SORRENTO
Two days after her visit to Posilipo Nancy came back from her
singing-lesson to discover John Kenrick at the _pensione_.
“I found that I could get away from England for a few days,” he
announced. “And I thought I’d come and ascertain for myself how you
really were getting on.”
“Very badly,” Nancy told him.
“So your last letter implied. But Gambone always errs on the side of
discouragement. I’m going to have a chat with him on the way back to
Bertolini’s. Will you dine with me there to-night? Or, no, wait a
minute. I’ll come down and fetch you, and we’ll eat at a more native
restaurant and go to the opera, or are you tired of the opera?”
Nancy had to confess that she had not yet been to San Carlo.
Kenrick was astonished.
“I couldn’t very well go alone, and I haven’t had anybody I could ask
to go with me,” she explained.
“You’ve been feeling lonely,” he said quickly. “And you’re looking a
bit overstrained. Has Gambone been working you too hard?”
“I doubt if he thinks I’m worth working very hard,” said Nancy.
“Nonsense! I’m going to find out exactly what he does think about your
voice and your prospects. I wager you’ll be pleasantly surprised to
hear what a great opinion he has of you.”
Kenrick left her soon after this, and then Nancy realised how terribly
lonely she had been ever since she came to Naples. A few weeks ago
she would have been vexed by the arrival of her patron. It would have
embarrassed her. It might even have made her suspect him of ulterior
motives. But his arrival now was a genuine pleasure, and if only he
came away from Maestro Gambone with good news of her progress, she
should be happier than she had been for months. Even an unfavourable
report would be something definite, and in that case she could return
to England immediately. Loneliness in beautiful surroundings was much
harder to bear than fellowship in ugliness. To go back to playing
adventuresses in the black country would have its compensations.
When Kenrick returned to take her out to dinner, there was a smile on
his sombre face. He put up his monocle and looked at Nancy quizzically.
“You’re a nice one!”
“What’s the matter? What have I done?”
“I thought you told me you weren’t getting on?”
“I didn’t think I was.”
“Well, Gambone says you’re a splendid pupil, that you work very hard,
that you have a glorious natural voice, and that if he can keep you
another six months he’ll guarantee you an engagement at San Carlo next
autumn. What more do you want?”
Nancy caught her breath.
“You’re joking!”
“I’m not indeed. I was never more serious.”
“But why didn’t he say something to me?”
“Gambone is a Neapolitan. Gambone is a realist. About women he has no
illusions. He thinks that the more he beats them the better they’ll be.
He only told me all this after exacting a promise not to repeat it to
you for fear you would be spoilt and give up working as well as you’re
working at present. I reproached him with not having looked after you
socially, and he nearly jumped through the ceiling of his apartment.”
“‘She is here to work,’ he shouted. ‘She is not here to amuse herself.’
‘But you might at least have managed to find her an escort for the
opera.’ And I told him that you had not yet visited San Carlo. ‘_Meno
male!_’ he squealed. I presume your Italian has at least got as far
as knowing that _meno male_ means the less harm done. ‘_Meno male_
that she has not filled her head with other people’s singing. She has
enough to do with her practising, enough to do to learn how to speak
and pronounce the only civilised tongue that exists for a singer.’ I
told him that you had been lonely, and what do you think he replied?
‘If she’s lonely, let her cultivate carnations. _Garofani!_’ he yelled
at the top of his voice. ‘Believe me, my good sir, carnations are a
thousand times more worth while than men and ten thousand times more
worth while than women.’ ‘Even good contraltos?’ I laughed. ‘_Sicuro!_
Or sopranos, either,’ the old villain chuckled.”
“Well, in some moods I would agree with him,” Nancy said.
“Anyway, whatever the old cynic may say, he has a profound belief in
your future. When he was ushering me out of his apartment ...”
“Oh, he ushered you out?” Nancy laughed. “He always pushes me out.”
