During the last days Artois had not been to the island, nor had he seen
the Marchesino. A sudden passion for work had seized him. Since the
night of Vere’s meeting with Peppina his brain had been in flood with
thoughts. Life often acts subtly upon the creative artist, repressing
or encouraging his instinct to bring forth, depressing or exciting
him when, perhaps, he expects it least. The passing incidents of life
frequently have their hidden, their unsuspected part in determining his
activities. So it was now with Artois. He had given an impetus to Vere.
That was natural, to be expected, considering his knowledge and his
fame, his great experience and his understanding of men. But now Vere
had given an impetus to him--and that was surely stranger. Since the
conversation among the shadows of the cave, after the vision of the
moving men of darkness and of fire, since the sound of Peppina sobbing
in the night, and the sight of her passionate face lifted to show its
gashed cross to Vere, Artois’ brain and head had been alive with a fury
of energy that forcibly summoned him to work, that held him working. He
even felt within him something that was like a renewal of some part of
his vanished youth, and remembered old days of student life, nights in
the Quartier Latin, his debut as a writer for the papers, the sensation
of joy with which he saw his first article in the _Figaro_, his dreams
of fame, his hopes of love, his baptism of sentiment. How he had worked
in those days and nights! How he had hunted experience in the streets
and the by-ways of the great city! How passionate and yet how ruthless
he had been, as artists often are, governed not only by their quick
emotions, but also by the something watchful and dogged underneath, that
will not be swept away, that is like a detective hidden by a house door
to spy out all the comers in the night. Something, some breath from the
former days, swept over him again. In his ears there sounded surely the
cries of Paris, urging him to the assault to the barricades of Fame. And
he sat down, and he worked with the vehement energy, with the pulsating
eagerness of one of “les jeunes.” Hour after hour he worked. He took
coffee, and wrote through the night. He slept when the dawn came, got
up, and toiled again.
He shut out the real world and he forgot it--until the fit was past.
And then he pushed away his paper, he laid down his pen, he
stretched himself, and he knew that his great effort had tired him
tremendously--tremendously.
He looked at his right hand. It was cramped. As he held it up he saw
that it was shaking. He had drunk a great deal of black coffee during
those days, had drunk it recklessly as in the days of youth, when he
cared nothing about health because he felt made of iron.
“Pf-f-f!”
And so there was Naples outside, the waters of the Bay dancing in the
sunshine of the bright summer afternoon, people bathing and shouting to
one another from the diving platforms and the cabins; people galloping
by in the little carriages to eat oysters at Posilipo. Lazy, heedless,
pleasure-loving wretches! He thought of Doro as he looked at them.
He had given strict orders that he was not to be disturbed while he was
at work, unless Hermione came. And he had not once been disturbed. Now
he rang the bell. An Italian waiter, with crooked eyes and a fair beard,
stepped softly in.
“Has any one been to see me? Has any one asked for me lately?” he said.
“Just go down, will you, and inquire of the concierge.”
The waiter departed, and returned to say that no one had been for the
Signore.
“Not the Marchese Isidoro Panacci?
“The concierge says that no one has been, Signore.”
“Va bene.”
The man went out.
So Doro had not come even once! Perhaps he was seriously offended. At
their last parting in the Villa he had shown a certain irony that had
in it a hint of bitterness. Artois did not know of the fisherman’s
information, that Doro had guessed who was Vere’s companion that night
upon the sea. He supposed that his friend was angry because he believed
himself distrusted. Well, that could soon be put right. He thought of
the Marchesino now with lightness, as the worker who has just made a
great and prolonged effort is inclined to think of the habitual idler.
Doro was like a feather on the warm wind of the South. He, Artois, was
not in the mood just then to bother about a feather. Still less was he
inclined for companionship. He wanted some hours of complete rest out in
the air, with gay and frivolous scenes before his eyes.
He wanted to look on, but not to join in, the merry life that was about
him, and that for so long a time he had almost violently ignored.
He resolved to take a carriage, drive slowly to Posilipo, and eat his
dinner there in some eyrie above the sea; watching the pageant that
unfolds itself on the evenings of summer about the ristoranti and the
osterie, round the stalls of the vendors of Fruitti di Mare, and the
piano-organs, to the accompaniment of which impudent men sing love songs
to the saucy, dark-eyed beauties posed upon balconies, or gathered in
knots upon the little terraces that dominate the bathing establishments,
and the distant traffic of the Bay. His brain longed for rest, but it
longed also for the hum and the stir of men. His heart lusted for the
sight of pleasure, and must be appeased.
