Jerry Part 16

He had the grace to blush.

'Tony, did you kiss my hand?'

'_Scusi_, signorina. I ver' sorry to wake you, but it is tree o'clock and ze Signor Papa he say we must start just now or we nevair get to ze top.'

'Answer my question.'

'Signorina, I cannot tell to you a lie. It is true, I forget I am just poor donkey-man. I play li'l' game. You sleeping beauty; I am ze prince.

I come to wake you. Just _one_ kiss I drop on your hand--one ver' little kiss, signorina.'

Constance a.s.sumed an air of indignant reproof, but in the midst of it she laughed.

'I wish you wouldn't be so funny, Tony; I can't scold you as much as you deserve. But I am angry just the same, and if anything like that ever happens again I shall be very _very_ angry.'

'Signorina, I would not make you very _very_ angry for anysing. As long as I live nosing like zat shall happen again. No, nevair, I promise.'

They plunged into a pine wood and climbed for another two hours, the summit always vanis.h.i.+ng before them like a mirage. At the end of that time they were apparently no nearer their goal than when they had started. They had followed first one path, then another, until they had lost all sense of direction, and finally when they came to a place where three paths diverged, they had to acknowledge themselves definitely lost.

Mr. Wilder elected one path, Tony another, and Constance sat down on a rock.

'I'm not going any farther,' she observed.

'You can't stay here all night,' said her father.

'Well, I can't walk over this mountain all night. We don't get anywhere; we merely move in circles. I don't think much of the guide you engaged.

He doesn't know his way.'

'He wasn't engaged to know his way,' Tony retorted. 'He was engaged to wear earrings and sing Santa Lucia.'

Constance continued to sit on her rock while Tony went forward on a reconnoitring expedition. He returned in ten minutes with the information that there was a shepherd's hut not very far off with a shepherd inside who would like to be friendly. If the signorina would deign to ask some questions in the Italian language which she spoke so fluently, they could doubtless obtain directions as to the way home.

They found the shepherd, the shepherdess and four little shepherds eating their evening polenta in an earth-floored room, with half a dozen chickens and the family pig gathered about them in an expectant group.

They rose politely and invited the travellers to enter. It was an event in their simple lives when foreigners presented themselves at the door.

Constance commenced amenities by announcing that she had been walking on the mountain since sunrise and was starving. Did they by chance have any fresh milk?

'Starving! _Madonna mia_, how dreadful!' Madame held up her hands. But yes, to be sure they had fresh milk. They kept four cows. That was their business--turning milk into cheese and selling it on market day in the village. Also they had some fresh mountain strawberries which Beppo had gathered that morning--perhaps they too might be pleasing to the signorina?

Constance nodded affirmatively, and added, with her eyes on the pig, that it might be pleasanter to eat outside where they could look at the view.

She became quite gay again over what she termed their afternoon tea-party, and her father had to remind her most insistently that if they wished to get down before darkness overtook them they must start at once.

An Italian twilight is short. They paid for the food and presented a lira apiece to the children, leaving them silhouetted against the sky in a bobbing row shouting musical farewells.

Their host led them through the woods and out on to the brow of the mountain in order to start them down by the right path. He regretted that he could not go all the way, but the sheep had still to be brought in for the night. At the parting he was garrulous with directions.

The easiest way to get home now would be straight down the mountain to Grotta del Monte--he pointed out the brown-tiled roofs of a village far below them--there they could find donkeys or an ox-cart to take them back. It was nine kilometres to Valedolmo. They had come quite out of their way; if they had taken the right path in the morning they would have reached the top, where the view was magnificent--truly magnificent.

It was a pity to miss it. Perhaps some other day they would like to come again and he himself would be pleased to guide them. He shook hands and wished them a pleasant journey. They would best hurry a trifle, he added, for darkness came fast, and when one got caught on the mountain at night--he shrugged his shoulders and looked at Tony--one needed a guide who knew his business.

They had walked for ten minutes when they heard some one shouting behind and found a young man calling to them to wait. He caught up with them and breathlessly explained.

Pasquale had told him that they were foreigners from America who were climbing the mountain for diversion and who had lost their way. He was going down to the village himself and would be pleased to guide them.

He fell into step beside Constance and commenced asking questions, while Tony, as the path was narrow, perforce fell behind. Occasionally Constance translated, but usually she laughed without translating, and Tony, for the twentieth time, found himself hating the Italian language.

The young man's question's were refres.h.i.+ngly ingenuous. He was curious about America, since he was thinking, he said, of becoming an American himself some day. He knew a man once who had gone to America to live and had made a fortune there--but yes, a large fortune--ten thousand lire in four years. Perhaps the signorina knew him--Giuseppe Motta; he lived in Buenos Aires. And what did it look like--America? How was it different from Italy?

Constance described the sky-sc.r.a.pers in New York.

His wonder was intense. A building twenty stories high! _Dio mio_! He should hate to mount himself up all those stairs. Were the buildings like that in the country too? Did the shepherds live in houses twenty stories high?

'Oh no,' she laughed. 'In the country the houses are just like these, only they are made of wood instead of stone.'

'Of wood?' He opened his eyes. 'But, signorina, do they never burn?'

He had another question to ask. He had been told--though of course he did not believe it--that the Indians in America had red skins.

Constance nodded yes. His eyes opened wider.

'Truly red like your coat?' with a glance at her scarlet golf jacket.

'Not quite,' she admitted.

'But how it must be diverting,' he sighed, 'to travel the world over and see different things.' He fell silent and trudged on beside her, the wanderl.u.s.t in his eyes.

It was almost dark when they reached the big arched gateway that led into the village. Here their ways parted and they paused for farewell.

'Signorina,' the young man said suddenly, 'take me with you back to America. I will prune your olive trees, I will tend your vines. You can leave me in charge when you go on your travels.'

She shook her head with a laugh.

'But I have no vines; I have no olive trees. You would be homesick for Italy.'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'Then good-bye. You, signorina, will go around the world and see many sights, while I, for travel, shall ride on a donkey to Valedolmo.'

He shook hands all around and with the grace of a prince accepted two of Tony's cigarettes. His parting speech showed him a fatalist.

'What will be, will be. There is a girl----' he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the village. 'If I go to America then I cannot stay behind and marry Maria. So perhaps it is planned for the best. You will find me, signorina, when next you come to Italy, still digging the ground in Grotta del Monte.'

As he swung away Tony glanced after him with a suggestion of malice, then he transferred his gaze to the empty gateway.

'I see no one else with whom you can talk Italian. Perhaps for ten minutes you will deign to speak English with me?'

'I am too tired to talk,' she threw over her shoulder as she followed her father through the gate.

They plunged into a tangle of tortuous paved streets, the houses pressing each other as closely as if there were not all the outside world to spread in. Grotta del Monte is built on a slope and its streets are in reality long narrow flights of stairs all converging in the little piazza. The moon was not yet up, and aside from an occasional flickering light before a madonna's shrine, the way was black.

'Signorina, take my arm. I'm afraid maybe you fall.'

Tony's voice was humbly persuasive. Constance laughed and laid her hand lightly on his arm. Tony dropped his own hand over hers and held her firmly. Neither spoke until they came to the piazza.