“He would! But listen, he took my arm and said, with a twinkle in his
bright black eyes, ‘So you heard her sing and knew she had a voice?’ I
bowed. ‘_Siete un conoscente, caro. Felicitazioni._’”
The opera played at San Carlo that night was _La Traviata_. Nancy, not
oppressed by the sound and sight of a contralto singing and acting far
better than she could ever hope to sing and act, thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Violetta was a delicate and lovely creature so that, even if her
_coloratura_ did lack something of the finest quality and ease, her
death was almost intolerably moving. Alfredo was played by an elderly
tenor into whose voice the _vibrato_ of age had already insinuated
itself. He was, however, such a master of all the graces that neither
his appearance nor the fading of his voice seemed to matter a great
deal. In compensation for an elderly tenor, the heavy father was
played by a very young barytone with a voice of glorious roundness and
sonority. Kenrick was much excited by this performance and prophesied
for this new singer a success all over Europe as round and sonorous as
his voice. He declared that he had never heard Germont’s great aria “Di
Provenza” given so well.
After the performance they went to supper at one of the popular
restaurants near the opera house, where Kenrick discoursed upon the
æsthetic value of _La Traviata_.
“It’s the fashion to decry it as a piece of tawdry and melodramatic
sensationalism, but to my mind it fulfills perfectly Aristotle’s
catharsis.”
“That sounds reassuring,” Nancy laughed. “But I’m afraid I don’t in the
least understand what it means.”
“Aristotle found an æsthetic value in the purging of the emotions.
Well, at the end of _Traviata_ we are left with the feeling that music
could not express more completely the particular set of emotions that
are stirred by the story of Alfredo, Violetta, and Germont. No critic
has ever done justice to the younger Dumas’s _Dame aux Camélias_
either as a novel or as a play. Yet both they and the opera founded
upon them have a perennial vitality so marked as almost to tempt me to
claim for them an eternal vitality. The actuality of _Traviata_ is so
tremendous that on the first night of its production in Venice it was
a failure because the soprano playing Violetta was so fat as to revolt
the audience’s sense of fact. This seems to me highly significant.
You cannot imagine an operatic version of, let us say, _Wuthering
Heights_ being hissed off the stage because the Heathcliff revolted
any audience’s sense of fact. Now _Wuthering Heights_ much more nearly
approximates to melodrama than _La Dame aux Camélias_. The pretentious
spiritualism with which a sordid tale of cruelty, revenge, and lust
is decked out cannot hide from the sane observer the foolish parody
of human nature presented therein. It has been acclaimed as a work of
tragic grandeur and sublime imagination as if forsooth grandeur of
imagination were to be measured by the remoteness of protagonists or
plot from recognisable life. Let us grant that _Traviata_ exhibits a
low form of life——”
“Or a form of low life,” Nancy interposed.
“No, no, don’t make a joke of it! I feel seriously and strongly on
this subject,” Kenrick averred. “But a live jelly-fish is a great deal
more marvellous and much more beautiful than a stuffed lion. Nothing
really matters in a work of art if it lacks vitality. I would not
say that _Wuthering Heights_ lacked all vitality, but its vitality
is slight, indeed it is almost imperceptible except to the precious
and microscopic taste of the literary connoisseur. The vitality of
_La Dame aux Camélias_ is startling, so startling indeed as to repel
the fastidious and academic mind just as a don would be embarrassed
were his attentions solicited by a gay lady outside the St. James’s
Restaurant. The trouble is that the standards of criticism are nearly
always set up by the middle-aged. _La Dame aux Camélias_ is a book for
youth. We have most of us lived not wisely and not well in our youth,
and middle-age is not the time to judge that early behaviour. Let it
be remembered that the follies of our youth are usually repeated when
we are old—not always actually, but certainly in imagination. An old
man should be the best judge of _La Dame aux Camélias_. Well, if that
is a vital book, and just because of its amazing vitality, a great
book, _Traviata_ is a great opera, because, unlike that much inferior
opera _Aïda_, it is impossible to imagine any other music for it. All
that could be expressed by that foolish dead love, all the sentimental
dreams of it, all the cruelty of it, and the sweetness and the remorse,
all is there. We may tire of its barrel-organ tunes, but we tire in
middle-age of all youth’s facile emotions. We can scarcely imagine
ourselves, let us say, waiting two hours in the rain for any woman.
