Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/655

 . 5, 1863.]

was with a very bad appetite that Beppo sat down to the attorney’s table. Nor was the information that Signor Sandro had to communicate to him respecting the other great object of his visit to the city at all more consoling to him than that which had already made life seem not worth having to him since that morning. If the conscription had simply involved getting knocked on the head and put out of his pain at once, he felt as if he could have been quite contented to draw Number One!

The news which the attorney had to give him, indeed, confirmed all the worst fears of the poor fellows whom he left at Santa Lucia, anxiously awaiting the tidings that he would bring back from the city. The conscription was not merely threatened; it was certain. It was not for next year, but for this. The day for the drawing had not been appointed for Fano yet; but it would be very shortly known, and would certainly be not longer than a fortnight after the completion of the communal lists. His brother Carlo was exempt; but he, Beppo, was as surely liable as any man in the district;—“and it is not very easily that they will let a fellow of your inches out of their clutches, my friend, if you once get into them,” added the attorney.

“One can but take one’s chance!” said Beppo, striving to put the best face on the matter that he could. “After all, the chance is in one’s favour.”

“Well, yes, as far as equal chances go, it’s in your favour, of course; but the devil of it is that these Signori Uffiziali are bent upon getting the likeliest men. And if the draft were for a hundred, say, and you drew number two hundred, I should be sorry to insure you!”

“Why, how can that be, Signor Sandro? If a man is not fairly drawn, he cannot be taken, I suppose!”

“Aha! fairly drawn! That’s all very well! But it is not every man who is fit to serve! There is the medical examination! Ever so many are sure to be rejected! Then, as I tell you, they make all sorts of excuses to reject the smaller and weaker men, in order to get a chance of laying hold of a fellow like you. I suppose you can’t make out that you have got anything the matter with you?” said the attorney, with a laugh.

“Oh, yes, he has!” put in little Lisa; “he has got a sore heart; and I am sure that is a very bad complaint. He has a very sore heart ever since I have been telling him all about la Giulia!”

“Oh, if that’s his complaint, it’s likely enough to get worse instead of getting better,” said the attorney, affecting to give a low whistle, and turn his eyes up to the ceiling, as if that was a dull matter, about which the less was said the better.

“Why, what is there to be said against la Giulia?” said Beppo, almost fiercely.

“Against her? Oh, nothing! nothing at all! I never say anything against anybody. But it may be that all the world is not equally prudent or equally indulgent.”

“Come now, papa,” said Lisa, “you know there is nothing to be said against poor Giulia, at all. Of course it cannot be expected that such a girl as Giulia should not be admired!”

“Well, it may be so, of course. And some men may have no objection to take up with a girl who has been flirted with by half the town, and talked of by the whole of it. Others may not like it. It’s a matter of taste. If I was a young fellow in a respectable and good position, the head of my family—to be so one day, at least—and looked up to by all the country, I should not like to make a girl my wife who had gone through that sort of thing. Girls are easily spoilt;—and the handsomest perhaps the quickest.”

“Tell me the truth, now, as an old friend, Signor Sandro!” said Beppo, piteously, while the big drops of perspiration gathered on his brow; “do you mean that la Giulia has got herself talked about in a way—that—that a good girl should not?”

“Well, my dear friend, it is a difficult question to answer! It is hard to say what a good girl may do, and what she may not. I don’t wish to be severe. I dare say la Giulia is a very good girl, as girls in her position are,—a very good girl. But she has been very much—admired, we will say. She has been a good deal spoken of. Men will speak of such things in a tone like this. No doubt la Giulia has had her head turned a little! Che vuola? No doubt it would have been better if she had kept this Corporal Tenda—I think they call him—more at a distance. Still there is no great harm in it all! Only that if I, as a man who has some knowledge of the world, and as an old friend of the family, were asked for my advice in the matter of choosing a wife for your father’s son,—why I should not pitch upon Giulia Vanni. Girls of her sort make the most charming sweethearts in the world. But a good wife is another sort of article!”

Beppo knew perfectly well that the attorney had a motive for saying all this. He knew perfectly well what that motive was. Nevertheless it gave him exquisite pain to hear it. Did not what had fallen from Lisa, who had no such motive, but quite the contrary, confirm it? Worse than all, did not the evidence of his own eyes vouch for the truth of a good deal of it? He dreaded, yet longed for an interview with her. If only he could have heard her disculpate herself. He would believe every word she said. That he was quite determined on. Did Giulia ever lie?