RETROSPECTIVE.
In less than half an hour he had left the place. Valdez accompanied
him as far as the cafe door, but there, with scarcely the exchange of a
word, they parted.
'Are you not going home, lad? Go home and get some sleep,' the elder
man said, speaking in a tone of great kindness and friendliness. And
yes, Dino admitted, he was tired. And with that they separated: but he
would not go home yet. With the instinct of one born and brought up by
the sea, it was to the sea he turned, naturally and unconsciously, as
another man might have turned to an open window. He walked fast until
he reached the low parapet which runs along the embankment of the
public walk; but, once there, his pace slackened. The night was
growing quiet; the wind had fallen perceptibly with the setting of the
moon. There were many clouds still, but broken and moving; and clear
dark spaces of the sky where the stars sparkled frostily. Below, the
water was still restlessly leaping and falling beneath the low
sea-wall, a dark unquiet surface crossed with long pale streaks of
foam. He walked up and down, slowly, by the edge of a clump of ilex
trees, his hands in his pockets, his head a little bent, in the
attitude of a man who is thinking intently. Now and then, at the
louder splash of some wave which broke higher than its fellows, he
lifted up his face automatically and looked about him with a blank,
confused stare. In truth he was feeling little more than an
overwhelming sense of confusion; nothing seemed real, within or
without; he was only conscious that all was changed around him, and he
could not realise the blow.
Dino's strongest personal impressions, all his most treasured boyish
remembrances, were in some way connected with his father, who had died
young, and when the boy was not more than twelve or thirteen years of
age. Any one else remembering Olinto de Rossi--had there indeed been
any one left in the very least likely to speak of him--any other person
would, in all probability, have summed him up briefly as a handsome,
fickle, enthusiastic young man, who--having begun life with a tolerable
fortune, a persuasive tongue, a singularly equable and lovable temper,
and an absolute incapacity for denying himself the smallest
satisfaction--had ended by dying miserably of consumption at
thirty-five; having in the interval married; spent all his money; and
earned for himself some measure of local notoriety as a sort of popular
demagogue, a speaker and leader at democratic meetings.
Chance having thrown him, while very young, among men of determined
political sympathies, he had insensibly acquired so many of their
opinions, which he afterwards retailed and amplified with so much
natural ingenuity and eloquence, as to have earned no slight fame for
himself as a radical patriot of extreme views. In point of fact, he
had taken to speech-making in the first place, almost by accident, and
as he would have taken to drink, or to gambling, or to any other form
of excitement which appealed to his pleasure-giving, pleasure-loving,
nature. And having once begun to taste the sweets of popularity, he
was fascinated by them; he required no especial convictions, the
applause and admiration he received were quite enough to determine his
vocation.
But it was not to be supposed that a reputation obtained in this manner
could last for ever, or indeed for very long. Before many years had
passed there had come a sensible diminution in the number and the
fervour of De Rossi's political adherents. The elder men of his party
had long since ceased to take serious notice of his impassioned
prophecies; and now even the editors of the fiercest socialistic
papers--the compiler of _Il Lucifero_ of Ancona, and the gentleman who
was responsible for the appearance of the Leghorn _Thief_--even they
had begun to fight shy of their old and brilliant contributor. By the
time little Dino was old enough to become his father's companion,
following him about from meeting to meeting with undoubting,
enthusiastic admiration and love, it is probable that the faith and awe
the elder De Rossi excited in his little listener was very nearly the
sum total of the credence he received.
On the whole, this defection did not depress him seriously. Perhaps he
never thoroughly believed in it, or that he had in any way deserved it;
one's own account of one's motives, and the way they strike a friend,
often bearing much the same relation to each other as a photograph does
to a portrait. Each represents the same individual; but one is fact;
the other may be a poem. And from first to last Dino saw nothing but
the poem; his father treating him throughout with a gentleness, a pride
in his clever boy, and an amount of expansive affection, which cost him
nothing, and which bound the lad to him with a more than common
reverence and love. As for his wife, for Dino's mother, she was by
nature a silent woman, who did not need to express all that she
thought; and this, Olinto sometimes reflected, was perhaps fortunate:
the view other people take of the less admirable consequences of our
actions being apt to strike one as morbid. After all, her husband was
never positively unkind to her. He had never purposely deceived her.
