The Marchesino Panacci was generally very sincere with his friends,
and the boyish expression in his eyes was not altogether deceptive,
for despite his wide knowledge of certain aspects of life, not wholly
admirable, there was really something of the simplicity of a child--of a
child that could be very naughty--in his disposition. But if he could
be naïve he could also be mischievous and even subtle, and he was very
swift in grasping a situation, very sharp in reading character, very
cunning in the pursuit of his pleasure, very adroit in deception, if
he thought that publicity of pursuit would be likely to lead to the
frustration of his purpose.
He had seen at once that Artois either knew, or suspected, who were the
occupants of the white boat with the green line, and he had also seen
that, influenced perhaps by one of those second thoughts which lead men
into caution, Artois desired to conceal his knowledge, or suspicion.
Instantly the Marchesino had, therefore, dropped the subject, and as
instantly he had devised a little plan to clear the matter up.
The Marchesino knew that when Artois had arrived in Naples he had had no
friends in the town or neighborhood. But he also knew that recently an
Englishwoman, an old friend of the novelist, had come upon the scene,
that she was living somewhere not far off, and that Artois had been to
visit her once or twice by sea. Artois had spoken of her very casually,
and the Marchesino’s interest in her had not been awakened. He was not
an inquisitive man by nature, and was always very busy with his own
pursuit of pleasure. But he remembered now that once he had seen his
friend being rowed in the direction of Posilipo, and that in the evening
of the same day Artois had mentioned having been to visit his English
friend. This fact had suggested to the Marchesino that if his suspicion
were correct, and the ladies in the white boat with the green line were
this English friend and a daughter, they probably lived in some villa as
easily reached by sea as by land. Such villas are more numerous towards
the point of the Capo di Posilipo than nearer Naples, as the high road,
after the Mergellina, mounts the hill and diverges farther and farther
from the sea. The Antico Giuseppone is a small waterside ristorante at
the point of the Capo di Posilipo, a little below the Villa Rosebery.
The Marchesino’s suggestion of a dinner there that evening had been
prompted by the desire to draw his friend into the neighborhood of his
charmer of the sea. Once there he might either find some pretext for
making her acquaintance through Artois--if Artois did know her--or, if
that were impossible, he might at least find out where she lived. By the
manner of Artois when the Antico Giuseppone was mentioned, he knew at
once that he was playing his cards well. The occupants of the white
boat were known to the novelist. They did live somewhere near the Antico
Giuseppone. And certainly Artois had no desire to bring about his--the
Marchesino’s--acquaintance with them.
That this was so, neither surprised nor seriously vexed the Marchesino.
He knew a good deal of his friend’s character, knew that Artois, despite
his geniality and friendliness, was often reserved--even with him.
During their short intimacy he had certainly told Artois a great deal
more about his affairs with women than had been told to him in return.
This fact was borne in upon him now. But he did not feel angry. A
careless good-nature was an essential part of his character. He did not
feel angry at his friend’s secrecy, but he did feel mischievous. His
lively desire to know the girl with “the perfect little nose” was backed
up now by another desire--to teach “Caro Emilio” that it was better to
meet complete frankness with complete frankness.
He had strolled out of his friend’s room pensively, acting the
melancholy youth who had lost all hope of succeeding in his desire; but
directly the door was shut his manner changed. Disregarding the lift, he
ran lightly down the stairs, made his way swiftly by the revolving door
into the street, crossed it, and walked towards the harbor of Santa
Lucia, where quantities of pleasure-boats lie waiting for hire, and the
boatmen are gathered in knots smoking and gossiping, or are strolling
singly up and down near the water’s edge, keeping a sharp look-out for
possible customers.
As the Marchesino turned on the bridge that leads towards Castel dell’
Ovo one of these boatmen met him and saluted him.
“Good-day, Giuseppe,” said the Marchesino, addressing him familiarly
with a broad Neapolitan accent.
“Good-day, Signorino Marchesino,” replied the man. “Do you want a boat?