We should be bored by having to find the chocolates that Cleopatra
preferred, and we would not escort even Helen of Troy to the nearest
railway station. But fatigue is not necessarily wisdom, and so much
that we reject in middle-age is due to loss of resiliency. We cannot
react as we once could to the demands of the obvious excitement. We
are, in a word, blasé.”
Nancy felt that she was rushing in like a fool, but she could not sit
here and watch Kenrick blow away all argument in the wreaths of his
cigarette smoke. She had to point out one flaw in his remarks.
“But when I said that I would never love again and implied that I knew
what I was talking about, because I was twenty-eight, you warned me
that a woman’s most susceptible age was thirty-three.”
“Thirty-three is hardly middle-age,” said Kenrick. “I was thinking of
the chilly forties. Besides, you can’t compare women with men in this
matter. The old saw about a woman being as old as she looks and a man
as old as he feels is always used by women as an illustration of the
advantage of being a man. As a matter of fact, the advantage lies all
the other way. It is so much easier to look young than to feel young. A
woman is never too old to be loved. You can hardly maintain that a man
is never to old to love. I doubt if a man over thirty ever knows what
love means.”
“Och, I never heard such a preposterous statement,” Nancy declared.
“Why, think of the men who cherish hopeless passions all their lives.”
“For my part I can never understand a man’s cherishing a hopeless
passion,” he declared. “I should feel so utterly humiliated by a
woman’s refusal of her love that my own passion would be killed by it
instantly. And the humiliation would be deepened by my knowledge of
woman’s facility for falling in love, which is, of course, much greater
than a man’s, as much greater as her fastidiousness and sensitiveness
are less. To be refused by a woman, when one sees on what monstrous
objects she is prepared to lavish her affection, seems to me terrible.
Equally I do not understand why a woman, who after her childhood so
rarely cherishes a hopeless passion that will never be returned, is
always prepared to cherish the much more hopeless passion of continuing
to love a man after he has ceased to love her. I suppose it’s because
women are such sensualists. They always regard love as a gratification
of self too long postponed, and they continue to want it as children
want broken toys and men fail to give up smoking. The famous women who
have held men have held them by their infinite variety. Yet the one
quality in a lover that a woman finds it hardest to forgive is his
variety.”
“Och, I don’t agree at all,” Nancy declared breathlessly. “In fact I
don’t agree with anything you’ve said about love or men or women. I
think it’s a great pity that you have let yourself grow middle-aged.
You wouldn’t be able to have all these ideas if you were still capable
of feeling genuine emotion. I’m not clever enough to argue with
you properly. No woman ever can argue, because either she feels so
strongly about a subject that all her reasons fly to the wind, or, if
she doesn’t feel strongly, she doesn’t think it worth while to argue
and, in fact, finds it a boring waste of time. But I feel that you are
utterly wrong. I know you are. You’re just wrong. And that’s all there
is to be said. My husband had more variety than any man I ever knew,
and I loved his variety as much as I loved every other single one of
his qualities.”
There were tears in her big deep-blue eyes, the tears that always came
to them when she spoke of Bram, and flashing tears of exasperation
as well, at being unable to defeat her companion’s cynicism, for all
his observations seemed to her to be the fruit of a detestable and
worldly-wise cynicism, the observations of a man who has never known
what it was to suffer or to lose anything in the battle of life.
