Somewhere, not far off on the still sea that held the tiny islet in a
warm embrace, a boy’s voice was singing “Napoli Bella.”
Vere heard the song as she sat in the sun with her face set towards
Nisida and the distant peak of Ischia; and instinctively she shifted her
position, and turned her head, looking towards the calm and untroubled
water that stretched between her and Naples. For the voice that sang
of the beautiful city was coming towards her from the beautiful city,
hymning the siren it had left perhaps but two hours ago.
On his pedestal set upon rock San Francesco seemed to be attentive to
the voice. He stood beyond the sheltered pool of the sea that divided
the islet from the mainland, staring across at Vere as if he envied her;
he who was rooted in Italy and deprived of her exquisite freedom.
His beard hung down to his waist, his cross protruded over his left
shoulder, and his robe of dusty grayish brown touched his feet, which
had never wandered one step since he was made, and set there to keep
watch over the fishermen who come to sleep under the lee of the island
by night.
Now it was brilliant daylight. The sun shone vividly over the Bay of
Naples, over the great and vital city, over Vesuvius, the long line of
the land towards Sorrento, over Capri with its shadowy mountain, and
Posilippo with its tree-guarded villas. And in the sharp radiance of May
the careless voice of the fisher-boy sang the familiar song that Vere
had always known and seldom heeded.
To-day, why she did not know, Vere listened to it attentively. Something
in the sound of the voice caught her attention, roused within her a
sense of sympathy.
Carelessness and happiness make a swift appeal to young hearts, and
this voice was careless, and sounded very happy. There was a deliberate
gruffness in it, a determination to be manly, which proved the vocalist
to be no man. Vere knew at once that a boy was singing, and she felt
that she must see him.
She got up, went into the little garden at the edge of the cliff, and
looked over the wall.
There was a boat moving slowly towards her, not very far away. In it
were three figures, all stripped for diving, and wearing white cotton
drawers. Two were sitting on the gunwale with their knees drawn up
nearly to their chins. The third was standing, and with a languid,
but strong and regular movement, was propelling the boat forward with
big-bladed oars. This was the singer, and as the boat drew nearer Vere
could see that he had the young, lithe form of a boy.
While she watched, leaning down from her eyrie, the boat and the song
stopped, and the singer let go his oars and turned to the men behind
him. The boat had reached a place near the rocks that was good ground
for _frutti di mare_.
Vere had often seen the divers in the Bay of Naples at their curious
toil. Yet it never ceased to interest her. She had a passion for the
sea, and for all things connected with it. Now she leaned a little lower
over the wall, with her eyes fixed on the boat and its occupants.
Upon the water she saw corks floating, and presently one of the men
swung himself round and sat facing the sea, with his back to the boat
and his bare legs dipping into the water. The boy had dropped down
to the bottom of the craft. His hands were busy arranging clothes, or
tackle, and his lusty voice again rang out to the glory of “Napoli,
bella Napoli.” There was something infectious in his happy-go-lucky
light-heartedness. Vere smiled as she listened, but there was a
wistfulness in her heart. At that moment a very common desire of young
and vigorous girls assailed her--the desire to be a boy; not a boy born
of rich parents, destined to the idle, aimless life of aristocratic
young Neapolitans, but a brown, badly dressed, or scarcely dressed at
all boy of the people.
She was often light-hearted, careless. But was she ever as light-hearted
and careless as that singing boy? She supposed herself to be free. But
was she, could she ever be at liberty as he was?
The man who had been dipping his feet in the sea rested one hand on the
gunwale, let his body droop forward, dropped into the water, paddled for
a moment, reached one of the floating corks, turned over head downwards,
describing a circle which showed his chocolate-colored back arched,
kicked up his feet and disappeared. The second man lounged lazily from
the boat into the sea and imitated him. The boy sat still and went
on singing. Vere felt disappointed. Was not he going to dive too? She
wanted him to dive. If she were that boy she would go in, she felt
sure of it, before the men. It must be lovely to sink down into the
underworld of the sea, to rifle from the rocks their fruit, that grew
thick as fruit on the trees. But the boy--he was lazy, good for nothing
but singing. She was half ashamed of him. Whimsically, and laughing to
herself at her own absurdity, she lifted her two hands, brown with the
sun, to her lips, and cried with all her might:
“Va dentro, pigro! Va dentro!”
