"Vedi Napoli e poi mori."
The first time we got into conversation was in the National Museum
in Naples, in the rooms on the ground floor containing the famous
collection of bronzes from Herculaneum and Pompeii: that marvellous
legacy of antique art whose delicate perfection has been preserved for
us by the catastrophic fury of a volcano.
He addressed me first, over the celebrated Resting Hermes which we had
been looking at side by side. He said the right things about that wholly
admirable piece. Nothing profound. His taste was natural rather than
cultivated. He had obviously seen many fine things in his life
and appreciated them: but he had no jargon of a dilettante or the
connoisseur. A hateful tribe. He spoke like a fairly intelligent man of
the world, a perfectly unaffected gentleman.
We had known each other by sight for some few days past. Staying in the
same hotel--good, but not extravagantly up to date--I had noticed him
in the vestibule going in and out. I judged he was an old and valued
client. The bow of the hotel-keeper was cordial in its deference, and
he acknowledged it with familiar courtesy. For the servants he was Il
Conde. There was some squabble over a man's parasol--yellow silk with
white lining sort of thing--the waiters had discovered abandoned outside
the dining-room door. Our gold-laced door-keeper recognized it and I
heard him directing one of the lift boys to run after Il Conde with it.
Perhaps he was the only Count staying in the hotel, or perhaps he had
the distinction of being the Count par excellence, conferred upon him
because of his tried fidelity to the house.
Having conversed at the Museo--(and by the by he had expressed his
dislike of the busts and statues of Roman emperors in the gallery of
marbles: their faces were too vigorous, too pronounced for him)--having
conversed already in the morning I did not think I was intruding when in
the evening, finding the dining-room very full, I proposed to share his
little table. Judging by the quiet urbanity of his consent he did not
think so either. His smile was very attractive.
He dined in an evening waistcoat and a "smoking" (he called it so) with
a black tie. All this of very good cut, not new--just as these things
should be. He was, morning or evening, very correct in his dress. I have
no doubt that his whole existence had been correct, well ordered and
conventional, undisturbed by startling events. His white hair brushed
upwards off a lofty forehead gave him the air of an idealist, of an
imaginative man. His white moustache, heavy but carefully trimmed and
arranged, was not unpleasantly tinted a golden yellow in the middle. The
faint scent of some very good perfume, and of good cigars (that last
an odour quite remarkable to come upon in Italy) reached me across the
table. It was in his eyes that his age showed most. They were a little
weary with creased eyelids. He must have been sixty or a couple of years
more. And he was communicative. I would not go so far as to call it
garrulous--but distinctly communicative.
He had tried various climates, of Abbazia, of the Riviera, of other
places, too, he told me, but the only one which suited him was the
climate of the Gulf of Naples. The ancient Romans, who, he pointed out
to me, were men expert in the art of living, knew very well what they
were doing when they built their villas on these shores, in Baiae, in
Vico, in Capri. They came down to this seaside in search of health,
bringing with them their trains of mimes and flute-players to amuse
their leisure. He thought it extremely probable that the Romans of
the higher classes were specially predisposed to painful rheumatic
affections.
This was the only personal opinion I heard him express. It was based
on no special erudition. He knew no more of the Romans than an average
informed man of the world is expected to know. He argued from personal
experience. He had suffered himself from a painful and dangerous
rheumatic affection till he found relief in this particular spot of
Southern Europe.
This was three years ago, and ever since he had taken up his quarters
on the shores of the gulf, either in one of the hotels in Sorrento or
hiring a small villa in Capri. He had a piano, a few books: picked
up transient acquaintances of a day, week, or month in the stream of
travellers from all Europe. One can imagine him going out for his
walks in the streets and lanes, becoming known to beggars, shopkeepers,
children, country people; talking amiably over the walls to the
contadini--and coming back to his rooms or his villa to sit before the
piano, with his white hair brushed up and his thick orderly moustache,
"to make a little music for myself." And, of course, for a change
there was Naples near by--life, movement, animation, opera. A little
amusement, as he said, is necessary for health. Mimes and flute-players,
in fact. Only unlike the magnates of ancient Rome, he had no affairs
of the city to call him away from these moderate delights. He had no
affairs at all. Probably he had never had any grave affairs to attend
to in his life. It was a kindly existence, with its joys and sorrows
regulated by the course of Nature--marriages, births, deaths--ruled by
the prescribed usages of good society and protected by the State.