“Forgive me if I spoke thoughtlessly,” said Kenrick. “I get carried
away by my tongue whenever I go to an opera. Operas stimulate me. They
are the _reductio ad absurdum_ of art. I seem always to get down to
the bedrock of the æsthetic impulse at the opera. We are deluded by
a tragedy of Æschylus into supposing that art is something greater
than it is, something more than a sublimation of childhood’s games,
something comparable in its importance to science. In opera we see
what a joke art really is. We know that in the scroll of eternity the
bottle-washer of a great chemist is a more conspicuous minuscule than
the greatest artist who ever shall be.”
“I think I’m too tired to listen to you any longer,” Nancy said. “I
really don’t understand anything you’re talking about now, and even if
I did I feel sure I wouldn’t agree with you.”
Kenrick laughed.
“I plead guilty to being a chatterbox to-night. But it was partly your
fault. You shouldn’t have sat there looking as if you were listening
with such intelligence. But let’s leave generalisations and come to
particulars. Gambone says a little holiday will do you good.”
“I don’t believe you,” Nancy laughed. “Maestro Gambone never indulged
in theories about his pupils’ well-being. I simply don’t believe you.”
“Yes, really he did. I asked him if he did not think that you would be
all the better for a short rest, and he agreed with me. Now, why don’t
you come to Sorrento with me and see in this New Year that is going to
be your _annus mirabilis_?”
Nancy looked at him quickly.
“You’re thinking of the proprieties? There are no proprieties at
Sorrento. You want a change of air. I promise not to talk about art.
We’ll just take some good walks. Now don’t be missish. Treat me as a
friend.”
Yet Nancy still hesitated to accept this invitation. She had no reason
that she could express to herself, still less put into words. It was
merely an irrational presentiment that she should regret going to
Sorrento.
“Why don’t you answer?” he pressed.
“I was only wondering if it was wise to interrupt my lessons,” she told
him lamely.
“But you wouldn’t lose more than a couple. We shan’t be away more than
five days. I’ve got to be back in London by the fifth of January.”
“All right. I’d really love to come if Gambone won’t think I’m being
lazy.”
Kenrick drove her back to the Via Virgilio, and next morning they took
the boat for Sorrento.
They stayed in an old sun-crumbled _albergo_ built on one of the
promontories, the sheer cliff of which had been reinforced by immense
brick arches raised one above another against its face, so that the
soft tufaceous rock, which rather resembled rotten cheese, should not
collapse and plunge _albergo_, tangled garden, and pine-dark promontory
into the inky blue water two hundred feet below. Sorrento looks north,
and the proprietor of the _albergo_, a toad-faced little man with sandy
hair and a food-stained frock coat much too large for him, suggested
that his new guests would be more comfortable at this season in rooms
with an aspect away from the sea. The south aspect of the _albergo_
formed three sides of an oblong, and the doors of all the rooms opened
on a balcony paved with blue and green porcelain tiles and covered with
the naked grey stems of wistaria, the convolutions of which resembled
the throes of huge pythons. The view looked away over orange groves to
the Sorrentine hills, and particularly to one conical bosky peak on
which the wooden cross of a Camaldolese congregation was silhouetted
against the sky. In the garden below the balcony tazetta narcissus and
China roses were in bloom. There were not many other guests in the
_albergo_, and these were mostly elderly English and American women,
all suffering from the delusion that Italy was the cheapest country on
earth and from a delusion of the natives that all English and Americans
were extremely wealthy.
Kenrick apologised for bringing Nancy to the _Albergo del Sole_ rather
than taking her to one of the two fashionable hotels.
“But we can always go and feed at the Tramontano or the Victoria,” he
pointed out. “And there’s a charm about this tumbledown old place. I
was here once ten years ago and always promised myself a return visit.
Of course, Winter is not the time to be in Sorrento. It’s not till the
oranges come into their glory, about Easter, that one understands the
raptures of the great men who have visited this place. The fascination
of Sorrento is a stock subject with all the letter-writers of our
century.”