As her voice died away, the boy stopped singing, sprang into the sea,
kicked up his feet and disappeared.
Vere was conscious of a thrill that was like a thrill of triumph.
“He obeyed me!” she thought.
A pleasant feeling of power came to her. From her eyrie on the rock she
was directing these strange sea doings. She was ruling over the men of
the sea.
The empty boat swayed softly on the water, but its three former
occupants were all hidden by the sea. It seemed as if they would never
come up again. Vere began to hold her breath as they were holding
theirs. At last a dark head rose above the surface, then another. The
two men paddled for a minute, drawing the air into their lungs. But the
boy did not reappear.
As the seconds passed, Vere began to feel proud of him. He was doing
that which she would have tried to do had she been a boy. He was
rivalling the men.
Another second slipped away--and another. He was more than rivalling, he
was beating the men.
They dived once more. She saw the sun gleam on their backs, which looked
polished as they turned slowly over, almost like brown porpoises.
But the boy remained hidden beneath the veil of water.
Vere began to feel anxious. What if some accident had happened? What
if he had been caught by the seaweed, or if his groping hand had been
retained by some crevice of the rock? There was a pain at her heart.
Her quick imagination was at work. It seemed to her as if she felt his
agony, took part in his struggle to regain his freedom. She clinched
her small hands and set her teeth. She held her breath, trying to feel
exactly as he was feeling. And then suddenly she lifted her hands up to
her face, covering her nostrils. What a horrible sensation it was, this
suffocation, this pressing of the life out of the body, almost as one
may push a person brutally out of a room! She could bear it no more, and
she dropped her hands. As she did so the boy’s dark head rose above the
sea.
Vere uttered a cry of joy.
“Brave! Bravo!”
She felt as if he had returned from the dead. He was a wonderful boy.
“Bravo! Bravissimo!”
Serenely unconscious of her enthusiasm, the boy swam slowly for a
moment, breathing the air into his lungs, then serenely dived again.
“Vere!” called a woman’s voice from the house--“Vere!”
“Madre!” cried the girl in reply, but without turning away from the sea.
“I am here! Do come out! I want to show you something.”
On a narrow terrace looking towards Naples a tall figure appeared.
“Where are you?”
“Here! here!”
The mother smiled and left the terrace, passed through a little gate,
and almost directly was standing beside the girl, saying:
“What is it? Is there a school of whales in the Bay, or have you sighted
the sea-serpent coming from Capri?”
“No, no! But--you see that boat?”
“Yes. The men are diving for _frutti di mare_, aren’t they?”
Vere nodded.
“The men are nothing. But there is a boy who is wonderful.”
“Why? What does he do?”
“He stays under water an extraordinary time. Now wait. Have you got a
watch, Madre?”
“Yes.”
“Take it out, there’s a darling, and time him. I want to know--there he
is! You see!”
“Yes.”
“Have you got your watch? Wait till he goes under! Wait a minute! There!
He’s gone! Now begin.”
She drew into her lungs a long breath, and held it. The mother smiled,
keeping her eyes obediently on the watch which lay in her hand.
There was a silence between them as the seconds passed.
“Really,” began the mother presently, “he must be--”
“Hush, Madre, hush!”
The girl had clasped her hands tightly. Her eyes never left the sea.
The tick, tick of the watch was just audible in the stillness of the May
morning. At last--
“There he is!” cried the girl. “Quick! How long has he been under?”
“Just fifty seconds.”
“I wonder--I’m sure it’s a record. If only Gaspare were here! When will
he be back from Naples with Monsieur Emile?”