He was a widower; but in the months of July and August he ventured to
cross the Alps for six weeks on a visit to his married daughter. He
told me her name. It was that of a very aristocratic family. She had
a castle--in Bohemia, I think. This is as near as I ever came to
ascertaining his nationality. His own name, strangely enough, he never
mentioned. Perhaps he thought I had seen it on the published list. Truth
to say, I never looked. At any rate, he was a good European--he spoke
four languages to my certain knowledge--and a man of fortune. Not
of great fortune evidently and appropriately. I imagine that to be
extremely rich would have appeared to him improper, outre--too blatant
altogether. And obviously, too, the fortune was not of his making. The
making of a fortune cannot be achieved without some roughness. It is
a matter of temperament. His nature was too kindly for strife. In the
course of conversation he mentioned his estate quite by the way, in
reference to that painful and alarming rheumatic affection. One year,
staying incautiously beyond the Alps as late as the middle of September,
he had been laid up for three months in that lonely country house
with no one but his valet and the caretaking couple to attend to him.
Because, as he expressed it, he "kept no establishment there." He
had only gone for a couple of days to confer with his land agent. He
promised himself never to be so imprudent in the future. The first weeks
of September would find him on the shores of his beloved gulf.
Sometimes in travelling one comes upon such lonely men, whose only
business is to wait for the unavoidable. Deaths and marriages have made
a solitude round them, and one really cannot blame their endeavours to
make the waiting as easy as possible. As he remarked to me, "At my time
of life freedom from physical pain is a very important matter."
It must not be imagined that he was a wearisome hypochondriac. He was
really much too well-bred to be a nuisance. He had an eye for the
small weaknesses of humanity. But it was a good-natured eye. He made
a restful, easy, pleasant companion for the hours between dinner and
bedtime. We spent three evenings together, and then I had to leave
Naples in a hurry to look after a friend who had fallen seriously ill
in Taormina. Having nothing to do, Il Conde came to see me off at the
station. I was somewhat upset, and his idleness was always ready to take
a kindly form. He was by no means an indolent man.
He went along the train peering into the carriages for a good seat for
me, and then remained talking cheerily from below. He declared he would
miss me that evening very much and announced his intention of going
after dinner to listen to the band in the public garden, the Villa
Nazionale. He would amuse himself by hearing excellent music and looking
at the best society. There would be a lot of people, as usual.
I seem to see him yet--his raised face with a friendly smile under the
thick moustaches, and his kind, fatigued eyes. As the train began to
move, he addressed me in two languages: first in French, saying,
"Bon voyage"; then, in his very good, somewhat emphatic
English, encouragingly, because he could see my concern: "All
will--be--well--yet!"
My friend's illness having taken a decidedly favourable turn, I returned
to Naples on the tenth day. I cannot say I had given much thought to Il
Conde during my absence, but entering the dining-room I looked for him
in his habitual place. I had an idea he might have gone back to Sorrento
to his piano and his books and his fishing. He was great friends with
all the boatmen, and fished a good deal with lines from a boat. But I
made out his white head in the crowd of heads, and even from a distance
noticed something unusual in his attitude. Instead of sitting erect,
gazing all round with alert urbanity, he drooped over his plate. I stood
opposite him for some time before he looked up, a little wildly, if such
a strong word can be used in connection with his correct appearance.
"Ah, my dear sir! Is it you?" he greeted me. "I hope all is well."
He was very nice about my friend. Indeed, he was always nice, with the
niceness of people whose hearts are genuinely humane. But this time it
cost him an effort. His attempts at general conversation broke down into
dullness. It occurred to me he might have been indisposed. But before I
could frame the inquiry he muttered:
"You find me here very sad."
"I am sorry for that," I said. "You haven't had bad news, I hope?"
