FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
As he reached the quay, and even before he was so near it, from the
steps above, looking across from the bridge, Dino could see the light
shining like a welcome behind the curtained window of old Drea's house.
The wind had fallen a little, but not the sea. The flight of stone
stairs leading down to the landing from the level of the street was wet
and slippery with the salt spray; even here, in the shelter of the Old
Port, the black water was tossing and heaving in the light of the
rising moon. There was a continual movement, a backward and forward
swaying, among the ships at anchor; a shifting of the level of the
signal lights.
As he came nearer Dino could see that the friendly scarlet curtain had
a great rent across the middle of it; he halted by the window, looking
in with smiling eyes at the little group by the fireside. A young girl
was sitting on a low stool beside the fire, with her back to the
window; she was talking to a child who knelt beside her and was looking
up intently in her face. The young man could not see that face, which
was turned away from him, but only the outline of the dear round head,
with its heavy dark twist of hair; he could not hear what she was
saying; he could only watch the quick motion of her little brown hands.
She appeared to be telling some story, which the child was listening to
with bated breath. All about them were scattered books and pieces of
paper; there was a guitar--an open inkstand--upon a neighbouring chair.
'Ah, the idle child! the idle little girl!' the young man said to
himself with a half tender laugh, looking at those fallen papers upon
the floor. And then he rapped once, twice, upon the window.
Italia sprang to her feet at the sound. 'Dino! it is Dino!' she cried
joyfully, and flew to the door to meet him, with two little
outstretched hands, and welcome beaming in her eyes. She led him in,
away from the wind and cold and darkness. 'Father is coming, and we
have been expecting you, oh, for hours. I know it has been such a hard
day for you, you poor, poor Dino,' she said, in that sweet low voice of
hers, which seemed made only to express the pity and goodness and
loving-kindness of her gentle heart. She did not let go his hand: to
the young man's fancy it was as if all the new light and warmth about
him were radiating only from her look. As he gazed at her it seemed to
him that he had never fairly seen her before: when she turned away
again, blushing, he started as if he were awakening from a dream.
'We were speaking of interesting things. Italia was telling me a
story. It was a fairy story--out of a book--but now you have come in
and interrupted it,' observed little Palmira quietly, looking gravely
up at both of them from where she still knelt upon the floor.
'But hush, you bad child. Why, Mira, surely you would not have our
Dino think we are not glad to see him? And if we talk about fairies do
you think our hard taskmaster will not begin to ask us about our
lessons?' said Italia laughing, and still with that softest rosy flush
upon her cheek. 'There! that is what we have done for you, signor
Dino,' as she pointed to the scattered papers upon the floor. 'It was
I who threw them down there, because--oh, because I had not done one of
them. And I hate learning to write, it hurts my fingers; and then I
can't hold my guitar. And this is my birthday, and Lucia is coming to
supper with us--father has just gone over to fetch her--and see, I have
put on the new dress she made for me; do you like it? But Lucia will
scold me. I have not mended the hole in the curtain, and I tore it a
week ago,' cried the girl with another laugh.
''Tis a pretty dress. Have I never seen you in it before? but you
always look the same in my eyes, and whatever I see you wear is what I
like the best,' Dino answered, looking at her fondly. He put out his
hand and touched the sleeve of her cotton frock. 'You will wear this
the day we go to Monte Nero----'
'For the pilgrimage? ah, yes. And this year we must take poor Lucia
with us. And the Sora Catarina;--it would not be like Monte Nero if
you and your mother were not with us. Do you remember the first time
we went there together, Dino? I was twelve years old.'
'And you carried your doll into the church for the benediction; I
remember----'
'Ah, but it was a very pretty doll. It was the old Marchesa gave it to
me, one day your mother had taken me with her to the palazzo. I
remember it so well: I had never been in such a big room before, and
when Sora Catarina left me alone I was frightened, and I cried. And
then the Marchesa herself came in and spoke to me. She had a long
train to her gown that rustled, and it had gold things on it, like the
dress of the Madonna. And when she dropped her handkerchief I picked
it up for her. It was fine, oh, so fine! and white, like a cobweb, and
it smelt of flowers.'
