Produced by Al Haines
VESTIGIA
BY
GEORGE FLEMING
AUTHOR OF
'A NILE NOVEL,' 'MIRAGE,' 'THE HEAD OF MEDUSA,' ETC.
VOL. II.
'_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_'
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1884
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INCIDENTAL
CHAPTER II.
ON THE WAY UP
CHAPTER III.
BY THE LIGHT OF A TORCH
CHAPTER IV.
LA MORT DANS L'AME
CHAPTER V.
CHOOSING
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE BUOY
CHAPTER VII.
BELIEVING
CHAPTER VIII.
A LAST CHANCE
CHAPTER IX.
WITH VALDEZ
CHAPTER X.
GOOD-BYE
CHAPTER XI.
THE FIRING OF THE SHOT
CHAPTER XII.
VESTIGIA NULLA RETRORSUM
VESTIGIA.
CHAPTER I.
INCIDENTAL.
There was a letter waiting at home for Dino. 'It stands there on the
dresser; give it to your brother, child. One of Lucia's little nephews
brought it, maybe half an hour after you were gone,' Sora Catarina said.
'It was Beppi brought it, Dino. He came with it on his way to school.
He likes going to school; I asked him, and he said, "Yes." Mother, why
don't I go to school? I wish I went to school,' said Palmira, in a
complaining tone.
'School indeed! and a nice place you would find it, _bambina mia_.
Nay, you be content to stay where you are looked after and get plenty
to eat. Gesu Maria! 'tis all very well for such as Lucia's _nipotini_,
poor children--'twill maybe take their minds off their hunger, learning
to read. But learning's a poor sauce to empty plates in my opinion.'
'Doesn't Beppi have anything to eat but empty plates?' asked Palmira,
opening wide her eyes. She added, after a moment's reflection, 'But
you gave him some white bread to-day, mother. I saw you do it.'
'Nay, eat your dinner, child, and talk afterwards. Don't you see your
brother is reading?' said Sora Catarina, in a lowered tone, passing her
two hands over the little girl's hair under pretence of adjusting her
pinafore.
The letter was from Valdez. All the time he had spent in walking home
Dino had been thinking of Valdez, planning about him, rehearsing in his
own mind the words of some wild appeal which was to free him once for
all from the intolerable burden laid upon his life. Last night seemed
so far away. He had passed through a whole world of emotion since
then. He had put Italia between himself and his promises to those men;
he had made himself responsible for her happiness, and it was
impossible, even Valdez with all his fanaticism must see that--it was
impossible she should be made to suffer for him. Out-of-doors there,
looking at Maso's good-natured simple face, with old Drea's cheery
voice in his ears, it had somehow seemed such an easy natural thing
that matters should arrange themselves. But this note was like a
death-warrant. Before he opened it he knew there was no hope: the
shadow had closed around him.
There were but three lines:
'I have reason to fear we are watched. Do not try to see, or
communicate with, me until you hear again. Be prudent and patient: you
will hear in good time. The child who brings this lives in my house,
and is a safe messenger.'
There was no signature.
Dino crushed the note up in his hand with an impulse of personal
enmity. He turned away from the window and took his seat at the table
without a word, but no effort of self-control could keep his lips from
turning white, or alter the fixed look of pain about his eyes.
'The letter was from Pietro Valdez, surely? Was it bad news,
_figliuolo_? What has happened, in the name of all the blessed
saints!' said Sora Catarina, clasping her hands and looking at him.
He made an effort to smile as he said, 'Nothing, mother; it's nothing.
Valdez only writes to say I shall not see him; he will be busy for a
day or two.'
'And is it not seeing that man could make your face go the colour of a
piece of linen bleaching in the sun? Nay, _figliuolo mio_, I am not
one of those people who think they are seeing through a wall when all
the time they are looking at their own reflections in a looking-glass.
'Tis nothing an old man could write you would turn your face that
colour.' She lowered her voice. 'Tell me the truth, Dino. You have
been having a quarrel with Italia?'