It was very kind of me to take an interest. No. It was not that. No
bad news, thank God. And he became very still as if holding his
breath. Then, leaning forward a little, and in an odd tone of awed
embarrassment, he took me into his confidence.
"The truth is that I have had a very--a very--how shall I
say?--abominable adventure happen to me."
The energy of the epithet was sufficiently startling in that man of
moderate feelings and toned-down vocabulary. The word unpleasant I
should have thought would have fitted amply the worst experience likely
to befall a man of his stamp. And an adventure, too. Incredible! But
it is in human nature to believe the worst; and I confess I eyed him
stealthily, wondering what he had been up to. In a moment, however,
my unworthy suspicions vanished. There was a fundamental refinement of
nature about the man which made me dismiss all idea of some more or less
disreputable scrape.
"It is very serious. Very serious." He went on, nervously. "I will tell
you after dinner, if you will allow me."
I expressed my perfect acquiescence by a little bow, nothing more.
I wished him to understand that I was not likely to hold him to that
offer, if he thought better of it later on. We talked of indifferent
things, but with a sense of difficulty quite unlike our former easy,
gossipy intercourse. The hand raising a piece of bread to his lips, I
noticed, trembled slightly. This symptom, in regard to my reading of the
man, was no less than startling.
In the smoking-room he did not hang back at all. Directly we had taken
our usual seats he leaned sideways over the arm of his chair and looked
straight into my eyes earnestly.
"You remember," he began, "that day you went away? I told you then I
would go to the Villa Nazionale to hear some music in the evening."
I remembered. His handsome old face, so fresh for his age, unmarked by
any trying experience, appeared haggard for an instant. It was like the
passing of a shadow. Returning his steadfast gaze, I took a sip of my
black coffee. He was systematically minute in his narrative, simply in
order, I think, not to let his excitement get the better of him.
After leaving the railway station, he had an ice, and read the paper in
a cafe. Then he went back to the hotel, dressed for dinner, and dined
with a good appetite. After dinner he lingered in the hall (there were
chairs and tables there) smoking his cigar; talked to the little girl
of the Primo Tenore of the San Carlo theatre, and exchanged a few words
with that "amiable lady," the wife of the Primo Tenore. There was no
performance that evening, and these people were going to the Villa also.
They went out of the hotel. Very well.
At the moment of following their example--it was half-past nine
already--he remembered he had a rather large sum of money in his
pocket-book. He entered, therefore, the office and deposited the greater
part of it with the book-keeper of the hotel. This done, he took a
carozella and drove to the seashore. He got out of the cab and entered
the Villa on foot from the Largo di Vittoria end.
He stared at me very hard. And I understood then how really
impressionable he was. Every small fact and event of that evening stood
out in his memory as if endowed with mystic significance. If he did not
mention to me the colour of the pony which drew the carozella, and the
aspect of the man who drove, it was a mere oversight arising from his
agitation, which he repressed manfully.
He had then entered the Villa Nazionale from the Largo di Vittoria end.
The Villa Nazionale is a public pleasure-ground laid out in grass plots,
bushes, and flower-beds between the houses of the Riviera di Chiaja and
the waters of the bay. Alleys of trees, more or less parallel, stretch
its whole length--which is considerable. On the Riviera di Chiaja side
the electric tramcars run close to the railings. Between the garden and
the sea is the fashionable drive, a broad road bordered by a low wall,
beyond which the Mediterranean splashes with gentle murmurs when the
weather is fine.
As life goes on late at night in Naples, the broad drive was all astir
with a brilliant swarm of carriage lamps moving in pairs, some creeping
slowly, others running rapidly under the thin, motionless line of
electric lamps defining the shore. And a brilliant swarm of stars hung
above the land humming with voices, piled up with houses, glittering
with lights--and over the silent flat shadows of the sea.
The gardens themselves are not very well lit. Our friend went forward in
the warm gloom, his eyes fixed upon a distant luminous region extending
nearly across the whole width of the Villa, as if the air had glowed
there with its own cold, bluish, and dazzling light. This magic spot,
behind the black trunks of trees and masses of inky foliage, breathed
out sweet sounds mingled with bursts of brassy roar, sudden clashes of
metal, and grave, vibrating thuds.