'Why did she not give you that instead of a doll? I would not have
taken the doll. I despise dolls,' said Palmira, lifting up her little
pale face again from her book.
'As if I had ever been as wise as you, you little monkey. Oh, Dino, I
know I have been very idle all the week. And it seems so ungrateful to
you after all your trouble. But I can't write, I really can't. I am
like father, all my fingers are thumbs,' said Italia mournfully,
shaking her head and looking down on her lap at her little sunburned
hands. 'But you are not vexed with me? really not? I did not _mean_
to disappoint you, Dino.'
'No, dear; I am sure of that. But now let us see these famous
exercises. Perhaps they are not quite so bad.'
She gathered up all the books and brought them to him instantly,
standing beside him with perfect docility as he turned over the blotted
pages. 'Of course you write so beautifully yourself,' she said. And
at that young De Rossi gave a sudden start. 'Indeed I had forgotten.
When I am with you I can think of nothing else. But, Italia, there was
something--I knew there was something I wanted to tell you--and, what
will Sor Andrea say? For I have left the office.'
'Oh, Dino!'
'Not that I mind _that_ so particularly; but what will your father say?
I came down to consult with him about it. I----'
'There he is!' said Italia, quickly turning her head at the sound of a
heavy step, and adding hastily: 'Do tell him, Dino--tell him
everything; you know how good he is'--she sprang to open the door.
The first person to enter, blown into the room, as it seemed, by a
stronger gust of wind, was a small, thin woman of about forty or
forty-five. Her face and shoulders were closely muffled in a woollen
shawl, which Italia promptly removed and threw into a corner.
'Dear Lucia, how good of you to come to us on such a horrible night--'
'If you would not mind--if you will give it to me I will fold it up
properly; things get so easily worn,' the new-comer murmured, looking
apologetically at them all. And then she put up both her hands--the
thin, white hands of a sewing woman--and patted the bands of her
shining black hair; her dress, too, was black, and scrupulously neat,
with many shining beads and buttons upon it.
'I am so glad to see you,' Italia repeated, looking down at the little
woman with an indescribable friendliness and compassion in her own kind
eyes.
'Ay, it was rough work getting here for the poor little woman. I left
her for half a minute while I stopped to look at the boat, and _per
Bacco!_ she came in ahead of me in the race. I could not find her out
there in the dark; I thought she had been blown clean away, I did,'
observed Sor Drea with a loud, good-natured laugh. He fastened the
door and came up slowly to the fireside,--a short, strongly-built
figure, with a decided lurch in his walk. He came up and laid his hand
upon Italia's shoulder. 'Well, my little girl? Ah! this now is what I
like,' the old man said, glancing over with a broad, cordial smile at
Dino; 'this is the sort of thing that does a man's heart good, to come
in and find supper ready, and a good fire, and all the old faces. Who
wants to eat alone? Alone? Why, one isn't comfortable alone even in
Paradise; one needs an angel or two if it was only just for company.
The blessed saints, they know better than to live separate, they do.'
'How do you know, father?' asked Italia, with a laugh.
'Perhaps I've met them. Perhaps I've had an angel or two to live
with--there's no telling,' said her father, looking down at her fondly.
'Ask the youngster over there. Why, Lord bless you, my girl, when I
was his age---- But there, there, a sound man is a young man, and the
only old men are the dead ones. What's the matter with the lad? What
ails you, boy? Surely no one here can have been vexing you? You can't
have been quarrelling with my little girl?' But at that--
'Quarrelling with Italia!' and 'Father!' they both protested in one
breath.
Old Drea laughed good-humouredly. 'Well, well; 'tis a young sailor who
does not keep ready for a change in the fairest wind. There's no such
great harm in a friendly bit of a quarrel. And, bless you, lad! you
and the girl there are too like brother and sister not to have found
that out long before. There's no such great harm done, I tell you.
Women, they are like caterpillars; they curl up if you do but touch
them, but they go creeping on.'
