Produced by Al Haines
VESTIGIA
BY
GEORGE FLEMING
AUTHOR OF
'A NILE NOVEL,' 'MIRAGE,' 'THE HEAD OF MEDUSA,' ETC.
VOL. I.
'_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_'
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1884
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
DEDICATED TO
F. H.
(OF MARIGOLA),
--to know whom is indeed a 'liberal education' in all
that is gracious and good--in loving memory of that
bright March morning, years ago, when we met in a
certain street in Leghorn.
LONDON, 1884.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
MOTHER AND SON
CHAPTER II.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
CHAPTER III.
THE YOUNG MASTER
CHAPTER IV.
THE CIRCOLO BARSANTI
CHAPTER V.
RETROSPECTIVE
CHAPTER VI.
THE MORNING AFTER
CHAPTER VII.
ITALIA
VESTIGIA.
CHAPTER I.
MOTHER AND SON.
It was nearly five o'clock of a raw and windy afternoon in the month of
March, 187-, when a young man, Bernardino de Rossi by name, came
hastily out of an inner room of the Telegraph Office building at
Leghorn, letting the heavy swinging door close sharply behind him with
a disagreeable sound.
The room which he entered was one reserved for the use of the
Government clerks. Its floor was bare; its high walls, painted the same
dull uniform yellow as the rest of the building, were lighted from
above by a row of small square windows, crossed with rusty bars of
iron--an arrangement which involuntarily suggested a prison ward; and
there was little to contradict this fancy in the appearance of the line
of high desks ranged along three sides of the room, or in the
expression of the figures bending over them. The names and dates and
rude caricatures scrawled over every available space of plaster and
woodwork seemed indeed an indication that such absorbed industry was
not the invariable rule; but on that especial afternoon a dead silence
prevailed. To one accustomed to the ways of the place it was a
significant silence, broken only by the monotonous ticking of the
telegraph wires heard through the half-open door of the adjoining room,
and the rapid scratching of many pens.
At De Rossi's entrance one of the younger clerks, a mere lad, with pale
watery eyes and a Jewish profile, looked up from his writing.
'Well, Dino?' he murmured anxiously.
De Rossi glanced at him and hesitated.
'It is all right. Only--I'm off.'
'Not--not dismissed, Dino?'
'Dismissed. Turned out. Turned off. Sent away without a character,
like a bad cook. Put it any way you prefer it, it all comes to the
same thing. But it really does not matter in the least. It was sure
to come to that in the end. There is nothing for--for any one to be
sorry about. So don't trouble--don't let any one trouble himself on my
account,' the young man added rapidly, his face lighting up with a
sudden very pleasant smile.
'But--Dino----'
'Who is making that noise? I ask you, who is making that noise there?
By Heaven! you are enough to drive a man mad amongst you. Chatter!
chatter! chatter! Nothing but gossip and chatter, like a parcel of
idle women after mass. Government employees you call yourselves; my
word, it is a useful kind of employment that,' interposed the large
pale-faced man, who occupied a desk by himself, in the warmest corner,
beside the stove, at the far end of the room. 'You were not speaking?
Don't tell _me_, sir. I say you are always speaking--and to no
purpose. Chatter, chatter, chatter! and slamming doors----'
'Come, come, Sor Checco. Come now; the lads mean no harm by it. I'll
answer for them. They mean no harm,' observed another large,
middle-aged individual, who was elaborately filling up an empty
telegraph form, standing beside one of the desks provided for the use
of the public. He spoke in a good-natured, husky voice. Despite the
cold, the yellow fur collar of his enormous cloak was thrown wide open
upon his shoulders, and from time to time he paused heavily in his
writing, to rub his forehead with the blue and red checked handkerchief
which he carried, rolled up in a ball, in his left hand. 'And as for
their talking--as for their talking,' he went on soothingly, 'why, what
can you expect? Every donkey prefers his own bray. And our young
friend's little accident with the door there----'
'Accident! accident! Who believes in accidents? Any fool can call a
thing an accident,' retorted Sor Checco, with increasing irritation,
standing up and giving an impatient push to his chair. The chair
immediately slipped back against the nearest end of the fender,
bringing the fire-irons to the ground with a loud rattle and crash.
There was a general laugh at the head clerk's expense, under cover of
which Dino walked quietly over to his old place under the window,
unlocked a drawer with a key which he took from his pocket, and began
putting together some loose papers and a manuscript book.
