to do their military service first.’
‘What? And wear uniforms, and go to drill, and smoke Toscano cigars?’
‘I’m not sure about the smoking,’ laughed Maria; ‘but they have to serve their time in the army, just like other men.’
‘Of course you know,’ said the small boy, who had perfect confidence in his mother’s facts. ‘I didn’t. I’ll tell Gianluca to-morrow. All the same, this would be a good place for a castle. I wonder whose the fields are.’
‘I don’t know, dear. You may run down to the carriage and ask Telemaco if you like, and then come back and tell me. He knows all about the Campagna.’
Telemaco was Maria’s coachman, who had followed her when she had left the Montalto palace—a grey-haired, placid, corpulent man of great weight and overpowering respectability.
Leone jumped up and ran away at a steady trot, with his elbows well in, his fists close to his chest, and his head back, as he had seen soldiers run in drilling. Maria was left alone for a few minutes, for the carriage was on the other side of the ruins and two hundred yards away. She leaned on one elbow and looked westward at the distant broken aqueduct, far away under the sun. She was thinking of what she should say to the old monk in the Capuchin church later in the afternoon, and the moments passed quickly. Before she had determined upon the opening sentence, the boy came trotting back to her up the little hill. He stopped just before her, his legs apart and his face beaming with pleasure.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think? Shall I build a castle here or not?’
‘I think not,’ answered his mother, smiling.
‘But I think I shall when I am big. It all belongs to me!’
Maria opened her eyes in surprise.
‘To you, child? What do you mean?’
‘I asked Telemaco whose this land was. He said, “It belongs to your most excellent house.” I said just what you said—“What do you mean?” He said, “It is as I say, Signorino, for the land here belongs to his Excellency your papa, and if you see one of the mounted watchmen in blue about here, he will have the arms of your house on his badge.” That was what Telemaco said. So you see, when I am big I shall build a castle here. Why do you look sorry, mama?’
‘I’m not sorry, darling,’ Maria answered with a faint smile. ‘I was thinking of the time when you will be grown up.’
Leone reflected a little.
‘But why should you look sorry for that, mama? You won’t go away and leave me when I’m grown up, will you, to go and live with papa in Spain?’
‘No, dear. I shall certainly not do that.’
Another pause, longer than the first, during which the small boy watched her face keenly, and she shrank a little before the fearless blue eyes.
‘Why does papa never come back to see us?’ he asked.
She had expected the question a long time, and had made up her mind how to meet it when it came; yet she was taken by surprise.
‘Your father’s mother is a great invalid,’ she said, with a little nervous hesitation. ‘He does not like to leave her.’
‘He might come here for a day sometimes,’ answered Leone, not at all satisfied. ‘He doesn’t like us. That’s the reason. I know it is. He doesn’t want us to live in the palace. That’s why we live where we do.’
‘Hush! You must not say that, my dear. The palace is very gloomy, and I chose to live in a more cheerful part of the city.’
‘I like it better, too,’ said the boy in a tone of reflection. ‘But all other people live in their own palaces, all the same.’
‘Most of our friends are many in a family, dear. But we are only you and I.’
A silence, during which the child’s brain was weighing these matters in the balance.
‘I’m glad papa never comes back,’ he said at last. ‘You are, too.’
Without waiting for an answer, and as if to give vent to his feelings, he turned away, picked up a small stone, and threw it as far as he could over the green grass below the ruins—presumably at an imaginary enemy of Italy. He watched it as it fell, and did not seem satisfied with his performance.
‘I suppose David was bigger than I am when he killed the giant with a pebble,’ he observed rather wistfully.
They drove home.
‘Why didn’t you know that the land out there belongs to us, mama?’ asked Leone, after a long silence, when they were near the Porta San Giovanni.
‘I know very little about the property, except that it is large and some of it is in the Campagna.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because no one ever told me about it,’ Maria replied, feeling that she must find an answer. The boy looked at her gravely, but not incredulously, and asked nothing more.
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