Italia and De Rossi exchanged glances. 'Father,' the young girl began;
she hesitated for a moment. 'Father!' She went up to him and took one
of his hard and knotted hands into both of her own, looking up into his
face with the sweetest look of entreaty. 'Indeed you are always right,
dear, and our poor Dino _is_ in trouble,' she said simply. 'He has
left--he has been sent away from his office, and he has come to his
oldest friends. You are not going to be angry with him, father?' Her
sweet eyes were full of tears.
'The fact is, there has been a row about a demonstration. I don't know
if you heard about it. It was last month, when they were enlisting the
new recruits. And some of the republican clubs got up a counter
procession and marched down the Via Grande with flags, and cheered
Garibaldi. And then there had been a skirmish with the police--nothing
very serious, but still---- It was a foolish business altogether,' the
young man confessed, hanging his head.
'Foolish? By---- I call it by another name than foolish!' the other
man broke out with sudden passion. 'Nonsense, Italia; let me speak.
What does a woman know about such matters? I tell you it was a piece
of rank mutiny aboard ship. You ought to have been clapped into irons,
every man of you; and so you would have been if I'd had ought to do
with you. So you would have been. What, sir; do you mean to tell me
that you--you, a lad I've known, ay, and been fond of too, since you
were a little chap as high as my knee,--do you mean to tell me, Dino,
that _you've_ been and joined a company of shouting fools with nothing
better to do than insult the Government that pays and keeps 'em?'
'If the Government paid me the Government got my work in return,' says
the young man, turning very red; 'and I was not the only one. I was
only carrying out my club's orders.'
'Then I say, damn your club, sir!'
'Father!'
'Gesu Maria! Gesu Maria! ah, those men!' sighed Lucia under her
breath, and grasped Palmira's shoulder convulsively. The child shook
herself free with a contemptuous movement. 'Let me be. What are you
afraid of? Look at Italia,' she said quietly, turning her small pale
face and great eyes full upon the young girl. De Rossi, too, had
turned towards her.
'Perhaps I'd better go now, sir. I am sorry I came in. I am sorry I
troubled you,' he began in a formal voice. 'I ought, I suppose, to
apologise----'
'Oh, damn your apologies!' said Sor Drea, starting up to his feet
again, and taking a hasty turn across the room. 'Be a man, can't you?
What is the use of apologising--of--of apologising, _per Bacco!_ for
what you are perfectly ready to do again--for what you mean to do
again? Apologies!--yes--they're cheap enough in every market;--a good
wind to torn sails. I believe in actions myself; in doing your duty by
your masters and betters, and not hurting the people who love you,--not
in fine gentlemen apologies--damn 'em,' said the old man, bringing his
knotted hand down heavily upon the table, and glaring from under his
shaggy eyebrows at Dino with an unspoken world of troubled reproach in
his keen old eyes.
There was a moment of silence, and then, 'Father, dear?' said Italia
beseechingly, going up to him and slipping her arm about his neck.
'Ay, ay, my little girl. You're a good girl, I know it. A good girl,
though I say it as shouldn't. But not even you--you can't think I am
going to put up with this sort of nonsense from a youngster like that,
a fellow who comes to talk to me of----'
'Who comes to ask advice of his oldest friends. And in your own house,
father.'
'Oh, Lord help us!' said old Drea with a groan.
'And if you knew the whole of the story as I know it--I mean why it is
that he has lost his place to-day. Stop, Dino. I know it is a secret,
but I think it is a secret which I ought to tell my father. If you
knew why he was sent away,' said Italia, in her sweet low voice,
looking with beaming eyes full of affection from one man to the other.
'It is quite true what Dino told you about the procession, father, but
there is more than that. There was another man in Dino's office who
joined in the procession too. And they could not find out who it was,
and they wanted Dino to tell them his name. And he would not. And
that is why he had to leave.'
'There, there. Say no more, child, say no more. I spoke too soon and
forgot to listen. My words were like so many kittens that are born in
such a hurry they're born blind. No offence, lad. There, shake hands
over it. Lord bless you; and so you wouldn't tell 'em that other
chap's name--not to save your own place, eh? Ay, that was right, boy,
that was right. But Lord, Lord, what a chap that one must be who let
you do it.'
