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 pa.s.s. 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 t.i.tle 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 gla.s.s 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 t.i.tle 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d, I will,' the young man answered pa.s.sionately. 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.

CHAPTER III.

THE YOUNG MASTER.

The young man who entered--not waiting to have his knock answered, but throwing the door wide open before him with an easy air of good-natured authority--this newcomer, was dressed in the uniform of an officer of the King's Guards. As he came into the low smoke-embrowned room he was at once the brightest object there; the firelight caught and flashed upon all manner of resplendent b.u.t.tons and knots and gold lacings, and on the shining hilt of his sword. His long, glittering spurs rang sharply against the bare stone floor. 'It is the Prince out of the fairy tale, Italia; the fairy Prince,' said little Palmira breathlessly, and stared with her great brown eyes, clutching at Italia's hand.

'The Marchese Gasparo! the young master!' old Drea cried out in a loud voice, pulling off his round woollen cap.

They all stood up, even Dino, who strolled away a few steps from the table to the fireplace, where he began fingering a small dusty model of a boat: it had stood in that same place, between two handfuls of sh.e.l.ls, as far back as he could remember anything.

'I only came home to-day. I've lost no time in looking you up, old Drea. My mother was not expecting me back so soon, and half the rooms are shut up at the Villa--the house is as musty as a tomb. It was so dull I couldn't stay in after dinner,' the young Marchese said, with a quick, comprehensive glance at the two women present. His open face grew still more frankly bright at the sight of Italia; he took a step forward and doffed his cap, and made her a profound and smiling bow.

'And this is my little playmate, then; _this_ is the little girl who used to go out with us in the old boat while Drea was teaching me to fish,' he said, looking at her hard.

'Ay, she's grown, she's grown, my little girl has. Per Bacco! it's six years now, or more, since you have seen her; it's no wonder if you find her changed, signor Marchese.'

'I find her--changed!' the young man echoed, smiling. The tone of his voice was a _resume_ of all unspoken compliments. There could be no doubt of what he thought of this alteration; and Dino, by the fireplace, looked around with a sudden sharp pang of jealousy and wonder.

He had not spoken, but no movement seemed to escape the soldier's quick keen glance.

'What! Dino?--Dino de Rossi? Why, man, what is the matter with you?

You look like a thunder-cloud. Aren't you glad to see me home again, then?' the young Marquis asked laughingly, and was pleased to hold out his hand to his old acquaintance and foster-brother, bidding him cheer up and not stand there sulking, 'if it were only out of respect to the signorina's beautiful eyes.'

'Nay, she is no signorina; her name is Italia, at the signor Marchese's service,' old Drea interposed, gravely enough. Young men would be young men; but it would be well if the Marchese Gasparo should recollect the difference, and to be spoken of in this way by one of the 'padroni' brought with it an uneasy sense of incongruity: it was like one of the G.o.ds walking upon the earth and claiming human familiarity.

Old Drea probably cared more about pleasing his young master than for any other thing in the world unconnected with Italia. He was very susceptible to the influences of education and rank. 'Ay, there are differences between us workingmen just as there are differences between the donkeys; but your cleverest donkey will only think of seven tricks, while his master can think of eight,' he had said to Dino only a day or two before; and the fact that 'the masters' knew best was a quite unquestioned source of comfort and satisfaction to the loyal, simple-hearted old man. All genuine reverence implies a certain poetry of nature; there was a good deal of romantic admiration--the old feeling of the clansman to his chief--mixed up with the affection and respect with which he contemplated his young guest. And Gasparo was well aware of the fact. He liked the old man, too, in his way; above all, he liked to be liked. All pleasant sensations were natural to him, and the simple admiration which surrounded him now was warm and agreeable, like the sunshine. Things had not been made quite so pleasant to him at the Villa. He had found the household unprepared to receive him, the house in disorder, and the old Marchesa, his mother, more grimly logical than complaisant on the subject of his gambling debts. But here, at least, there was no fear of encountering irritating criticism. He was always ready to do a good-natured thing _en bon prince_; and now, as he took a seat beside the table--it was Drea's chair--and let the old man fill him up a gla.s.s of the sour wine, it was impossible altogether to resist the charm and gaiety of his manner. There was something satisfactory and winning in the very tones of his voice, in the glance of his quick smiling eyes, in the firm ready pressure of his hand. When he asked Italia to sing him a song, which he did presently, it was with the air of pleading for some favour.

