At the Antico Giuseppone, Artois left the boat from the islet and, taking another, was rowed towards the public gardens of Naples, whose trees were faintly visible far off across the Bay. Usually he talked familiarly to any Neapolitan with whom he found himself, but to-day he was taciturn, and sat in the stern of the broad-bottomed craft looking towards the city in silence while the boatman plied his oars. The memory of his conversation with Hermione in the Grotto of Virgil, of her manner, the look in her eyes, the sound of her voice there, gave him food for thought that was deep and serious.
Although Artois had an authoritative, and often an ironical manner that frightened timid people, he was a man capable of much emotion and of great loyalty. He did not easily trust or easily love, but in those whose worth he had thoroughly proved he had a confidence as complete as that of a child. And where he placed his complete confidence he placed also his affection. The one went with the other almost as inevitably as the wave goes with the wind.
In their discussion about the emotion of the heart Artois had spoken the truth to Hermione. As he had grown older he had felt the influence of women less. The pleasures of sentiment had been gradually superceded in his nature—or so at least he honestly believed—by the purely intellectual pleasures. More and more completely and contentedly had he lived in his work, and in the life of preparation for it. This life could never be narrow, for Artois was a traveller, and studied many lands.
In the years that had elapsed since the tragedy in Sicily, when the husband of Hermione had met his death suddenly in the sea, almost in sight of the home of the girl he had betrayed, the fame of Artois had grown steadily. And he was jealous of his fame almost as a good woman is jealous of her honor. This jealousy had led him to a certain selfishness of which he was quite aware—even to a certain hardness such as he had hinted to Hermione. Those who strove, or seemed likely to strive to interrupt him in his work, he pushed out of his life. Even if they were charming women he got rid of them. And the fact that he did so proved to him, and not improbably to them, that he was more wrapped up in the gratification of the mind than in the gratification of the heart, or of the body. It was not that the charm of charming women had ceased to please him, but it seemed to have ceased really to fascinate him.
Long ago, before Hermione married, he had felt for her a warm and intimate friendship. He had even been jealous of Maurice. Without being at all in love, he had cared enough for Hermione to be jealous. Before her marriage he had looked forward in imagination down a vista of long years, and had seen her with a husband, then with children, always more definitely separated from himself.
And he had seen himself exceptionally alone, even almost miserably alone.
Then fate had spun tragedy into her web. He had nearly died in Africa, and had been nursed back to life by this friend of whom he had been jealous. And they had gone together to Sicily, to the husband whose memory Hermione still adored. And then had followed swiftly the murder, the murderer’s departure to America, saved by the silence of Gaspare, and the journey of the bereaved woman to Italy, where Artois had left her and returned to France.
Once more Artois had his friend, released from the love of another man. But he wished it were not so. Hermione’s generosity met with a full response of generosity from him. All his egotism and selfishness dropped from him then, shaken down like dead leaves by the tempest of a genuine emotion. His knowledge of her grief, his understanding of its depth, brought to him a sorrow that was keen, and even exquisitely painful. For a long while he was preoccupied by an intense desire to assuage it. He strove to do so by acting almost in defiance of his nature, by fostering deception. From the Abetone Hermione had written him letters, human documents—the tale of the suffering of a woman’s heart. Many reserves she had from him and from every one. The most intimate agony was for her alone, and she kept it in her soul as the priest keeps the Sacred Host in its tabernacle. But some of her grief she showed in her letters, and some of her desire for comfort. And without any definite intention, she indicated to her subtle and devoted friend the only way in which he could console her.
For once, driven by his emotion, he took that way.
He allowed Hermione to believe that he agreed with her in the conception she had formed of her husband’s love for her. It was difficult for him to do this, for he had an almost cruel passion for truth, and generally a clear insight into human character. Far less than many others would have condemned did he, in his mind, condemn the man who was dead for the sin against love that he had committed. He had understood Maurice as Hermione had not understood him, and knowledge is full of pardon. But though he could pardon easily he could not easily pretend. By pretending he sinned against himself, and helped his friend some steps along the way to peace. He thought he had helped her to go much farther along that way than she had gone. And he thought that Vere had helped her, too.
Now the hollow mutterings of the rock in Virgil’s Grotto seemed to be in his heart, as he realized how permanent was the storm in Hermione’s nature. Something for her he had done. And something—much more, no doubt—Vere had done. But how little it all was!
Their helplessness gave him a new understanding of woman.
Hermione had allowed him great privileges, had allowed him to protect her, had taken his advice. After Vere was born she had wished to go back again to Sicily. The house of the priest, where she had been so happy, and so sad, drew her. She longed for it. She desired to make it her home. He had fought against her in this matter, and had been aided by Gaspare.
There had been a subtle understanding, never expressed, between the boy and him.
Artois had played upon her intellect, had appealed, too, to her mother’s heart.
He had not urged her to try to forget, but he had urged her not morbidly to remember, not to cherish and to foster the memory of the tragedy which had broken her life. To go back to that tiny home, solitary in its beautiful situation, in the changed circumstances which were hers, would be, he told her, to court and to summon sorrow. He was even cruel to be kind. When Hermione combated his view, assuring him that to her Monte Amato was like a sacred place, a place hallowed by memories of happiness, he recalled the despair in which that happiness had ended. With all the force at his command, and it was great, he drew the picture of the life that would be in comparison with the life that had been. And he told her finally that what she wished to do was morbid, was unworthy of her strength of character, was even wicked now that she was a mother. He brought before her mind those widows who make a cult of their dead. Would she be one of them? Would she steep a little child in such an atmosphere of memories, casting a young and tender mind backward into a cruel past instead of leading it forward into a joyous present? Maurice had been the very soul of happiness. Vere must be linked with the sunbeams. With his utmost subtlety Artois described and traced the effect upon a tiny and sensitive child of a mother’s influence, whether for good or evil, until Hermione, who had a deep reverence for his knowledge of all phases of human nature, at last, almost in despite of the truth within her, of the interior voice which said to her, “With you and Vere it would not be so,” caught alarm from his apparent alarm, drew distrust of herself from his apparent distrust of her.
Gaspare, too, played his part. When Hermione spoke to him of returning to the priest’s house, almost wildly, and with the hot energy that bursts so readily up in Sicilians, he begged her not to go back to themaledetta casain which his Padrone’s dead body had lain. As he spoke a genuine fear of the cottage came upon him. All the latent superstition that dwells in the contadino was stirred as dust by a wind. In clouds it flew up about his mind. Fear looked out of his great eyes. Dread was eloquent in his gestures. And he, too, referred to the child, to thepovera piccola bambina. It would cast ill-luck on the child to bring her up in a chamber of death. Her saint would forsake her. She too would die. The boy worked himself up into a fever. His face was white. Drops of sweat stood on his forehead.