I will take you for--”
The Marchesino drew out his cigarette case.
“I don’t want a boat. But perhaps you can tell me something.”
“What is it, Signorino Marchesino?” said the man, looking eagerly at the
cigarette case which was now open, and which displayed two tempting rows
of fat Egyptian cigarettes reposing side by side.
“Do you know a boat--white with a green line--which sometimes comes into
the harbor from the direction of Posilipo? It was here this afternoon,
or it passed here. I don’t know whether it went on to the Arsenal.”
“White with a green line?” said the man. “That might be--who was there
in it, Signorino Marchesino?”
“Two ladies, one old and one very young. The young lady--”
“Those must be the ladies from the island,” interrupted the man. “The
English ladies who come in the summer to the Casa del Mare as they call
it, on the island close to the Grotto of Virgilio by San Francesco’s
Pool. They were here this afternoon, but they’re gone back. Their boat
is white with a green line, Signorino Marchesino.”
“Grazie, Giuseppe,” said the Marchesino, with an immovable countenance.
“Do you smoke cigarettes?’
“Signorino Marchesino, I do when I have any soldi to buy them with.”
“Take these.”
The Marchesino emptied one side of his cigarette case into the boatman’s
hand, called a hired carriage, and drove off towards the Villa--the
horse going at a frantic trot, while the coachman, holding a rein in
each hand, ejaculated, “A--ah!” every ten seconds, in a voice that was
fiercely hortatory.
Artois, from his window, saw the carriage rattle past, and saw his
friend leaning back in it, with alert eyes, to scan every woman passing
by. He stood on the balcony for a moment till the noise of the wheels on
the stone pavement died away. When he returned to his writing-table the
mood for work was gone. He sat down in his chair. He took up his
pen. But he found himself thinking of two people, the extraordinary
difference between whom was the cause of his now linking them together
in his mind. He found himself thinking of the Marchesino and of Vere.
Not for a moment did he doubt the identity of the two women in the white
boat. They were Hermione and Vere. The Marchesino had read him rightly,
but Artois was not aware of it. His friend had deceived him, as almost
any sharp-witted Neapolitan can deceive even a clever forestiere.
Certainly he did not particularly wish to introduce his friend to
Vere. Yet now he was thinking of the two in connection, and not without
amusement. What would they be like together? How would Vere’s divine
innocence receive the amiable seductions of the Marchesino? Artois,
in fancy, could see his friend Doro for once completely disarmed by a
child. Vere’s innocence did not spring from folly, but was backed up
by excellent brains. It was that fact which made it so beautiful. The
innocence and the brains together might well read Doro a pretty little
lesson. And Vere after the lesson--would she be changed? Would she lose
by giving, even if the gift were a lesson?
Artois had certainly felt that his instinct told him not to do what Doro
wanted. He had been moved, he supposed now, by a protective sentiment.
Vere was delicious as she was. And Doro--he was delightful as he was.
The girl was enchanting in her ignorance. The youth--to Artois the
Marchesino seemed almost a boy, indeed, often quite a boy--was admirable
in his precocity. He embodied Naples, its gay _furberia_, and yet
that was hardly the word--perhaps rather one should say its sunny
naughtiness, its reckless devotion to life purged of thought. And
Vere--what did she embody? Not Sicily, though she was in some ways so
Sicilian. Not England; certainly not that!
Suddenly Artois was conscious that he knew Doro much better than he knew
Vere. He remembered the statement of an Austrian psychologist, that men
are far more mysterious than women, and shook his head over it now. He
felt strongly the mystery that lay hidden deep down in the innocence of
Vere, in the innocence of every girl-child of Vere’s age who had brains,
temperament and perfect purity. What a marvellous combination they made!
He imagined the clear flame of them burning in the night of the world of
men. Vere must be happy.