Catching up his hat, almost with the hasty eagerness of a boy, he
went down-stairs. On the opposite side of the road was a smart little
carriage in which the coachman was asleep, with his legs cocked up
on the driver’s seat, displaying a pair of startling orange-and-black
socks. By the socks Artois knew his man.
“Pasqualino! Pasqualino!” he cried.
The coachman sprang up, showing a round, rosy face, and a pair of
shrewd, rather small dark eyes.
“Take me to Posilipo.”
“Si, Signore.”
Pasqualino cracked his whip vigorously.
“Ah--ah! Ah--ah!” he cried to his gayly bedizened little horse, who wore
a long feather on his head, flanked by bunches of artificial roses.
“Not too fast, Pasqualino. I am in no hurry. Keep along by the sea.”
The coachman let the reins go loose, and instantly the little horse went
slowly, as if all his spirit and agility had suddenly been withdrawn
from him.
“I have not seen you for several days, Signore. Have you been ill?”
Pasqualino had turned quite round on his box, and was facing his client.
“No, I’ve been working.”
“Si?”
Pasqualino made a grimace, as he nearly always did when he heard a rich
Signore speak of working.
“And you? You have been spending money as usual. All your clothes are
new.”
Pasqualino smiled, showing rows of splendid teeth under his little
twisted-up mustache.
“Si, Signore, all! And I have also new underclothing.”
“Per Bacco!”
“Ecco, Signore!”
He pulled his trousers up to his knees, showing a pair of pale-blue
drawers.
“The suspenders--they are new, Signore!” He drew attention to the
scarlet elastics that kept the orange-and-black socks in place.
“My boots!” He put his feet up on the box that Artois might see his
lemon-colored boots, then unbuttoned and threw open his waistcoat. “My
shirt is new! My cravat is new! Look at the pin!” He flourished his
plump, brown, and carefully washed hands. “I have a new ring.” He bent
his head. “My hat is new.”
Artois broke into a roar of laughter that seemed to do him good after
his days of work.
“You young dandy! And where do you get the money?”
Pasqualino looked doleful and hung his head.
“Signore, I am in debt. But I say to myself, ‘Thank the Madonna, I have
a rich and generous Padrone who wishes his coachman to be chic. When he
sees my clothes he will be contented, and who knows what he will do?’”
“Per Bacco! And who is this rich and generous Signore?”
“Ma!” Pasqualino passionately flung out the ringed hand that was not
holding the reins--“Ma!--you, Signore.”
“You young rascal! Turn round and attend to your driving!”
But Artois laughed again. The impudent boyishness of Pasqualino, and his
childish passion for finery, were refreshing, and seemed to belong to
a young and thoughtless world. The sea-breeze was soft as silk, the
afternoon sunshine was delicately brilliant. The Bay looked as it often
does in summer--like radiant liberty held in happy arms, alluring, full
of promises. And a physical well-being invaded Artois such as he had not
known since the day when he had tea with Vere upon the island.
He had been shut in. Now the gates were thrown open, and to what a
brilliant world! He issued forth into it with almost joyous expectation.
They went slowly, and presently drew near to the Rotonda. Artois leaned
a little forward and saw that the fishermen were at work. They stood in
lines upon the pavement pulling at the immense nets which were still
a long way out to sea. When the carriage reached them Artois told
Pasqualino to draw up, and sat watching the work and the fierce energy
of the workers. Half naked, with arms and legs and chests that gleamed
in the sun like copper, they toiled, slanting backward, one towards
another, laughing, shouting, swearing with a sort of almost angry joy.
In their eyes there was a carelessness that was wild, in their gestures
a lack of self-consciousness that was savage. But they looked like
creatures who must live forever. And to Artois, sedentary for so long,
the sight of them brought a feeling almost of triumph, but also a
sensation of envy. Their vigor made him pine for movement.
“Drive on slowly, Pasqualino,” he said. “I will follow you on foot, and
join you at the hill.”
“Si Signore.”
He got out, stood for a moment, then strolled on towards the Mergellina.
As he approached this part of the town, with its harbor and its
population of fisherfolk, the thought of Ruffo came into his mind. He
remembered that Ruffo lived here. Perhaps he might see the boy this
afternoon.