He had set out to be deceptive—what he would have calledun poco birbante, and he had even deceived himself. He knew that it would be dangerous for his Padrona to live again near Marechiaro. Any day a chance scrap of gossip might reach her ears. In time she would be certain almost to hear something of the dead Padrone’s close acquaintance with the dwellers in the Casa delle Sirene. She would question him, perhaps. She would suspect something. She would inquire. She would search. She would find out the hideous truth. It was this fear which made him argue on the same side as Artois. But in doing so he caught another fear from his own words. He became really natural, really truthful in his fear. And—she scarcely knew why—Hermione was even more governed by him than by Artois. He had lived with them in the Casa del Prete, had been an intimate part of their life there. And he was Sicilian of the soil. The boy had a real power to move, to dominate her, which he did not then suspect.
Again and again he repeated those words, “La povera bambina—la povera piccola bambina.” And at last Hermione was overcome.
“I won’t go to Sicily,” she said to Artois. “For if I went there I could only go to Monte Amato. I won’t go until Vere is old enough to wish to go, to wish to see the house where her father and I were happy.”
And she had never gone back. For Artois had not been satisfied with this early victory.
In returning from a tour in North America the following spring, when Vere was nearly two years old, he had paid a visit to Marechiaro, and, while there, had seen the contadino from whom Hermione had rented, and still rented, the house of the priest. The man was middle-aged, ignorant but shrewd, and very greedy. Artois made friends with him, and casually, over a glass ofmoscato, talked about his affairs and the land question in Sicily. The peasant became communicative and, of course, loud in his complaining. His land yielded nothing. The price of almonds had gone down. The lemon crop had been ruined by the storms. As to the vines—they were all devoured by the phylloxera, and he had no money to buy and plant vines from America. Artois hinted that he received a good rent from the English lady for the cottage on Monte Amato. The contadino acknowledged that he received a fair price for the cottage and the land about it; but the house, he declared, would go to rack and ruin with no one ever in it, and the land was lying idle, for the English lady would have everything left exactly as it had been when she lived there with her husband. Artois seized upon this hint of what was in the peasant’s mind, and bemoaned with him his situation. The house ought to be occupied, the land all about it, up to the very door, and behind upon the sunny mountain-side, planted with American vines. If it belonged to him that was what he would do—plant American vines, and when the years of yielding came, give a good percentage on all the wine made and sold to the man who had tended the vineyard.
The peasant’s love of money awoke. He only let the cottage to Hermione year by year, and had no contract with her extending beyond a twelve-months’ lease. Before Artois left Marechiaro the tender treachery was arranged. When the year’s lease was up, the contadino wrote to her declining to renew it. She answered, protesting, offering more money. But it was all in vain. The man replied that he had already let the cottage and the land around it to a grower of vines for a long term of years, and that he was getting double the annual price she offered.
Hermione was indignant and bitterly distressed. When this letter reached her she was at Fiesole with Vere in a villa which she had taken. She would probably have started at once for Sicily; but Vere was just then ill with some infantile complaint, and could not be left. Artois, who was in Rome, and had received from her the news of this carefully arranged disaster, offered to go to Sicily on her behalf—and actually went. He returned to tell her that the house of the priest was already occupied by contadini, and all the land up to the very door in process of being dug up and planted with vines. It was useless to make any further offer. The thing was done.
Hermione said nothing, but Artois saw in her eyes how keenly she was suffering, and turned his own eyes away. He was only trying to preserve her from greater unhappiness, the agony of ever finding out the truth; but he felt guilty at that moment, and as if he had been cruel to the woman who roused all his tenderness, all his protective instinct.
“I shall not go back to Marechiaro now,” Hermione said. “I shall not go back even to see the grave. I could never feel that anything of his spirit lingered there. But I did feel, I should have felt again, as if something of him still loved that little house on the mountain, still stayed among the oak-trees. It seemed to me that when I took Vere to the Casa del Prete she would have learned to know something of her father there that she could never have learned to know in another place. But now—no, I shall not go back. If I did I should even lose my memories, perhaps, and I could not bear that.”
And she had not returned. Gaspare went to Marechiaro sometimes, to see his family and his friends. He visited the grave and saw that it was properly kept. But Hermione remained in Italy. For some time she lived near Florence, first at Fiesole, later at Bellosguardo. When the summer heat came she took a villa at the Abetone. Or she spent some months with Vere beside the sea. As the girl grew older she developed a passion for the sea, and seemed to care little for the fascination of the pine forests. Hermione, noting this, gave up going to the Abetone and took a house by the sea for the whole summer. Two years they were at Santa Margherita, one year at Sorrento.
Then, sailing one evening on the sea towards Bagnoli, they saw the house on the islet beyond the Pool of San Francesco. Vere was enchanted by it.
“To live in it,” she exclaimed, “would be almost like living in the sea!”
Hermione, too, was fascinated by its situation, the loneliness, the wildness, yet the radiant cheerfulness of it. She made inquiries, found that it was owned by a Neapolitan who scarcely ever went there, and eventually succeeded in getting it on a long lease. For two years now she and Vere had spent the summer there.
Artois had noticed that since Hermione had been in the Casa del Mare an old desire had begun to revive in her. She spoke more frequently of Sicily. Often she stood on the rock and looked across the sea, and he knew that she was thinking of those beloved coasts—of the Ionian waters, of the blossoming almond-trees among the olives and the rocks, of the scarlet geraniums glowing among the thorny cactus, of the giant watercourses leading up into the mountains. A hunger was awake in her, now that she had a home so near the enchanted island.
He realized it. But he was no longer much afraid. So many years had passed that even if Hermione revisited Marechiaro he believed there would be little or no danger now of her ever learning the truth. It had never been known in the village, and if it had been suspected, all the suspicions must have long ago died down. He had been successful in his protection. He was thankful for that. It was the one thing he had been able to do for the friend who had done so much for him.
The tragedy had occurred because of him. Because of him all knowledge of it had been kept from Hermione, and would now be kept from her forever—because of him and Gaspare.
This he had been able to do. But how powerless he was, and how powerless was Vere!
Now he looked vaguely at the villas of Posilipo, and he realized this thoroughly.
Something for her he had done, and something Vere had done. But how little it all was!
