Rose was finishing a letter to Agatha on the balcony. She found it
difficult to write to her sisters, they seemed so very far away.
She was afraid, too, that they might find her letters dull. You couldn’t
go on describing the blue grotto; besides, neither Agatha nor Edith
cared for descriptions of scenery, they always skipped them in books;
and as far as Rose could tell nobody played any particular game in
Capri. Young men shot birds on Sunday afternoons when they could, but
they weren’t even the proper birds to shoot, so perhaps it was better
not to mention them.
When Rose wrote to her people she always said “we” even when she was
referring to things that she did by herself.
It wasn’t very like a Pinsent to give way to this illicit expansion of
fact, but Rose comforted herself by thinking that after all, editors
said “we” when there was only one of them writing, and most of the
married people she knew expressed themselves in the plural, though that
perhaps was because they really did the things together. Still, she went
on writing “we” because she didn’t want her people to think anything
funny about Léon. She had just got as far as “We have such jolly little
dinners in the garden,” when she heard Léon’s whistle coming up the
stairs. He stood looking at her a little curiously.
“You are writing,” he asked her, “to your people?”
“To Agatha,” she said. “Have you any message?”
Léon sometimes sent very amusing messages to Agatha. For a moment Léon
did not reply, then he said, “And what do you say to them--of me--your
people?”
Rose blushed, just the same wonderful pink tulip blush Léon had from the
first particularly admired, but it was ill-timed, it looked guilty. It
shot through his uneasy mind that she had been complaining of him to the
Pinsents. In his irritable, resentful state it gave him a sudden sense
of justification. Hadn’t he done already wonders for Rose? He had not
made open love to Elise (until just now, of course), he had borne for
over a month the ennui of Capri. He hadn’t so much as been to a café
without his wife, and now he had almost decided not to leave her!
“Tell them,” he said bitterly, “that you are perfect, and that I am a
monster of depravity. Almost all wives say that to their relatives
sooner or later. You, it appears, have taken up the tone in good time!”
“Léon!” she cried, aghast. And then, because she loved him so, because
she had shielded him in the defiance of truth, because she had never had
a suspicion of his faithlessness, she chose this moment to say the only
harsh thing she had ever said to him. “I think,” she said, turning away
her eyes, “that you are guilty of very bad taste.”
It was, of course, the one fatal reproach to make to a Frenchman. If she
had said he was guilty of anything else he would have forgiven her.
Léon rushed into their room, his cheeks on fire as if she had struck
him. It was clear she no longer loved him! Coldly, cruelly, with her
horrible English justice, so out of place in a woman, she had thrown
this stone at his heart! There could be but one issue now. He must go to
Naples. She complained of him to her parents and she had accused him of
bad taste! He packed a small bag feverishly. The door between them was
shut.
Rose hesitated. Should she open it and tell him she was sorry?
What would Agatha or Edith do, if they were there? Probably they would
have burst open the door with shouts of glee, and inserted a cake of
soap down Léon’s back, but this happy method of conciliation seemed
closed to Rose. She had never had their robuster gift of horseplay. She
got up hesitatingly and walked slowly away, out into the garden and
beyond the gates to post her letter. Perhaps when she came back for
dinner she might have thought of something nice to say, something that
would show Léon she was sorry and not aggravate him.
It was a lovely evening. She wandered on, seeing at every fresh turn of
the road a yet more glorious view.
The great bay spread before her like an endless liquid flame. The color
seemed to throb upon its burnished shield.
Naples lay beyond it, a long pearly circle in the evening light, pale
cream and coral pink and soft, dull gold. Above Vesuvius the white plume
of smoke drove straight as a lifted feather up into the sky.
She went on till she reached the Madonna of the Rocks, then she sat
under the tall raised figure with its lamp.
At the turn of the road below her a little carriage was standing; in it
was the figure of a woman in white. The figure reminded her of Madame
Gérard, only it could not be Madame Gérard, of course, because Madame
had written to Rose that she was not well and could not leave her room.