'He's a mere boy. He doesn't know any better. And it does not matter
so much to me. I was not so anxious to stay--only on my mother's
account,' said Dino slowly.
'Ay, she'll be fine and disappointed, she will. She takes things hard,
does Sora Catarina. She always did from a girl. Have you told her
yet, Dino?'
'Yes,' he said, glancing over at Italia.
'Ay, she'll be disappointed, she will,' the old man repeated slowly,
wrinkling his brow, and looking at the fire, while he fumbled absently
in the pocket of his pea-jacket for his pipe. 'So you came and told my
little girl here all about it, eh, Dino?'
'I told Italia.'
'Yes, and he told me not to repeat it to any one,' added Italia quickly.
'Ay, ay. I'll warrant you he did. Ah, he's young yet is the lad; he's
young,' said Drea with a quiet chuckle. 'When you find a woman who
keeps a secret for you, my Dino, you may rest pretty certain she's got
some of her own to look after. And even then you need not think yours
will last her. Ah, they're a queer rigged craft are women, and a
secret is the ballast they think first about throwing overboard if
there's ever such a capful o' wind to make the sea a bit roughish.
Your mother's the only she-thing in petticoats I've ever seen who can
hold her tongue still between her teeth--and even she can only do it by
not speaking. They're a queer rigged craft, and no mistake, eh, Sora
Lucia? isn't that your experience? You'll have a deal to do with their
tempers in the way of your business, I'll be bound.'
'Well, Sor Drea, it's rather like the pins and needles--there are all
sorts. And it just makes the difference how much you can pay for
them,' said the little woman primly, smoothing down the neat cuff of
her sleeve.
'Lucia likes women better than men; they walk about the room without
making a noise; and they understand about trimmings,' remarked Palmira,
with a toss of her head.
'Eh, little one, and who asked _your_ opinion? Little girls should be
seen, you know, seen and not heard of--not heard of,' said the old man
in a voice of affected rebuke. He put out his hand, and the child came
up to him instantly, nestling against his shoulder, and rubbing her
thin little cheek on the rough sleeve of his coat. 'I don't mind, I'm
not afraid, if you _do_ make a noise,' she said softly in his ear.
'Nay, nay, child. But you should mind. Little girls must mind what is
going on about them, else how are they ever to learn their manners
before they grow up?' said Sor Drea, still in an admonitory tone, but
patting the little face near him as he spoke with a smile which the
child understood better than his words. And then he looked about him,
'Well, Dino--Italia, my girl!--and how about our supper? are we not
ready for that birthday supper yet?' he said aloud.
Italia had moved away, and was standing beside the window. She was
perfectly aware that Dino had followed her there, but some sudden new
shyness kept her silent and wondering at herself. She had pushed back
the scanty curtain, and stood leaning her forehead against the coolness
of the window-pane. Outside all was darkness, and one heard the sound
of the breaking waves. It was a rough night, she thought to herself:
and tried to say it, but somehow she could not speak: the words stuck
in her throat, and would not frame themselves. In that singular moment
she seemed to be leading a double life;--the old existence was there,
the old safe habit of home and her father's voice heard beside the
fire; and here--here was something different, an unknown feeling of
oppression--an anguish of self-consciousness, pierced with sudden
flashes of a new unfamiliar joy. And yet this was only Dino, whom she
had known all her life; Dino, her old tyrant and protector and
playfellow----
'You are not angry now? My father did not mean all that he said; he
did not mean to be unkind--to you,' she said abruptly, turning her face
still farther away and looking out into the blackness.
There was no answer for a moment, and her heart began to beat faster.
'It is--it is a very rough night,' she said in a still lower voice, the
words forcing themselves out at last. And then she turned her head
slowly towards him.
She did not lift her eyes to his face, but she was aware that he moved.
He had been leaning one arm against the window-frame; her own hands
were clasped together and resting upon the ledge. She saw him move his
arm--and felt the warm pressure of a strong hand laid upon both of
hers. She stood quite still, breathing very softly.
'Italia!'