When he said this to himself he knew that, perhaps for the first
time, he was despairing of something that he ardently desired. He was
transferring a wish, that was something like a prayer in the heart
of one who had seldom prayed. He was giving up hope for Hermione and
fastening hope on Vere. For a moment that seemed like treachery, like an
abandoning of Hermione. Since their interview on the sea Artois had
felt that, for Hermione, all possibility of real happiness was over. She
could not detach her love. It had been fastened irrevocably on Maurice.
It was now fastened irrevocably on Maurice’s memory. Long ago, had she,
while he was alive, found out what he had done, her passion for him
might have died, and in the course of years she might have been able
to love again. But now it was surely too late. She had lived with her
memory too long. It was her blessing--to remember, to recall, how love
had blessed her life for a time. And if that memory were desecrated now
she would be as one wrecked in the storm of life. Yet with that memory
how she suffered!
What could he do for her? His chivalry must exercise itself. He must
remain in the lists, if only to fight for Hermione in Vere. And the
Marchesino? Artois seemed to divine that he might be an enemy in certain
circumstances.
A warmth of sentiment, not very common in Artois, generated within him
by such thoughts as these, thoughts that detained him from work, still
glowed in his heart when evening fell and the Marchesino came gayly in
to take him out upon the sea.
“There’s a little wind, Emilio,” he said, as they got into the boat in
the harbor of Santa Lucia; “we can sail to the Antico Giuseppone. And
after dinner we’ll fish for sarde. Isn’t it warm? One could sleep out on
such a night.”
They had two men with them. When they got beyond the breakwater the sail
was set, the Marchesino took the helm, and the boat slipped through the
smooth sea, rounded the rocks on which the old fort stands to stare at
Capri, radiant now as a magic isle in the curiously ethereal light of
evening, and headed for the distant point of land which hid Ischia
from their eyes. The freedom of the Bay of Naples was granted them--the
freedom of the sea. As they ran out into the open water, and Artois saw
the round gray eyes of the Marchesino dancing to the merry music of a
complete bodily pleasure, he felt like a man escaping. He looked back
at the city almost as at a sad life over, and despite his deep and
persistent interest in men he understood the joy of the hermit who casts
them from him and escapes into the wilds. The radiance of the Bay, one
of the most radiant of all the inlets of the sea, bold and glaring
in the brilliant daytime, becomes exquisitely delicate towards night.
Vesuvius, its fiery watcher, looks like a kindly guardian, until perhaps
the darkness shows the flame upon its flanks, the flame bursting forth
from the mouth it opens to the sky; and the coast-line by Sorrento, the
lifted crest of Capri, even the hill of Posilipo, appear romantic and
enticing, calling lands holding wonderful pleasures for men, joys
in their rocks and trees, joys in their dim recesses, joys and soft
realities fulfilling every dream upon their coasts washed by the
whispering waves.
The eyes of the Marchesino were dancing with physical pleasure. Artois
wondered how much he felt the beauty of the evening, and how. His friend
evidently saw the question in his eyes, for he said:
“The man who knows not Naples knows not pleasure.”
“Is that a Neapolitan saying?” asked Artois.
“Yes, and it is true. There is no town like Naples for pleasure.
Even your Paris, Emilio, with all its theatres, its cocottes, its
restaurants--no, it is not Naples. No wonder the forestiere come here.
In Naples they are free. They can do what they will. They know we shall
not mind. We are never shocked.”
“And do you think we are easily shocked in Paris?”
“No, but it is not the same. You have not Vesuvius there. You have not
the sea, you have not the sun.”
Artois began laughingly to protest against the last statement, but the
Marchesino would not have it.
“No, no, it shines--I know that,--but it is not the sun we have here.”
He spoke to the seamen in the Neapolitan dialect. They were brown,
muscular fellows. In their eyes were the extraordinary boldness
and directness of the sea. Neither of them looked gay. Many of the
Neapolitans who are much upon the sea have serious, even grave faces.