To-day a new light had been thrown upon Hermione, and he realized what she was as he had never realized it before. No, she was right. She could never live fully in a girl child—she was not made to do that. Why had he ever thought, hoped that perhaps it might be so, that perhaps Vere might some day completely and happily fill her life? Long ago he had encouraged her to work, to write. Misled by her keen intelligence, her enthusiasm, her sincerity and vitality, by the passion that was in her, the great heart, the power of feeling, the power of criticising and inspiring another which she had freely shown to him, Artois had believed—as he had once said to her in London—that she might be an artist, but that she preferred to be simply a woman. But he found it was not so. Hermione had not the peculiar gift of the writer. She could feel, but she could not arrange. She could discern, but she could not expose. A flood of words came to her, but not the inevitable word. She could not take that exquisite leap from the known into the unknown which genius can take with the certainty of alighting on firm ground. In short, she was not formed and endowed to be an artist. About such matters Artois knew only how to be sincere. He was sincere with his friend, and she thanked him for being so.
One possible life was taken from Hermione, the life of the artist who lives in the life of the work.
There remained the life in Vere.
To-day Artois knew from Hermione’s own lips that she could not live completely in her child, and he felt that he had been blind as men are often blind about women, are blind because they are secretly selfish. The man lives for himself, but he thinks it natural, even distinctively womanly, that women should live for others—for him, for some other man, for their children. What man finds his life in his child? But the woman—she surely ought to, and without difficulty. Hermione had been sincere to-day, and Artois knew his blindness, and knew his secret selfishness.
The gray was lifting a little over Naples, the distant shadowy form of Vesuvius was becoming clearer, more firm in outline. But the boatman rowed slowly, influenced by the scirocco.
How, then, was Hermione to live? How was she to find happiness or peace? It was a problem which he debated with an ardor that had in it something of passion. And he began to wonder how it would have been if he had acted differently, if he had allowed her to find out what he suspected to be the exact truth of the dead man. Long ago he had saved her from suffering. But by doing so had he not dedicated her, not to a greater, but to a longer suffering? He might have defiled a beautiful memory. He must have done so had he acted differently. But if he had defiled it, might not Hermione have been the subject of a great revulsion? Horror can kill, but it can also cure. It can surely root out love. But from such a heart as Hermione’s?
Despite all his understanding of women, Artois felt at a loss to-day. He could not make up his mind what would have been the effect upon Hermione if she had learned that her husband had betrayed her.
Presently he left that subject and came to Vere.
When he did this he was conscious at once of a change within him. His tenderness and pity for Hermione were replaced by another tenderness and pity. And these were wholly for Vere. Hermione was suffering because of Maurice. But Vere was surely suffering, subconsciously, because of Hermione.
There were two links in the chain of suffering, that between Maurice and Hermione, and that between Hermione and Vere.
For a moment he felt as if Vere were bereaved, were motherless. The sensation passed directly he realized the exaggeration in his mind. But he still felt as if the girl were deprived of something which she ought to possess, which, till now, he had thought she did possess. It seemed to him that Vere stood quite outside of her mother’s life, instead of in it, in its centre, its core; and he pitied the child, almost as he pitied other children from time to time, children to whom their parents were indifferent. And yet Hermione loved Vere, and Vere could not know what he had only known completely to-day—that the mother often felt lonely with the child.
Vere did not know that, but surely some day she would find it out.
Artois knew her character well, knew that she was very sensitive, very passionate, quick to feel and quick to understand. He discovered in her qualities inherited both from her father and her mother, attributes both English and Sicilian. In appearance she resembled her father. She had “thrown back” to the Sicilian ancestor, as he had. She had the Southern eyes, the Southern grace, the Southern vivacity and warmth that had made him so attractive. But Artois divined a certain stubbornness in Vere that had been lacking in the dead man, a stubbornness that took its rise not in stupidity but in a secret consciousness of force.
Vere, Artois thought, might be violent, but would not be fickle. She had a loyalty in her that was Sicilian in its fervor, a sense of gratitude such as the contadini have, although by many it is denied to them; a quick and lively temper, but a disposition that responded to joy, to brightness, to gayety, to sunlight, with a swiftness, almost a fierceness, that was entirely un-English.
Her father had been the dancing Faun. She had not, could never have his gift of thoughtlessness. For she had intellect, derived from Hermione, and an old truthfulness that was certainly not Sicilian. Often there were what Artois called “Northern Lights” in her sincerity. The strains in her, united, made, he thought, a fascinating blend. But as yet she was undeveloped—an interesting, a charming child, but only a child. In many ways she was young for her age. Highly intelligent, she was anything rather than “knowing.” Her innocence was like clear water in a spring. The graciousness of youth was hers to the full.
As Artois thought of it he was conscious, as of a new thing, of the wonderful beauty of such innocent youth.
It was horrible to connect it with suffering. And yet that link in the chain did exist. Vere had not something that surely she ought to have, and, without consciously missing it, she must sometimes subtly, perhaps vaguely, be aware that there was a lack in her life. Her mother gave her great love. But she was not to her mother what a son would have been. And the love that is mingled with regret has surely something shadowy in it.
Maurice Delarey had been as the embodiment of joy. It was strange that from the fount of joy sorrow was thrown up. But so it was. From him sorrow had come. From him sorrow might still come, even for Vere.
In the white and silent day Artois again felt the stirring of intuition, as he had felt it long ago. But now he roused himself, and resolutely, almost angrily, detached his mind from its excursions towards the future.
“Do you often think of to-morrow?” he suddenly said to the boatman, breaking from his silence.
“Signore?”
“Do you often wonder what is going to happen to-morrow, what you will do, whether you will be happy or sad?”
The man threw up his head.
“No, Signore. Whatever comes is destiny. If I have food to-day it is enough for me. Why should I bother about to-morrow’s maccheroni?”
Artois smiled. The boat was close in now to the platform of stone that projected beneath the wall of the Marina.
As he stepped out he gave the boatman a generousbuonamano.
“You are quite right, comrade,” he said. “It is the greatest mistake in the world to bother about to-morrow’s maccheroni.”
Three days after Artois’ conversation with Hermione in the Grotto of Virgil the Marchesino Isidoro Panacci came smiling into his friend’s apartments in the Hotel Royal des Etrangers. He was smartly dressed in the palest possible shade of gray, with a bright pink tie, pink socks, brown shoes of the rather boat-like shape affected by many young Neopolitans, and a round straw hat, with a small brim, that was set slightly on the side of his curly head. In his mouth was a cigarette, and in his buttonhole a pink carnation. He took Artois’ hand with his left hand, squeezed it affectionately, murmured “Caro Emilio,” and sat down in an easy attitude on the sofa, putting his hat and stick on a table near by.
