moist stain of the
tear that had dropped from the lids of the father. Riccabocca renewed,
"The priest recommends a convent."
"To the devil with the priest!" cried the servant; then, crossing
himself rapidly, he added, "I did not mean that, Monsignore San
Giacomo--forgive me! But your Excellency[5] does not think of making a
nun of his only child!"
"And yet why not?" said Riccabocca, mournfully; "what can I give her in
the world? Is the land of the stranger a better refuge than the home of
peace in her native clime?"
"In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart!"
"And if that beat were stilled, what then? Ill fares the life that a
single death can bereave of all. In a convent at least (and the priest's
influence can obtain her that asylum among her equals and amidst her
sex) she is safe from trial and from penury--to her grave."
"Penury! Just see how rich we shall be when we take those fields at
Michaelmas."
"_Pazzie!_" (follies) said Riccabocca, listlessly. "Are these suns more
serene than ours, or the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy, saith
the proverb, 'he who sows land reaps more care than corn.' It were
different," continued the father, after a pause, and in a more
irresolute tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count
on--nay, if among all my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one
female who would accompany Violante to the exile's hearth--Ishmael had
his Hagar. But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the
nameless wants and cares of a frail female child? And she has been so
delicately reared--the woman-child needs the fostering hand and tender
eye of a woman."
"And with a word," said Jackeymo, resolutely, "the Padrone might secure
to his child all that he needs, to save her from the sepulchre of a
convent; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she might be sitting on his
knee. Padrone, do not think that you can conceal from me the truth, that
you love your child better than all things in the world--now the Patria
is as dead to you as the dust of your fathers--and your heart-strings
would crack with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a
convent. Padrone, never again to hear her voice--never again to see her
face! Those little arms that twined round your neck that dark night,
when we fled fast for life and freedom, and you said, as you felt their
clasp, 'Friend, all is not yet lost!'"
"Giacomo!" exclaimed the father, reproachfully, and his voice seemed to
choke him. Riccabocca turned away, and walked restlessly to and fro the
terrace; then, lifting his arms with a wild gesture as he still
continued his long, irregular strides, he muttered, "yes, heaven is my
witness that I could have borne reverse and banishment without a murmur,
had I permitted myself that young partner in exile and privation. Heaven
is my witness that, if I hesitate now, it is because I would not listen
to my own selfish heart. Yet never, never to see her again--my child!
And it was but as the infant that I beheld her! O friend, friend--"
(and, stopping short with a burst of uncontrollable emotion, he bowed
his head upon his servant's shoulder;) "thou knowest what I have endured
and suffered at my hearth, as in my country; the wrong, the perfidy,
the--the--" His voice again failed him; he clung to his servant's
breast, and his whole frame shook.
"But your child, the innocent one--think now only of her!" faltered
Giacomo, struggling with his own sobs.
"True, only of her," replied the exile, raising his face--"only of her.
Put aside thy thoughts for myself, friend--counsel me. If I were to send
for Violante, and if, transplanted to these keen airs, she drooped and
died--look, look--the priest says that she needs such tender care; or if
I myself were summoned from the world, to leave her in it alone,
friendless, homeless, breadless perhaps, at the age of woman's sharpest
trial against temptation; would she not live to mourn the cruel egotism
that closed on her infant innocence the gates of the House of God?"
Giacomo was appalled by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never
before thus reverently spoken of the cloister. In his hours of
philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and
superstition. But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion
reclaimed her empire; and the skeptical, world-wise man, thinking only
of his child, spoke and felt with a child's simple faith.