“Mar—ga—rì,
e perzo a Salvatore!
Mar—ga—rì,
Ma l’ommo è cacciatore!
Mar—ga—rì,
Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch’ è fatto, è fatto, un ne parlammo cchieù!”
A piano-organ was pouring the metallic music through our open windows,
while a voice of brass brayed the words, which I have since obtained,
and print above for identification by such as know their Italy better
than I. They will not thank me for reminding them of a tune so lately
epidemic in that land of aloes and blue skies; but at least it is
unlikely to run in their heads as the ribald accompaniment to a
tragedy; and it does in mine.
It was in the early heat of August, and the hour that of the lawful and
necessary siesta for such as turn night into day. I was therefore
shutting my window in a rage, and wondering whether I should not do the
same for Raffles, when he appeared in the silk pajamas to which the
chronic solicitude of Dr. Theobald confined him from morning to night.
“Don’t do that, Bunny,” said he. “I rather like that thing, and want to
listen. What sort of fellows are they to look at, by the way?”
I put my head out to see, it being a primary rule of our quaint
establishment that Raffles must never show himself at any of the
windows. I remember now how hot the sill was to my elbows, as I leant
upon it and looked down, in order to satisfy a curiosity in which I
could see no point.
“Dirty-looking beggars,” said I over my shoulder: “dark as dark; blue
chins, oleaginous curls, and ear-rings; ragged as they make them, but
nothing picturesque in their rags.”
“Neapolitans all over,” murmured Raffles behind me; “and that’s a
characteristic touch, the one fellow singing while the other grinds;
they always have that out there.”
“He’s rather a fine chap, the singer,” said I, as the song ended. “My
hat, what teeth! He’s looking up here, and grinning all round his head;
shall I chuck him anything?”
“Well, I have no reason to love the Neapolitans; but it takes me
back—it takes me back! Yes, here you are, one each.”
It was a couple of half-crowns that Raffles put into my hand, but I had
thrown them into the street for pennies before I saw what they were.
Thereupon I left the Italians bowing to the mud, as well they might,
and I turned to protest against such wanton waste. But Raffles was
walking up and down, his head bent, his eyes troubled; and his one
excuse disarmed remonstrance.
“They took me back,” he repeated. “My God, how they took me back!”
Suddenly he stopped in his stride.
“You don’t understand, Bunny, old chap; but if you like you shall. I
always meant to tell you some day, but never felt worked up to it
before, and it’s not the kind of thing one talks about for talking’s
sake. It isn’t a nursery story, Bunny, and there isn’t a laugh in it
from start to finish; on the contrary, you have often asked me what
turned my hair gray, and now you are going to hear.”
This was promising, but Raffles’s manner was something more. It was
unique in my memory of the man. His fine face softened and set hard by
turns. I never knew it so hard. I never knew it so soft. And the same
might be said of his voice, now tender as any woman’s, now flying to
the other extreme of equally unwonted ferocity. But this was toward the
end of his tale; the beginning he treated characteristically enough,
though I could have wished for a less cavalier account of the island of
Elba, where, upon his own showing, he had met with much humanity.
“Deadly, my dear Bunny, is not the word for that glorified snag, or for
the mollusks, its inhabitants. But they started by wounding my vanity,
so perhaps I am prejudiced, after all. I sprung myself upon them as a
shipwrecked sailor—a sole survivor—stripped in the sea and landed
without a stitch—yet they took no more interest in me than you do in
Italian organ-grinders. They were decent enough. I didn’t have to pick
and steal for a square meal and a pair of trousers; it would have been
more exciting if I had. But what a place! Napoleon couldn’t stand it,
you remember, but he held on longer than I did. I put in a few weeks in
their infernal mines, simply to pick up a smattering of Italian; then
got across to the mainland in a little wooden timber-tramp; and
ungratefully glad I was to leave Elba blazing in just such another
sunset as the one you won’t forget.
