WITH VALDEZ.
The sun was not more than half an hour high in the east when Valdez and
Dino started in their boat to row up the disused canal to Pisa. It was
a mild gray morning. A pearly-tinted scirocco sky hung low above the
flat country beyond Leghorn; on either side were stretches of bare
ploughed land; the only colour was in the thick fringe of tall yellow
reeds which bordered the canal, and on the scarlet-stained leaves of
the water plants and brambles which had survived the winter, hidden
deep under the faded bents of last year's grass, in sheltered nooks
below the overhanging banks.
It would have been easy to tow the boat: there was a narrow path
trodden out along the margin by the feet of the men who still dragged
the slow weight of their flat-bottomed barges, laden with barrels of
oil and sacks of corn, in preference to sending the merchandise to Pisa
by the new line of railway. But Dino liked better the labour of rowing
against the sluggish current. The monotonous action soothed him like
the reiteration of old words which carried pleasant memories. He felt
more himself with the oars in his strong young hands; and the long
regular sweep of the blades was like a visible sign of the vigour and
force of his determination. About nine o'clock it felt very warm upon
the water. The March sun shining behind the thin gray veil of mist,
filled the sky with a diffused whitish glare,--and there was no
escaping it, no possibility of shadow. By the time he had rowed eight
or ten miles Dino was glad enough to act on Valdez's suggestion, and
run the boat to land under the shelter of some drooping alders. They
stretched themselves out luxuriously on the short new grass, where a
point of smooth ground projected for a few feet from the bank. The
water gurgled with a cool liquid sound as it hurried past them, and the
air was sweet with the smell of bruised herbs. There was a tuft of
scented thyme growing by Dino's feet. He plucked off a leaf or two and
held them in his hand while he said:
'It is pleasant being here, Valdez.'
'Ay, lad.'
'I like rowing. I like everything which implies being
out-of-doors,--doing something and being no one in particular. If I
had to live over again, Valdez, I'd have more to do with men than
books.'
'You may be right there, lad, there's no saying. After all, a man's
personal experience is the only reality; the rest is mere hearsay.'
Dino crushed the aromatic herbs closer within his hands, and rubbed
them over his face. 'Valdez!' he said abruptly, 'that man over
there,--in Rome,--you know whom I mean--I know nothing about him; he
has done me no harm.'
'No, lad. And I see what you mean. But that's just the puzzling part
of it--when things pull both ways. But there must come a time in a
man's life when he ceases to ask himself questions, when he must give
up even wanting to know how well he may be doing the work that's been
set before him, or else the work doesn't get itself done. For, look
you, lad, in a way, what is absolutely bad is nearly as satisfactory as
what is absolutely good. It's black or white; and a man--a man, I
say--can understand either. But it's the thing between--it's
life--which upsets our calculations.'
'It's so damned hard to know that, do what one will, one can never get
any credit for it. If you stake your life on any desperate attempt to
make things a little better, people always imagine it was your own
choice, you liked doing it. They don't ask what it was that made you
give up the pleasantness; if you get credit for anything, it's only
credit for a morbid taste for being wretched.'
'Credit from society? credit for what you do? why, lad, who gives
credit for anything now, except the tradesmen? And they are not in
society,' said Valdez, with a short laugh. He pulled the brim of his
shabby felt hat farther down over his eyes. 'Society cheapens life.
Makes it full of small interests, small triumphs, small, bitter
disappointments. I've been through it; I've seen enough of it in my
day.'
'Valdez,' said Dino, looking at him rather curiously, 'you must have
been leading a very different sort of life before you came to Leghorn?
You yourself must have been very different?'
'Ay, lad, a different sort of fool, most likely. There's a variety in
fools, or life would be too monotonous. I've been among a good many
people in my time,' he added in his deepest voice; 'but all that's past
now. Past and forgotten. And what's over is safest let alone. It's
twenty years now since I've been tuning pianos. 'Tis a good trade; and
one must live somewhere.'
He rolled over on the damp grass, and thrust one arm up under his head.
'You have had a good deal to do with making me stay there so long, my
Dino. I was a lonely man; it has made a wonderful difference to me
that feeling that, at any minute, you might be coming in and out,
making a noise, knocking about in the old rooms; they would seem quiet
enough without you. You made a wonderful difference.'