'No, indeed, mother,' said Dino, pushing away his plate and standing
up. He could not swallow the food before him. He could see that his
mother was not convinced by his denial, but it was easier to leave her
under any delusion rather than to submit longer to the worry of a
cross-examination. He took refuge in saying, 'I am not well; my head
aches. I don't want any dinner. I shall go and lie down.'
'Yes, my Dino, yes. Lie down. _Santissima Vergine_, that it may not
be the fever!' said Sora Catarina, crossing herself devoutly.
She kept going to the door of his room to look at him at intervals all
the afternoon. About six o'clock Maso called with a long message from
old Drea. The Marchese Gasparo had hired the boat for a three days'
trip to Viareggio. If Dino was coming, he was to be ready immediately:
the wind was fair, and Drea proposed to start before seven. 'He said I
was to tell you the boat would be back on Saturday night, in time for
Monte Nero,' Maso concluded, looking carefully into the crown of his
hat and shaking it, as though to assure himself that he had forgotten
there no part of his commission.
He waited for Dino at the door, and they walked down to the pier
together. Gasparo was standing smoking a cigar at the head of the
steps under a gas-lamp. He nodded cheerfully to Dino. 'That's right,
old fellow. Glad you are coming,' he said. The two men were with him
whom Dino had seen at the door of the 'Giappone' that morning.
They seemed to have many friends at Viareggio. The _Bella Maria_ was
kept in constant readiness, for there was no telling at what hour a
message might not come down from some neighbouring villa, to be
followed shortly by a company of pleasure-seekers bound for a sail. On
one occasion Dino saw a face he knew among the cloaked and furred
figures whom Gasparo was handing so carefully on board.
There was an unsteady wind that afternoon, and the boat was heavily
laden: it was some time before Dino could look away from his task of
watching the uncertain half-filled sails, but when at last the breeze
struck them fully and the _Bella Maria_ ran out of harbour on a long
smooth tack, he could not resist his wish to see if he too had been
recognised.
The Contessa must have been watching him, for the moment he turned his
head their eyes met. He took off his woollen cap hastily, without
speaking. She kept her dark eyes fixed steadily upon him for a moment.
'You have taken my advice then? This is wiser than building
barricades,' she said in a low voice.
She looked as if she might have added something more, but at that
moment Gasparo, who was sitting beside her sheltering her from the sun
by holding up her parasol,--Gasparo leaned forward and repeated some
remark.
The Contessa laughed. 'You think so, _vraiement_? It is not my
experience. I find it is not only the virtues which require a certain
elbow-room in which comfortably to expand. Some people fight against
their own selfishness in this world, but mostly they fight the
selfishness of their neighbours.'
'And why not? After all, it's other people's selfishness that one
objects to,' said Gasparo gaily.
'And that is only out of disinterestedness,' struck in another man, who
had not yet spoken. 'You are too severe upon us, Contessa. One never
tires of virtue.'
She lifted her delicate eyebrows inquiringly.
'Well--not of other people's virtue: one tires of one's own perhaps.'
'But it's so seldom one has the chance of _that_,' added Gasparo
lightly, pulling with one hand at the fringe of the big parasol. He
had distinctly heard what had been said to Dino; but now, as his eye
rested upon him, he nodded in a half-careless, half-friendly manner.
'She's going better now. We shall get more wind beyond the breakwater,
eh, lad?'
'Yes, sir,' said Dino, putting on his cap again and going forward to
coil away a loose rope.
Everything he had noticed in the last day or two made him feel safer
about Gasparo. The young Marchese was an excellent sailor; he was
absorbed in his present amusement; the two young men had not exchanged
a word unconnected with the management of the boat.
Those three last days had seemed to Dino to pass like a dream. After
his sedentary habits of life between the four walls of an office, the
mere fact of being always out-of-doors and always actively employed
would have sufficed to change all his impressions. He was intoxicated
with fresh air, with sunlight, and the exhilarating sense of energetic
work. 'There's no life like it, lad; no life like it,' old Drea told
him more than once. 'Other men may make a better living, I'm not
denying it; but to be content with what one gets in this world is to be
the master of it. When you're as old as I am you'll find that you
can't put one foot in two shoes, boy; it's a good plan to know what you
want and be contented with it when you've got it--a rare good plan.'