As Rose sat there her eyes filled with tears. They were not for herself,
though her own heart was sore; they were for the poor woman whose
husband had so cruelly left her all alone on her honeymoon. And when
Rose thought how happy she was herself, and how soon she would tell
Léon, with her cheek against his cheek, that she was sorry she had been
horrid, her heart ached for that other bride who had no lover to
appease; and who must be looking at all this great sparkling sea and
wonderful bright earth with such sad, different eyes! And so Rose sat
there and cried for Madame Gérard--and Madame Gérard, two hundred yards
away, waited for Rose’s husband.
He came at last, hurriedly, quietly, with hanging head, like a thief. He
was ashamed, ashamed of his anger against Rose, of his incredible folly,
of his silly, intemperate desires. He passed close by the rock on which
Rose sat. Her heart moved suddenly against her side; it betrayed her;
stubbornly it beat as if it knew itself in danger, and yet, Rose said to
herself, there was no danger. It was only Léon hurrying by, looking as
if he were ashamed.
She saw him get into the little carriage, and then turn and look back.
She could not see his face, but it seemed to her as if he were reluctant
to be driven away. Of course he would be back for dinner.
Perhaps, after all, that was Madame Gérard, and Léon was driving her
down to the eight o’clock boat? Probably she was going to Naples to join
her husband, and Léon had offered to see her off. He would be very late
for dinner. If she hadn’t been cross he would have told her what he
meant to do. The little Capri ponies plunged forward and the carriage
disappeared in a cloud of dust. A long while after she saw the little
steamer pushing its way across the crystal sea and leaving behind it a
long purple trail. She watched it till it lost itself beyond
Castellamare. Léon would soon be back now. She walked slowly towards the
hotel and when she got there she was conscious of something strange
about it. The Padrone met her with a bunch of flowers, and the stout
Padrona bustled out from the office to ask Rose if there wasn’t anything
extra she would like--would she not dine now in the garden?
“Oh, no, not now,” Rose said quickly. “I will wait for my husband.” A
shadow passed over the Padrona’s face. She hesitated and then said with
urgent kindness, “The Signora has only to ask for anything she wants.”
The waiter, too, looked at Rose with strange, sympathetic eyes. He
suggested her feeding the pigeons, and hurried to offer her new bread
off the table of some traveling Germans.
“These people,” he said, “Tedeschi will not know the difference. Take
it, Signora mia, for your birds.”
The pigeons had already gone to roost.
Peppina, the chambermaid, watched Rose from the balcony. She should have
been at her supper, but she stood for some time gazing down into the
garden at the figure of the young wife. Suddenly she also bethought
herself of something and hurried down into the garden carrying a black
kitten in her apron which she deposited on Rose’s lap. “Behold,” she
said, “the little one of fortune. A black cat brings luck. Talk to it,
Signora, perhaps it will stay with you.” But the black kitten jumped off
Rose’s lap. It wanted to play with its own shadow in the grass, and to
stalk birds. It was not too young for that.
The sky changed slowly from rose color to a clear, pale blue. One by one
the stars came out, but they made no place in the sky, till the evening
waned and night came, velvety and black, to Capri, embracing it like a
dropped mantle, and then, through the curtain of the mysterious dark,
the stars grew enormous and shone down upon the scented lemon gardens
and over the vague wide sea.
Outside the gate a mandolin struck up a hungry, empty little tune.
Rose shivered and moved back into the house. She could not bear the
beauty of the garden any more alone.
The Padrona met her with a letter in her hand. She had had it for two
hours, but she could not make up her mind to give it to Rose. “How,” she
asked her husband, “am I to slay happiness?--I am not a butcher.”
“Signora,” she said nervously, “here is a little letter--it is doubtless
from the Signore. He is perhaps detained--hospitable friends have kept
him--” Rose held out her hand for the letter. The Pinsents never made
fusses. They didn’t believe in bad things happening, and when they
happened they tried to look as if they weren’t bad.
This was the way Rose looked now. She smiled pleasantly at the Padrona,
and moved slowly away towards her room with the letter. She would not
hurry.
The Padrona gazed compassionately after her. “She is walking over a
precipice,” said the Padrona to herself, “as if it were a path in our
garden, Poverina!”