“Och, but I would much rather be staying here,” Nancy assured him. “I
think this place is so attractive.”
“It would be more attractive in Spring when the creamy Banksia roses
are in blossom and hung with necklaces of wistaria. It is a little
melancholy now. Yet the sun strikes warm at midday. I’ve told them to
make up a roaring fire of chestnut logs in your room.”
“They’ve certainly done so, and it’s as cosy as it can be.”
“I only hope the weather stays fine for our holiday,” said Kenrick,
putting up his monocle and staring an appeal to the tender azure of the
December sky.
And the weather did stay fine, so that they were able to drive or walk
all day and escape from the narrow walled alleys of Sorrento, alleys
designed for summer heats, when their ferns and mosses would refresh
the sun-tired eye, but in Winter damp and depressing, soggy with dead
leaves.
On the last day of the old year they climbed up through the olives
until they reached an open grassy space starred thick with the tigered
buff and mauve blooms of a myriad crocuses, the saffron stamens of
which burned like little tongues of fire in the sunlight.
“Forgive the melancholy platitude,” said Kenrick, “but I am oppressed
by the thought of our transience here, and not only our transience, but
the transience of all the tourists who sojourn for a while on this
magic coast. The song of a poet here is already less than the warble of
a passing bird; the moonlight is more powerful than all the vows of all
who have ever loved in Sorrento; no music can endure beside the murmur
of the Tyrrhenian. ‘Here could I live,’ one protests, and in a day or
two the railway-guide is pulled out, and one is discussing with the
hotel porter how to fit in Pompeii on the way back to Naples. Ugh! What
is it that forbids man to be happy?”
“Well, obviously most of the people who visit Sorrento couldn’t afford
to stay here indefinitely,” said Nancy, who always felt extremely
matter-of-fact when her companion began to talk in this strain.
“Yes, but there must be many people like myself who could.”
“Some do.”
“Ah, but not in the right way. They dig out a house-agent and inspect
eligible villas and behave exactly as if they were moving from
Bayswater to Hampstead, which in fact they are. I don’t want to adjust
these surroundings to myself. I want to become an integral part of
them. I should like to stay on in the _Albergo del Sole_ without
writing letters or getting letters. I should like to be sitting here
when these crocuses have faded, and the grass is wine-stained by
anemones or silvery with asphodels. I should like to watch the cistus
petals fluttering to the hot earth, and to lie for hours listening to
the cicali, lie and dream all through the Summer as still and hot as
a terra-cotta shard, lie and dream until the black sirocco whips the
orchards and spits into my face the first drops of autumn rain. But if
I had to make arrangements for my business and explain that my nerves
required a long rest, all the savour would be taken out of my whim. Oh,
_dio_, I am as full to-day of yearnings for the _au delà_ as a French
symbolist, or a callow German who sees the end of his _Wanderjahre_
looming.”
All the way back to the town Kenrick walked along beside Nancy in a
moody silence. She felt that perhaps she had been too discouraging, and
just before they emerged from the last of the olives she put a hand on
his arm and said:
“Will it do anything to console you if I tell you how perfectly I have
enjoyed these days here? I’m not an eloquent person, Mr. Kenrick.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake call me John. Haven’t you noticed I’ve been
calling you Nancy all this time?”
“I’ll try to call you John,” she promised. “But it’s terribly hard for
me to call people by their Christian names. I’m not an eloquent person
... John. In fact, I’m sort of tongue-tied. But surely you must realise
what you’ve done for me.”
He stopped abruptly and looked into her eyes.
“Have I really done much?”
“Why, you know you have. You know you have. I was a touring actress
without an idea of ever being anything else, and you’ve given me the
chance to be something much more than that.”
“That’s all I’ve managed to do?” Kenrick asked.
“Isn’t it enough?”
He seemed to be striving either to say something or not to say
something, Nancy did not know which. Then he shivered.