On the mole that serves as a slight barrier between the open sea and
the snug little harbor several boys were fishing. Others were bathing,
leaping into the water with shouts from the rocks. Beyond, upon the
slope of dingy sand among the drawn-up boats, children were playing, the
girls generally separated from the boys. Fishermen, in woolen shirts
and white linen trousers, sat smoking in the shadow of their craft, or
leaned muscular arms upon them, standing at ease, staring into vacancy
or calling to each other. On the still water there was a perpetual
movement of boats; and from the distance came a dull but continuous
uproar, the yells and the laughter of hundreds of bathers at the
Stabilimento di Bagni beyond the opposite limit of the harbor.
Artois enjoyed the open-air gayety, the freedom of the scene; and once
again, as often before, found himself thinking that the out-door life,
the life loosed from formal restrictions, was the only one really and
fully worth living. There was a carelessness, a camaraderie among these
people that was of the essence of humanity. Despite their frequent
quarrels, their intrigues, their betrayals, their vendettas, they hung
together. There was a true and vital companionship among them.
He passed on with deliberation, observing closely, yet half-lazily--for
his brain was slack and needed rest--the different types about him,
musing on the possibilities of their lives, smiling at the gambols of
the intent girls, and the impudent frolics of the little boys who seemed
the very spawn of sand and sea and sun, till he had nearly passed the
harbor, and was opposite to the pathway that leads down to the jetty, to
the left of which lie the steam-yachts.
At the entrance to this pathway there is always a knot of people
gathered about the shanty where the seamen eat maccaroni and strange
messes, and the stands where shell-fish are exposed for sale. On the far
side of the tramway, beneath the tall houses which are let out in rooms
and apartments for families, there is an open space, and here in summer
are set out quantities of strong tables, at which from noon till late
into the evening the people of Mergellina, and visitors of the humbler
classes from Naples, sit in merry throngs, eating, smoking, drinking
coffee, syrups, and red and white wine.
Artois stood still for a minute to watch them, to partake from a
distance, and unknown to them, in their boisterous gayety. He had lit
a big cigar, and puffed at it as his eyes roved from group to group,
resting now on a family party, now on a quartet of lovers, now on two
stout men obviously trying to drive a bargain with vigorous rhetoric and
emphatic gestures, now on an elderly woman in a shawl spending an hour
with her soldier son in placid silence, now on some sailors from a ship
in the distant port by the arsenal bent over a game of cards, or a party
of workmen talking wages or politics in their shirt-sleeves with flowers
above their ears.
What a row they made, these people! Their animation was almost like the
animation of a nightmare. Some were ugly, some looked wicked; others
mischievous, sympathetic, coarse, artful, seductive, boldly defiant or
boisterously excited. But however much they differed, in one quality
they were nearly all alike. They nearly all looked vivid. If they
lacked anything, at least it was not life. Even their sorrows should be
energetic.
As this thought came into his mind Artois’ eyes chanced to rest on two
people sitting a little apart at a table on which stood a coffee-cup,
a thick glass half full of red wine, and a couple of tumblers of water.
One was a woman, the other--yes, the other was Ruffo.
When Artois realized this he kept his eyes upon them. He forgot his
interest in the crowd.
At first he could only see Ruffo’s side-face. But the woman was exactly
opposite to him.
She was neatly dressed in some dark stuff, and wore a thin shawl, purple
in color, over her shoulders. She looked middle-aged. Had she been an
Englishwoman Artois would have guessed her to be near fifty. But as
she was evidently a Southerner it was possible that she was very much
younger. Her figure was broad and matronly. Her face, once probably
quite pretty was lined, and had the battered and almost corrugated look
that the faces of Italian women of the lower classes often reveal when
the years begin to increase upon them. The cheek-bones showed harshly in
it, by the long and dark eyes, which were surrounded by little puckers
of yellow flesh. But Artois’ attention was held not by this woman’s
quite ordinary appearance, but by her manner. Like the people about her
she was vivacious, but her vivacity was tragic--she had not come here
to be gay. Evidently she was in the excitement of some great grief or
passion. She was speaking vehemently to Ruffo, gesticulating with her
dark hands, on which there were two or three cheap rings, catching at
her shawl, swaying her body, nodding her head, on which the still black
hair was piled in heavy masses. And her face was distorted by an emotion
that seemed of sorrow and anger mingled. In her ears, pretty and almost
delicate in contrast to the ruggedness of her face, were large gold
rings, such as Sicilian women often wear. They swayed in response to her
perpetual movements. Artois watched her lips as they opened and shut,
were compressed or thrust forward, watched her white teeth gleaming. She
lifted her two hands, doubled into fists, till they were on a level
with her shoulders, shook them vehemently, then dashed them down on the
table. The coffee-cup was overturned. She took no notice of it. She was
heedless of everything but the subject which evidently obsessed her.