“The tramp was bound for Naples, but first it touched at Baiæ, where I
carefully deserted in the night. There are too many English in Naples
itself, though I thought it would make a first happy hunting-ground
when I knew the language better and had altered myself a bit more.
Meanwhile I got a billet of several sorts on one of the loveliest spots
that ever I struck on all my travels. The place was a vineyard, but it
overhung the sea, and I got taken on as tame sailorman and emergency
bottle-washer. The wages were the noble figure of a lira and a half,
which is just over a bob, a day, but there were lashings of sound wine
for one and all, and better wine to bathe in. And for eight whole
months, my boy, I was an absolutely honest man. The luxury of it,
Bunny! I out-heroded Herod, wouldn’t touch a grape, and went in the
most delicious danger of being knifed for my principles by the thieving
crew I had joined.
“It was the kind of place where every prospect pleases—and all the rest
of it—especially all the rest. But may I see it in my dreams till I
die—as it was in the beginning—before anything began to happen. It was
a wedge of rock sticking out into the bay, thatched with vines, and
with the rummiest old house on the very edge of all, a devil of a
height above the sea: you might have sat at the windows and dropped
your Sullivan-ends plumb into blue water a hundred and fifty feet
below.
“From the garden behind the house—such a garden, Bunny—oleanders and
mimosa, myrtles, rosemarys and red tangles of fiery, untamed flowers—in
a corner of this garden was the top of a subterranean stair down to the
sea; at least there were nearly two hundred steps tunnelled through the
solid rock; then an iron gate, and another eighty steps in the open
air; and last of all a cave fit for pirates,
a-penny-plain-and-two-pence-colored. This cave gave upon the sweetest
little thing in coves, all deep blue water and honest rocks; and here I
looked after the vineyard shipping, a pot-bellied tub with a brown
sail, and a sort of dingy. The tub took the wine to Naples, and the
dingy was the tub’s tender.
“The house above was said to be on the identical site of a suburban
retreat of the admirable Tiberius; there was the old sinner’s private
theatre with the tiers cut clean to this day, the well where he used to
fatten his lampreys on his slaves, and a ruined temple of those ripping
old Roman bricks, shallow as dominoes and ruddier than the cherry. I
never was much of an antiquary, but I could have become one there if
I’d had nothing else to do; but I had lots. When I wasn’t busy with the
boats I had to trim the vines, or gather the grapes, or even help make
the wine itself in a cool, dark, musty vault underneath the temple,
that I can see and smell as I jaw. And can’t I hear it and feel it too!
Squish, squash, bubble; squash, squish, guggle; and your feet as though
you had been wading through slaughter to a throne. Yes, Bunny, you
mightn’t think it, but this good right foot, that never was on the
wrong side of the crease when the ball left my hand, has also been
known to
‘crush the lees of pleasure
From sanguine grapes of pain.’”
He made a sudden pause, as though he had stumbled on the truth in jest.
His face filled with lines. We were sitting in the room that had been
bare when first I saw it; there were basket-chairs and a table in it
now, all meant ostensibly for me; and hence Raffles would slip to his
bed, with schoolboy relish, at every tinkle of the bell. This afternoon
we felt fairly safe, for Theobald had called in the morning, and Mrs.
Theobald still took up much of his time. Through the open window we
could hear the piano-organ and “Mar—gar—rì” a few hundred yards further
on. I fancied Raffles was listening to it while he paused. He shook his
head abstractedly when I handed him the cigarettes; and his tone
hereafter was never just what it had been.
“I don’t know, Bunny, whether you’re a believer in transmigration of
souls. I have often thought it easier to believe than lots of other
things, and I have been pretty near believing in it myself since I had
my being on that villa of Tiberius. The brute who had it in my day, if
he isn’t still running it with a whole skin, was or is as cold-blooded
a blackguard as the worst of the emperors, but I have often thought he
had a lot in common with Tiberius. He had the great high sensual Roman
nose, eyes that were sinks of iniquity in themselves, and that swelled
with fatness, like the rest of him, so that he wheezed if he walked a
yard; otherwise rather a fine beast to look at, with a huge gray
moustache, like a flying gull, and the most courteous manners even to
his men; but one of the worst, Bunny, one of the worst that ever was.