It was quite evident that he had come for no special reason. He had just dropped in, as he did whenever he felt inclined, to gossip with “Caro Emilio,” and it never occurred to him that possibly he might be interrupting an important piece of work. The Marchesino could not realize work. He knew his friend published books. He even saw him sometimes actually engaged in writing them, pen in hand. But he was sure anybody would far rather sit and chatter with him, or hear him play a valse on the piano, or a bit of the “Boheme,” than bend over a table all by himself. And Artois always welcomed him. He liked him. But it was not only that which made him complaisant. Doro was a type, and a singularly perfect one.
Now Artois laid down his pen, and pulled forward an arm-chair opposite to the sofa.
“Mon Dieu, Doro! How fresh you look, like a fish just pulled out of the sea!”
The Marchesino showed his teeth in a smile which also shone in his round and boyish eyes.
“I have just come out of the sea. Papa and I have been bathing at the Eldorado. We swam round the Castello until we were opposite your windows, and sang ‘Funiculi, funicula!’ in the water, to serenade you. Why didn’t you hear us? Papa has a splendid voice, almost like Tamagno’s in the gramophone, when he sings the ‘Addio’ from ‘Otello.’ Of course we kept a little out at sea. Papa is so easily recognized by his red mustaches. But still you might have heard us.”
“I did.”
“Then why didn’t you come unto the balcony, amico mio?”
“Because I thought you were street singers.”
“Davvero? Papa would be angry. And he is in a bad temper to-day anyhow.”
“Why?”
“Well, I believe Gilda Mai is going to bring acausaagainst Viviano. Of course he won’t marry her, and she never expected he could. Why, she used to be a milliner in the Toledo. I remember it perfectly, and now Sigismondo—But it’s really Gilda that has made papa angry. You see, he has paid twice for me, once four thousand lire, and the other time three thousand five hundred. And then he has lost a lot at Lotto lately. He has no luck. And then he, too, was in a row yesterday evening.”
“The Marchese?”
“Yes, in the Chiaia. He slapped Signora Merani’s face twice before every one.”
“Diavolo! What! a lady?”
“Well, if you like to call her so,” returned Doro, negligently. “Her husband is an impiegato of the Post-office, or something of the kind.”
“But why should the Marchese slap her face in the Chiaia?”
“Because she provoked him. They took a flat in the house my father owns in the Strada Chiatamone. After a time they got behind with the rent. He let them stay on for six months without paying, and then he turned them out. What should he do?” Doro began to gesticulate. He held his right hand up on a level with his face, with the fingers all drawn together and pressed against the thumb, and moved it violently backwards and forwards, bringing it close to the bridge of his nose, then throwing it out towards Artois. “What else, I say? Was he to give his beautiful rooms to them for nothing? And she with a face like—have you, I ask you, Emilio, have you seen her teeth?”
“I have never seen the Signora in my life!”
“You have never seen her teeth? Dio Mio!” He opened his two hands, and, lifting his arms, shook them loosely above his head, shutting his eyes for an instant as if to ward off some dreadful vision. “They are like the keys of a piano from Bordicelli’s! Basta!” He dropped his hands and opened his eyes. “Yesterday papa was walking in the Chiaia. He met Signori Merani, and she began to abuse him. She had a red parasol. She shook it at him! She called him vigliacco—papa, a Panacci, dei Duchi di Vedrano! The parasol—it was a bright red, it infuriated papa. He told the Signora to stop. She knows his temper. Every one in Naples knows our tempers, every one! I, Viviano, even Sigismondo, we are all the same, we are all exactly like papa. If we are insulted we cannot control ourselves. You know it, Emilio!”
“I am perfectly certain of it,” said Artois. “I am positive you none of you can.”
“It does not matter whether it is a man or a woman. We must do something with our hands. We have got to. Papa told the Signora he should strike her at once unless she put down the red parasol and was silent. What did she do, the imbecile? She stuck out her face like this,”—he thrust his face forward with the right cheek turned towards Artois—“and said, ‘Strike me! strike me!’ Papa obeyed her. Poom! Poom! He gave her a smack on each cheek before every one. ‘You want education!’ he said to her. ‘And I shall give it you.’ And now she may bring aprocessotoo. But did you really think we were street singers?” He threw himself back, took the cigarette from his mouth, and laughed. Then he caught hold of his blond mustache with both hands, gave it an upward twist, at the same time pouting his big lips, and added:
“We shall bring acausaagainst you for that!”
“No, Doro, you and I must never quarrel. By the way, though, I want to see you angry. Every one talks of the Panacci temper, but when I am with you I always see you smiling or laughing. As to the Marchese, he is as lively as a boy. Viviano—”
“Oh, Viviano is a buffone. Have you ever seen him imitate a monkey from whom another monkey has snatched a nut?”
“No.”
“It is like this—”
With extraordinary suddenness he distorted his whole face into the likeness of an angry ape, hunching his shoulders and uttering fierce simian cries.
“No, I can’t do it.”
With equal suddenness and self-possession he became his smiling self again.
“Viviano has studied in the monkey-house. And the monk looking the other way when he passes along the Marina where the women are bathing in the summer! He shall do that for you on Sunday afternoon when you come to Capodimonte. It makes even mamma die of laughing, and you know how religious she is. But then, of course, men—that does not matter. Religion is for women, and they understand that quite well.”
The Marchesino never made any pretence of piety. One virtue he had in the fullest abundance. He was perfectly sincere with those whom he considered his friends. That there could be any need for hypocrisy never occurred to him.
“Mamma would hate it if we were saints,” he continued.
“I am sure the Marchesa can be under no apprehension on that score,” said Artois.
“No, I don’t think so,” returned the Marchesino, quite seriously.
He had a sense of humor, but it did not always serve him. Occasionally it was fitful, and when summoned by irony remained at a distance.
“It is true, Emilio, you have never seen me angry,” he continued, reverting to the remark of Artois; “you ought to. Till you have seen a Panacci angry you do not really know him. With you, of course, I could never be angry—never, never. You are my friend, my comrade. To you I tell everything.”
A sudden remembrance seemed to come to him. Evidently a new thought had started into his active mind, for his face suddenly changed, and became serious, even sentimental.
“What is it?” asked Artois.
“To-day, just now in the sea, I have seen a girl—Madonna! Emilio, she had a little nose that was perfect—perfect. How she was simpatica! What a beautiful girl!”