'Well! it's over now,' said Dino, pulling up a tuft of grass and
hurling it far into the water. 'It's gone like that.'
'Lad, you take things too hardly. I'm an older man than you, and I
tell you you should believe in happiness. The flower of life is a
gift, Dino, without money and without price. The supreme gifts of the
gods can neither be discussed nor deserved. Believe in happiness;
expect it; make room for it in your life. Have faith. Faith moves
mountains. And happiness is of the swift-footed immortals, and
descends only on the garlanded altars of her worshippers.'
The old man was curiously roused out of his usual reticence and quiet.
As they got into the boat again a pale gleam of sunlight pierced
through the gray vapour overhead and rested on the distant buildings
and spires of Leghorn.
'Ay, twenty years. I've lived there for twenty years,' Valdez
murmured, looking back at the shining curve of the white houses beside
the sea.
'Shall you go back immediately? I mean--after Rome?' Dino asked
presently, taking up the oars.
Valdez glanced at him keenly. 'Maybe I shall, lad. There's no
telling. I'll see you safely to the end of your journey first.' After
a pause he added, 'We'll wait till it gets dark, and then walk on to
Bocca d'Arno. I know a man there will give us a bed to sleep on. And
then we can separate for a day. I will carry the revolver up with me
to Rome and wait for you there. The review is not till Friday; your
best plan is to go home first for a day. And it's safer if I have the
pistol with me. The police might take it into their heads to have you
watched and searched at the last moment. You can't tell. And a little
extra precaution costs nothing.'
'Why should you think the police suspect anything?'
Valdez shrugged his shoulders.
'_Chi lo sa_? Everything and nothing. There were men I could not
account for at the door of your house when I came out yesterday. And
that young Marchese friend of yours, I had some words with him in the
street. He spoke of your getting into dangerous company. But it may
be only my fancy; who can tell?'
As they drew near Pisa the country stretched before them a flat
ploughed plain, of a pale reddish brown, crossed by interminable lines
of furrows. There was not a sign of life anywhere about. The light
sandy soil of the plain stretched to the far horizon like an expression
of unrequited labour; for where the green rows of maize had already
pierced the ground the crop promised to be poor and thin and stunted.
The country was extraordinarily silent. There was not even a lark
singing under that low-roofed sky. The dark line of pine-trees where
the king's preserves begin were all blown one way, and only the wind
seemed alive, a full and rioting scirocco wind blowing with insolent
unconcern across these empty fields, as though mocking at their record
of patient and unsuccessful toil.
The two men left their boat at the last bridge, just outside the city
gates. Valdez was familiar with every turning of the Pisan streets.
He led the way now, without hesitating, to a small dingy shop not far
from the Duomo, where the revolver was soon purchased, Valdez insisting
upon going in alone to buy it.
And then for hours they sauntered up and down the quiet thoroughfares,
over the bridges, along the quay by the yellow Arno. The deadly
stillness of the place weighed with a sort of physical oppression upon
Dino. The hours stretched themselves out until he could scarcely
believe that it was only in the first freshness of this same morning
that they had turned their backs upon Leghorn. He was in a state of
half weary, half dreamy unconsciousness, like a man under the influence
of some strong opiate. Emotion was dulled and deadened. He talked
constantly to his companion all through that long spring afternoon; he
found amusement and occupation in speculating about the passing faces.
Anything was better than the silence which threatened him with the
awakening of that dull pain, which, whenever he ceased speaking, seemed
to make a new clutch at his heart.
It was dusk when they left the small suburban cafe where they had eaten
supper, and passed under an old archway into the high-road which leads
to the sea. But, late as it was, they were not the only travellers
afoot and bound for Bocca d'Arno. They had walked scarcely a quarter
of a mile before they overtook two peasant women, a mother and
daughter, on their way home from making purchases in the town, and
presently, as they all four walked abreast along the country road, they
fell into converse together. Valdez began questioning the elder woman
about the crops. Then he asked her if she sent her children to the
communal schools.
'_Che!_ schools! yes, indeed! that was a likely idea, to carry the
_bimbi_ four miles there and four miles back every morning that God
sends us.'
