CHAPTER XXXIII AT PALERMO

For a whole week I shared my father's abode in company with this band of robbers, and then, finding me indomitable in my determination to remain with him, he made another proposition. Such a retreat and such company as we were amongst was all very well for him, an outcast from the world; but for me it was different. He did not like the thought of my dwelling amongst proscribed men; there was no necessity for it.

At first I laughed at him. Monsieur José and I were the best of friends, and though with the other men I could not exchange even a casual remark, for their only language was a vile, unintelligible patois, they were all civil enough, and seemed disposed to be friendly. The wild, open life suited me exactly, especially in the mood in which I then was, and I had no wish to change it for any more luxurious method of living. But as my father seemed to have made up his mind upon the matter, I, of course, had little to say about it.

We did not have much difficulty in finding a suitable abode. At the foot of the wild gorge which gives access to the mountains amongst which the convent of San Martino and the Cathedral of Monreale lie hidden, we came across a tumble-down, half-ruined, grey villa, of which several of the rooms were fairly habitable. We took it from its owner, a neighbouring farmer, for a sum which seemed to us ridiculously low. Then, from the little village of Bocca di Falco, we engaged, for wages little above their keep, a man and woman, and with the remainder of the old furniture which was in the place, and a very few additions from Palermo, we were fairly set up in housekeeping.

I am quite sure that that period was not altogether an unhappy one for my father, and, for my part, I found it very far from such. The complete novelty of our surroundings and manner of life was full of interest to me, and it was with the keenest pleasure, too, that I watched the colour come slowly back to my father's cheeks, and his limbs regain their old elasticity and vigour. He could not conceal the change which my coming had brought into his life, and he did not attempt to. Many a time did I feel devoutly thankful that I had held to and carried out my purpose.

Our life was simple enough, but pleasant. Some times we spent the whole day trying to shoot the only bird there is to shoot—a sort of wild duck; at others we took long walks, exploring the coast scenery, and frequently winding up by a visit to our robber friends. Antiquities or sight-seeing we neither of us cared much about, but we paid together more than one visit to the vast palatial convent of San Martino and to the Cathedral of Monreale. Other places of interest we avoided, for my father had lost none of his old dread of meeting any of his fellow-countrymen, although, as I more than once pointed out to him, the probabilities of their ever having heard his story were very far removed.

Sometimes we rode on mules across the rich intervening plain into Palermo, and mingled with the little crowd of priests and soldiers in the café, and went down to the Casino to glance through the papers. It was I who read these, however, for my father carefully avoided them, and perhaps it was as well that he did, for more often than not there was some mention of Rupert Devereux's name, either presiding at a meeting or heading a subscription list, or as one of the committee interested in some great philanthropic work. It could not have been pleasant for him to have read such items of news as this, and I was thankful that he chose never to read English papers.

And so our life passed on for more than a year, not at all unpleasantly for either of us. My father, in his previous state of complete solitude, had developed a taste for profound reading, and seemed to find much pleasure in studying abstruse works on Buddhism, the creed of the Mahometans, the Confucian teaching, the religion of the Brahmins and the Fetichists, and the strange, fascinating doctrine of quietism held by so many of the nations of the East. It was a taste which I never pretended to share, the only one of our joint interests in which the other did not participate. I feared it, although in my ignorance I could do nothing to check it. I had dim ideas that to a man circumstanced as my father was, such study must develop any secret leanings towards fatalism, and it was a doctrine which he would have many excuses for embracing. But I was too ignorant to argue with him, so I contented myself with keeping him from his books always in the daytime and often in the evening; for we had improvised in one of the empty rooms a sort of billiard table, on which, I am convinced, we executed some of the most extraordinary strokes that a marker ever gazed upon. Then, too, we played chess often, and I tried, by every means in my power, to keep him from turning bookworm. And, on the whole, I was not dissatisfied with my success.