His whole face assumed a melting expression, and he pursed his lips in the form of a kiss.
“She was in the sea, too?” asked Artois.
“No. If she had been! But I was with papa. It was just after we had been serenading you. She had heard us, I am sure, for she was laughing. I dived under the boat in which she was. I did all my tricks for her. I did the mermaid and the seal. She was delighted. She never took her eyes from me. As to papa—she never glanced at him. Poor papa! He was angry. She had her mother with her, I think—a Signora, tall, flat, ugly, but she was simpatica, too. She had nice eyes, and when I did the seal she could not help laughing, though I think she was rather sad.”
“What sort of boat were they in?” Artois asked, with sudden interest.
“A white boat with a green line.”
“And they were coming from the direction of Posilipo?”
“Ma si! Emilio, do you know them? Do you know the perfect little nose?”
The Marchesino laid one hand eagerly on the arm of his friend.
“I believe you do! I am sure of it! The mother—she is flat as a Carabiniere, and quite old, but with nice eyes, sympathetic, intelligent. And the girl is a little brown—from the sun—with eyes full of fun and fire, dark eyes. She may be Italian, and yet—there is something English, too. But she is not blonde, she is not cold. And when she laughs! Her teeth are not like the keys of a piano from Bordicelli’s. And she is full of passion, of flame, of sentiment, as I am. And she is young, perhaps sixteen. Do you know her? Present me, Emilio! I have presented you to all my friends.”
“Mio caro, you have made me your debtor for life.”
“It isn’t true!”
“Indeed it is true. But I do not know who these ladies are. They may be Italians. They may be tourists. Perhaps to-morrow they will have left Naples. Or they may come from Sorrento, Capri. How can I tell who they are?”
The Marchesino suddenly changed. His ardor vanished. His gesticulating hands fell to his sides. His expressive face grew melancholy.
“Of course. How can you tell? Directly I was out of the sea and dressed, I went to Santa Lucia. I examined every boat, but the white boat with the green line was not there, Basta!”
He lit a fresh cigarette and was silent for a moment. Then he said:
“Emilio caro, will you come out with me to-night?”
“With pleasure.”
“In the boat. There will be a moon. We will dine at the Antico Giuseppone.”
“So far off as that?” Artois said, rather abruptly.
“Why not? To-day I hate the town. I want tranquility. At the Antico Giuseppone there will be scarcely any one. It is early in the season. And afterwards we will fish for sarde, or saraglie. Take me away from Naples, Emilio; take me away! For to-night, if I stay—well, I feel that I shall not be santo.”
Artois burst into his big roaring laugh.
“And why do you want to be santo to-night?” he asked.
“The beautiful girl! I wish to keep her memory, if only for one night.”
“Very well, then. We will fish, and you shall be a saint.”
“Caro Emilio! Perhaps Viviano will come, too. But I think he will be with Lidia. She is singing to-night at the Teatro Nuovo. Be ready at half-past seven. I will call for you. And now I shall leave you.”
He got up, went over to a mirror, carefully arranged his tie, and put on his straw hat at exactly the most impudent angle.
“I shall leave you to write your book while I meet papa at the villa. Do you know why papa is so careful to be always at the villa at four o’clock just now?”
“No!”
“Nor does mamma! If she did! Povera mamma! But she can always go to Mass. A rivederci, Emilio.”
He moved his hat a little more to one side and went out, swinging his walking-stick gently to and fro in a manner that was pensive and almost sentimental.
The Marchesino Panacci was generally very sincere with his friends, and the boyish expression in his eyes was not altogether deceptive, for despite his wide knowledge of certain aspects of life, not wholly admirable, there was really something of the simplicity of a child—of a child that could be very naughty—in his disposition. But if he could be naïve he could also be mischievous and even subtle, and he was very swift in grasping a situation, very sharp in reading character, very cunning in the pursuit of his pleasure, very adroit in deception, if he thought that publicity of pursuit would be likely to lead to the frustration of his purpose.
He had seen at once that Artois either knew, or suspected, who were the occupants of the white boat with the green line, and he had also seen that, influenced perhaps by one of those second thoughts which lead men into caution, Artois desired to conceal his knowledge, or suspicion. Instantly the Marchesino had, therefore, dropped the subject, and as instantly he had devised a little plan to clear the matter up.
The Marchesino knew that when Artois had arrived in Naples he had had no friends in the town or neighborhood. But he also knew that recently an Englishwoman, an old friend of the novelist, had come upon the scene, that she was living somewhere not far off, and that Artois had been to visit her once or twice by sea. Artois had spoken of her very casually, and the Marchesino’s interest in her had not been awakened. He was not an inquisitive man by nature, and was always very busy with his own pursuit of pleasure. But he remembered now that once he had seen his friend being rowed in the direction of Posilipo, and that in the evening of the same day Artois had mentioned having been to visit his English friend. This fact had suggested to the Marchesino that if his suspicion were correct, and the ladies in the white boat with the green line were this English friend and a daughter, they probably lived in some villa as easily reached by sea as by land. Such villas are more numerous towards the point of the Capo di Posilipo than nearer Naples, as the high road, after the Mergellina, mounts the hill and diverges farther and farther from the sea. The Antico Giuseppone is a small waterside ristorante at the point of the Capo di Posilipo, a little below the Villa Rosebery.
The Marchesino’s suggestion of a dinner there that evening had been prompted by the desire to draw his friend into the neighborhood of his charmer of the sea. Once there he might either find some pretext for making her acquaintance through Artois—if Artois did know her—or, if that were impossible, he might at least find out where she lived. By the manner of Artois when the Antico Giuseppone was mentioned, he knew at once that he was playing his cards well. The occupants of the white boat were known to the novelist. They did live somewhere near the Antico Giuseppone. And certainly Artois had no desire to bring about his—the Marchesino’s—acquaintance with them.
That this was so, neither surprised nor seriously vexed the Marchesino. He knew a good deal of his friend’s character, knew that Artois, despite his geniality and friendliness, was often reserved—even with him. During their short intimacy he had certainly told Artois a great deal more about his affairs with women than had been told to him in return. This fact was borne in upon him now. But he did not feel angry. A careless good-nature was an essential part of his character. He did not feel angry at his friend’s secrecy, but he did feel mischievous. His lively desire to know the girl with “the perfect little nose” was backed up now by another desire—to teach “Caro Emilio” that it was better to meet complete frankness with complete frankness.