“About twelve, I should think. But I doubt if they can sail.” She looked
out to sea, and added: “I think the wind is changing to scirocco. They
may be later.”
“He’s gone down again!”
“I never saw you so interested in a diver before,” said the mother.
“What made you begin to look at the boy?”
“He was singing. I heard him, and his voice made me feel--” She paused.
“What?” said her mother.
“I don’t know. _Un poco diavolesca_, I’m afraid. One thing, though! It
made me long to be a boy.”
“Did it?”
“Yes! Madre, tell me truly--sea-water on your lips, as the fishermen
say--now truly, did you ever want me to be a boy?”
Hermione Delarey did not answer for a moment. She looked away over the
still sea, that seemed to be slowly losing its color, and she thought of
another sea, of the Ionian waters that she had loved so much. They had
taken her husband from her before her child was born, and this child’s
question recalled to her the sharp agony of those days and nights in
Sicily, when Maurice lay unburied in the Casa del Prete, and afterwards
in the hospital at Marechiaro--of other days and nights in Italy, when,
isolated with the Sicilian boy, Gaspare, she had waited patiently for
the coming of her child.
“Sea-water, Madre, sea-water on your lips!”
Her mother looked down at her.
“Do you think I wished it, Vere?”
“To-day I do.”
“Why to-day?”
“Because I wish it so much. And it seems to me as if perhaps I wish it
because you once wished it for me. You thought I should be a boy?”
“I felt sure you would be a boy.”
“Madre! How strange!”
The girl was looking up at her mother. Her dark eyes--almost Sicilian
eyes they were--opened very wide, and her lips remained slightly parted
after she had spoken.
“I wonder why that was?” she said at length.
“I have wondered too. It may have been that I was always thinking of
your father in those days, recalling him--well, recalling him as he had
been in Sicily. He went away from me so suddenly that somehow his
going, even when it had happened, for a long time seemed to be an
impossibility. And I fancied, I suppose, that my child would be him in a
way.”
“Come back?”
“Or never quite gone.”
The girl was silent for a moment.
“Povera Madre mia!” at last she said.
But she did not seem distressed for herself. No personal grievance,
no doubt of complete love assailed her. And the fact that this was so
demonstrated, very quietly and very completely, the relation existing
between this mother and this child.
“I wonder, now,” Vere said, presently, “why I never specially wished to
be a boy until to-day--because, after all, it can’t be from you that the
wish came. If it had been it must have come long ago. And it didn’t. It
only came when I heard that boy’s voice. He sings like all the boys,
you know, that have ever enjoyed themselves, that are still enjoying
themselves in the sun.”
“I wish he would sing once more!” said Hermione.
“Perhaps he will. Look! He’s getting into the boat. And the men are
stopping too.”
The boy was very quick in his movements. Almost before Vere had finished
speaking he had pulled on his blue jersey and white trousers, and again
taken the big oars in his hands. Standing up, with his face set towards
the islet, he began once more to propel the boat towards it. And as he
swung his body slowly to and fro he opened his lips and sang lustily
once more,
“O Napoli, bella Napoli!”
Hermione and Vere sat silently listening as the song grew louder and
louder, till the boat was almost in the shadow of the islet, and the
boy, with a strong stroke of the left oar turned its prow towards the
pool over which San Francesco watched.
“They’re going into the Saint’s Pool to have a siesta,” said Vere.
“Isn’t he a splendid boy, Madre?”
As she spoke the boat was passing almost directly beneath them, and they
saw its name painted in red letters on the prow, _Sirena del Mare_. The
two men, one young, one middle-aged, were staring before them at the
rocks. But the boy, more sensitive, perhaps, than they were to the
watching eyes of women, looked straight up to Vere and to her mother.
They saw his level rows of white teeth gleaming as the song came out
from his parted lips, the shining of his eager dark eyes, full of the
careless merriment of youth, the black, low-growing hair stirring in
the light sea breeze about his brow, bronzed by sun and wind. His
slight figure swayed with an easy motion that had the grace of perfectly
controlled activity, and his brown hands gripped the great oars with
a firmness almost of steel, as the boat glided under the lee of the
island, and vanished from the eyes of the watchers into the shadowy pool
of San Francesco.