He was simply an ordinary man; selfish, good-humoured, eager for any
new amusement; a creature of fine moments and detestable habits. And,
after all, when his wife had married him it was because she wanted to
do so; because nothing else could or would satisfy her. If she had
made a mistake, well! perhaps he too had had his illusions. And it is
the law of life--a woman loves what she can evoke, but what she
_marries_ in a man is not his best, but his average, self.
Being gifted with a perfect, an unalterable good humour, De Rossi
accepted his wife's altered opinion of him as he accepted the reduced
circumstances of his material life: both were more or less of his own
making, and between them they troubled him but very little. His
experience of life was a succession of easy contentments. He enjoyed
his own emotions. He liked sinning as he liked repenting, and in both
phases he was alike sincere--and unreliable. He was capable of the
deepest enthusiasms--the tenderest emotions--but he was unable to
master his own shifting moods for a week. His facile nature lapsed
away from the highest points it reached with the inevitableness of
water which seeks its level. He was attractive; he was weak; he was
untrustworthy;--and yet he was always attractive. 'The sort of man,'
Valdez said of him, 'the sort of man who orders his dog "to come here,"
and when the beast lies down in a corner,--"Ah, the clever dog! he knew
I was going to tell him to do that next!" says my amiable gentleman.'
Before her marriage---she was five years older than her
husband--Catarina had been the confidential maid of the Marchesa Balbi.
She had never wholly lost her place at the Villa. When the young heir
was born, a month or two after the birth of Dino, she was, at her own
earnest entreaty, made the _balia_ of the little Marchese. Whenever
the family came to Leghorn she was always going up to the Villa; the
Marchesa was perpetually sending for her. There was no great mental
barrier between the Italian lady and her old servant: both were convent
bred, with much the same sort of education--and what hopes and fears
had they not shared since then in common! Catarina would stand for
hours at the foot of her old mistress' sofa, talking to her in
undertones of things which every one else had forgotten. The two women
were bound to one another by a whole world of recollected emotions--the
night young Gasparo was ill; his first steps; the day he had first
moved alone from the arms of his nurse to the arms of his mother,--to
each of them these had been events in life.
As the years went by Olinto objected less and less to his wife's
frequent absences. 'She is a good woman, my Dino, but hard--hard,' he
would say sometimes to his boy--and by the very passion with which the
child loved him he could see how much he had inherited of his mother's
loyal and serious nature. He began to fear vaguely lest, his boy
growing older, he should begin to learn to judge him--and he had grown
strangely dependent on that one unhesitating faith.
Things were then in this condition, when one day, Dino being at the
time some twelve years old, he was taken by his father to a political
banquet, a sort of subscription supper given by one of the clubs to
which Olinto had at some time belonged.
Dino never forgot that supper. There had been some objection made to
his own presence when he was first taken in; high words exchanged
between some of the men present and his father; sneering references,
which the child only half understood, to other debts, and former feasts
unpaid for. In the midst of the confusion Dino saw his father rise
suddenly from his place at the table; he looked about him, waving his
hand to command silence: his face was very white.
There was a general outcry of 'Sit down! sit down!'--'It's too early
yet!'--'We don't want any more speeches;' and then Dino saw the man who
was sitting on his other side lean well forward and put his hand upon
his father's shoulder. 'Don't try and talk to them now. Wait till
after supper. And--sit down, De Rossi, do. There's a good fellow,' he
said. And then, as Olinto yielded mechanically to the pressure, his
neighbour drew back, looking kindly enough into Dino's terrified face.
'Don't be frightened, my little fellow. They often make a noise at
these suppers. It means--nothing,' he said, with a half contemptuous
smile.
Dino looked at him for a moment in silence. Then the boy's face
flushed scarlet, and his eyes filled with tears.
'It can't mean anything,' he said desperately. 'My--my father would
never have brought me here if he did not mean to pay for it.' But he
did not look at his father, who was arguing eagerly across the table
with his opposite neighbour, and there was a lump in his throat which
seemed to choke him as he spoke.
'What, are you Olinto's little chap? Is De Rossi your father? And
what's your name, then? What do you call yourself, my little lad?' the
stranger asked good-naturedly.
'My name is Bernardo. But they call me Dino at home,' the boy said,
rather huskily.
