The castle stood like a gleaming skull, balancing on the edge of a
precipice. The centuries had picked it clean. Through empty sockets,
about which moss gathered, it watched white wings of shipping flit
mothlike across the blue waters of the Gulf of Spezia. It had been the
terror of sailors once--a stronghold of pirates, Saracens and Genoese,
fierce men who had built the hunchback town that huddled against the
rocks behind it. Now it was nothing but a crumbling shell, picturesque
and meaningless save to tourists and artists. The tourists came because
Byron had written _The Corsair_ in its shadow, and the artists----.
One of them had left his canvas on an easel in a broken archway. Kay
tripped across and looked at it--a wild piece of composition, all white
and green and orange, splashed in with vigor, with the fierce Italian
sky above it. It interpreted the spirit of the place--its loneliness,
its lawless past, its brooding sense of unsatisfied passion. She turned
away, awed by its power, a little frightened by its intensity. It made
her feel that, from behind tumbled mastery, eyes were gazing at her.
Climbing the splintered tower, she watched the sunset. In the great
stillness she could hear stones dropping down the sheer cliff into the
racing tide beneath.
She had forgotten how time was passing. That low bass humming! It was
the voice of the sea; it seemed as though the sun's voice spoke to
her. Across the blue of the Mediterranean a golden track led up to the
horizon. At its end a fiery disc hung, like a gong against which the
waves tapped gently.
It had been a tumultuous day--a day of excited fears, winged hopes and
strategies. Harry was coming. Peter had received the astounding telegram
that morning.
“Queer chap! This was sent off from Genoa. He's almost here by now. Why
on earth didn't he let us know earlier?”
Why hadn't he? Kay knew--because, if he had, there would have been still
time for her to turn him back. The persistent mouth-organ boy, he was
always quite certain that he had only to make up his mind and he'd get
his desire. She didn't like him any the less for that, but----.
No, she wouldn't be there to meet him. She had excused herself to Peter
and had accompanied him to the sun-baked pier, at which the steamer
called on its way from Lerici to Spezia. She had waved and waved till he
was nearly out of sight--then she had fled.
Why? She couldn't say--couldn't say exactly, but very nearly. She
had forbidden her mouth-organ boy to come--and he was coming. She was
secretly elated to find herself defied. After all, she didn't own Italy,
and----. But Harry wasn't making the journey to see Italy, nor to see
Peter. She was well aware of that--Peter wasn't.
So she had persuaded one of her fishermen friends to sail her across the
gulf to Porto Venere. Down there in the sleepy harbor he was waiting,
his brown eyes lazily watching, his ear-rings glittering, his fingers
rolling cigarettes, not at all perturbed but wondering, with a shrug of
his shoulders, why she so long delayed.
And Harry, he too would be wondering, thinking her unkind. Peter had
probably brought him back to San Terenzo by now. They would have been on
the lookout for her directly the steamer rounded the cypressed headland.
When they hadn't found her on the pier, they would have made haste to
the yellow villa in which they lived, which had been Shelley's. And
again, they hadn't found her. She could imagine it all--just what had
happened: Peter's discreet apologies, and Harry's amused suspicion that
he was being punished. His laughter--she could imagine that as well; he
always laughed when he was hurt or annoyed.
Kay clasped her hands. It was rotten of her not to go to him. All day
she had wanted to be with him. He had traveled all the way from London
to get a glimpse of her. And yet, knowing that, she sat on in the ruined
castle, while the reluctant day, like a naughty child at bed-time,
saffron skirts held high, stepped lingeringly down the purple hills,
keeping the sun waiting.
She was trying to arrive at a conclusion. To Peter she was
everything--more than ever this past year had taught her that. He made
no plans for the future in which she was not to share. It was just as it
had been when they were girl and boy--he seemed to take it for granted
that they were always to live together. The thought that she should
marry never entered his head. Save for the mouth-organ boy, it would not
have entered hers.
But the mouth-organ boy! Long ago, when she couldn't see him, she had
heard him playing in the tree-tops. It was something like that now.
Since she had left England, his letters had followed her. Sometimes
she hadn't answered them. Sometimes she had answered them casually.
Sometimes she had had fits of contrition and had written him
volumes--compact histories of her thoughts and doings. It made no
difference whether she was punctual or neglectful; like a familiar
friend in unfamiliar places, his handwriting was always ahead of her
travels, waiting to greet her.