It was said that the vineyard was only his hobby; if so, he did his
best to make his hobby pay. He used to come out from Naples for the
week-ends—in the tub when it wasn’t too rough for his nerves—and he
didn’t always come alone. His very name sounded unhealthy—Corbucci. I
suppose I ought to add that he was a Count, though Counts are
two-a-penny in Naples, and in season all the year round.
“He had a little English, and liked to air it upon me, much to my
disgust; if I could not hope to conceal my nationality as yet, I at
least did not want to have it advertised; and the swine had English
friends. When he heard that I was bathing in November, when the bay is
still as warm as new milk, he would shake his wicked old head and say,
‘You are very audashuss—you are very audashuss!’ and put on no end of
side before his Italians. By God, he had pitched upon the right word
unawares, and I let him know it in the end!
“But that bathing, Bunny; it was absolutely the best I ever had
anywhere. I said just now the water was like wine; in my own mind I
used to call it blue champagne, and was rather annoyed that I had no
one to admire the phrase. Otherwise I assure you that I missed my own
particular kind very little indeed, though I often wished that _you_
were there, old chap; particularly when I went for my lonesome swim;
first thing in the morning, when the Bay was all rose-leaves, and last
thing at night, when your body caught phosphorescent fire! Ah, yes, it
was a good enough life for a change; a perfect paradise to lie low in;
another Eden until....
“My poor Eve!”
And he fetched a sigh that took away his words; then his jaws snapped
together, and his eyes spoke terribly while he conquered his emotion. I
pen the last word advisedly. I fancy it is one which I have never used
before in writing of A. J. Raffles, for I cannot at the moment recall
any other occasion upon which its use would have been justified. On
resuming, however, he was not only calm, but cold; and this flying for
safety to the other extreme is the single instance of self-distrust
which the present Achates can record to the credit of his impious
Æneas.
“I called the girl Eve,” said he. “Her real name was Faustina, and she
was one of a vast family who hung out in a hovel on the inland border
of the vineyard. And Aphrodite rising from the sea was less wonderful
and not more beautiful than Aphrodite emerging from that hole!
“It was the most exquisite face I ever saw or shall see in this life.
Absolutely perfect features; a skin that reminded you of old gold, so
delicate was its bronze; magnificent hair, not black but nearly; and
such eyes and teeth as would have made the fortune of a face without
another point. I tell you, Bunny, London would go mad about a girl like
that. But I don’t believe there’s such another in the world. And there
she was wasting her sweetness upon that lovely but desolate little
corner of it! Well, she did not waste it upon me. I would have married
her, and lived happily ever after in such a hovel as her people’s—with
her. Only to look at her—only to look at her for the rest of my days—I
could have lain low and remained dead even to you! And that’s all I’m
going to tell you about that, Bunny; cursed be he who tells more! Yet
don’t run away with the idea that this poor Faustina was the only woman
I ever cared about. I don’t believe in all that ‘only’ rot;
nevertheless I tell you that she _was_ the one being who ever entirely
satisfied my sense of beauty; and I honestly believe I could have
chucked the world and been true to Faustina for that alone.
“We met sometimes in the little temple I told you about, sometimes
among the vines; now by honest accident, now by flagrant design; and
found a ready-made rendezvous, romantic as one could wish, in the cave
down all those subterranean steps. Then the sea would call us—my blue
champagne—my sparkling cobalt—and there was the dingy ready to our
hand. Oh, those nights! I never knew which I liked best, the moonlit
ones when you sculled through silver and could see for miles, or the
dark nights when the fishermen’s torches stood for the sea, and a red
zig-zag in the sky for old Vesuvius. We were happy. I don’t mind owning
it. We seemed not to have a care between us. My mates took no interest
in my affairs, and Faustina’s family did not appear to bother about
her. The Count was in Naples five nights of the seven; the other two we
sighed apart.