'The child's ready enough to sing; and proud enough she ought to be to think you should have remembered her voice all these years. But she was always like a little singing bird, when she was no higher than my knee. Lord! how well I can remember it--taking her out with me in the old boat, and she, no bigger than that, sitting on the nets and singing away to herself, soft like, till you could think of nothing else but a summer morning, when the boat is anch.o.r.ed off sh.o.r.e, and the larks are just rising in the meadows. But there! 'tis I am keeping the Captain from his music after all,' old Drea said, with an apologetic laugh.

Italia had taken her guitar from Dino's hands; she took it with a smile and a blush, as she had taken the Captain's pretty speeches, and moved away to the other end of the room. Her voice was the lowest, sweetest contralto. When she began to sing her face grew serious and composed.

'Why does Italia look so unhappy as that? She looks like one of the saints on the cathedral window, as if she were saying her prayers,'

Palmira whispered into Lucia's ear. She was awe-struck with admiration of the Captain's sword, which he had taken off before sitting down at the table. 'Do you think, Lucia; do you think he would let me touch it if Italia were to ask him?' she said.

The Captain did not seem in the humour to object to anything. The song--or was it the singer?--had given him far more pleasure than he had expected. He told her so, after a moment's hesitation.

'Indeed, I am very glad, sir. I shall be very glad to sing for you as much as you like, and father pleases,' Italia answered, looking at him with a great deal of kindness and pleasure. Indeed, every instinct of her nature was always prompting her to do some kindness to some one.

As she sat there on her low seat, bending over her guitar, the firelight shining full upon her small dark head and flushed cheeks, and on the movement of her little brown wrists, Dino could not turn his gaze away from her. Another man's admiration is a background against which many an ordinary woman has shone clad in unaccustomed graces to her lover's eyes. But in this case Dino wanted no confirming in his devotion: it was only that seeing her there, listening to another man's compliments, had given a slight shock to the sense of unquestioning security which had grown up with him since the very first earliest days of his love. Already he began to look back with some jealous uneasiness at the past years when Italia had seemed as much his, and as much a necessity of his being, as the breath he drew. True, he had never spoken to her about it, at least not in so many definite words; that was partly because she was still so young--only eighteen on this birthday, and partly too that there had seemed no need for vexing his mother beforehand: he had not money enough to marry upon as yet, and his mother was sure to object; she had always discouraged his being so much at Drea's. But now all these considerations seemed to go for nothing, to become futile and irrelevant seen in the light of this new possibility that another man could step in and attempt to carry away his own especial treasure from before his very eyes. Dino had but little of old Andrea's capacity for personal reverence; there was not enough modesty in his own nature for that; so that it did not strike him as so utterly preposterous that a man in the young Marchese's position should fall seriously in love with a fisherman's daughter. On the other hand, there was always a certain doubt lurking at the bottom of his strongest a.s.sertions of equality. He had no weight of simple conviction to steady his possession of the theories which attracted him the most. There was always a struggle between his intelligence and his instincts. Things outside and away from his creed of conduct appealed to him. He could not take life simply: there was the exaggeration of effort in his innermost beliefs. He looked at Italia: he looked with almost more than a woman's sensitiveness, to material impressions at the gallant and determined bearing of the man beside her, whose frank and n.o.ble beauty was only like an additional distinction--an emphasis of cla.s.s differences. No devout believer in the divinest rights of kings could have recognised those differences more keenly than Dino did at that moment. For there is nothing ambiguous in the secret language of jealousy: 'And they say--_we_ say--that one man is as good as another without regard to his rank! I was a fool--a fool,' De Rossi reflected bitterly.