The boy, Ruffo, sat quite still listening to her. His attitude was calm.
Now and then he sipped his wine, and presently he took from his pocket a
cigarette, lighted it carefully, and began to smoke. There was something
very boyish and happy-go-lucky in his attitude and manner. Evidently,
Artois thought, he was very much at home with this middle-aged woman.
Probably her vehemence was to him an every-day affair. She laid one
hand on his arm and bent forward. He slightly shrugged his shoulders
and shook his head. She kept her hand on his arm, went on talking
passionately, and suddenly began to weep. Tears rushed out of her eyes.
Then the boy took her hand gently, stroked it, and began to speak
to her, always keeping her hand in his. The woman, with a despairing
movement, laid her face down on the table, with her forehead touching
the wood. Then she lifted it up. The paroxysm seemed to have passed. She
took out a handkerchief from inside the bodice of her dress and dried
her eyes. Ruffo struck the table with his glass. An attendant came. He
paid the bill, and the woman and he got up to go. As they did so Ruffo
presented for a moment his full face to Artois, and Artois swiftly
compared it with the face of the woman, and felt sure that they were
mother and son.
Artois moved on towards the hill of Posilipo, but after taking a few
steps turned to look back. The woman and Ruffo had come into the road
by the tram-line. They stood there for a moment, talking. Then Ruffo
crossed over to the path, and the woman went away slowly towards the
Rotonda. Seeing Ruffo alone Artois turned to go back, thinking to have
a word with the boy. But before he could reach him he saw a man step out
from behind the wooden shanty of the fishermen and join him.
This man was Gaspare.
Ruffo and Gaspare strolled slowly away towards the jetty where the
yachts lie, and presently disappeared.
Artois found Pasqualino waiting for him rather impatiently not far from
the entrance to the Scoglio di Frisio.
“I thought you were dead, Signore,” he remarked, as Artois came up.
“I was watching the people.”
He got into the carriage.
“They are canaglia,” said Pasqualino, with the profound contempt of the
Neapolitan coachman for those who get their living by the sea. He lived
at Fuorigrotta, and thought Mergellina a place of outer darkness.
“I like them,” returned Artois.
“You don’t know them, Signore. I say--they are canaglia. Where shall I
drive you?”
Artois hesitated, passing in mental review the various ristoranti on the
hill.
“Take me to the Ristorante della Stella,” he said, at length.
Pasqualino cracked his whip, and drove once more merrily onward.
When Artois came to the ristorante, which was perched high up on the
side of the road farthest from the sea, he had almost all the tables to
choose from, as it was still early in the evening, and in the summer
the Neapolitans who frequent the more expensive restaurants usually dine
late. He sat down at a table in the open air close to the railing, from
which he could see a grand view of the Bay, as well as all that was
passing on the road beneath, and ordered a dinner to be ready in half an
hour. He was in no hurry, and wanted to finish his cigar.
There was a constant traffic below. The tram-bell sounded its reiterated
signal to the crowds of dusty pedestrians to clear the way. Donkeys
toiled upward, drawing carts loaded with vegetables and fruit. Animated
young men, wearing tiny straw hats cocked impertinently to one side,
drove frantically by in light gigs that looked like the skeletons of
carriages, holding a rein in each hand, pulling violently at their
horses’ mouths, and shouting “Ah--ah!” as if possessed of the devil.
Smart women made the evening “Passeggiata” in landaus and low victorias,
wearing flamboyant hats, and gazing into the eyes of the watching men
ranged along the low wall on the sea-side with a cool steadiness that
was almost Oriental. Some of them were talking. But by far the greater
number leaned back almost immobile against their cushions; and their
pale faces showed nothing but the languid consciousness of being
observed and, perhaps, desired. Stout Neapolitan fathers, with bulging
eyes, immense brown cheeks, and peppery mustaches, were promenading
with their children and little dogs, looking lavishly contented
with themselves. Young girls went primly past, holding their narrow,
well-dressed heads with a certain virginal stiffness that was yet not
devoid of grace, and casting down eyes that were supposed not yet to be
enlightened. Their governesses and duennas accompanied them. Barefooted
brown children darted in and out, dodging pedestrians and horses.