These were intensely, almost overpoweringly male. They seemed to partake
of the essence of the elements of nature, as if blood of the sea ran in
their veins, as if they were hot with the grim and inner fires of the
sun. When they spoke their faces showed a certain changefulness that
denoted intelligence, but never lost the look of force, of an almost
tense masculinity ready to battle, perpetually alive to hold its own.
The Marchesino was also very masculine, but in a different way and more
consciously than they were. He was not cultured, but such civilization
as he had endowed him with a power to catch the moods of others not
possessed by these men, in whom persistence was more visible than
adroitness, unless indeed any question of money was to the fore.
“We shall get to the Giuseppone by eight, Emilio,” the Marchesino said,
dropping his conversation with the men, which had been about the best
hour and place for their fishing. “Are you hungry?”
“I shall be,” said Artois. “This wind brings an appetite with it. How
well you steer!”
The Marchesino nodded carelessly.
As the boat drew ever nearer to the point, running swiftly before
the light breeze, its occupants were silent. Artois was watching the
evening, with the eyes of a lover of nature, but also with the eyes
of one who takes notes. The Marchesino seemed to be intent on his
occupation of pilot. As to the two sailors, they sat in the accustomed
calm and staring silence of seafaring men, with wide eyes looking
out over the element that ministered to their wants. They saw it
differently, perhaps, from Artois, to whom it gave now an intense
aesthetic pleasure, differently from the Marchesino, to whom it was
just a path to possible excitement, possible gratification of a new
and dancing desire. They connected it with strange superstitions, with
gifts, with deprivations, with death. Familiar and mysterious it was
purely to them as to all seamen, like a woman possessed whose soul is
far away.
Just as the clocks of Posilipo were striking eight the Marchesino
steered the boat into the quay of the Antico Guiseppone.
Although it was early in the season a few deal tables were set out by
the waterside, and a swarthy waiter, with huge mustaches and a napkin
over his arm, came delicately over the stones to ask their wishes.
“Will you let me order dinner, Emilio?” said the Marchesino: “I know
what they do best here.”
Artois agreed, and while the waiter shuffled to carry out the
Marchesino’s directions the two friends strolled near the edge of the
sea.
The breeze had been kindly. Having served them well it was now
dying down to its repose, leaving the evening that was near to night
profoundly calm. As Artois walked along the quay he felt the approach of
calm like the approach of a potentate, serene in the vast consciousness
of power. Peace was invading the sea, irresistible peace. The night was
at hand. Already Naples uncoiled its chain of lamps along the Bay. In
the gardens of Posilipo the lights of the houses gleamed. Opposite,
but very far off across the sea, shone the tiny flames of the houses
of Portici, of Torre del Greco, of Torre Annunziata, of Castellamare.
Against the gathering darkness Vesuvius belched slowly soft clouds of
rose-colored vapor, which went up like a menace into the dim vault of
the sky. The sea was without waves. The boats by the wharf, where
the road ascends past the villa Rosebery to the village of Posilipo,
scarcely moved. Near them, in a group, lounging against the wall and
talking rapidly, stood the two sailors from Naples with the boatmen
of the Guiseppone. Oil lamps glimmered upon two or three of the deal
tables, round one of which was gathered a party consisting of seven
large women, three children, and two very thin middle-aged men with
bright eyes, all of whom were eating oysters. Farther on, from a small
arbor that gave access to a fisherman’s house, which seemed to be
constructed partially in a cave of the rock, and which was gained by a
steep and crumbling stairway of stone, a mother called shrilly to some
half-naked little boys who were fishing with tiny hand-nets in the
sea. By the table which was destined to the Marchesino and Artois three
ambulant musicians were hovering, holding in their broad and dirty hands
two shabby mandolins and a guitar. In the distance a cook with a white
cap on his head and bare arms was visible, as he moved to and fro in the
lighted kitchen of the old ristorante, preparing a “zuppa di pesce” for
the gentlemen from Naples.
“Che bella notte!” said the Marchesino, suddenly.
His voice sounded sentimental. He twisted his mustaches and added:
“Emilio, we ought to have brought two beautiful women with us to-night.