He had strolled out of his friend’s room pensively, acting the melancholy youth who had lost all hope of succeeding in his desire; but directly the door was shut his manner changed. Disregarding the lift, he ran lightly down the stairs, made his way swiftly by the revolving door into the street, crossed it, and walked towards the harbor of Santa Lucia, where quantities of pleasure-boats lie waiting for hire, and the boatmen are gathered in knots smoking and gossiping, or are strolling singly up and down near the water’s edge, keeping a sharp look-out for possible customers.
As the Marchesino turned on the bridge that leads towards Castel dell’ Ovo one of these boatmen met him and saluted him.
“Good-day, Giuseppe,” said the Marchesino, addressing him familiarly with a broad Neapolitan accent.
“Good-day, Signorino Marchesino,” replied the man. “Do you want a boat? I will take you for—”
The Marchesino drew out his cigarette case.
“I don’t want a boat. But perhaps you can tell me something.”
“What is it, Signorino Marchesino?” said the man, looking eagerly at the cigarette case which was now open, and which displayed two tempting rows of fat Egyptian cigarettes reposing side by side.
“Do you know a boat—white with a green line—which sometimes comes into the harbor from the direction of Posilipo? It was here this afternoon, or it passed here. I don’t know whether it went on to the Arsenal.”
“White with a green line?” said the man. “That might be—who was there in it, Signorino Marchesino?”
“Two ladies, one old and one very young. The young lady—”
“Those must be the ladies from the island,” interrupted the man. “The English ladies who come in the summer to the Casa del Mare as they call it, on the island close to the Grotto of Virgilio by San Francesco’s Pool. They were here this afternoon, but they’re gone back. Their boat is white with a green line, Signorino Marchesino.”
“Grazie, Giuseppe,” said the Marchesino, with an immovable countenance. “Do you smoke cigarettes?’
“Signorino Marchesino, I do when I have any soldi to buy them with.”
“Take these.”
The Marchesino emptied one side of his cigarette case into the boatman’s hand, called a hired carriage, and drove off towards the Villa—the horse going at a frantic trot, while the coachman, holding a rein in each hand, ejaculated, “A—ah!” every ten seconds, in a voice that was fiercely hortatory.
Artois, from his window, saw the carriage rattle past, and saw his friend leaning back in it, with alert eyes, to scan every woman passing by. He stood on the balcony for a moment till the noise of the wheels on the stone pavement died away. When he returned to his writing-table the mood for work was gone. He sat down in his chair. He took up his pen. But he found himself thinking of two people, the extraordinary difference between whom was the cause of his now linking them together in his mind. He found himself thinking of the Marchesino and of Vere.
Not for a moment did he doubt the identity of the two women in the white boat. They were Hermione and Vere. The Marchesino had read him rightly, but Artois was not aware of it. His friend had deceived him, as almost any sharp-witted Neapolitan can deceive even a clever forestiere. Certainly he did not particularly wish to introduce his friend to Vere. Yet now he was thinking of the two in connection, and not without amusement. What would they be like together? How would Vere’s divine innocence receive the amiable seductions of the Marchesino? Artois, in fancy, could see his friend Doro for once completely disarmed by a child. Vere’s innocence did not spring from folly, but was backed up by excellent brains. It was that fact which made it so beautiful. The innocence and the brains together might well read Doro a pretty little lesson. And Vere after the lesson—would she be changed? Would she lose by giving, even if the gift were a lesson?
Artois had certainly felt that his instinct told him not to do what Doro wanted. He had been moved, he supposed now, by a protective sentiment. Vere was delicious as she was. And Doro—he was delightful as he was. The girl was enchanting in her ignorance. The youth—to Artois the Marchesino seemed almost a boy, indeed, often quite a boy—was admirable in his precocity. He embodied Naples, its gayfurberia, and yet that was hardly the word—perhaps rather one should say its sunny naughtiness, its reckless devotion to life purged of thought. And Vere—what did she embody? Not Sicily, though she was in some ways so Sicilian. Not England; certainly not that!
Suddenly Artois was conscious that he knew Doro much better than he knew Vere. He remembered the statement of an Austrian psychologist, that men are far more mysterious than women, and shook his head over it now. He felt strongly the mystery that lay hidden deep down in the innocence of Vere, in the innocence of every girl-child of Vere’s age who had brains, temperament and perfect purity. What a marvellous combination they made! He imagined the clear flame of them burning in the night of the world of men. Vere must be happy.
When he said this to himself he knew that, perhaps for the first time, he was despairing of something that he ardently desired. He was transferring a wish, that was something like a prayer in the heart of one who had seldom prayed. He was giving up hope for Hermione and fastening hope on Vere. For a moment that seemed like treachery, like an abandoning of Hermione. Since their interview on the sea Artois had felt that, for Hermione, all possibility of real happiness was over. She could not detach her love. It had been fastened irrevocably on Maurice. It was now fastened irrevocably on Maurice’s memory. Long ago, had she, while he was alive, found out what he had done, her passion for him might have died, and in the course of years she might have been able to love again. But now it was surely too late. She had lived with her memory too long. It was her blessing—to remember, to recall, how love had blessed her life for a time. And if that memory were desecrated now she would be as one wrecked in the storm of life. Yet with that memory how she suffered!
What could he do for her? His chivalry must exercise itself. He must remain in the lists, if only to fight for Hermione in Vere. And the Marchesino? Artois seemed to divine that he might be an enemy in certain circumstances.
A warmth of sentiment, not very common in Artois, generated within him by such thoughts as these, thoughts that detained him from work, still glowed in his heart when evening fell and the Marchesino came gayly in to take him out upon the sea.
“There’s a little wind, Emilio,” he said, as they got into the boat in the harbor of Santa Lucia; “we can sail to the Antico Giuseppone. And after dinner we’ll fish for sarde. Isn’t it warm? One could sleep out on such a night.”
They had two men with them. When they got beyond the breakwater the sail was set, the Marchesino took the helm, and the boat slipped through the smooth sea, rounded the rocks on which the old fort stands to stare at Capri, radiant now as a magic isle in the curiously ethereal light of evening, and headed for the distant point of land which hid Ischia from their eyes. The freedom of the Bay of Naples was granted them—the freedom of the sea. As they ran out into the open water, and Artois saw the round gray eyes of the Marchesino dancing to the merry music of a complete bodily pleasure, he felt like a man escaping. He looked back at the city almost as at a sad life over, and despite his deep and persistent interest in men he understood the joy of the hermit who casts them from him and escapes into the wilds. The radiance of the Bay, one of the most radiant of all the inlets of the sea, bold and glaring in the brilliant daytime, becomes exquisitely delicate towards night. Vesuvius, its fiery watcher, looks like a kindly guardian, until perhaps the darkness shows the flame upon its flanks, the flame bursting forth from the mouth it opens to the sky; and the coast-line by Sorrento, the lifted crest of Capri, even the hill of Posilipo, appear romantic and enticing, calling lands holding wonderful pleasures for men, joys in their rocks and trees, joys in their dim recesses, joys and soft realities fulfilling every dream upon their coasts washed by the whispering waves.