The old democrat looked grave. 'And are there many children who cannot
read in the _paese_, my good woman?'
'Eh, Signore! There is my second cousin, the _guardia_ of the forest,
he is an old man now; he has been there all his life, and he gets
fifty-six centesimi a day, to support himself and his family. It is
likely, is it not? that he should trouble his head if the children
cannot read the books? and they are good children.'
'How many has he?'
'E--e--h! _tanti_! Now, two of the boys are grown up enough to work in
the wood as foresters. And that helps. He doesn't poach, my cousin,'
the woman said regretfully, turning her sensible face towards Valdez;
'another man would, _si capisce_. But my cousin--he cannot see well.
And then he misses the game he shoots at. He has no luck about
him--not enough to make you wink your eye.'
She walked on a few yards and added, 'The Padrone! ah, yes, that is
another sort of weaving! The Padrone is a banker in the city: when he
comes to shoot, he brings his luncheon with him in his pocket; two
hard-boiled eggs; that's for fear he should leave any bones behind him.
Is it not true, Isola?'
Valdez laughed, and the girl walking beside Dino opened her blue eyes
frankly and looked up in his face. 'That is true what my mother says.
But you are not like your friend there, you do not care for the
schools?'
She was pretty, even in this dim light it was easy to see how pretty,
with a round babyish face and crisp fair hair. She wore a bright
cotton handkerchief knotted over her head, and in her hand she carried
a large bundle.
'No. I am not so wise as my friend. But at least I am good for some
things,' said Dino, smiling down at her. He put out his hand, 'If you
will trust me with it, we are going the same way. I can carry your
bundle.'
The peasant girl drew back. 'Nay. What should you do that for?' she
objected quickly. Then after a pause for reflection she suggested,
'Perhaps that is the fashion in the country that you come from, to
carry other people's burdens?'
'Surely.'
'_Guardate_! But that is quite different. No one would do it here;
not even the _sposo_?
'Are you going to be married soon, Isola? I think I heard your mother
call you Isola.'
'Ah, yes; Isolina; that is what they call me. I shall not be married
until next Carnival. It is a long time off, but what would you have?
When one is poor one must learn to make oneself small enough to pass
through the cat's hole. That is what I tell my Pio.' She ended with a
laugh, a clear ringing bird-like sound.
'Tell me about him,' said Dino, smiling sympathetically, with a sense
of pure comradeship in her youth, such as he had never felt before.
All that was living and joyous and young asserted its claim over him;
he looked across the road at the two middle-aged faces of their
companions with an exaggerated perception of what they had outlived.
Life, young buoyant life, seemed the one thing to be valued. He was
sick of tragedy. What he wanted was easy youthful laughter, and the
warm bright satisfaction of being. The innocent chatter of this little
peasant girl satisfied him better than all the theories about all the
universe. He listened in a sort of vague dream to the rippling flow of
her talk. When she ceased speaking he yielded to the impulse that was
strong within him; he told her about Italia. What he said was very
little, only that he and his sweetheart were parted; he put it in the
simplest words which she would understand.
She listened; then she turned her bright face towards him, glowing with
spirit and brave interest. 'Oh,' she said, 'I know what it is like,
for there was a time, one week, when they would not let me speak to my
Pio.'
She talked to him now of herself as to an old friend; with the
unhesitating frankness of a child; the young man was strangely touched
and pleased by her simple confidence.
When the footpath grew narrower she walked on in front of him. She
walked well, with an easy carriage; her firm bare ankles gleamed in the
moonlight below the hem of her short cotton gown; her loose wooden
shoes made a short quick tapping at each step which she took.
The night was very warm and still. On one side of the road the Arno
flowed past silently; the pale light in the sky was reflected upon its
glassy surface as upon a sheet of metal; it looked like a river of
lead. As the moon rose a faint wind stirred softly among the budding
branches of the lime-trees which edge the fields, and the delicate
shadows of the moving stems fell upon ploughed land. In each isolated
farmyard the hay-ricks, cut close for last winter's fodder, assumed a
curiously velvety texture as the moonlight rested on their blanched and
weather-beaten tops.