“At first it was the oldest story in literature—Eden _plus_ Eve. The
place had been a heaven on earth before, but now it was heaven itself.
So for a little; then one night, a Monday night, Faustina burst out
crying in the boat; and sobbed her story as we drifted without mishap
by the mercy of the Lord. And that was almost as old a story as the
other.
“She was engaged—what! Had I never heard of it? Did I mean to upset the
boat? What was her engagement beside our love? ‘Niente, niente,’
crooned Faustina, sighing yet smiling through her tears. No, but what
did matter was that the man had threatened to stab her to the heart—and
would do it as soon as look at her—that I knew.
“I knew it merely from my knowledge of the Neapolitans, for I had no
idea who the man might be. I knew it, and yet I took this detail better
than the fact of the engagement, though now I began to laugh at both.
As if I was going to let her marry anybody else! As if a hair of her
lovely head should be touched while I lived to protect her! I had a
great mind to row away to blazes with her that very night, and never go
near the vineyard again, or let her either. But we had not a lira
between us at the time, and only the rags in which we sat barefoot in
the boat. Besides, I had to know the name of the animal who had
threatened a woman, and such a woman as this.
“For a long time she refused to tell me, with splendid obduracy; but I
was as determined as she; so at last she made conditions. I was not to
go and get put in prison for sticking a knife into him—he wasn’t worth
it—and I did promise not to stab him in the back. Faustina seemed quite
satisfied, though a little puzzled by my manner, having herself the
racial tolerance for cold steel; and next moment she had taken away my
breath. ‘It is Stefano,’ she whispered, and hung her head.
“And well she might, poor thing! Stefano, of all creatures on God’s
earth—for her!
“Bunny, he was a miserable little undersized
wretch—ill-favored—servile—surly—and second only to his master in
bestial cunning and hypocrisy. His face was enough for me; that was
what I read in it, and I don’t often make mistakes. He was Corbucci’s
own confidential body-servant, and that alone was enough to damn him in
decent eyes: always came out first on the Saturday with the _spese_, to
have all ready for his master and current mistress, and stayed behind
on the Monday to clear and lock up. Stefano! That worm! I could well
understand _his_ threatening a woman with a knife; what beat me was how
any woman could ever have listened to him; above all, that Faustina
should be the one! It passed my comprehension. But I questioned her as
gently as I could; and her explanation was largely the thread-bare one
you would expect. Her parents were so poor. They were so many in
family. Some of them begged—would I promise never to tell? Then some of
them stole—sometimes—and all knew the pains of actual want. She looked
after the cows, but there were only two of them, and brought the milk
to the vineyard and elsewhere; but that was not employment for more
than one; and there were countless sisters waiting to take her place.
Then he was so rich, Stefano.
“‘Rich!’ I echoed. ‘Stefano?’
“‘Si, Arturo mio.’
“Yes, I played the game on that vineyard, Bunny, even to going my own
first name.
“‘And how comes he to be rich?’ I asked, suspiciously.
“She did not know; but he had given her such beautiful jewels; the
family had lived on them for months, she pretending an avocat had taken
charge of them for her against her marriage. But I cared nothing about
all that.
“‘Jewels! Stefano!’ I could only mutter.
“‘Perhaps the Count has paid for some of them. He is very kind.’
“‘To you, is he?’
“‘Oh, yes, very kind.’
“‘And you would live in his house afterwards?’
“‘Not now, mia cara—not now!’
“‘No, by God you don’t!’ said I in English. ‘But you would have done
so, eh?’
“‘Of course. That was arranged. The Count is really very kind.’
“‘Do you see anything of him when he comes here?’