What are the moon and the sea to men without beautiful women?”
“And the fishing?” said Artois.
“To the devil with the fishing,” replied the young man. “Ecco! Our
dinner is ready, with thanks to the Madonna!”
They sat down, one on each side of the small table, with a smoking lamp
between them.
“I have ordered vino bianco,” said the Marchesino, who still looked
sentimental. “Cameriere, take away the lamp. Put it on the next table.
Va bene. We are going to have ‘zuppa di pesce,’ gamberi and veal
cutlets. The wine is Capri. Now then,” he added, with sudden violence
and the coarsest imaginable Neapolitan accent, “if you fellows play
‘Santa Lucia,’ ‘Napoli Bella,’ or ‘Sole mio’ you’ll have my knife in
you. I am not an Inglese. I am a Neapolitan. Remember that!”
He proved it with a string of gutter words and oaths, at which the
musicians smiled with pleasure. Then, turning again to Artois, he
continued:
“If one doesn’t tell them they think one is an imbecile. Emilio caro, do
you not love to see the moon with a beautiful girl?”
His curious assumption that Artois and he were contemporaries because
they were friends, and his apparently absolute blindness to the fact
that a man of sixty and a man of twenty-four are hardly likely to
regard the other sex with an exactly similar enthusiasm, always secretly
entertained the novelist, who made it his business with this friend to
be accommodating, and who seldom, if ever, showed himself authoritative,
or revealed any part of his real inner self.
“Ma si!” he replied; “the night and the moon are made for love.”
“Everything is made for love,” returned the Marchesino. “Take plenty of
soaked bread, Emilio. They know how to make this zuppa here. Everything
is made for love.--Look! There is a boat coming with women in it!”
At a short distance from the shore a rowing boat was visible; and from
it now came shrill sounds of very common voices, followed by shouts of
male laughter.
“Perhaps they are beautiful,” said the Marchesino, at once on the alert.
The boat drew in to the quay, and from it there sprang, with much noise
and many gesticulations, two over-dressed women--probably, indeed almost
certainly, _canzonettiste_--and the two large young men, whose brown
fingers and whose chests gleamed with false diamonds. As they passed the
table where the two friends were sitting, the Marchesino raked the women
with his bold gray eyes. One of them was large and artificially blonde,
with a spreading bust, immense hips, a small waist, and a quantity of
pale dyed hair, on which was perched a bright blue hat. The other was
fiercely dark, with masses of coarse black hair, big, blatant eyes that
looked quite black in the dim lamplight, and a figure that suggested a
self-conscious snake. Both were young. They returned the Marchesino’s
stare with vigorous impudence as they swung by.
“What sympathetic creatures!” he murmured. “They are two angels.
I believe I have seen one of them at the Margherita. What was her
name--Maria Leoni, I fancy.”
He looked enviously at the young men. The arrival of the lobster
distracted his attention for the moment; but it was obvious that the
appearance of these women had increased the feeling of sentimentality
already generated in him by the softness and stillness of the night.
The three musicians, rendered greedy rather than inspired by the
presence of more clients, now began to pluck a lively street tune from
their instruments; and the waiter, whose mustaches seemed if possible
bigger now that night was truly come, poured the white wine into the
glasses with the air of one making a libation.
As the Marchesino ate, he frequently looked towards the party at the
neighboring table. He was evidently filled with envy of the two men
whose jewels glittered as they gesticulated with their big brown hands.
But presently their pleasure and success recalled to him something
which he had momentarily forgotten, the reason why he had planned this
expedition. He was in pursuit. The recollection cheered him up, restored
to him the strength of his manhood, put him right with himself. The envy
and the almost sickly sentimentality vanished from him, and he broke
into the usual gay conversation which seldom failed him, either by day
or night.