He was gazing at her with all his soul in his eyes--with a transfigured
face which she had never seen before--he spoke in a new voice.
'Italia!' Was it a prayer--a command? The girl shivered from head to
foot. She turned very pale, and then, slowly, she lifted up her
glorious eyes full of a new resplendent light of joy, and they stood
silent for a long, long moment, gazing at one another with the full,
serious inquiring look of familiar souls new met in some strange heaven.
'Italia!' said her father's voice again, and she turned to him at once
with a simultaneous movement of her whole being. These last moments
were not a thing to be thought of now; she put them entirely on one
side with a feeling of definite possession; it was something to be
remembered and realised later on, when she was alone. She went up now
to her father and laid her little hands upon his shoulder caressingly,
with something of the sensation of having returned to him from afar.
Her face was a little pale perhaps, but she smiled, and no one noticed
her paleness. It is the way with the great crises of our mental
experience: they pass us by in silence. Angels visit us for good or
ill; the shadows of night gather deeper, or our dawn grows red with
promise--and nothing has taken place which was noticeable even to very
affectionate eyes. It is not all insensibility in the lookers-on. At
every marriage procession, as at every funeral, there _must_ be some
person present whose chief interest lies in the trappings--in the
workman-like manner in which the wheels go around a corner, and how the
horses carry their heads. And life teaches that, as it teaches
patience.
It was some time before anything more was said concerning Dino's
prospects. When a man's daily food is the measure of his degree of
success in the world, conversation at table means chiefly an
interruption. So that it was some time before old Drea pushed away his
plate and drew his glass nearer, rubbing the back of one hand across
his lips with a deep-drawn breath of satisfaction, while with the other
he fumbled in his pocket for his pipe. It was only a small flask of
cheap thin country wine which stood upon the table before him, but he
passed it over to Dino with an air of simple satisfaction and pride, a
cordial and affectionate pleasure in his own hospitality, which might
well have softened a harsher beverage.
'Drink, lad. Don't stint yourself. Wine was made for drinking. Lord,
'tis one more reason for not being a woman. Look at Italia there.
You'd think an old sailor's daughter would know better than to care for
any water that isn't salt-water, eh, boy? And Sora Lucia, too, sip,
sipping, with her head on one side like a fly. But there, she is not
to be laughed at, for a pluckier little woman---- Lord, how she did
fight that wind! You didn't well know which of you was running away
with the other, eh, Lucia? Well, well, after all, a fly kicks as hard
as it can----'
'Did Lucia kick? I should have liked to see her,' said the child
Palmira, looking up. A smile like her brother's smile lit up with a
sudden brightness her pale, small face.
'Indeed, Sor Drea was far too busy thinking of his boat--he knows
nothing about what I did,' the little dressmaker retorted briskly, with
a toss of her head, which made the black beads glisten. Her face, too,
was warmed and dilated by the sense of plenty about her--the wine and
fire and supper. Her black eyes shone demurely, the hollow cheeks were
flushed, she had lost for the moment something of her habitual air of
suppression--an air of decent disappointment with life.
The old man laughed good-humouredly. 'Hark to her--hark to the child,
will you? Ay, quick and sharp, and down on you before you know where
you are. She's her mother's own daughter--in all but looks. She was
always a tall girl, was Catarina, and a step and an eye like a queen,
an eye that went through you. But never you mind, Lucia; 'tis better
to be the head of an eel than the tail of the biggest sturgeon, to my
way of thinking. Ay, do your best in this world as you find it, and if
any one else can do better, why, let 'em show you how 'tis done.
That's my way of thinking. And now----' he leaned back, thrusting both
hands into his trousers pockets and shifting his pipe to the other
corner of his mouth. 'And now about this business of yours, lad?'
Dino looked up with a start from his occupation of drawing patterns
upon the table with a little heap of breadcrumbs. 'I wanted to ask
your advice about that,' he began doubtfully.