The eyes of the Marchesino were dancing with physical pleasure. Artois wondered how much he felt the beauty of the evening, and how. His friend evidently saw the question in his eyes, for he said:
“The man who knows not Naples knows not pleasure.”
“Is that a Neapolitan saying?” asked Artois.
“Yes, and it is true. There is no town like Naples for pleasure. Even your Paris, Emilio, with all its theatres, its cocottes, its restaurants—no, it is not Naples. No wonder the forestiere come here. In Naples they are free. They can do what they will. They know we shall not mind. We are never shocked.”
“And do you think we are easily shocked in Paris?”
“No, but it is not the same. You have not Vesuvius there. You have not the sea, you have not the sun.”
Artois began laughingly to protest against the last statement, but the Marchesino would not have it.
“No, no, it shines—I know that,—but it is not the sun we have here.”
He spoke to the seamen in the Neapolitan dialect. They were brown, muscular fellows. In their eyes were the extraordinary boldness and directness of the sea. Neither of them looked gay. Many of the Neapolitans who are much upon the sea have serious, even grave faces. These were intensely, almost overpoweringly male. They seemed to partake of the essence of the elements of nature, as if blood of the sea ran in their veins, as if they were hot with the grim and inner fires of the sun. When they spoke their faces showed a certain changefulness that denoted intelligence, but never lost the look of force, of an almost tense masculinity ready to battle, perpetually alive to hold its own.
The Marchesino was also very masculine, but in a different way and more consciously than they were. He was not cultured, but such civilization as he had endowed him with a power to catch the moods of others not possessed by these men, in whom persistence was more visible than adroitness, unless indeed any question of money was to the fore.
“We shall get to the Giuseppone by eight, Emilio,” the Marchesino said, dropping his conversation with the men, which had been about the best hour and place for their fishing. “Are you hungry?”
“I shall be,” said Artois. “This wind brings an appetite with it. How well you steer!”
The Marchesino nodded carelessly.
As the boat drew ever nearer to the point, running swiftly before the light breeze, its occupants were silent. Artois was watching the evening, with the eyes of a lover of nature, but also with the eyes of one who takes notes. The Marchesino seemed to be intent on his occupation of pilot. As to the two sailors, they sat in the accustomed calm and staring silence of seafaring men, with wide eyes looking out over the element that ministered to their wants. They saw it differently, perhaps, from Artois, to whom it gave now an intense aesthetic pleasure, differently from the Marchesino, to whom it was just a path to possible excitement, possible gratification of a new and dancing desire. They connected it with strange superstitions, with gifts, with deprivations, with death. Familiar and mysterious it was purely to them as to all seamen, like a woman possessed whose soul is far away.
Just as the clocks of Posilipo were striking eight the Marchesino steered the boat into the quay of the Antico Guiseppone.
Although it was early in the season a few deal tables were set out by the waterside, and a swarthy waiter, with huge mustaches and a napkin over his arm, came delicately over the stones to ask their wishes.
“Will you let me order dinner, Emilio?” said the Marchesino: “I know what they do best here.”
Artois agreed, and while the waiter shuffled to carry out the Marchesino’s directions the two friends strolled near the edge of the sea.
The breeze had been kindly. Having served them well it was now dying down to its repose, leaving the evening that was near to night profoundly calm. As Artois walked along the quay he felt the approach of calm like the approach of a potentate, serene in the vast consciousness of power. Peace was invading the sea, irresistible peace. The night was at hand. Already Naples uncoiled its chain of lamps along the Bay. In the gardens of Posilipo the lights of the houses gleamed. Opposite, but very far off across the sea, shone the tiny flames of the houses of Portici, of Torre del Greco, of Torre Annunziata, of Castellamare. Against the gathering darkness Vesuvius belched slowly soft clouds of rose-colored vapor, which went up like a menace into the dim vault of the sky. The sea was without waves. The boats by the wharf, where the road ascends past the villa Rosebery to the village of Posilipo, scarcely moved. Near them, in a group, lounging against the wall and talking rapidly, stood the two sailors from Naples with the boatmen of the Guiseppone. Oil lamps glimmered upon two or three of the deal tables, round one of which was gathered a party consisting of seven large women, three children, and two very thin middle-aged men with bright eyes, all of whom were eating oysters. Farther on, from a small arbor that gave access to a fisherman’s house, which seemed to be constructed partially in a cave of the rock, and which was gained by a steep and crumbling stairway of stone, a mother called shrilly to some half-naked little boys who were fishing with tiny hand-nets in the sea. By the table which was destined to the Marchesino and Artois three ambulant musicians were hovering, holding in their broad and dirty hands two shabby mandolins and a guitar. In the distance a cook with a white cap on his head and bare arms was visible, as he moved to and fro in the lighted kitchen of the old ristorante, preparing a “zuppa di pesce” for the gentlemen from Naples.
“Che bella notte!” said the Marchesino, suddenly.
His voice sounded sentimental. He twisted his mustaches and added:
“Emilio, we ought to have brought two beautiful women with us to-night. What are the moon and the sea to men without beautiful women?”
“And the fishing?” said Artois.
“To the devil with the fishing,” replied the young man. “Ecco! Our dinner is ready, with thanks to the Madonna!”
They sat down, one on each side of the small table, with a smoking lamp between them.
“I have ordered vino bianco,” said the Marchesino, who still looked sentimental. “Cameriere, take away the lamp. Put it on the next table. Va bene. We are going to have ‘zuppa di pesce,’ gamberi and veal cutlets. The wine is Capri. Now then,” he added, with sudden violence and the coarsest imaginable Neapolitan accent, “if you fellows play ‘Santa Lucia,’ ‘Napoli Bella,’ or ‘Sole mio’ you’ll have my knife in you. I am not an Inglese. I am a Neapolitan. Remember that!”
He proved it with a string of gutter words and oaths, at which the musicians smiled with pleasure. Then, turning again to Artois, he continued:
“If one doesn’t tell them they think one is an imbecile. Emilio caro, do you not love to see the moon with a beautiful girl?”