“What does he say?” Peter would ask her.
Then she would read him carefully edited extracts--nice polite
information, entirely innocuous. Peter hadn't guessed. He mustn't.
How preposterous it had seemed when Harry had first written her that he
loved her! She hadn't regarded him in the aspect of a lover--didn't want
to. It had seemed almost treachery to Peter. But now----. Now it didn't
seem at all preposterous--only wonderful, and true, and puzzling.
How long ago was it? Eight months since he had told her. She had been a
child then--seventeen, with cornflower eyes and blowy daffodil hair. The
knowledge that she was loved had startled her into womanhood.
She ought to be getting back. But Peter, Peter from whom she had no
secrets, didn't know. She dared not tell him--and Harry was there. Peter
had given her so much--this year of romance; and yet, with all his
giving----.
He might give her his whole life; he couldn't give her this different
thing that Harry offered.
She rose to go. Her attention was arrested. It couldn't be! Gazing
sheer down, she leant out across the broken parapet. In the racing tide,
through its treacherous whirlpools, a man was swimming. She could see
his reddish hair and beard shine as they caught the sunset. As he lunged
forward, they sank beneath the surface. She held her breath.
He was keeping near in to the rocks--so near that, had she dropped a
stone, it would have struck him. With all his fighting, he was making
little progress. It was too far to the town to run for help--moreover,
none of the fishing-boats ever ventured there. She wanted to cry out
encouragement; she feared to distract him from his effort. Now, in
rounding a bend, he was lost to sight. Ah! There he was again. She saw
where he was going--to the weather-beaten steps which wound down the
precipice. He stretched out his hand and pulled himself up, dragging
his body across the rocks like a fly which had been all but drowned. He
stood up, white and magnificent, squeezing the water from his beard
and hair. As he commenced to climb the stair in the cliff-front, he
vanished.
She couldn't go now. Her curiosity was roused. What kind of a man could
be so foolhardy as to do a thing like that? Drawing back into the shadow
of the tower, she waited.
Whistling--faint at first! It was a gay little Neapolitan air. Singing
for a stave or two! It broke off--the whistling took up the air. Gulls
flew up, circling and screaming. Above the moldering ramparts, red and
gold against the red and gold of the sunset, came the valiant head of
a man who might have been the last of the pirates. His eyes shone
like blue fire. The wind was in his beard and hair. When he had lifted
himself on to the wall, he stood there, on the very edge, looking back
perilously. He was of extraordinary height and strength. The teeth,
through which he whistled, were strong and white--everything about him
was powerful, his hands, his shoulders, his courageous face. He seemed
a survival of ancient deity--a sea-god who, thinking himself unobserved,
had landed at the spot where, centuries ago, Venus had been worshiped
by a forgotten world. He looked solitary and irresponsible--a law to
himself. Because of his size and the remoteness of the place, Kay was
filled with lonely terror.
He walked slowly over to the easel in the broken archway. He was
bare-armed and bare-footed; his shirt was collarless and turned back at
the neck. Still whistling, he picked up the palette, pushed his thumb
through it, glanced across his shoulder seaward and commenced touching
in streaks of color. He worked carelessly, yet with rapid intensity.
Sometimes he left ofif whistling, stepped back from the canvas, his
head on one side, and surveyed his handiwork. The light was failings Kay
prayed that he had finished--but no. Driven to desperation, she thought
she could creep by him. Harry and Peter would be getting nervous.
She had drawn level with him. A stone turned beneath her foot. His head
twisted sharply. She commenced to run. Glancing back, she saw his eyes
following--he was laying down his brushes and palette. In her panic, she
had chosen the wrong direction; a wall rose in front, blocking her exit.
He was coming--she could hear his bare feet overtaking her. She climbed
the wall; below lay the sea, now orange, now sullen in patches. There
was no way of escape; she looked down. The space made her dizzy; she
groped with her hands as if to push back the distance. She felt like a
bird with its wings folded, falling, falling. Everything had gone black.
For a moment she was held out above the sea, her flight arrested. Blue
eyes bent over her laughing. She was swung back. She found herself lying
on the sun-scorched turf. The man was kneeling beside her, chafing her
hands and forehead. Her faintness left her. As she gazed up at him,
he smiled and said something in an unintelligible language. She sat up
bewildered, trying to appear brave. “I'm--I'm all right, thank you. I'll
go now.”