'Well, then, Dino, my boy, eat your supper, and don't trouble your head
about what doesn't concern you. Your share of it shall be paid for,
never fear. Now then, what's the matter now? Don't sit and stare at
your father. He won't notice you. He's--busy. If you are wise you'll
tell _me_ what you want,' he repeated, with the same equivocal smile.
There was something in his kind and melancholy face which had won the
boy's entire confidence. 'I am afraid, sir---- I don't think my
father has got enough money with him,' he said hastily, with burning
cheeks and downcast eyes. When he ventured to look up he met his
neighbour's glance fixed full upon him with a certain friendly
amusement.
'So you are Olinto de Rossi's son,' he said slowly; and Dino wondered
to hear him say it, for surely he knew that already. 'Well, well.
_Per Bacco!_ if the evolutionists are to be trusted, why, here's a
curious experiment of Dame Nature's. Well, look here, my boy, did you
ever see me before?'
'No, sir.'
'Did you ever hear your father speak of Pietro Valdez?'
'No, sir.'
'H--m. Well! that's my name. And I spend my time teaching people how
to play the guitar, and tuning pianos: that's my trade. So now you
know who I am. And I've known your father a good many years now, first
and last, a good many years. Just tell him to turn around for a
moment. I say, De Rossi---- You look out for yourself; I don't want
to crush you, my boy.'
He leaned well forward, and spoke in a low voice to Olinto. Dino was
crouching back in his chair: he could not hear what passed between the
two men; but half an hour later, and having in the meantime, and at the
instigation of his new friend, partaken heartily of his supper, he had
the satisfaction of seeing his father carelessly fling a gold piece
into the subscription plate, where it lay and glittered obtrusively
among the pile of meaner silver coins.
The boy's eyes sparkled with triumph at the sight. He looked up with a
frank laugh into the face of his new companion. 'Did you see that,
sir?' he asked eagerly, his face all aglow.
'Ay,' Valdez answered almost indifferently. He leaned back on his
chair and contemplated the row of faces before him. 'Presently they
will begin their fine speechifying. Look here, my boy, I see
signs--never mind what they are--but I see symptoms of a coming row.
It will be nothing to speak of, I daresay, but all the same I want you
to promise me this: If I send you home, I want you to cut away at once
without stopping to ask questions, do you see? Now promise me you'll
do that, like a good little chap.'
'I'll stay with my father, sir. I must stay with my father. And if
you please, sir, I'd rather stay, really. I'm not afraid.'
'Now, who ever supposed you were afraid, my little man? But that is
not the question. Now, look here--ah!----'
He stopped short. A sudden silence had fallen upon the room. A man
near him roared out 'Hush!' and smote the table before him with his
clenched fist. For the last time in his life Olinto de Rossi had risen
to make a speech.
He had been very quiet all the previous part of the evening; sitting
most of the time with his head leaning upon his hand, hardly speaking
to any one, not even to his boy. As he rose slowly to his feet a wild
burst of ironical applause greeted him from every part of the room,
only Valdez sat silent and motionless, staring down at his plate with a
moody troubled face. De Rossi stood leaning a little forward; his thin
cheeks, which had grown so deadly pale of late, were burning now with
vivid spots of red. 'Friends,' he began, 'Gentlemen----' He hesitated
for an instant, then burst into wild invective against Church and King
and State. 'The State--the State, I tell you, is the very negation of
liberty,' he cried, 'and no matter who command, they make all serve.
You talk, some of you, of changing the political _regime_. How will
you change it? For what good? If a man among you has a thorn in his
foot, will it help him if he change his boots? I tell you, it is the
thorn, the thorn itself, that you must get out, wrench out, cut out, if
need be. We, the people, how often have we asked our rulers for bread
and they have given us a stone? Yet this is scarcely prudent, friends,
for a stone is a fair missile. What! will they live on in their
princely palaces and offer to us, to the people, the bare right and
privilege of labour? Labour! I tell you that God Himself has set His
curse upon labour. I--tell--you----'
His voice had failed him suddenly. He put his hand up to his head,
staring wildly about him.
'Go on, go on. That's the right sort of stuff. Down with everything.
A general mess and scrimmage, and myself dancing on the top of it;
that's your real radical programme. That's what you call reform!' a
man in the crowd at the foot of the table cried out derisively. There
was a general laugh; some indication of a wish to hustle him into
silence; some shouts of '_Viva_ De Rossi!' The men had all been
drinking freely, and were ripe for any mischief.