Gasparo seemed to have a talent for seeing everything. He took his cigarette case out of his pocket and asked old Drea for a light; then he said: 'There _are_ changes. Why, even the old gardens up there at the Villa seem to have grown smaller. I remember I thought there was no end to them when I was a boy.'

'Ay, there's something in a place, but there's more in the eye that looks at it. And you'll have seen a many fine places since then, sir, and a many fine people, I'll warrant. It's only the little people and the little places in life that don't change much; they're away down at the bottom, in the still water, out o' reach o' the tide. You'll not find much change in us, sir. There's not a question if we're proud and glad to see you back.'

'Oh, if there's any change among you it's not of the kind I'm finding fault with,' the young man said, glancing again at Italia; 'only it makes one feel how much time has pa.s.sed. Why, you must be getting an old man now yourself, Drea--beginning to think about giving up work and settling down for a bit--while you look out for a husband for Italia.

You'll need to find a good fellow. But perhaps you have done that already.'

'Nay, as for that,--the little girl can wait for a bit,--she can wait a bit yet,' her father answered slowly, taking his pipe out of his mouth and knocking the ashes on the table. 'Our girls are not like the young ladies you're accustomed to, sir,--with nothing to do but sit in their chairs while they pick and choose. Gentlefolks--Lord bless you!

they've got one paradise here on earth, and, as for the other one, they've got plenty o' money to spend in ma.s.ses--they've only got to pay for it. But with us 'tis different, you see.' He took up his gla.s.s of wine, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, and then emptied its contents down his throat with a sudden jerk of his wrist. 'And I'd never be one to urge a girl to jump at the first comer,' he said cheerfully, leaning across the narrow table to emphasise his remark.

'No, no, patience never spoilt any man's luck. And the biggest fish--they're often nearest the bottom--they're nearest the bottom, eh, Sora Lucia?'

'Gesu Maria! how should _I_ know?' the little woman murmured hurriedly, with an apologetic look at the young Marchese. 'In my time we did not think these things should be discussed before young--young persons,'

she said primly; it would have seemed a familiarity to her if she had used a common expression such as, 'before young girls.'

'Nay, nay, Lucia _mia_, you won't make us swallow that!' retorted Sor Drea, with another chuckle of supreme good humour. 'You won't make us swallow it, my dear. For you'll sooner find an old man without an ache than a young girl without a lover,--eh, signor Marchese? 'Tis the good Lord who made us all, who chose to make us in that way, and where's the harm in speaking of it?' He filled his gla.s.s up with a more unsteady hand. 'There's Dino over there looking at me like a black thunder-cloud,--but I suppose I may say what I like about my own daughter in my own house,--eh, boy?'

'I was not contradicting you, Sor Drea,' the young man answered quietly.

'Nay, lad, nay, I meant no malice. But it's a poor sort of business to waste your breath whistling for yesterday's breeze. Cheer up, lad!

There's always plenty o' good work to the fore when a man's ready to do it. Ready and cheery,--even the dog can earn his dinner by wagging his tail.'

Gasparo laughed. 'Well, I must be going,' he said, and stood up and put out his hand for his belt and sword. As he was buckling it about him his eye fell upon Palmira's pale intent little face. He sat down again.

'Come here, child,' he said, and held out his hand.

'Go to the gentleman, Palmira. Go and tell him what your name is, like a good little girl, and don't be frightened,' said Lucia hastily, with a general tug at the child's frock.

Palmira looked at her with flashing eyes. 'I am not frightened,' she said indignantly, and went and stood composedly beside Gasparo's knee.

When he asked, 'Shall I show you my sword?' her eyes flashed again.