“Ah, a little English girl!” His voice was deep and pleasant.
She surveyed him with growing confidence. How concerned and gentle he
was for so large a creature! She scrambled to her feet. He was quick to
take her hand, but she withdrew it from him. “I'm really all right. It
was only dizziness. Good-by, Mr.--Mr. Neptune.”
“Mr. Neptune!” He plucked at his red beard and planted himself in front
of her. His eyes twinkled. “Strange little English girl, why do you call
me that?”
“Because you came out of the sea. And d'you know, before I go I want
to tell you--I was awfully afraid you'd get drowned. Do you always swim
when you come to the castle?”
Mr. Neptune placed his hands on her slight shoulders. They were large
and masterful hands, barbaric with vivid smudges of the colors he had
been using. She was conscious that, in his artist's way, he was looking
not so much at her as at her body.
“Always swim to the castle! No. It was the first time. Your poet, Byron,
was the last to do it. Thought I'd try just for sport, as you English
call it.”
“I wouldn't do it again,” she said wisely; “and now I must really go.”
He didn't budge from her path. She waited. He regarded her with
amusement. “Going! Not till you've promised to let me paint your
portrait.”
Kay was astounded and--yes, and flattered. He might be a great artist;
he had the air of a man who was important. But she was more frightened
than flattered: he looked so huge standing there in the yellow twilight.
“Please, please,” she said, “you must let me go. My brother's waiting
for me and he'll be nervous.”
He made no sign that he had heard, but gazed down at her intently with
his bare arms folded. She hesitated. A sob rose in her throat. “Why--why
should you want to paint me?”
“Because,” he said, “you are beautiful. What is beautiful dies, but I--I
make it last for always.” Then, in a gentler voice, “Because, little
English girl, if I don't paint you, we may never meet again.”
It was the way in which he said it--the thrilling sadness of his
tone. She felt that she was flushing, and laughed to disguise her
embarrassment. “But, Mr. Neptune, I've thanked you and--and it was
your fault that we met--and isn't it rather rude of you to prevent me
from----?”
“No,” he spoke deliberately, “not rude. You're adorable--too good to
die. I want to make you live forever. If I were Mr. Neptune, d'you know
what I'd do? I'd swim off with you, earth-maiden.”
Her words came quickly; she was afraid of what he might say or do. “I
promise. You shall paint me.”
She tried to pass him. He put his arm before her as a barrier. His
eyes flashed down on her, gladly and gravely. “When the English promise
anything, they shake hands on it. Is that not so?”
She slipped her small hand into his great one. She heard a footstep
behind; it was her fisherman who had at last come in search of her. She
nodded to let him know that she was coming. Now that she was not alone,
she lost her fear of the giant. She became interested in him. She almost
liked him.
“Where will you paint me?” she asked.
“Here, against the sky. It's the color of your eyes. We're going to
be friends--is it so?” He stepped aside. “Then, little English girl,
good-night.”
As she passed under the broken archway, she turned and waved. His blue
eyes still followed her through the yellow twilight.
Down through the hunchback town she went. Its streets were deformed,
steeply descending, scarcely more than a yard wide. It was eloquent with
memories of unrecorded fights, in which a handful had held Porto Venere
against armies. Beneath its close-packed roofs it was already night.
Before little shrines in the walls candles glistened. Sailor-men,
with gaudy sashes round their waists, bowed their heads and crossed
themselves reverently as they passed. In crooked doorways mothers sat
suckling their babies--madonnas with the oval faces and kind eyes that
Raphael loved to paint. To them the mystery of love was divulged; many
of them no older than Kay.
After her great fear she was strangely elated. She had seen admiration
in a man's eyes. “Why should you want to paint me?” She could hear his
deep voice replying, “Because you are beautiful.” Then came the wistful
knowledge of life's brevity, “What is beautiful dies.” She had never
thought of that--that she and Harry and Peter, and all this world which
was hers to-day must die. The old town with its defaced magnificence,
its battered heraldry, its generations of lover-adventurers who had
left not even their names behind them--everything reminded her, “What
is beautiful dies.” She was consumed with a desire she had never known
before--to experience the rage of life.
Why was it? What had made her waken? Was it contact with a primitive and
virile personality? She had gained a new understanding of manhood. Would
Harry be like that, if he lived to-day as though it were a thousand
years ago?