“Come along, it’s beginning to turn chilly as the sun gets behind the
hills. Let’s go and have a fashionable tea at the Victoria, and book a
table for to-night.”
After dinner they sat in the lounge and watched the sophisticated
_tarantella_ that was splashed on the tourists three times a week as
from a paint-pot of gaudy local colour. Followed luscious songs and
mandolinades, and shortly before midnight the _capo d’anno_ procession
arrived to sing the song of the New Year. It was accompanied by a
band of queer primitive instruments; but the most important feature
of the celebration was a bay-tree, which was banged on the floor to
mark the time of the rhythmical refrain throughout the song’s many
verses. Everybody drank everybody’s else health; the elderly English
and American women twinkled at the inspiration of an extra glass of
vermouth; all was music and jollity.
The moonlight was dazzling when Kenrick and Nancy left the hotel, the
air coldly spiced with the scent of mandarins. He proposed a walk to
shake off the fumes, and, though she was feeling sleepy after a long
day in the open air followed by the long evening’s merrymaking, Nancy
had not the heart to say that she would rather go home to bed. They
wandered through the alleys now in darkness, now in a vaporous sheen
of grey light, now full in the sharp and glittering eye of the moon.
The naked arms of the walnut-trees and figs shimmered ashen-pale.
Here and there a gust of perfume from the orange-groves waylaid them
to hang upon its sweetness like greedy moths. After twenty minutes of
meandering through these austere blazonries of argent and sable they
turned back toward the _albergo_ and followed their shadows away from
the soaring moon, their little shadows that hung round their feet like
black velvet, so rich seemed they and so substantial upon the dusty
silver of the path.
All was still when they reached the _albergo_, and the porcelain tiles
of the balcony were sparkling in the moonshine like aquamarines.
“Good night,” said Nancy, pausing in the doorway of her room. “And once
more a happy New Year!”
Kenrick stood motionless for an instant. Then he stepped forward
quickly into the doorway and caught Nancy to him.
“You can’t say good night like this,” he gasped.
She struggled to free herself from the kiss he had forced upon her. In
her physical revolt against him the lips pressed to hers felt like the
dry hot hide of some animal.
“Let me go! Let me go!” she choked. “Och, why are you doing this and
spoiling everything?”
In escaping from his arms Nancy had gone right into her room. Kenrick
followed her in and, shutting the door behind him, began to plead with
her.
“Let me come and sit in here for a while. I won’t try to kiss you
again. Let’s pull up a couple of chairs to the fire and talk.”
“Och, do go away,” Nancy begged. “There’s nothing to talk about now,
and it’s late, and I feel so unhappy about this.”
All the time she was talking she was searching everywhere for the
matches to light the lamp and illuminate with its common sense this mad
situation created by moonshine and shadows and flickering logs.
“You’ve surely realised that I’ve been madly in love with you ever
since I saw you at Bristol?” he demanded.
Nancy found the matches and lit the lamp. Then she turned to face
Kenrick.
“Of course I didn’t realise it. Do you suppose I would have let you
pay for my singing-lessons and all this, if I’d thought you were in
love with me? I see it now, and I could kill myself for being so dense.
And me supposing it was all on account of my fine voice! Och, it’s too
humiliating. Just an arrangement between you and Gambone, and me to be
so mad as to believe in you.”
“Now don’t be too unjust, Nancy,” he said. “You have a fine voice,
and even if you turn me down as a lover I’m still willing to see you
through with your training.”
“I thought you knew so much about women,” she stabbed. “You don’t
really suppose that I’d accept another penny from you now?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Well, I won’t ever be your mistress, and since it was the
hope of getting me for your mistress that made you send me out here—you
can’t deny that, now, can you?—well, since it was that and I can’t
oblige, you don’t suppose I’ll accept your charity?”
“But I tell you I do think you have a fine voice, and so does Gambone.