One by one the clerks suspended their work, turning their heads to
watch him, but no one ventured to speak again until worthy Sor
Giovanni--having written out his despatch and read it over carefully,
checking off each word on the thick square fingers of his right
hand--turned about with a satisfied air, and catching sight of young De
Rossi's occupation, 'Why, lad, lad,' he said, reprovingly, 'you're
never packing up your things to go on account of six cross words and a
sour look? Come, come, my boy, leave that sort of thing to the women
folk--God bless them! But a man can't afford to catch fire every time
he strikes a match. Come now. Here is something different for you to
do. Why, lad, if bad temper were a fever there wouldn't be hospitals
enough to hold us all. Come now. Send off this despatch for me like a
good fellow. And no nonsense about mistaking the address. Visconti,
Guiseppe, No. 20, Via Tordinona, Rome. There it is all written out for
you as plain as the blessed cross on the roof of the Duomo. And here
is my franc waiting to pay for it. Fifteen words. You may count it
over, you'll find no cheating. I'll answer for it you won't.'
He laughed a good-natured satisfied laugh, and dabbed at his forehead
with his checked handkerchief. 'Come, my boy,' he said very
good-humouredly, leaning confidentially across the top of the desk, and
pushing over the paper and the money.
Dino looked up with a sharp gesture of impatience. 'Oh, go to some one
else!' he began; and then seeing the other's beaming face so near his,
and being always ready to be affected by a kind word or a kind look, 'I
would serve you if I could, Sor Giovanni,' he added quickly; 'but the
fact is--I'm no longer a clerk here. My name was taken off the books
this morning. I'm dismissed.'
'Dismissed! Why, lad--why, God bless my soul! what have you been doing
then?' cried Sor Giovanni huskily, bringing his hand down heavily upon
the table.
Dino's face flushed; he gave a little laugh. 'Ah, that is the
question!' he said, turning away with some slight embarrassment and
beginning to fasten up his papers: they were letters chiefly.
'It _is_ the question; there I quite agree with you. It is very much
the question,' added the head clerk, Sor Checco, coming forward and
resting both hands upon the back of the desk. He looked at the young
man with a hard glance. 'Before you leave--and, as I had the honour of
telling the Director this morning, it is a question of your leaving or
of mine,--before you leave you will perhaps have the goodness to
explain the nature of those documents which----'
'I shall have the goodness to explain precisely nothing at all,'
retorted De Rossi promptly, standing up and thrusting the package of
papers into the breast pocket of his coat. With the change of attitude
every vestige of hesitation seemed to leave his bearing. 'To _you_,
Sor Giovanni,' he said, looking at him very gratefully, 'I have to
express my regret that circumstances prevent my doing you so trifling a
service----'
'But--God bless my soul! But I don't understand. Come now, lad, what
is the row all about? I don't understand in the least; upon my soul I
don't. Why, look here. Here am I, so to speak,'--he unfolded one
corner of the checked handkerchief,--'here am I writing my despatches
as quiet as a sleeping babe. And there is Sor Checco, poor man! busy
in his own corner and thinking of nothing. And here are you----'
Dino smiled. 'Was Sor Checco thinking of nothing? It would be a pity
to interrupt him. Besides, to him I have nothing to say. He knows my
opinion of him,' the young man added sharply, with a sudden light of
indignation flashing in his eyes. 'To the others here,--to my old
companions----'
He looked down the long room, but at the sound of his words each head
was bent lower over its work. De Rossi's face flushed and turned pale
like a girl's. He bit his lip, where the smile seemed suddenly to have
grown fixed and unnatural, and turned to a peg on the wall from which
was hanging a long gray ulster coat. He took down this coat and put it
on, buttoning it across his breast with a deliberation which could not
entirely prevent his fingers from trembling. He took down his hat, and
stood there for an instant facing the entire room. The light had
almost faded away from the small high windows, but there was not a
corner of those sordid yellow walls, not a face among those averted
faces with which he had not felt familiar. Why, even the chief clerk's
fault-finding had its associations with many an old foolish
light-hearted joke--he had grown accustomed to the discontent, as a man
grows accustomed to the rough handle of his daily tool. 'I wish you a
very good afternoon. And--and I'm very much obliged to you for your
kindness,' the young fellow said abruptly, turning to Sor Giovanni and
putting out his hand. And then yielding to an impulse for which he
never quite forgave himself, 'I have worked here every day for the last
four years, and there is not a man in this room whom I would not have
called my friend,' he said bitterly enough, and put his hat upon his
head and walked out of the room before them all.
As he passed before the young clerk to whom he had spoken on first
entering, the boy moved uneasily in his chair, muttering some
indistinct word; but at the same moment Sor Checco's voice was heard
giving a harsh command that the gas be lighted without further delay.
'And 'tis time surely for more light, when we lose so brilliant an
example,' added a tall cadaverous-looking youth, who had hitherto sat
silent, keeping a small but wary eye upon the stormy countenance of the
patron. Dino could remember years after the pang of bitter and
impotent resentment which made him start and clench his fist outside
there in the long cold corridor at the echo of the sound of their
laughter.