She stepped into the boat, curling herself in the prow among nets where
she would be out of the way of the sail. Darkness was stealing across
the sky, a monstrous shadow-bird whose wings roofed in the gulf from
shore to shore. The sail began to bulge; the boat lay over on its side.
Outlines of wooded hills grew vague. To the north Spezia lay, a blazing
jewel. At the mast-heads of anchored men-of-war lanterns twinkled
faintly. She trailed her hand, watching how the water ran phosphorescent
through her fingers. A fisher-boat crept out of the dusk. A guitar was
being played. A man's voice and a girl's, singing full-throatedly! They
faded voluptuously into silence.
“Because you are beautiful.” Her young heart beat flutteringly. Had
others thought it and been afraid to tell her? She leant back her head;
stars gazed down on her, approvingly and placid-eyed. All sounds and
sights were touched with poetry. The whole of life before her! Peter and
Harry waiting! So much of youth to spend; so many choices! Yet, only one
choice--Peter.
A voice hailed her. “Hulloa! Is that you, Kay?”
So soon! She sat up. San Terenzo with its golden eyes! On the crazy quay
she made out two blurs of white.
“Yes, Peter, it's Kay. Is Harry with you?”
Before the boat had stopped, as it nosed its way along the side, Harry
leapt in. “At last! It's you.”
His voice was strained and impetuous. For eight months he had waited; he
had been kept waiting an extra day--the longest of them all.
“Hush!” she whispered. “Peter---- I've told him nothing. You shouldn't
have come, Harry; you really shouldn't.”
She took a hand of each as they helped her to land. Walking back to the
villa, she gave them laughing glimpses of her adventure, “So it's
not such a bad day's work; he's going to make me live forever in a
portrait.”
Good-nights had been said. From her window Kay had seen the lights blown
out in other bedrooms. The fishing-village, fringing the shore, had been
in darkness for two hours. She leant out, gazing across the bay to where
the headland of Lerici curved in like a horn. Life--that was what she
thought about. It was in this very room that Shelley had wakened and
recognized the cowled figure of his soul, and had heard it question,
“Art thou satisfied?” It was the same question that she asked herself.
A knock upon the door! She started from the window and looked back. It
came again, so lightly that it seemed to say, “Only you and I are meant
to hear me.”
She threw a wrapper about her; her long bright hair fell shining across
her shoulders. It might be Peter. Again it came.
On the threshold Harry was standing.
“Let me speak to you.”
She hesitated.
“You gave me no chance to say anything. Am I to stay or--or to go
to-morrow?”
He ought to go. She knew that. And yet----.
“I can wait, Kay. Though you send me away, I shall wait forever for
you.”
She was sorry for him--and more than sorry. This pleading of the living
voice was different--so different from the pleading of letters. Dimly
she heard within herself the echo of his clamor stirring.
“Dear Harry, I want you to stay--but to stay just as you were always.”
He caught his breath. It was almost as though he laughed in the
darkness. “It was always as it is now. You didn't know; it began that
first day when I fought Peter, showing off like a boy. So if it's to be
as it was always-----.”
He looked so lonely standing there. He oughtn't to be sad with her--it
hurt; they'd always been glad together. She took his hands tremblingly,
“Stay and be--be the mouth-organ boy. We'll have such good times, Harry,
we three together. Don't be my--anything else. I'm too young for that,
and----
“And?”
“Peter hasn't learnt to do without me. Lorie was the same with you--you
understand. So Harry, promise me that you won't let Peter know--won't do
anything to make him know, or to make him unhappy.”
He put his arms about the narrow shoulders, stooping his head. “Trust
me.”
She leant her face aside sharply. “Not on my lips. They're for the man I
marry.”
“But one day I----.”
She freed herself from him gently. “Neither of us can tell.”
In the days that followed, when they walked and swam and sailed
together, Harry recognized what Kay had meant when she said that Peter
hadn't learnt to do without her. With the end of his hope of Cherry, all
his affections had flown homeward and had concentrated on the love of
his sister. It seemed as though he made an effort to find her sufficient
for his heart's cravings. To all other women his eyes were blind. The
thought that any other woman should come into his life seemed never to
occur to him.
Glory--she wrote to him, as Harry had written to Kay, with conscientious
regularity. But he read her letters aloud, obviously without editing;
they were serious letters like her eyes, searching and quiet, with a
hint of need behind them, and with bursts of fun when she told of the
struggles of her stepfather and Mr. Grace to run The Winged Thrust both
genially and for profit.