When the boat had disappeared, Vere lifted herself up and turned round
to her mother.
“Isn’t he a jolly boy, Madre?”
“Yes,” said Hermione.
She spoke in a low voice. Her eyes were still on the sea where the boat
had passed.
“Yes,” she repeated, almost as if to herself.
For the first time a little cloud went over Vere’s sensitive face.
“Madre, how horribly I must have disappointed you,” she said.
The mother did not break into protestations. She always treated her
child with sincerity.
“Just for a moment, Vere,” she answered. “And then, very soon, you made
me feel how much more intimate can be the relationship between a mother
and a daughter than between a mother and any son.”
“Is that true, really?”
“I think it is.”
“But why should that be?”
“Don’t you think that Monsieur Emile can tell you much better than I? I
feel all the things, you know, that he can explain.”
There was a touch of something that was like a half-hidden irony in her
voice.
“Monsieur Emile! Yes, I think he understands almost everything about
people,” said Vere, quite without irony. “But could a man explain such a
thing as well as a woman? I don’t think so.”
“We have the instincts, perhaps, men the vocabulary. Come, Vere, I want
to look over into the Saint’s Pool and see what those men are doing.”
Vere laughed.
“Take care, Madre, or Gaspare will be jealous.”
A soft look came into Hermione’s face.
“Gaspare and I know each other,” she said, quietly.
“But he could be jealous--horribly jealous.”
“Of you, perhaps, Vere, but never of me. Gaspare and I have passed
through too much together for anything of that kind. Nobody could ever
take his place with me, and he knows it quite well.”
“Gaspare’s a darling, and I love him,” said Vere, rather inconsequently.
“Shall we look over into the Pool from the pavilion, or go down by the
steps?”
“We’ll look over.”
They passed in through a gateway to the narrow terrace that fronted the
Casa del Mare facing Vesuvius, entered the house, traversed a little
hall, came out again into the air by a door on its farther side, and
made their way to a small pavilion that looked upon the Pool of San
Francesco. Almost immediately below, in the cool shadow of the cliff,
the boat was moored. The two men, lying at full length in it, their
faces buried in their hands, were already asleep. But the boy, sitting
astride on the prow, with his bare feet dangling on each side of it
to the clear green water, was munching slowly, and rather seriously, a
hunch of yellow bread, from which he cut from time to time large pieces
with a clasp knife. As he ate, lifting the pieces of bread to his mouth
with the knife, against whose blade he held them with his thumb, he
stared down at the depths below, transparent here almost to the sea
bed. His eyes were wide with reverie. He seemed another boy, not the
gay singer of five minutes ago. But then he had been in the blaze of the
sun. Now he was in the shade. And swiftly he had caught the influence of
the dimmer light, the lack of motion, the delicate hush at the feet of
San Francesco.
This time he did not know that he was being watched. His reverie,
perhaps, was too deep, or their gaze less concentrated than it had been
before. And after a moment, Hermione moved away.
“You are going in, Madre?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mind if I give something to that boy?”
“Do you mean money?”
“Oh no. But the poor thing’s eating dry bread, and--”
“And what, you puss?”
“Well, he’s a very obedient boy.”
“How can you know that?”
“He was idling in the boat, and I called out to him to jump into the
sea, and he jumped in immediately.”
“Do you think because he heard you?”
“Certainly I do.”
“You conceited little creature! Perhaps he was only pleasing himself!”
“No, Madre, no. I think I should like to give him a little reward
presently--for his singing too.”
“Get him a dolce, then, from Carmela, if there is one. And you can give
him some cigarettes.”
“I will. He’ll love that. Oh dear! I wish he didn’t make me dissatisfied
with myself!”
“Nonsense, Vere!”
Hermione bent down and kissed her child. Then she went rather quickly
away from the pavilion and entered the Casa del Mare.