'If only wanting were enough to get it,' said Dino bitterly.
'Lad, lad! _Bisogna dar tempo al tempo_--give time time enough to work
in. But you youngsters are all alike; you expect to smell fried fish
before the nets are even cast into the water.'
'That 'ud be a poor look-out for supper,' observed silent Maso with a
grin.
'What! were _you_ listening to what I was saying? Then I'm bound
you'll be whistling for a wind before long, my boy;--you know the old
saying, when you see a donkey listening it's a sign the weather is
changing,' retorted old Drea, shifting his pipe in his mouth and giving
vent to a dry chuckle.
But presently, as Maso moved away, Dino looking up found the old man's
keenly-inquiring glance fixed full upon him.
'We've known each other a good many years, and each of us knows pretty
well what timber the other's boat is built of. Without wasting breath,
boy,--is there anything troubling you?'
Dino doubled up his fist and struck one of the rowlocks tighter into
its place. 'Oh! every one is more or less troubled,' he said evasively.
'Ay; but there's a difference, there's a difference, boy. Little
worries, Lord bless you! they're everywhere. And they're like a grain
o' sand in your eye, no use to any mortal man, out or in. But real
trouble's a different thing. I'm not saying there's no use in it, or
even that a man ought to hope to escape it; it's only a fool would
expect the wind always to be blowing from the same point o' the
compass. And a real sorrow--an old sorrow--I've known it to act like
ballast. It's heavy; ay; but it trims the boat. There's many a man
wouldn't sail so straight about his day's work if there wasn't some
dead weight o' that sort at his heart to steady him.'
He was silent for a moment, and then once more he looked with a kindly
affectionate glance at the young man's flushed and averted face. 'I'm
not asking for more than you want to tell, lad. When a real friend has
got two eyes to look at you with, sometimes the best service he can do
you is to keep one o' them shut. There's nothing easier than to sail
when the right wind's blowing; you'll tell me all about it fast enough
when the time comes. _Andiamo! corraggio, ragazzo_! It's a poor
business looking at the sun with a cloudy face.'
He gave a searching look at the horizon, 'We'll be in in half an hour
more if the wind holds--we'll have her snug in harbour before sunset.
And then, hey! for a clear sky to-morrow and a day at Monte Nero.
To-morrow'll be the finest day we've had this week, and I'm glad o't,
I'm glad o't. I don't like having my little girl disappointed.' He
turned his head towards the sunny semicircle of houses of the distant
city. 'She'll be waiting there now to see us come in, _che Dio la
benedica_!'
Dino, too, was secretly preoccupied with the prospect of that
approaching meeting. He was the first to see her as they ran the long
oars out to pull the boat in across the smooth water of the inner port.
He saw her scarlet handkerchief, a spot of colour a long way off
beneath the shadow of the bridge. She was standing in the same place
as when he had last seen her, and it was like a good omen that he
should have been the first to discover her at that distance.
She spoke first of all to her father, but as she put her little hand
into his Dino was exquisitely conscious of the quick tremor of joy
which made her heart beat at his touch. There was irresistible delight
in the mere fact of being near her. And there was no lack of
brightness now in the face which turned towards her, or in the voice
which wished her 'Good-night!'
'Until to-morrow, Dino,' she said, following him to the foot of the
stone steps.
'_A domani, cara!_'
There was a bright fire and a welcome waiting for him in the old room
at home. He stood before the blaze talking for several moments before
he crossed the room to look at the shelf above the dresser where the
letters were put.
'Are you expecting anything? There are no letters for you, my Dino;
no, not even one little letter. Are you sorry? Do you mind?' Palmira
asked, rather anxiously.
He stooped to kiss her. 'No, little one. I was only looking. I don't
really want it at all,' he said laughingly.
It seemed like another good omen that there should be no news from
Valdez.