'Well, ask it. Advice costs no headache, boy. You may borrow another
man's compass to steer by even when he can't lend you the wind. Stop a
bit, though. We'll begin with the beginning, by your leave.' His
face, which time and exposure to the weather had so stiffened and
tanned that it had grown well-nigh impossible to detect any of the
slighter changes of expression upon it, his face looked as rigid and
impassive as a piece of wood. 'It's really all over with you now at
your office? no chance of making it up again with the masters? they
wouldn't take you back again, eh?'
'Why, as for that,' said Dino hastily, 'I would not go back if they all
came here together, in a body, to ask me.' He looked across the table
at Italia. 'I am an eel's head too, sir,--like Lucia there,' he said
smiling. 'I've been a sturgeon's tail long enough. I'm tired of being
wagged when I'd rather be quiet.'
'And so you want to show your teeth, you young rascal!' called out
Drea, with another great laugh, and filling up his glass. 'Nay, lad,
but it is a pity you were not bred for a sailor. You've a good notion
of your own, too, about handling a boat. But your mother would never
have heard of it, not she. Bless you! she's been up too much to the
Villa to see the old Marchesa--by her leave and meaning no offence--to
listen to reason. That's the way with women: they want a bit of every
shining thing they see. And nothing's too good for them. It's my
belief they'd use diamonds to fasten up their sleeves with if they
could get at 'em, and think nothing of it.'
'I know we should want to begin by fastening up yours, father,' said
Italia in her soft gentle way. Her glance met Dino's as she spoke, and
she looked down again with smiling lips and cheeks grown suddenly red.
'Your mother was always a proud woman, always,' the old man went on
meditatively, staring at the blue rings of smoke curling up from his
pipe. 'She took life hard. And she meant to make a gentleman of you
from the first. She was proud; that is why she married your father.
And she did not want you down on our level. She meant to make a
gentleman of you, you see----'
'A fine gentleman!' Dino burst out eagerly. 'Sor Drea, is this fair?
Have I ever had, have I ever wanted, other friends than you? I don't
know what you mean by talking about different levels; but Italia
knows--you ought to know--if I have ever done anything to deserve to
have this said to me. Why, all the happiness I have ever had in my
life I have had here,' he said, with a quick comprehensive glance
around him at the old familiar walls. All the associations of his
boyhood seemed lurking in those shadowy corners. 'I can understand
that you are not particularly well satisfied with me now. I'm not
particularly well satisfied with myself. It's not a brilliant look-out
for the future. But why shouldn't I work as well as another man? They
never found any fault with my work in that infernal office. Why, even
the head clerk there--Sor Checco--he hates me--if he owned a donkey he
would call it Dino for the pleasure of kicking it; but even he could
never find fault. There's plenty to be done. My mother, now, her one
idea is to go up to the Villa to talk to the Marchesa----'
'Ay, 'tis a good plan--a good plan. Look there, now! I should never
have thought of that. But she has a head on her shoulders, has your
mother,' the old man said admiringly, clapping the palm of his hand
down heavily upon the table. 'Fill up, boy, fill up, and we'll drink
good luck to her going. That's right and as it should be. For one
works for the masters here as one prays to the saints in Heaven, and
they know best what's wanted in both places. Lord bless you! if one
had to stop to discuss matters with 'em, there'd be no time left to
work in. That's my way of thinking. _Commando, chi pol e obidisca chi
deve_. 'Twould be a poor way of travelling if all the crew wanted to
steer.'
'Why, as to that----' began Dino, pushing away his glass impatiently.
'Look here, Sor Drea. You were speaking of my father a moment ago. I
was very fond of my father----'
'Ay, lad,'
'You never knew him well. You never understood him.'
Old Drea took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it carefully.
'Perhaps not,' he said.
'You never understood him. You thought he was aping the manners and
customs of his betters, when all the while--poor father! But let that
pass. He taught me one thing, at any rate, for which I am more
thankful to him every day that I live. He taught me that there are
wants and wishes in a man--yes, and rights too--that are too strong to
be choked off with a good dinner, and too old to be taught to drop
curtsies to every fine dress and fine title they may chance to come
across. I'll have nothing to do with it all, for my part--nothing.