It was past nine before they had finished their coffee. The two boatmen
had been regaled and had drunk a bottle of wine, and the moon was rising
and making the oil lamps of the Guiseppone look pitiful. From the table
where the canzonettiste were established came peals of laughter, which
obviously upset the seven large and respectable women who had been
eating oysters, and who now sat staring heavily at the gay revellers,
while the two thin middle-aged men with bright eyes began to look
furtively cheerful, and even rather younger than they were. The
musicians passed round a small leaden tray for soldi, and the waiter
brought the Marchesino the bill, and looked inquiringly at Artois, aware
that he at least was not a Neapolitan. Artois gave him something and
satisfied the musicians, while the Marchesino disputed the bill, not
because he minded paying, but merely to prove that he was a Neapolitan
and not an imbecile. The matter was settled at last, and they went
towards the boat; the Marchesino casting many backward glances towards
the two angels, who, with their lovers, were becoming riotous in their
gayety as the moon came up.
“Are we going out into the Bay?” said Artois, as they stepped into the
boat, and were pushed off.
“Where is the best fishing-ground?” asked the Marchesino of the elder of
the two men.
“Towards the islet, Signorino Marchesino,” he replied at once, looking
his interlocutor full in the face with steady eyes, but remaining
perfectly grave.
Artois glanced at the man sharply. For the first time it occurred to
him that possibly his friend had arranged this expedition with a purpose
other than that which he had put forward. It was not the fisherman’s
voice which had made Artois wonder, but the voice of the Marchesino.
“There are generally plenty of sarde round the islet,” continued the
fisherman, “but if the Signori would not be too tired it would be best
to stay out the night. We shall get many more fish towards morning, and
we can run the boat into the Pool of San Francesco, and have some sleep
there, if the Signori like. We others generally take a nap there, and
go to work further on in the night. But of course it is as the Signori
prefer.”
“They want to keep us out all night to get more pay,” said the
Marchesino to Artois, in bad French.
He had divined the suspicion that had suddenly risen up in his friend,
and was resolved to lay it to rest, without, however, abandoning his
purpose, which had become much more ardent with the coming of the night.
The voices of the laughing women were ringing in his ears. He felt
adventurous. The youth in him was rioting, and he was longing to be gay,
as the men with those women were being gay.
“What do you think, Emilio caro?” he asked.
Then before Artois could reply, he said:
“After all, what do a few soldi matter? Who could sleep in a room on
such a night? It might be August, when one bathes at midnight, and sings
canzoni till dawn. Let us do as he says. Let us rest in the--what is the
pool?” he asked of the fishermen, pretending not to know the name.
“The pool of San Francesco, Signorino Marchesino.”
“Pool of San Francesco. I remember now. That is the place where all the
fishermen along the coast towards Nisida go to sleep. I have slept there
many times when I was a boy, and so has Viviano. To-night shall we do as
the fishermen, Emilio?”
There was no pressure in his careless voice. His eyes for the moment
looked so simple, though as eager as a child’s.
“Anything you like, mon ami,” said Artois.
He did not want to go to San Francesco’s Pool with the Marchesino, but
he did not wish to seem reluctant to go. And he said to himself now that
his interior hesitation was absurd. Night had fallen. By the time they
reached the Pool the inmates of the Case del Mare would probably be
asleep. Even if they were not, what did it matter? The boat would lie
among the vessels of the fishermen. The Marchesino and he would share
the fishermen’s repose. And even if Hermione and Vere should chance
to be out of doors they would not see him, or, if they did, would not
recognize him in the night.
His slight uneasiness, prompted by a vague idea that the Marchesino was
secretly mischievous, had possibly some plan in his mind connected with
the islet, was surely without foundation.
He told himself so as the fisherman laid hold of their oars and set the
boat’s prow towards the point of land which conceals the small harbor of
the Villa Rosebery.
The shrill voices of the two singers died away from their ears, but
lingered in the memory of the Marchesino, as the silence of the sea took
the boat to itself, the sea silence and the magic of the moon.
He turned his face towards the silver, beyond which, hidden as yet, was
the islet where dwelt the child he meant to know.