As they drew nearer the mouth of the Arno the spreading pines of the
Gombo made a dark line against the sky to their right and across the
river. The fields grew wider; the night was full of a new sound which
was not the sound of the wind. Dino listened more intently; his quick
ear could distinguish the muffled beat of the waves upon the sandy
shore.
Presently they reached the borders of the wood; the footpath ended; the
soil grew sandy underfoot. At the turning of the road there were
lights burning in some cottages. The peasant women stopped at the door
of one of the houses.
'Good-night,' Isolina called out in her friendly voice; 'good-night
again; and thank you for the civil company.'
She disappeared amidst a rapturous chorus of welcome from the farmyard
dogs. She had brought to Dino a charmed hour of forgetfulness; he
watched her turning away from him with an air of regret.
Later, as they lounged upon the beach, smoking their pipes in the still
moonlight, Valdez said, laying his hand affectionately upon Dino's
shoulder, 'I liked hearing you laugh with that little girl to-night, my
lad. You were such a light-hearted lad in the old days. You're
fretting now. Courage! my Dino, courage! There are no depths for a
brave heart from which hope cannot mount; hope which outlasts gold and
the grave. And, for a man, whatever the consequence of his action may
be, even to have meant well, is sufficient excuse in the eyes of the
woman who loves him. Excuse? it's a vindication which, nine times out
of ten, will make her end by asking him to forgive her suspicion.'
'I know it; but it won't save Italia from suffering,' said Dino quickly.
Valdez was silent. Then he said, 'Did it never occur to you that there
is a chance, just a chance, of your getting away after all? Think of
the crowd and the confusion. And if you once get outside of Rome the
Society will soon find means of taking you safely beyond the frontier.
There is always that chance, you know.'
'I don't believe it,' said Dino, turning away abruptly.
But the words haunted him--'There's always a chance'--'always a
chance;' they rang their changes upon his brain far into the wakeful
night. Once, towards morning, unable to sleep, he rose and groped his
way to the door of the hut belonging to Valdez's friend and host. The
shore stretched before him, and the moonlight on the wild sea grass.
When the moon went under a cloud the wet sand by the edge of the
receding wave was of a bright steely blue; far away near the horizon
the light still shone, a streak of burnished silver, upon the tranquil
sea.
Valdez was sleeping quietly; Dino went back and threw himself down by
his side.
It was late when the young man awoke. The little hut was empty; his
companion had gone hours before, leaving behind him a message, a few
scribbled words, to say that the fishing-smack which was to take Dino
back, by another route, to Leghorn, might be expected to call at Bocca
d'Arno towards sunset that same afternoon.
There was food and water in the hut. It was one of those small
thatched cabins, built for the use and shelter of the owners of the
great stationary nets suspended from beams and worked by means of a
crank, of which there are several by the mouth of the river.
Dino spent the long day in the woods. It was a lovely morning when he
first went out, with a touch of April sweetness in the air. It is a
wild and silent shore. The flat-topped pines grow to the very verge of
the sand-hills. On the sea side the forest ends in a thick undergrowth
of dark-spreading juniper bushes, which fill the hollows of the dunes
and mingle with the thistles and the tough salt grass. And the wood
itself is always filled with the sound and savour of the sea. Before a
storm the white-winged gulls flit wildly in and out between the pine
tops. There is fine white sand underfoot beneath the moss and the
fallen needles, and thick growths of all strong-stemmed aromatic
sea-loving plants; blue rosemary, and tufted heather, and great
golden-crested reeds. Dino lying in one of those sheltered hollows,
with closed eyes, could scarcely distinguish between the melancholy
murmur of the trees overhead and the sleepy murmur of the restless
waves. The very air had its mingled breath of salt and spiciness, of
the sea and the resinous pines.
By Monte Nero all nature had seemed dead in his eyes; the downs there
had been nothing more to him than an empty hillside, a dull background
to his own dominant existence. But here, in this still wood--perhaps
because of his very surrender of that existence--there was infinite
charm and interest in every moment of the long calm hours. He felt
himself a mere spectator watching the natural life of things. He found
occupation for half a morning in seeing the warm spring sunshine creep
across the straight pine stems; in looking up at the tender blue of the
sky above him; in listening to the myriad small noises of the woods;
bird notes, and the tapping of the wood-peckers, the hum of insects,
the cracking and stirring of the branches, and the rustling furtive
tread of shy four-footed creatures, young rabbits, and bright-eyed
squirrels, or the quick darting of green lizards across the thin, short
grass.