“Yes, he had sometimes brought her little presents, sweetmeats,
ribbons, and the like; but the offering had always been made through
this toad of a Stefano. Knowing the men, I now knew all. But Faustina,
she had the pure and simple heart, and the white soul, by the God who
made it, and for all her kindness to a tattered scapegrace who made
love to her in broken Italian between the ripples and the stars. She
was not to know what I was, remember; and beside Corbucci and his
henchman I was the Archangel Gabriel come down to earth.
“Well, as I lay awake that night, two more lines of Swinburne came into
my head, and came to stay:
“God said ‘Let him who wins her take
And keep Faustine.’
“On that couplet I slept at last, and it was my text and watchword when
I awoke in the morning. I forget how well you know your Swinburne,
Bunny; but don’t you run away with the idea that there was anything
else in common between his Faustine and mine. For the last time let me
tell you that poor Faustina was the whitest and the best I ever knew.
“Well, I was strung up for trouble when the next Saturday came, and
I’ll tell you what I had done. I had broken the pledge and burgled
Corbucci’s villa in my best manner during his absence in Naples. Not
that it gave me the slightest trouble; but no human being could have
told that I had been in, when I came out. And I had stolen nothing,
mark you, but only borrowed a revolver from a drawer in the Count’s
desk, with one or two trifling accessories; for by this time I had the
measure of these damned Neapolitans. They are spry enough with a knife,
but you show them the business end of a shooting-iron, and they’ll
streak like rabbits for the nearest hole. But the revolver wasn’t for
my own use. It was for Faustina, and I taught her how to use it in the
cave down there by the sea, shooting at candles stuck upon the rock.
The noise in the cave was something frightful, but high up above it
couldn’t be heard at all, as we proved to each other’s satisfaction
pretty early in the proceedings. So now Faustina was armed with
munitions of self-defence; and I knew enough of her character to
entertain no doubt as to their spirited use upon occasion. Between the
two of us, in fact, our friend Stefano seemed tolerably certain of a
warm week-end.
“But the Saturday brought word that the Count was not coming this week,
being in Rome on business, and unable to return in time; so for a whole
Sunday we were promised peace; and made bold plans accordingly. There
was no further merit in hushing this thing up. ‘Let him who wins her
take and keep Faustine.’ Yes, but let him win her openly, or lose her
and be damned to him! So on the Sunday I was going to have it out with
her people—with the Count and Stefano as soon as they showed their
noses. I had no inducement, remember, ever to return to surreptitious
life within a cab-fare of Wormwood Scrubbs. Faustina and the Bay of
Naples were quite good enough for me. And the prehistoric man in me
rather exulted in the idea of fighting for my desire.
“On the Saturday, however, we were able to meet for the last time as
heretofore—just once more in secret—down there in the cave—as soon as
might be after dark. Neither of us minded if we were kept for hours;
each knew in the end that the other would come; and there was a charm
of its own even in waiting with such knowledge. But that night I did
lose patience: not in the cave, but up above, where first on one
pretext and then on another the direttore kept me going until I smelt a
rat. He was not given to exacting overtime, this direttore, whose only
fault was his servile subjection to our common boss. It seemed pretty
obvious, therefore, that he was acting upon some secret instructions
from Corbucci himself, and, the moment I suspected this, I asked him to
his face if it was not the case. And it was; he admitted it with many
shrugs, being a conveniently weak person, whom one felt almost ashamed
of bullying as the occasion demanded.
“The fact was, however, that the Count had sent for him on finding he
had to go to Rome, and had said he was very sorry to go just then, as
among other things he intended to speak to me about Faustina. Stefano
had told him all about his row with her, and moreover that it was on my
account, which Faustina had never told me, though I had guessed as much
for myself. Well, the Count was going to take his jackal’s part for all
he was worth, which was just exactly what I had expected him to do. He
intended going for me on his return, but meanwhile I was not to make
hay in his absence, and so this tool of a direttore had orders to keep
me at it night and day. I undertook not to give the poor beast away,
but at the same time told him I had not the faintest intention of doing
another stroke of work that night.
