“I don’t care,” said she.
“Would you like to go the play?”
“If you wish.”
“What do you wish?”
“I think I should like to stay here a little longer. It is
pleasant.”
We leaned on the parapet, close to each other. Her face was very pale in
the starlight; her eyes were infinitely deep, and dark, and tender. One
of her little hands lay on the stone wall, like a white flower. I took
it. It was warm and soft. She did not attempt to withdraw it. I bent
over it and kissed it. I kissed it many times. Then I kissed her lips.
“Zabetta—I love you—I love you,” I murmured fervently.—Don’t
imagine that I didn’t mean it. It was April, and I was twenty.
“I love you, Zabetta. Dearest little Zabetta! I love you so.”
“É vero?” she questioned, scarcely above her breath.
“Oh, si; é vero, vero, vero,” I asseverated. “And you? And
you?”
“Yes, I love you,” she whispered.
And then I could say no more. The ecstasy that filled my heart was too
poignant. We stood there speechless, hand in hand, and breathed the air
of heaven.
By-and-by Zabetta drew her bunch of rosemary from her belt, and
divided it into two parts. One part she gave to me, the other she kept.
“Rosemary—it is for constancy,” she said. I pressed the cool herb
to my face for a moment, inhaling its bitter-sweet fragrance; then I
fastened it in my buttonhole. On my watch-chain I wore—what everybody
in Naples used to wear—a little coral hand, a little clenched coral
hand, holding a little golden dagger. I detached it now, and made
Zabetta take it. “Coral—that is also for constancy,” I reminded
her; “and besides, it protects one from the Evil Eye.” X
At last Zabetta asked me what time it was; and when she learned that it
was half-past nine, she insisted that she really must go home. “They
shut the outer door of the house we live in at ten o’clock, and I have
no key.”
“You can ring up the porter.”
“Oh, there is no porter.”
“But if we had gone to the theatre?”
“I should have had to leave you in the middle of the play.”
“Ah, well,” I consented; and we left the villa and took a cab.
“Are you happy, Zabetta?” I asked her, as the cab rattled us towards
our parting.
“Oh, so happy, so happy! I have never been so happy before.”
“Dearest Zabetta!”
“You will love me always?”
“Always, always.”
“We will see each other every day. We will see each other
to-morrow?”
“Oh, to-morrow!” I groaned suddenly, the actualities of life rushing
all at once upon my mind.
“What is it? What of to-morrow?”
“Oh, to-morrow, to-morrow!”
“What? What?” Her voice was breathless with suspense, with alarm.
“Oh, I had forgotten. You will think I am a beast.”
“What is it? For heaven’s sake, tell me.”
“You will think I am a beast. You will think I have deceived you.
To-morrow—I cannot help it—I am not my own master—I am summoned by
my parents—to-morrow I am going away—I am leaving Naples.”
“You are leaving Naples?”
“I am going to Paris.”
“To Paris?”
“Yes.”
There was a breathing-space of silence. Then, “Oh, Dio!” sobbed
Zabetta; and she began to cry as if her heart would break.
I seized her hands; I drew her to me. I tried to comfort her. But she
only cried and cried and cried.
“Zabetta... Zabetta.... Don’t cry... Forgive me.... Oh, don’t cry
like that.”
“Oh, Dio! Oh, caro Dio!” she sobbed.
“Zabetta—listen to me,” I began. “I have something to say to
you....”
“Cosa?” she asked faintly.
“Zabetta—do you really love me?”
“Oh, tanto, tanto!”
“Then, listen, Zabetta. If you really love me—come with me.”
“Come with you. How?”
“Come with me to Paris.”
“To Paris?”
“Yes, to-morrow.”
There was another instant of silence, and then again Zabetta began to
cry.
“Will you? Will you? Will you come with me to Paris?” I implored
her.
“Oh, I would, I would. But I can’t. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I can’t.”
“Why? Why can’t you?”
“Oh, my father—I cannot leave my father.”
“Your father? But—if you love me———”
“He is old. He is ill. He has no one but me. I cannot leave him.”