Priests and black-robed students chattered vivaciously. School-boys with
peaked caps hastened homeward. The orphans from Queen Margherita’s Home,
higher up the hill, marched sturdily through the dust to the sound of a
boyish but desperately martial music. It was a wonderfully vivid world,
but the eyes of Artois wandered away from it, over the terraces, the
houses, and the tree-tops. Their gaze dropped down to the sea. Far off,
Capri rose out of the light mist produced by the heat. And beyond was
Sicily.
Why had that woman, Ruffo’s mother, wept just now? What was her tragedy?
he wondered. Accurately he recalled her face, broad now, and seamed with
the wrinkles brought by trouble and the years.
He recalled, too, Ruffo’s attitude as the boy listened to her vehement,
her almost violent harangue. How boyish, how careless it had been--yet
not unkind or even disrespectful, only wonderfully natural and
wonderfully young.
“He was the deathless boy.”
Suddenly those words started into Artois’ mind. Had he read them
somewhere? For a moment he wondered. Or had he heard them? They seemed
to suggest speech, a voice whose intonations he knew. His mind was still
fatigued by work, and would not be commanded by his will. Keeping his
eyes fixed on the ethereal outline of Capri, he strove to remember,
to find the book which had contained these words and given them to his
eyes, or the voice that had spoken them and given them to his ears.
“He was the deathless boy.”
A piano-organ struck up below him, a little way up the hill to the
right, and above its hard accompaniment there rose a powerful tenor
voice singing. The song must have been struck forcibly upon some part
of his brain that was sleeping, must have summoned it to activity. For
instantly, ere the voice had sung the first verse, he saw imaginatively
a mountain top in Sicily, evening light--such as was then shining over
and transfiguring Capri--and a woman, Hermione. And he heard her voice,
very soft, with a strange depth and stillness in it, saying those words:
“He was the deathless boy.”
Of course! How could he have forgotten? They had been said of Maurice
Delarey. And now idly, strangely, he had recalled them as he thought of
Ruffo’s young and careless attitude by the table of the ristorante that
afternoon.
The waiter, coming presently to bring the French Signore the plate of
oysters from Fusaro, which he had ordered as the prelude to his dinner,
was surprised by the deep gravity of his face, and said:
“Don’t you like ‘A Mergellina,’ Signore? We are all mad about it. And it
won the first prize at last year’s festa of Piedigrotta.”
“Comment donc?” exclaimed Artois, as if startled. “What?--no--yes. I
like it. It’s a capital song. Lemon? That’s right--and red pepper. Va
bene!”
And he bent over his plate rather hurriedly and began to eat.
The piano-organ and the singing voice died away down the hill, going
towards Mergellina.
But the effect, curious and surely unreasonable, of the song remained.
Often, while he ate, Artois turned his eyes towards the mountain of
Capri, and each time that he did so he saw, beyond it and its circling
sea, Sicily, Monte Amato, the dying lights on Etna, the evening star
above its plume of smoke, the figure of a woman set in the shadow of her
sorrow, yet almost terribly serene; and then another woman, sitting at a
table, vehemently talking, then bowing down her head passionately as if
in angry grief.
When he had finished his dinner the sun had set, and night had dropped
down softly over the Bay. Capri had disappeared. The long serpent of
lights had uncoiled itself along the sea. Down below, very far down,
there was the twang and the thin, acute whine of guitars and mandolines,
the throbbing cry of Southern voices. The stars were out in a deep
sky of bloomy purple. There was no chill in the air, but a voluptuous,
brooding warmth, that shed over the city and the waters a luxurious
benediction, giving absolution, surely, to all the sins, to all the
riotous follies of the South.
Artois rested his arms on the balustrade.
The ristorante was nearly full now, gay with lights and with a tempest
of talk. The waiter came to ask if the Signore would take coffee.
Artois hesitated a moment, then shook his head. He realized that his
nerves had been tried enough in these last days and nights. He must let
them rest for a while.