It was a very short letter.
“My dear,” Léon wrote in French, “I find I must go to Naples. It will
not be for long I leave you, and I have told them all to look after you
until my return. Forgive me. Léon.”
After all he could not lie to Rose.
She read his letter three times. The first two times she translated his
letter into English, and wondered why Léon had gone to Naples. The third
time she read it without translating it, and then she knew everything.
She knew everything in all the world.
But she could not quite believe it. The arrogance in her rose up and
fought against the truth.
Rose had very little arrogance, but all women who have been loved must
have some. Surely he who was so much her lover could not have left her
so soon?
She remembered that when she had said to her mother, “But I could never
leave Léon,” Mrs. Pinsent had made no direct response. Her mother had
realized that that wasn’t the only question. How had she realized this?
Had her father ever--? Rose buried her face in her hands and wept
bitterly. “Oh, poor mother!” she murmured, “poor mother!” She could not
see herself as wholly poor yet.
And then she remembered Léon’s face as he passed her, his sad, ashamed
face, and she knew now why he had left her; but that he did not want to
leave her.
She sat up very straight and stopped crying when she realized this.
She thought it very strange, for she knew quite well that Madame Gérard
didn’t love Léon, either. She loved her own husband, Rose had seen this;
she knew it as if it were in the multiplication table; but she couldn’t
think of Madame Gérard now, she wasn’t her business. Léon was her
business. She must understand, why he had done this thing. It wasn’t any
use being silly and just crying, then it might happen again, and it
should never happen again; she wasn’t going to have Léon looking ashamed
twice.
From the first what wrung her heart was that Léon would feel it so! He
had meant to be such a help, he nearly had been, and if he hadn’t been
wasn’t it because Rose had failed him? She hadn’t meant to fail him of
course, she had meant just the opposite; but that was before she knew
all about everything, and before you know how to mean, meaning isn’t
going to be much of a help.
She had thought Léon was strong. He wasn’t strong, but in the rush of
her passionate reasoning she carried this feather-weight of disadvantage
into the fathomless sea of her love and left it safely there. No, he
wasn’t strong--but he was Léon--he was hers.
It was she who should have realized his weakness. She remembered now
that once or twice lately he had turned back from his excursions with
Madame to suggest that Rose should join them, but she had refused in her
foolish pride because she had wanted to prove to him how magnanimous she
was. She shouldn’t have done that at all, she shouldn’t have had any
pride--and it didn’t matter in the least whether she was magnanimous or
not! She should have held him to her by whatever could have kept him
there. Tears, if tears were necessary; pity, duty, pleading--anything
and everything that would have helped him.
She had been thinking of what he would think of her--not of what he
needed in her! She saw now it only mattered what he thought of her in so
far as it helped her to save him. Her magnanimity hadn’t saved him.
Something less beautiful but more practical might have saved him, her
just being, for instance, a little more there.
But he hadn’t lied to her, she came back to that as if it was something
on which her heart might rest. Ah! if he had done that she would have
known that he no longer loved her!
But he had given her no reason--no excuse; he had flung his sin before
her because he was ashamed, because he wanted his soul to be naked in
her sight--because he knew that she would never fail him.
In the dark she caught sight of the hovering Peppina. “Signora,” Peppina
pleaded, “will you not dine?”
Rose stood up. “Yes,” she said in a voice that sounded strange. “Yes,
please, I will dine.”
The Pinsents always dined.
“Tell the Padrona,” Rose said steadily, “that the Signore has had to go
to Naples on business. He will not return to-night.”
Peppina still hovered. “Si Signora,” she said, “and the black cat, the
one I brought to the Signora earlier in the evening, he has found for
himself the room of the Signora. Behold, he lies there curled-up on her
bed. He is there now--a miracle! The Signora remembers that I told her
‘a black cat means good fortune’?”
Rose hurried into the room, and found him. He was not quite so good as
her fox terrier at home, but he was a comfort. She buried her cheek
against the round black ball of the fortunate kitten, and wept with
easier tears.
Then she went down and had her dinner in the garden.