His curious assumption that Artois and he were contemporaries because they were friends, and his apparently absolute blindness to the fact that a man of sixty and a man of twenty-four are hardly likely to regard the other sex with an exactly similar enthusiasm, always secretly entertained the novelist, who made it his business with this friend to be accommodating, and who seldom, if ever, showed himself authoritative, or revealed any part of his real inner self.
“Ma si!” he replied; “the night and the moon are made for love.”
“Everything is made for love,” returned the Marchesino. “Take plenty of soaked bread, Emilio. They know how to make this zuppa here. Everything is made for love.—Look! There is a boat coming with women in it!”
At a short distance from the shore a rowing boat was visible; and from it now came shrill sounds of very common voices, followed by shouts of male laughter.
“Perhaps they are beautiful,” said the Marchesino, at once on the alert.
The boat drew in to the quay, and from it there sprang, with much noise and many gesticulations, two over-dressed women—probably, indeed almost certainly,canzonettiste—and the two large young men, whose brown fingers and whose chests gleamed with false diamonds. As they passed the table where the two friends were sitting, the Marchesino raked the women with his bold gray eyes. One of them was large and artificially blonde, with a spreading bust, immense hips, a small waist, and a quantity of pale dyed hair, on which was perched a bright blue hat. The other was fiercely dark, with masses of coarse black hair, big, blatant eyes that looked quite black in the dim lamplight, and a figure that suggested a self-conscious snake. Both were young. They returned the Marchesino’s stare with vigorous impudence as they swung by.
“What sympathetic creatures!” he murmured. “They are two angels. I believe I have seen one of them at the Margherita. What was her name—Maria Leoni, I fancy.”
He looked enviously at the young men. The arrival of the lobster distracted his attention for the moment; but it was obvious that the appearance of these women had increased the feeling of sentimentality already generated in him by the softness and stillness of the night.
The three musicians, rendered greedy rather than inspired by the presence of more clients, now began to pluck a lively street tune from their instruments; and the waiter, whose mustaches seemed if possible bigger now that night was truly come, poured the white wine into the glasses with the air of one making a libation.
As the Marchesino ate, he frequently looked towards the party at the neighboring table. He was evidently filled with envy of the two men whose jewels glittered as they gesticulated with their big brown hands. But presently their pleasure and success recalled to him something which he had momentarily forgotten, the reason why he had planned this expedition. He was in pursuit. The recollection cheered him up, restored to him the strength of his manhood, put him right with himself. The envy and the almost sickly sentimentality vanished from him, and he broke into the usual gay conversation which seldom failed him, either by day or night.
It was past nine before they had finished their coffee. The two boatmen had been regaled and had drunk a bottle of wine, and the moon was rising and making the oil lamps of the Guiseppone look pitiful. From the table where the canzonettiste were established came peals of laughter, which obviously upset the seven large and respectable women who had been eating oysters, and who now sat staring heavily at the gay revellers, while the two thin middle-aged men with bright eyes began to look furtively cheerful, and even rather younger than they were. The musicians passed round a small leaden tray for soldi, and the waiter brought the Marchesino the bill, and looked inquiringly at Artois, aware that he at least was not a Neapolitan. Artois gave him something and satisfied the musicians, while the Marchesino disputed the bill, not because he minded paying, but merely to prove that he was a Neapolitan and not an imbecile. The matter was settled at last, and they went towards the boat; the Marchesino casting many backward glances towards the two angels, who, with their lovers, were becoming riotous in their gayety as the moon came up.
“Are we going out into the Bay?” said Artois, as they stepped into the boat, and were pushed off.
“Where is the best fishing-ground?” asked the Marchesino of the elder of the two men.
“Towards the islet, Signorino Marchesino,” he replied at once, looking his interlocutor full in the face with steady eyes, but remaining perfectly grave.
Artois glanced at the man sharply. For the first time it occurred to him that possibly his friend had arranged this expedition with a purpose other than that which he had put forward. It was not the fisherman’s voice which had made Artois wonder, but the voice of the Marchesino.
“There are generally plenty of sarde round the islet,” continued the fisherman, “but if the Signori would not be too tired it would be best to stay out the night. We shall get many more fish towards morning, and we can run the boat into the Pool of San Francesco, and have some sleep there, if the Signori like. We others generally take a nap there, and go to work further on in the night. But of course it is as the Signori prefer.”
“They want to keep us out all night to get more pay,” said the Marchesino to Artois, in bad French.
He had divined the suspicion that had suddenly risen up in his friend, and was resolved to lay it to rest, without, however, abandoning his purpose, which had become much more ardent with the coming of the night. The voices of the laughing women were ringing in his ears. He felt adventurous. The youth in him was rioting, and he was longing to be gay, as the men with those women were being gay.
“What do you think, Emilio caro?” he asked.
Then before Artois could reply, he said:
“After all, what do a few soldi matter? Who could sleep in a room on such a night? It might be August, when one bathes at midnight, and sings canzoni till dawn. Let us do as he says. Let us rest in the—what is the pool?” he asked of the fishermen, pretending not to know the name.
“The pool of San Francesco, Signorino Marchesino.”
“Pool of San Francesco. I remember now. That is the place where all the fishermen along the coast towards Nisida go to sleep. I have slept there many times when I was a boy, and so has Viviano. To-night shall we do as the fishermen, Emilio?”
There was no pressure in his careless voice. His eyes for the moment looked so simple, though as eager as a child’s.
“Anything you like, mon ami,” said Artois.
He did not want to go to San Francesco’s Pool with the Marchesino, but he did not wish to seem reluctant to go. And he said to himself now that his interior hesitation was absurd. Night had fallen. By the time they reached the Pool the inmates of the Case del Mare would probably be asleep. Even if they were not, what did it matter? The boat would lie among the vessels of the fishermen. The Marchesino and he would share the fishermen’s repose. And even if Hermione and Vere should chance to be out of doors they would not see him, or, if they did, would not recognize him in the night.
His slight uneasiness, prompted by a vague idea that the Marchesino was secretly mischievous, had possibly some plan in his mind connected with the islet, was surely without foundation.
He told himself so as the fisherman laid hold of their oars and set the boat’s prow towards the point of land which conceals the small harbor of the Villa Rosebery.
The shrill voices of the two singers died away from their ears, but lingered in the memory of the Marchesino, as the silence of the sea took the boat to itself, the sea silence and the magic of the moon.
He turned his face towards the silver, beyond which, hidden as yet, was the islet where dwelt the child he meant to know.