As he walked on, all these noises combined together into a piece of
elaborate music whose harmonious phrases came persuasively through a
great disorderly murmur of voices and shuffling of feet on the gravel of
that open space. An enormous crowd immersed in the electric light, as
if in a bath of some radiant and tenuous fluid shed upon their heads by
luminous globes, drifted in its hundreds round the band. Hundreds
more sat on chairs in more or less concentric circles, receiving
unflinchingly the great waves of sonority that ebbed out into the
darkness. The Count penetrated the throng, drifted with it in tranquil
enjoyment, listening and looking at the faces. All people of good
society: mothers with their daughters, parents and children, young men
and young women all talking, smiling, nodding to each other. Very many
pretty faces, and very many pretty toilettes. There was, of course, a
quantity of diverse types: showy old fellows with white moustaches, fat
men, thin men, officers in uniform; but what predominated, he told
me, was the South Italian type of young man, with a colourless, clear
complexion, red lips, jet-black little moustache and liquid black eyes
so wonderfully effective in leering or scowling.
Withdrawing from the throng, the Count shared a little table in front
of the cafe with a young man of just such a type. Our friend had some
lemonade. The young man was sitting moodily before an empty glass.
He looked up once, and then looked down again. He also tilted his hat
forward. Like this--
The Count made the gesture of a man pulling his hat down over his brow,
and went on:
"I think to myself: he is sad; something is wrong with him; young men
have their troubles. I take no notice of him, of course. I pay for my
lemonade, and go away."
Strolling about in the neighbourhood of the band, the Count thinks he
saw twice that young man wandering alone in the crowd. Once their eyes
met. It must have been the same young man, but there were so many there
of that type that he could not be certain. Moreover, he was not very
much concerned except in so far that he had been struck by the marked,
peevish discontent of that face.
Presently, tired of the feeling of confinement one experiences in a
crowd, the Count edged away from the band. An alley, very sombre by
contrast, presented itself invitingly with its promise of solitude
and coolness. He entered it, walking slowly on till the sound of the
orchestra became distinctly deadened. Then he walked back and turned
about once more. He did this several times before he noticed that there
was somebody occupying one of the benches.
The spot being midway between two lamp-posts the light was faint.
The man lolled back in the corner of the seat, his legs stretched out,
his arms folded and his head drooping on his breast. He never stirred,
as though he had fallen asleep there, but when the Count passed by next
time he had changed his attitude. He sat leaning forward. His elbows
were propped on his knees, and his hands were rolling a cigarette. He
never looked up from that occupation.
The Count continued his stroll away from the band. He returned slowly,
he said. I can imagine him enjoying to the full, but with his usual
tranquillity, the balminess of this southern night and the sounds of
music softened delightfully by the distance.
Presently, he approached for the third time the man on the garden seat,
still leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. It was a dejected
pose. In the semi-obscurity of the alley his high shirt collar and his
cuffs made small patches of vivid whiteness. The Count said that he had
noticed him getting up brusquely as if to walk away, but almost before
he was aware of it the man stood before him asking in a low, gentle tone
whether the signore would have the kindness to oblige him with a light.
The Count answered this request by a polite "Certainly," and dropped his
hands with the intention of exploring both pockets of his trousers for
the matches.
"I dropped my hands," he said, "but I never put them in my pockets. I
felt a pressure there--"
He put the tip of his finger on a spot close under his breastbone,
the very spot of the human body where a Japanese gentleman begins the
operations of the Harakiri, which is a form of suicide following
upon dishonour, upon an intolerable outrage to the delicacy of one's
feelings.
"I glance down," the Count continued in an awestruck voice, "and what do
I see? A knife! A long knife--"
"You don't mean to say," I exclaimed, amazed, "that you have been held
up like this in the Villa at half-past ten o'clock, within a stone's
throw of a thousand people!"
He nodded several times, staring at me with all his might.
"The clarionet," he declared, solemnly, "was finishing his solo, and I
assure you I could hear every note. Then the band crashed fortissimo,
and that creature rolled its eyes and gnashed its teeth hissing at me
with the greatest ferocity, 'Be silent! No noise or--'"