Daphne: An Autumn Pastoral Part 8

She sat there a long, long time, and when she wakened to a consciousness of where she was, it was a whining voice that roused her.

"Signorina, for the love of heaven, give me a few soldi, for I am starving."

Daphne looked up and was startled, and yet old beggar women were common enough sights here among the hills. This one had an evil look, with her cunning, half-shut eyes.

The girl shook her head.

"I have no money with me," she remarked.

"But Signorina, so young, so beautiful, surely she has money with her."

A dirty brown hand came all too close to Daphne's face, and she sprang to her feet.

"I have spoken," she said severely, giving a little stamp. "I have none. Now go away."

The whining continued, unintermittent. The old woman came closer, and her hand touched the girl's skirt. Wrenching herself away, Daphne found herself in the grasp of two skinny arms, and an actual physical struggle began. The girl had no time for fear, and suddenly help came.

A firm hand caught the woman's shoulder, and the victim was free.

"Are you hurt?" asked Apollo anxiously.

She shook her head, smiling.

"Frightened?"

"No. Don't you always rescue me?"

"But this is merest accident, my being here. It really isn't safe for you alone on these roads."

"I knew you were near."

"And yet, I have just this minute come round the hill. You could not possibly have seen me."

"I have ways of knowing," said Daphne, smiling demurely.

A faint little bleat interrupted them.

"Oh, oh!" cried the girl, "she is running away with Hermes!"

Never did Apollo move more swiftly than he did then! Daphne followed, with flying feet. He reached the beggar woman, held her, took the lamb with one hand from her and handed it to Daphne. There followed a scene which the girl remembered afterward with a curious sense of misgiving and of question. The thief gave one glance at the beautiful, angry face of the man, then fell at his feet, groveling and beseeching. What she was saying the girl did not know, but her face and figure bore a look of more than mortal fear.

"What does she think him?" murmured the girl. Then she turned away with him, and, with the lamb at their heels, they walked together back along the gra.s.sy road.

"You look very serious," remarked her protector. "You are sure it is not fright?"

She shook her head, holding up her bundle of letters.

"Bad news?"

"No, good," she answered, smiling bravely.

"I hope good news will be infrequent," he answered. "You look like Iphigenia going to be sacrificed."

"I will admit that there is a problem," said the girl. "There's a question about my doing something."

"And you know it must be right to do it because you hate it?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Don't you think so, too? Now when you answer," she added triumphantly, "I shall know what kind of G.o.d you are."

They had reached the turning of the ways, and he stopped, as if intending to leave her. "I cannot help you," he said sadly, "for I do not know the case. Only, I think it is best not to decide by any abstruse rule. Life is life's best teacher, and out of one's last experience comes insight for the next. But don't be too sure that duty and unhappiness are one."

She left him, standing by the little wayside shrine with a strange look on his face. A tortured Christ hung there, casting the shadow of pain upon the pa.s.sers-by. The expression in the brown eyes of the heathen G.o.d haunted her all the way down the hill, and throughout the day: they seemed to understand, and yet be glad.

CHAPTER X

It was nine o'clock as the Signorina descended the stairs. Through the open doorway morning met her, crisp and cool, with suns.h.i.+ne touching gra.s.s and green branch, still wet with dew. The very footfalls of the girl on the shallow marble steps were eager and expectant, and her face was gayer than those of the nymphs in the frescoes on the wall. At the bottom of the stairs, Giacomo met her, his face wreathed in smiles.

"Bertuccio has returned," he announced.

"Si, si, Signorina," came the voice of a.s.sunta, who was pus.h.i.+ng her way through the dining-room door behind Giacomo. She had on her magenta Sunday shawl, and the color of her wrinkled cheeks almost matched it.

"What is Bertuccio?" asked the girl. "A kitten?"

"A kitten!" gasped a.s.sunta.

"Corpo di Bacco!" swore Giacomo.

Then the two brown ones devoted mind and body to explanation. Giacomo gesticulated and waved the napkin he had in his hand; a.s.sunta shook her black silk ap.r.o.n: and they both spoke at once.

"Il mio Bertuccio! It is my little son, Signorina, and my only, and the Signorina has never seen his like. When he was three years old he wore clothing for five years, and now he is six inches taller than his father."

This and much more said a.s.sunta, and she said it as one word. Giacomo, keeping pace and giving syllable for syllable, remarked:--

"It is our Bertuccio who has been working in a tunnel in the Italian Alps, and has come home for rest. He is engineer, Signorina, and has genius. And before he became this he was guide here in the mountains, and he knows every path, every stone, every tree."

"What?" asked Daphne feebly.

Then, in a mult.i.tude of words that darkened knowledge, they said it all over again. Bertuccio, the light of their eyes, the sole hope of their old age, had come home. He could be the Signorina's guide among the hills, being very strong, very trusty, molto forte, molto fedele.

"Oh, I know!" cried the Signorina, with a sudden light in her face.

"Bertuccio is your son!"

"Si, si, si, Signorina!" exclaimed Giacomo and a.s.sunta together, ushering her into the dining-room.

"It is the blessed saints who have managed it," added a.s.sunta devoutly.

"A wreath of flowers from Rome, all gauze and spangles, will I lay at the shrine of our Lady, and there shall be a long red ribbon to say my thanks in letters of gold."