Once he reflected, 'They will say in the papers, afterwards, the
prisoner passed a day before his crime concealed in the woods at Bocca
d'Arno. "Concealed in the woods!" But will it mean _this_ to them?'
He looked down, between his elbows, at a patch of greenest moss; a
miniature pine-tree, some three inches high, raised itself proudly
above the other small plants, and a couple of shiny-backed beetles
wandered up and down its stem. Dino felt in his pocket for crumbs, and
strewed them before the insects, but the motion of his hand frightened
them away. Presently a company of red-headed ants came up out of the
ground and attacked the provisions. Two of the ants fought one another
for a particular crumb. Dino watched their movements with the
intensest interest. When they had vanished--'The prisoner passed the
day before committing his atrocious crime concealed in the woods of
Bocca d'Arno,' he repeated solemnly, and he laughed aloud.
No one came near him. Once he heard some quick footsteps and the
cheery whistle of a woodman tramping along some hidden path on his way
home to dinner. And once, from between the leaves of the neighbouring
alder thicket--young leaves so brightly green that they might be
mistaken for flowers--there came a heavy rustling sound which excited
his curiosity. He strolled over to the place, and peered in between
the branches at a pair of those great melancholy-eyed white oxen common
to that part of the country.
Something in the presence of those 'slow moving animals, breathing
content,' reminded him of his little _contadina_. A sudden wish to
speak to her again made him abandon his wood. Inland, a broad, wet
ditch, half full of faded sea-heather, divided him from the ploughed
fields. He jumped the ditch, and there, hard at work behind a
hedgerow, he stumbled upon Isolina.
Her short blue gown was tucked up above her knees; her scarlet kerchief
was hanging loose from her hair; she was digging away like a man, and
her bright, childish face was all rosy and warm with the exertion. She
nodded in the most friendly fashion to Dino as he came nearer, but time
was too precious to be wasted on mere talk this busy morning. Only, as
he moved away again, she held her spade suspended in the air for a
moment, and her round cheeks grew pinker still as she said, 'As you
pass through the farther field, will you greet my Pio for me? Give him
_tanti saluti_, for I have not seen him to-day.'
'Shall I tell him I left you making the cat hole bigger?' asked Dino,
beginning to laugh.
Her white teeth flashed. 'Tell him to dig away at his own end of it.'
And presently Dino heard her voice singing as he strolled away between
the moist brown furrows.
He had no difficulty in finding Pio, a short, thick-set _contadino_,
with a smiling, good-natured face below its thatch of thick,
irregularly-clipped hair, brown hair burnt red by the sun. His face
was tanned to the colour of yellow bricks, except at the temples and
behind the ears, where there were bits of white skin. He wore a ring
on his hand, and used the most singular gestures in speaking.
Dino sat down on the edge of the ditch among the weeds and grasses to
watch him at his work. Valdez would have talked of common schools,
perhaps of politics; would have tried most likely to drive some faint
idea of social equality and the rights of labour into this sturdy
peasant with the Figaro face. The more Dino looked at him the more
remote he felt from any impulse of proselytising.
This idyllic love-making, with its simple interests and its simple
cares; its messages sent from field to field;--its _naivete_, its
sincerity, its security,--ended by plunging Dino into the profoundest
melancholy. For the first time he absolutely realised what was this
thing which he had undertaken. He gazed at the young fellow beside
him; he noted how the strong muscles played along his back as he bent
to his work, and the vigorous vital grip of his horny hand.
'Will that piece of ditching be done to-morrow?' he asked suddenly.
The _contadino_ straightened his shoulders and kicked aside a heavy
clod. 'Na--ay. I'll be at work here all o' Friday, if the master
doesn't put me at something else,' he said slowly.
At work here o' Friday, and Friday was the day of the review. Dino's
whiter hand was lying across his knee; he clenched the fingers together
with a sudden passion, and thrust his doubled fist into his pocket.
His hand, in his own eyes, had seemed the hand of a corpse.