“It was very dark, and I remember knocking my head against the oranges
as I ran up the long, shallow steps which ended the journey between the
direttore’s lodge and the villa itself. But at the back of the villa
was the garden I spoke about, and also a bare chunk of the cliff where
it was bored by that subterranean stair. So I saw the stars close
overhead, and the fishermen’s torches far below, the coastwise lights
and the crimson hieroglyph that spelt Vesuvius, before I plunged into
the darkness of the shaft. And that was the last time I appreciated the
unique and peaceful charm of this outlandish spot.
“The stair was in two long flights, with an air-hole or two at the top
of the upper one, but not another pin-prick till you came to the iron
gate at the bottom of the lower. As you may read of an infinitely
lighter place, in a finer work of fiction than you are ever likely to
write, Bunny, it was ‘gloomy at noon, dark as midnight at dusk, and
black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight.’ I won’t swear to my
quotation, but I will to those stairs. They were as black that night as
the inside of the safest safe in the strongest strong-room in the
Chancery Lane Deposit. Yet I had not got far down them with my bare
feet before I heard somebody else coming up in boots. You may imagine
what a turn that gave me! It could not be Faustina, who went barefoot
three seasons of the four, and yet there was Faustina waiting for me
down below. What a fright she must have had! And all at once my own
blood ran cold: for the man sang like a kettle as he plodded up and up.
It was, it must be, the short-winded Count himself, whom we all
supposed to be in Rome!
“Higher he came and nearer, nearer, slowly yet hurriedly, now stopping
to cough and gasp, now taking a few steps by elephantine assault. I
should have enjoyed the situation if it had not been for poor Faustina
in the cave; as it was I was filled with nameless fears. But I could
not resist giving that grampus Corbucci one bad moment on account. A
crazy hand-rail ran up one wall, so I carefully flattened myself
against the other, and he passed within six inches of me, puffing and
wheezing like a brass band. I let him go a few steps higher, and then I
let him have it with both lungs.
“‘Buona sera, eccellenza, signorì!’ I roared after him. And a scream
came down in answer—such a scream! A dozen different terrors were in
it; and the wheezing had stopped, with the old scoundrel’s heart.
“‘Chi sta la?’ he squeaked at last, gibbering and whimpering like a
whipped monkey, so that I could not bear to miss his face, and got a
match all ready to strike.
“‘Arturo, signorì.’
“He didn’t repeat my name, nor did he damn me in heaps. He did nothing
but wheeze for a good minute, and when he spoke it was with insinuating
civility, in his best English.
“‘Come nearer, Arturo. You are in the lower regions down there. I want
to speak with you.’
“‘No, thanks. I’m in a hurry,’ I said, and dropped that match back into
my pocket. He might be armed, and I was not.
“‘So you are in a ’urry!’ and he wheezed amusement. ‘And you thought I
was still in Rome, no doubt; and so I was until this afternoon, when I
caught train at the eleventh moment, and then another train from Naples
to Pozzuoli. I have been rowed here now by a fisherman of Pozzuoli. I
had not time to stop anywhere in Naples, but only to drive from station
to station. So I am without Stefano, Arturo, I am without Stefano.’
“His sly voice sounded preternaturally sly in the absolute darkness,
but even through that impenetrable veil I knew it for a sham. I had
laid hold of the hand-rail. It shook violently in my hand; he also was
holding it where he stood. And these suppressed tremors, or rather
their detection in this way, struck a strange chill to my heart, just
as I was beginning to pluck it up.
“‘It is lucky for Stefano,’ said I, grim as death.
“‘Ah, but you must not be too ’ard on ’im,’ remonstrated the Count.
‘You have stole his girl, he speak with me about it, and I wish to
speak with you. It is very audashuss, Arturo, very audashuss! Perhaps
you are even going to meet her now, eh?’”