'I say, De Rossi, get up on your chair, man. We can't hear you,' some
one called out again; the suggestion was received with another hoarse
roar of approval. Two or three men moved towards the orator as if with
the intention of forcing him to adopt this new position.
'For God's sake, can't you let the man alone? Don't you see that he is
ill?' cried Valdez, suddenly starting forward.
Some one, more humane than his fellows, had poured De Rossi out a glass
of wine. He lifted it to his lips now, facing them all, with flushed
face and wild glittering eyes, 'I drink to your health, gentlemen!'
He stood so for a second amidst frantic shouts of applause, with one
hand outstretched. To Dino's eyes he looked like some demi-god
mastering a whirlwind. And then all of a sudden the brimming glass
slipped from his nerveless hand, and was dashed into a thousand pieces.
He watched it fall with a half-bewildered laugh; he staggered, and
clutched at the table; a sudden red mark discoloured his smiling mouth,
and he fell heavily forward, face downwards, without a word or a groan.
He had broken a blood-vessel; he was still insensible as they carried
him back to his home through the dark and empty streets; and Dino
walked beside the litter and held his father's hand. His wife met them
at the door with Palmira, who was then a baby, in her arms. Her face
seemed turned to stone as she listened to Valdez's explanations. Only,
as they laid her husband gently down upon his bed, and uncovered his
face, a quick spasm contracted her rigid mouth, and she stooped and
kissed the dying man upon his forehead.
'I knew it would come. It had to come,' she said drearily. And after
that she scarcely spoke again, turning away from all consolation, and
seeming to find relief only in the few practical cares which were left
to her.
And so, like some impatient wave breaking too far from shore, whose
troubled existence reaches its climax in but one instant of wasted
force, in the midst of a sea where every wave which lifts itself must
fall, so Olinto died, and his idle raving was hushed, and his place
knew him no more. Of mourners he had few or none; it was only to his
boy that he left so much as a memory. That was almost the lad's entire
heritage, that and the friendship of Pietro Valdez.
As little Dino grew up every other detail of his life seemed to change
about him, as things do change in the lives of people too poor to order
their surrounding circumstances. The Marchesa came less and less often
to the Villa Balbi; he had lost the familiar companionship of his
foster-brother; of his first childish recollections there was only old
Drea left, and the dear face of Italia, to illuminate the past. But,
whatever else was altered, he had never lost sight of Valdez. Indeed,
since that night the man seemed to have taken a strange fancy to the
boy; as the years went on those two were always more and more together;
an arbitrary friendship, in which one was ever the leader and teacher
and guide.
Even to Dino there was always a certain mystery about Valdez, but it
was the mystery of pure blankness; there were no secrets about him,
chiefly because he seemed to own no history. He never willingly spoke
of himself, or alluded to former acquaintances or habits. If he had
any one belonging to him, if he had ever been married, no one precisely
knew. He never spoke to women, or appeared interested in them. He
lived alone, where he had lived for twenty years, in two small rooms in
one of the narrowest streets of Leghorn. His wants were few and
unchanging, and the money which he earned amply sufficed for them. In
his working hours he followed his trade, as he called it, with the
sober exactitude and indifference of a machine. He was a Spaniard by
birth, and a Protestant by conviction; and he believed in a coming
universal republic as he believed in the rising of the sun. After a
dozen years of companionship that was the most that Dino knew of him.
* * * * *
As he paced up and down there by the sea, a hundred confused images and
impressions came floating back out of that past to Dino. His father's
face, and the unforgotten sound of his voice,--Sor Checco, Gasparo,
Drea, dear old Valdez, and those men at the cafe to-night, and the
scene this morning at the office, and the scene at the banquet, that
other night, long ago,--how long ago it seemed! It was as if some
storm-wave breaking over his life and soul had stirred the very depths
of old remembrance, until he could scarcely distinguish the actual from
the past, the living from the dead. They were all mixed up with the
darkness and the wind and the sense of the restless seething water
about him.
When he thought of Italia he stopped short. He could not, he _would_
not think of Italia--not then. He could bear nothing further to-night,
he told himself, with a curious sense of relief and quiet. The measure
was full; he could realise nothing more. And, indeed, beyond great
pain as beyond great joy, there is this mysterious region of rest.
Great passions end in calm, as the two poles are surrounded by similar
spaces of silent, ice-locked sea.