And I've told my mother so. If she chooses to depend upon the old
Marchesa's protection, well and good. Perhaps it suits a woman's
nature to sit through rainstorms waiting for the sun to shine. I know
nothing about it. I only know it doesn't suit me. I went into that
office to please my mother, and I'm ashamed of having been in there.
I'm ashamed of having held my tongue for three years for the sake of
wearing a black coat and having the office boy answer, "Yes, sir!" when
I told him to fetch me a glass of water. They were quite right to turn
me out for taking part in that demonstration: it was a foolish thing in
itself, but what it meant wasn't foolish. And it meant more than they
knew. As for myself,' the young man added vehemently, with a sudden
flush all over his pale dark face, 'I agree with my father, if I had
the power. I would make every title in Europe a thing to put into a
museum, along with the other dead things in the dust. I am a
Republican.' He looked straight across the table at Sor Drea. 'I am a
red Republican,' he repeated.
'Ah!' said Italia quickly, and turning, laid her hand in mute appeal
upon her father's arm.
But he only patted the little hand kindly, looking back at Dino with
more of amusement than surprise in his keen old eyes. 'Ay, lad. We've
all been young in our time,' he said simply. 'Things never struck me
in that fashion; but there! it's all a matter of chance, like having
the fever. Perhaps if they'd fastened me up in a black coat and tied
me by the leg to a desk when I was a youngster like you, things 'ud
have seemed different to me. I might have been longer finding out for
myself that the sun goes on shining just the same if you keep your own
umbrella shut or open. The good God lets us do, but he doesn't let us
overdo. Mind that. There's things that are settled for us; settled
before we were born; but it takes a baby a good while to make quite
sure that the walls of the house can't be got to move by its pushing at
'em--that's one way I used to keep my little girl there quiet when she
was a mite of a thing, so high, when she used to cry to come and sit
beside me in the boat while I was cleaning the fish, and believed she
was making the water rock her by shaking the rudder with her soft
little fingers. Ay, so she did--so she did.'
He puffed slowly away at his pipe as if he had finished speaking. But
when Dino leaned forward as if about to reply, the old man checked him
with a warning movement of his finger. He was evidently ruminating
some plan, for presently he added:
'I'm not blaming you for what you've done, lad--though, Lord, Lord,
what a chap the one must be who let you do it! But there--it takes all
sorts of days to make up one week. And I'm not saying you are not as
well out o' that place as in it. There are some men that it's cheaper
to lose 'em than to find 'em;--ay, and places too. The bread of
service is baked with seven crusts;--it's not suited to every man's
stomach. Look, my Dino,' the old man added slowly. 'We are all
friends here--Lucia and all of us. And I've known you, man and boy,
since you and the child there used to play i' the old boat together. I
never had a son of my own, but if I had had there 'ud be two of us to
keep, and two of us to look after the little girl; that 'ud be all the
difference. And if you're minded, now you're out of other work, if
you're minded to come and have a try at it, lad, why, there's my hand
on it. There's plenty wouldn't let another man set his foot in their
boat unless they could clap a plaister o' stamped paper on the spot he
first stepped on, but that's not my way o' thinking. An old ox keeps a
straight furrow. We don't need 'greements, you and I. We'll just have
Sora Lucia there to witness, and there's my hand on it if it pleases
you to say "Done!"'
The three silent spectators of this scene had been listening to what
was said in feminine fashion, watching the faces of the two men rather
than their words, and now, as they clasped hands across the supper
table, Italia could no longer control her excitement. Her hands turned
cold: she rose from her seat: she went up to Lucia and threw her arms
about the good little woman's neck.
'There, my little girl, there. It's nothing to cry about,' the old
father said tenderly. He turned to Dino. 'There's two of us to look
after her and take care of her now.'
'So help me, God, I will,' the young man answered passionately. He
looked at Italia full in the face.
'I am her servant. I would give my life for her, and she knows it,' he
said simply, with all his soul lighting up his eager eyes.
Her hand was hanging loosely by her side; he took the little hand in
his and looked at it for an instant, and raised it to his lips and
kissed it.
'I am her servant, if she will have me,' he said.
Before any one had time to answer there came a loud sharp knock at the
outer door.