“Zabetta!”
“No, no. I cannot leave him. Oh, Dio mio!”
“But Zabetta————”
“No. It would be a sin. Oh, the worst of sins. He is old and ill. I
cannot leave him. Don’t ask me. It would be dreadful.”
“But then? Then what? What shall we do?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I wish I were dead.”
The cab came to a standstill, and Zabetta said, “Here we are.” I
helped her to descend. We were before a dark porte-cochêre, in some
dark back-street, high up the hillside.
“Addio,” said Zabetta, holding out her hand.
“You won’t come with me?”
“I can’t. I can’t. Addio.”
“Oh, Zabetta! Do you———Oh, say, say that you forgive me.”
“Yes. Addio.”
“And, Zabetta, you—you have my address. It is on the card I gave
you. If you ever need anything—if you are ever in trouble of any
kind—remember you have my address—you will write to me.”
“Yes. Addio.”
“Addio.”
She stood for a second, looking up at me from great brimming eyes, and
then she turned away and vanished in the darkness of the porte-cochère.
I got into the cab, and was driven to my hotel. XI
And here, one might have supposed, was an end of the episode; but no.
I went to Paris, I went to New York, I returned to Paris, I came on
to London; and in this journeying more than a year was lost. In the
beginning I had suffered as much as you could wish me in the way of
contrition, in the way of regret too. I blamed myself and pitied myself
with almost equal fervour. I had trifled with a gentle human heart;
I had been compelled to let a priceless human treasure slip from my
possession. But—I was twenty. And there were other girls in the world.
And a year is a long time, when we are twenty. Little by little the
image of Zabetta faded, faded. By the year’s end, I am afraid it had
become very pale indeed....
It was late June, and I was in London, when the post brought me a
letter. The letter bore an Italian stamp, and had originally
been directed to my old address in Paris. Thence (as the numerous
redirections on the big square foreign envelope attested) it had been
forwarded to New York; thence back again to Paris; and thence finally to
London.
The letter was written in the neatest of tiny copperplates; and this is
a translation of what it said:
“Dear Friend,—My poor father died last month in the German Hospital,
after an illness of twenty-one days. Pray for his soul.
“I am now alone and free, and if you still wish it, can come to you.
It was impossible for me to come when you asked me; but you have not
ceased to be my constant thought. I keep your coral hand.—Your ever
faithful Zabetta Collaluce.”
Enclosed in the letter there was a sprig of some dried,
bitter-sweet-smelling herb; and, in pencil, below the
signature—laboriously traced, as I could guess, from what I
had written for her on my visiting-card,—the English phrase:
“Rosemary—that’s for remembrance.”
The letter was dated early in May, which made it six weeks old.
What could I do? What answer could I send?
Of course, you know what I did do. I procrastinated and vacillated, and
ended by sending no answer at all. I could not write and say “Yes,
come to me.” But how could I write and say “No, do not come?"?
Besides, would she not have given up hoping for an answer, by this time?
It was six weeks since she had written. I tried to think that the worst
was over.
But my remorse took a new and a longer and a stronger lease of life.
A vision of Zabetta, pale, with anxious eyes, standing at her window,
waiting, waiting for a word that never came,—for months I could not
chase it from my conscience; it was years before it altogether ceased
its accusing visits. XII
And then, last night, after a perfectly usual London day and evening,
I went to bed and dreamed of her vividly; and all day long to-day the
fragrance of my dream has clung about me,—a bitter-sweet fragrance,
like that of rosemary itself. Where is Zabetta now? What is her life?
How have the years treated her?... In my dream she was still eighteen.
In reality—it is melancholy to think how far from eighteen she has had
leisure, since that April afternoon, to drift.
Youth faces forward, impatient of the present, panting to anticipate the
future. But we who have crossed a certain sad meridian, we turn our
gaze backwards, and tell the relentless gods what we would sacrifice to
recover a little of the past, one of those shining days when to us also
it was given to sojourn among the Fortunate Islands. Ah, si jeunesse
savait!...