The waiter went away, and he turned once more towards the sea. To-night
he felt the wonder of Italy, of this part of the land and of its people,
as he had not felt it before, in a new and, as it seemed to him, a
mysterious way. A very modern man and, in his art, a realist, to-night
there was surely something very young alert within him, something of
vague sentimentality that was like an echo from Byronic days. He felt
over-shadowed, but not unpleasantly, by a dim and exquisite melancholy,
in which he thought of nature and of human nature pathetically, linking
them together; those singing voices with the stars, the women who leaned
on balconies to listen with the sea that was murmuring below them, the
fishermen upon that sea with the deep and marvellous sky that watched
their labors.
In a beautiful and almost magical sadness he too was one with the night,
this night in Italy. It held him softly in its arms. A golden sadness
streamed from the stars. The voices below expressed it. The fishermen’s
torches in the Bay, those travelling lights that are as the eyes of the
South searching for charmed things in secret places, lifted the sorrows
of earth towards the stars, and they were golden too. There was a joy
even in the tears wept on such a night as this.
He loved detail. It was, perhaps, his fault to love it too much. But now
he realized that the magician, Night, knew better than he what were the
qualities of perfection. She had changed Naples into a diaper of jewels
sparkling softly in the void. He knew that behind that lacework of
jewels there were hotels, gaunt and discolored houses full of poverty,
shame, and wickedness, galleries in which men hunted the things
that gratify their lusts, alleys infected with disease and filth
indescribable. He knew it, but he no longer felt it. The glamour of the
magician was upon him. Perhaps behind the stars there were terrors,
too. But who, looking upon them, could believe it? Detail might create
a picture; its withdrawal let in upon the soul the spirit light of the
true magic.
It was a mistake to search too much, to draw too near, to seek always to
see clearly.
The Night taught that in Italy, and many things not to be clothed with
words.
Reluctantly at last he lifted his arms from the balcony rail and got up
to leave the restaurant. He dreaded the bustle of the street. As he came
out into it he heard the sharp “Ting! Ting!” of a tram-bell higher up
the hill, and stepped aside to let the tram go by. Idly he looked at it
as it approached. He was still in the vague, the almost sentimental mood
that had come upon him with the night. The tram came up level with him
and slipped slowly by. There was a number of people in it, but on the
last seat one woman sat alone. He saw her clearly as she passed, and
recognized Hermione.
She did not see him. She was looking straight before her.
“Ah-ah! Ah-ah!”
A shower of objurgations in the Neapolitan dialect fell upon Artois from
the box of a carriage coming up the hill. He jumped back and gained
the path. There again he stood still. The sweet and half-melancholy
vagueness had quite left him now. The sight of his friend had swept it
away. Why was she going to Mergellina at that hour? And why did she look
like that?
And he thought of the expression he had seen on her face as the tram
slipped by, an expression surely of excitement; but also a furtive
expression.
Artois had seen Hermione in all her moods, and hers was a very changeful
face. But never before had he seen her look furtive. Nor could he have
conceived it possible that she could look so.
Perhaps the lights had deceived him. And he had only seen her for an
instant.
But why was she going to Mergellina?
Then suddenly it occurred to him that she might be going to Naples, not
to Mergellina at all. He knew no reason why her destination should be
Mergellina. He began to walk down the hill rather quickly. Some hundreds
of yards below the Ristorante della Stella there is a narrow flight of
steps between high walls and houses, which leads eventually down to the
sea at a point where there are usually two or three boats waiting for
hire. Artois, when he started, had no intention of going to sea that
night, but when he reached the steps he paused, and finally turned from
the path and began to descend them.
He had realized that he was really in pursuit, and abruptly relinquished
his purpose. Why should he wish to interfere with an intention of
Hermione’s that night?
He would return to Naples by sea.
As he came in sight of the water there rose up to him in a light tenor
voice a melodious cry:
“Barca! Barca!”
He answered the call.
“Barca!”
The sailor who was below came gayly to meet him.
“It is a lovely night for the Signore. I could take the Signore to
Sorrento or to Capri to-night.”
He held Artois by the right arm, gently assisting him into the
broad-bottomed boat.
“I only want to go to Naples.”
“To which landing, Signore?”
“The Vittoria. But go quietly and keep near the shore. Go round as near
as you can to the Mergellina.”
“Va bene, Signore.”
They slipped out, with a delicious, liquid sound, upon the moving
silence of the sea.