I swear to you he does. This hasn’t been a trick to get you out to
Italy, and nothing else; though it would be absurd to pretend that I’d
have done what I did for you for any woman with a fine voice.”
“Why couldn’t you have told me there was a price attached? It wasn’t
fair of you to let me come out here without knowing that.”
Nancy was on the verge of breaking down; but she knew that if she
cried Kenrick would take the opportunity of such weakness to attempt
a reconciliation, and she was determined to finish with him for ever
to-night.
“I suppose it wasn’t,” he admitted. “But you must remember that I
didn’t know you then as I know you now, and perhaps I assumed that you
were like most women, for I swear most women would have realised that I
was in love.”
“But it’s such a damnable way of being in love!” Nancy exclaimed. “If
you loved me, how could you think that I’d pretend such innocence? To
make myself more interesting? Well, I suppose if you go through life
judging women by your own ideas about them, you _would_ have discovered
by now that all of them were frauds.”
“Listen, Nancy,” Kenrick said. “Is it because you don’t love me that
you refuse me as a lover? Or is it because of the conventions? Would
you marry me, if I could marry you?”
“Do you mean if I weren’t an actress?” she said, blazing.
“No, no,” he replied impatiently. “For God’s sake don’t talk like that.
What on earth difference could that conceivably make? I can’t marry
you, because I’m married already, and because my wife would die rather
than divorce me. But would you marry me?”
“No, never in this world! I won’t be your mistress, because I don’t
love you, and even if I did love you a little, I wouldn’t be your
mistress, because I could never love you as much as I loved my husband
and I wouldn’t do anything to hurt his child and mine.”
“Are you sure you don’t love me? Are you sure the second and more
sentimental reason isn’t the true one?”
“I’m so far from loving you,” she declared, “that I couldn’t even hate
you. Now perhaps you’ll go away and leave me alone? Remember what you
said the other night in Naples about cherishing hopeless passions? Or
was that just all nothing but beautiful talk?”
“Why don’t you love me?” he asked.
“I told you once that I could never love anybody again. You had a
theory about that, I remember. Now do go away, and leave me alone.”
“Forgive me, Nancy.”
“I’ll forgive you if you let me know to a farthing what you’ve paid for
me from the moment I left London.”
“That’s not forgiveness,” he said. “You needn’t be cruel. After all,
it’s not unforgivable to love a woman. I loved you from the beginning.
I haven’t just taken advantage of moonlight to indulge myself. At
least, let me continue paying for your lessons. I’m going back to
England at once; I’ll promise not to worry you any more. Do, Nancy,
please do let me see you through!”
She shook her head.
“I couldn’t.”
“You’re sacrificing yourself for pride.”
“It’s not entirely pride,” she said. “There’s pride in it, but it’s—oh,
I can’t explain things as you can. Please tell me what I’ve cost you. I
have enough, I think, to pay you back.”
“I won’t accept it,” he declared. “And for no reason whatever can you
prove to me that I ought to accept repayment. I persuaded you to leave
your engagement. You believed in my sincerity. And I was sincere.
I think it’s wrong of you to give up your singing. But I know it’s
useless to argue about that with you. What I have paid is quite another
matter, and I simply refuse to accept repayment. If you can’t even
succeed in hating me, you’ve no right to ask me to do something for
which I must hate myself.”
“Yes, but you only used my voice as an excuse for the rest,” Nancy
argued. “Your main thought in getting me out to Italy was to make me
your mistress. Apparently I must have given you the impression that
your trouble was worth while. Yet when you invited me to come with
you to Sorrento on this holiday, why did you ask me to treat you as a
friend? As a matter of fact, the idea that you wanted to make love to
me did pass through my mind, but you drove away the fancy by the way
you spoke, as if you knew that I suspected your reasons and wanted to
reproach me for my nasty mind. Did you or did you not expect that I
would give myself to you here?”