It was a cold clear night, with many stars and a piercing March wind,
which set the gas lamps flickering in the deserted Via Grande; for it
was a Saturday, and all the Jewish shops were closed; and even the few
Christian vendors scattered here and there along the street seemed for
once to have renounced both orthodoxy and profit, and were for the most
part engaged in putting up their shutters with cold and hasty hands.
As he turned, with the automatic accuracy of a man going homewards, out
of the main thoroughfare into one of those many narrow streets which
lie between the Via Grande and the port, it was indeed a wintry blast
which struck the young man full in the face making him catch his breath
with a gasp and thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his long
thin coat; but what was this violence of the outer air in comparison to
that other fiercer storm, that tumult of hurt pride, of wounded
disregarded sensibility, the passionate indignation, the hundred mad
impulses and promptings which tore at each other and contradicted each
other inside his breast? The recollection of his own last words came
back to him, and every nerve quivered. He could have struck himself
with anger and disgust at his own weakness in having spoken them. 'To
have called them--_them_--my friends,' he muttered half aloud. 'If
they were laughing at _that_!' he thought, and his face grew hot and
cold again as he remembered their laughter.
It was not until he had actually quitted the street, and was rapidly
running up the dark stair of a narrow building, that another thought
seemed to strike him with a sudden power to slacken his impatient
footstep and hold him, hesitating, outside a closed door. 'And the
mother? what will she say to it all?' he asked himself, and looked at
the latch-key in his hand. An expression of mingled weariness and
defiance, the expression of a man who expects to find but short and
scanty indulgence between the four walls of his home, crossed his face
for an instant. He opened the door and went in.
First came a little hall, a mere passageway; beyond that again was a
large low room, somewhat empty of furniture, with blackened rafters
which divided the ceiling into squares. The walls were whitewashed,
scrupulously clean, and quite devoid of character, but here and there a
touch of faded colour,--the blurred outline of a flying figure, some
heavy tracery of fruit or flower, or line of tarnished gold, still
spoke of the original painting of the roof. Facing the door a narrow
window led out upon a rickety iron balcony, high hung beneath the eaves
of the old house, and from thence in the daytime the view was superb,
stretching across the Old Port and the New, over the sea, to the pale
vision-like peaks of Carrara.
But to-night the curtain was close drawn. A single oil lamp, with a
long wick, was burning on the mantelpiece; its light fell upon the bent
gray head of an elderly woman, who was knitting busily, and only
occasionally moving a little to cast an anxious glance at the contents
of an earthen vessel which stood before the fire.
She looked up, with an air of almost painful suspense in eyes which had
once been celebrated for their beauty, and which, even yet, shone clear
and dark beneath the troubled brows; she looked up, still holding her
knitting with both hands, as her son entered.
'Well, Dino?' she said breathlessly.
'Well, mother. You see I was not mistaken. I thought I should come
home rather later to-night,' the young man answered, with an attempt at
speaking easily. He came and stood before the fire, spreading out his
chilled fingers to the warmth of the blaze. 'It is a cold night. I
don't know when I can remember so cold a night,' he said absently. And
then, rousing himself with an effort, 'Where is the little one? where
is Palmira?' he asked, glancing around him.
'She has gone to spend the afternoon at Drea's. Italia came for her.
It is Italia's birthday, and they said you had arranged to call for the
child,' returned his mother slowly. She bent her head still lower over
her knitting. 'You will want your supper before you go out again. It
is spoilt now, with keeping. It has been ready for you this hour past.
I knew nothing about it. I knew nothing of when you intended to come
back. Perhaps that is one of the things which you had already
settled--with Italia.'
'Dear mother, I am so sorry. But indeed it was unavoidable,' said Dino
soothingly. He added in a lower voice, 'Even this morning I did not
think there was much chance for me. And the moment I heard the
Director's conditions I saw it was all up. They wanted to get rid of
me,--my being at the demonstration was a mere pretext. Don't worry
yourself about it, mother; pray don't. It must have come to this in
the end. They wanted--they all wanted to get rid of me. And perhaps,
all things considered, it is not so much to be wondered at.'
'Wonder? Do you think I have lived until now to wonder at any trouble
overtaking us--at _any_ misfortune?' interrupted Sora Catarina
passionately. She took a few hasty impatient stitches, holding her
work up close to her eyes, which burned painfully with hot tears of
repressed disappointment. Then she rose abruptly, sweeping the balls
of wool into some inner pocket; she took up the lamp, placing it upon a
centre table. 'You are cold. You had better eat,' she said briefly.
'Thank you, mother. I am not hungry.'
'There were potatoes, too, cooked as you like them. But that was an
hour ago,' she went on, taking a dish from the warm hearth and looking
into it.
'Oh, it is sure to be good. It is my own fault that I am not hungry,'
said Dino. He threw off his outer coat and drew his chair nearer to
the table.
'Mother.'
'Well?'