And the man who lived to-day as though it were a thousand years ago--a
week after Kay had first met him, they sailed across the gulf to
discover him. They found him in the castle painting.
“Ha! The little English girl!”
He threw down his brushes and came toward her with his arms extended. He
gathered her hands together into his own and bent over her intently with
his eyes of blue fire, “I thought I'd lost my earth-maiden.”
That was all. So long as Harry and Peter were present he was no more
than a shaggy artist, a little self-important, a little shy. When they
had walked off to explore the town it was different.
He picked her up as though she were a child, and sat her on the broken
wall, where the blue sea swept behind her shoulders and the white clouds
raced through her corn-colored hair. For a while he was utterly silent,
touching in sketches of her, testing various poses. The smell of wild
thyme mingled with that of flowers, fermenting in the sunshine. From far
below the wash of waves rose coolly.
Presently he spoke. “You stopped a long while away. Every day I've been
here watching for you. I don't often watch for anybody. If people don't
come----,” he snapped his fingers, “I begin again. I begin with someone
who won't keep me waiting.”
His egotism seemed not conceit, but justified consciousness of power.
Kay was beginning to explain; he cut in upon her. “It's all right. For
you I'd wait till--oh, till there wasn't any castle--till it was all
swept into the sea by rain. But only for you--for other people life's
too short.” He stopped sketching and looked up at her. “Little English
girl, life is very short. Phew!” He blew out his cheeks. “Like that, and
you are old. All the lovers are gone. No one cares whether you live or
die. With us men it's the same, only we--we search for the great secret.
You have it in your face. There's so much to do; it's not kind to keep
us waiting.”
“The great secret! What is it?”
He appeared to take no notice of her question. Picking up his pencil, he
went back to his sketching. Then, while he worked, glancing occasionally
to her face where the radiance of the sunshine fell against her profile,
“The great secret! It's hard to say. It's why we're here, and from where
we come, and where we go. It's the knowledge of life and the meaning
of death; it's everything that we call beauty. I see it in your face. I
paint it. How it came there, neither you nor I can say.”
Next day he set to work on canvas. The picture grew. It wasn't for
the picture that Kay went to him; it was for the things he said in the
loneliness, lifted high between the waste of tossing sea and restless
sky. He set her thinking; he made life more glad, more eager and,
because of its mystery, more poignant. The great secret! He didn't hope
to find it; but he told her of the men who had sought.
In telling her, he brought the soul into her eyes and set it down on
canvas. A young girl with blowy hair, perched among things ancient, her
white hands folded, patient for the future, with the pain of joy in her
wide child's eyes! That was what he painted.
And she--she was stirred by him. He gave her the freedom of his mind.
He treated her as a woman, teaching her knowledge and the sorrow of
knowledge--from all suspicion of which she had been guarded. She was as
much repelled as attracted by him; through him she learnt to love Harry.
She began to understand the suffering of love that is kept hungry. She
began to understand its urgency. At last she understood that such love
as Harry brought her must always stand first, sacrificing every other
affection. It was this that gave pain to her joy.
One day in early June, the man laid aside his brushes. “The last touch.
It's finished.”
He lifted her down very gently and watched her as she stood before it.
Clasping and unclasping her hands, she gazed at her own reflection with
an odd mixture of wonder and ecstacy. “But--but it's beautiful.”
He put his arm about her shoulder, speaking softly, “And so are you.”
“But not so beautiful.”
“More. I couldn't paint your voice.”
She stretched out her hands toward it. “Oh, I wish--I wish I could have
it.”
He tilted up her face. “Little English girl, it's yours. I did it for
you. You'll know now how you looked when your beauty dies.”
Tears came. It was like the world complaining against God's injustice.
“But I don't want it to die.”
He drew her head against him. “Kay--what an English name! Little Kay,
one thing will keep it alive.” She waited. “The great secret,” he
whispered; “it lies behind all life. For other people your beauty will
have vanished; a man who loves you will always see it.”
Before she was aware, he had touched her lips. If was as though he had
stained her purity.
On the sail back to San Terenzo, as the darkness drew about them, she
crept closer to Harry. He felt her hand groping for his own. “Kiddy,
you're burning--as hot as a coal. What is it? A touch of fever?”
She spoke chokingly. “Harry, my lips. They're yours.”