“It was here that I first thought that you were growing fond of me,”
Kenrick said evasively. “I can tell you the exact moment. It was
yesterday afternoon when you put your hand on my arm.”
“I _was_ growing fond of you. But not in that kind of way,” she said.
“Naturally I was growing fond of you. You had, as I thought, done a
great deal for me. I was grateful; and when you seemed depressed I
wanted to comfort you.”
“Nancy, let’s cut out to-night and blame the moon.”
She shook her head.
“I can’t. I know myself too well. Just to give you pleasure because I
owe you a great deal, I would like beyond anything to cut out to-night
and go on with my singing. But the moment I was alone I’d begin to
fret. I haven’t enough confidence in my success as a singer. For one
thing, now that you’ve told me that you were attracted to me personally
at Bristol I feel that you’ve thought my voice better than it is.
Suppose at the end of another five or six months Gambone shouldn’t
consider me worthy of being pushed along? I’d have nothing to fall back
upon. I’d have failed myself and my daughter and you, artistically,
and I’d have failed you in the only way that might compensate you for
that failure.”
“But if the risk is mine and I’m willing to accept it, why must you
worry?”
“It’s no good. I know myself. I know that I couldn’t endure taking your
money under those conditions.”
“But you aren’t seriously proposing to give up your lessons and leave
Naples simply because I’ve told you that I’m in love with you?”
“Yes, yes, I am. I’m going back to-morrow.”
“But how will you explain your sudden return to your friends?”
“I haven’t so very many friends to bother about. But I shall tell those
I have that my voice wasn’t good enough to make it worth while going
on.”
Kenrick flung himself into a chair and poked the logs savagely.
“You make me feel such a clumsy brute,” he groaned. “Can’t I find any
argument that will make you change your mind?”
“None.”
“But at any rate you aren’t serious about paying me back the trifling
sum I’ve spent on you?”
“I am indeed.”
“Nancy, I’ve taken my disappointment fairly well; you can’t deny that.
I beg you to be kind and not insist on this repayment. I promise not to
inflict myself or my hopes upon you. I’ll do anything you tell me, if
only you’ll be generous over this. Your only motive for repaying me can
be pride. Use your imagination and try to realise what it will mean for
me if you insist. I do love you. I might have pretended that the magic
of this night had turned my senses for a moment, but by being sincere
I’ve ruined any hope I had for the future. My dream is shattered. Be
generous.”
He looked so miserable, hunched up over the fire, that Nancy fought
down her pride and agreed to accept as a present what he had already
done. She was inclined to regret her weakness a moment later, when she
saw that her surrender went far to restore Kenrick’s optimism about
their future relations. He began to talk about the beauty of Italy in
the Spring, of the peach blossoms in March and the orange-groves in
April. The mistake was in having sent her out in Winter. In Spring she
must think over everything and come out again. And so on, and so on
until Nancy could have screamed with exasperation at his inability to
comprehend the finality of her decision.
It was nearly two o’clock before Kenrick left Nancy’s room. The stress
of argument had chased away her fatigue; but in Kenrick’s new mood she
did not dare stand on the balcony and pore upon the hills of Sorrento
floating like islands in that sea of moonshine. He was capable of
supposing that she had changed her mind and of expecting the fulfilment
of his passion. The fire had died down to a heap of glowing ashes.
The room was heavy with the smoke of Kenrick’s incessant Macedonian
cigarettes. So this was the end of Italy. Yet she did not feel more
than a twinge or two of sentimental regret for the loveliness of
earth and sea and sky that she was deliberately abandoning. She had
the happiness of knowing that she had been true to herself. A dull, a
bourgeois virtue perhaps for a rogue and a vagabond; but Nancy, knowing
all that she now wanted from life, did not feel sorry for that self to
which she had been true.
Three days later Italy seemed as far away as paradise, when the cliffs
of England loomed through a driving mist of dirty southerly weather.