She turned her head slowly towards him, and for the first time that
evening their eyes met,--dark serious eyes, almost the only trace of
resemblance between mother and son, the only feature they had in
common. 'Well?' she repeated after an instant's pause. She was still
standing; now she crossed the room to fetch another candle, which she
lighted and placed before him. 'There is no reason you should eat your
supper in the dark. It is little enough pleasure that comes here in
the daytime, goodness knows. But you never did care about being made
comfortable.'
'Mother, I think--I have been thinking of asking Drea if he does not
want another hand at his work. I can manage a boat if I can do nothing
else. And it will be something to go on with for the present. That
is, if you have no objection,' said Dino, still looking at her rather
anxiously.
'And if I had, what difference would it make? Will you not go your own
way as your father did before you? What good has ever come of my
objecting?' She had taken up her knitting again, and was turning it
over and over between her trembling fingers. 'It is the same story--it
began in the same way. It began so with your father. I have seen it
all before,' she said in a hopeless sort of voice, and with a half sob.
Dino looked up quickly at the sound, and seemed about to speak, but her
face was turned away from him. He remained silent, pushing away the
untouched food before him, and leaning both arms upon the table.
'Are you going to that--to that place again to-night? I will never
mention its name--to that club of yours? But of course you are. It is
the same story over again. I tell you, like father like son. And
sometimes--sometimes I ask myself what is the use of it all? Though I
should work my hands off,' she said passionately, 'though I work my
hands off trying to keep the place comfortable for you; trying to be
respectable and keep up appearances, what is the good? As your dear
Drea says, can one man lift both ends of a beam at the same time? And
I'm tired of struggling against what I cannot help. Have your own way.
I've tried hard enough, God knows, but there are no sails will keep a
stone from sinking.' She got up restlessly from her place and walked
over to the fire and came back again. 'Italia! 'tis my belief the girl
has bewitched you all, with her baby face and those great eyes of hers.
I spend my life, I make a slave of myself, for you and the child, and
for what good? Why, even the child, even Palmira, it's little enough
she troubles her head about me if she can get Italia to do so much as
look at her. Italia! I don't say she is not a good girl----'
'Mother!'
'I tell you---- Dino, I will not have you looking at me in that way.
I will not have it. I am not saying anything against Italia, I tell
you. I have not waited until now to have my own son teach me how to
know a good girl when I see one, though, mind you, there's many a lass
will sweep out the corners of the balcony while she's waiting to be
married, and when she's got a husband--you'll not find her so much as
wiping the dust off her own plate. Not that I am saying that Italia is
of that sort. She is a good girl.'
'Yes,' said Dino lifting up his face. And then, as if there had indeed
been some spell of comfort and of healing in the very sound of her
name, he rose with a new look of light and gladness in his young eyes.
'Mother, dear.' He stood looking down upon her bowed gray head for a
moment, and stooped and kissed it. 'I will go for Palmira first. But
I will come back as soon as I can,' he said simply. 'Poor mother! it
is hard for you I know. What you wanted to make you happy was a very
different sort of son--the kind of fellow who never troubled his head
about other people's doings, and who would have found out long ago how
to get on with Sor Checco--confound him! Poor little mother. But we
must even make the best of what we have. And you will see it will not
turn out so badly as you fear. Come, mother, dear, look up before I
go, and let me see that you are not angry;' he slipped his arm about
her neck, forcing her to raise her head and look at him.
But although she yielded to the caress--'I am not like you; I cannot
change as the wind blows. When I mean a thing I mean it,' she said,
sadly enough. And long after he had gone she sat still, as he had left
her, gazing fixedly at the closed door. That door! how much of her
life had she not seen pass through it, not to return, since the time
when the years seemed long before her and she had found her chief
pride, her chief plaything, in her handsome boy! Now, it was as if
with every month that passed he were going more and more away from her,
as the likeness to his dead father deepened. And the knowledge of this
was like the painful pressure of a heavy hand upon her bruised mother's
heart.
Disappointment, discouragement, and the rebellion against that
discouragement, and all the weariness of a hard strenuous nature, for
ever struggling, and for ever thrust back upon itself, were expressed
in every line of her worn yet insistent face. She sat thus for what
seemed to her a long space of time before she roused herself to take up
her work. But before she did so she blew out both the candles. 'He
likes plenty of light. They will do for him when he comes back. His
eyes are young still, let him save 'em while he can,' she said half
aloud, bending her own gray head still lower over her work as she
knitted on and on in the darkened room. She let the fire go down to
its lowest ember; what was the good of wasting warmth if Dino was not
there to enjoy it? But, indeed, she was scarcely aware of the
increasing cold, her mind was already so full of new plans for the
future--projects in which she unconsciously disposed of the future
action of her son as confidently as if he were still the little child
she remembered, her docile bright-eyed boy, knowing no other law but
the imperious rule of her anxious and exacting love.