The _Fretta_ rushed straight towards the sunset, like some little
water-creature magnetised by light. On either side of the wheel,
opposite each other, Sophy and Amaldi sat gazing at the gorgeous,
cloud-suffused sky. They had both thrown aside their hats. His face had
a new, boyish look with his hair blown back by the wind. It was still so
warm in the mellow glow from the sunset, that he had also taken off his
coat. Sophy liked his slight figure freed of the dark-blue coat. It,
too, looked boyish somehow. This pleased her. Sometimes his grave
stillness almost made her nervous. There seemed to be so much at work
under the smooth surface. She thought that he was rather like a still,
dark, mountain pool. One saw reflections so clearly--but never what was
really in the depths of the pool.
But now some quickening change had come over him and his face looked
eager, joyous--the face of one who could be a delightful companion. His
eyes seemed to have dismissed more serious thoughts.
The sun, with disk hidden behind a mass of purple cloud, sent forth vast
spokes of light on every side; and this immense, fiery wheel, whose axle
was the hidden sun, whose tyre the extreme round of pale blue air, made
Sophy cry out:
"There 'tarry the wheels of his chariot'! Apollo's revealing himself to
me because I'm a good Pagan!"
"_Are_ you a 'good Pagan'?" said Amaldi, smiling. "Then you shouldn't
have dealings with the priesthood that have stolen his rays to set round
the vessel sacred to another god."
She shook her head at him, smiling, too.
"No, no. I won't let you quarrel with me to-day. It has all been too
beautiful."
"I couldn't quarrel with you," he said, "even if you let me--even if you
insisted on keeping a pet priest. Or, yes--then I might be tempted to
'quarrel'--though I'd have no right to."
"Friendship gives rights. We agreed to be friends long ago--in England,"
answered Sophy happily.
Then she looked again at the golden wheel that filled the west.
"The clouds are beautiful--but do you think they mean rain?" she asked
rather anxiously.
"So our peasants say," replied Amaldi. "They have a rhyme that goes:
'_Sol che varda in dree, Acqua ai pe_'-'A sun that peeps backward, water
over the feet.'"
"Oh, I love this dialect. Would it be _very_ hard to learn?"
"But you should learn Italian, not dialect," he said, smiling.
"I should like to know both. I'd love to talk to the people in their own
language. Is that very hard to do? Steering, I mean. May I try?"
He showed her how the wheel worked, indicating a white house far away as
a point for her to steer by.
"Oh, how nice! How well she answers--like a little water-horse to a
bridle!"
She was charmed to feel how the _Fretta_ glided this way or that at the
lightest touch. They had now reached a part of the Lake, near Santa
Catterina, where at this hour there is no faintest stir of air. The
water spread beneath them so still, so clear, that it was almost as if
they were rushing through a golden vacuum. Only the arrowy silver of the
_Fretta_'s bow-waves showed that the element through which they fled was
water and not air.
Suddenly the Intragnola--the land breeze that blows from shore near
Intra--met them full. The sky was fast fading.
"Hadn't you better let me get you that cloak?" said Amaldi. As she
turned to let him put his mother's cloak about her shoulders, his heart
flashed hot on a sudden. Just so might he be folding a wrap of his
mother's about her--if she were his wife. It seemed subtly, wildly sweet
to him to see her nestling there in that cloak so intimately associated
with his mother--with his daily, familiar life.
"She is so sweet--your mother," said Sophy, looking down at the warm
folds. "It was dear of her to think of lending me this cloak. I almost
envy you your mother."
"And--yours?" asked Amaldi softly.
"She died when I was a young girl."
"That is very sad," said Amaldi, but the tone of his voice was better
than the most florid words of sympathy.
All at once Sophy started. She had given him back the steering-wheel
some time ago. She clasped her hands under the folds of the grey cloak.
"Marchese! Your dinner! How will you get your dinner!" she cried
regretfully. "I am so selfish--I had forgotten all about your dinner!
There will be nothing--nothing at all for you to eat at--at my villa. I
told Luigi not to order dinner--just to have some milk and bread and
fruit for me."
Amaldi reassured her, smiling.
"There are dozens of places where I can dine capitally," he said. "The
'Isola Pescatori'--just ahead of us to the left there--that is a
delightful place to dine. You must go there with us--Baldi and me--some
time---- That is, if you'd care to----"
"Oh, I should--of course. But I can't think of anything now but that
you'll be hours late for your dinner. It's so far yet to Ghiffa."
"We shall be there in half an hour--easily," he consoled her. He glanced
at his watch. "It's not yet half-past seven."
But Sophy felt very worried. She was essentially the old-fashioned woman
where the regularity of masculine meals was concerned. In regard to
food, men impressed her as machines that would run down or collapse
altogether unless stoked, so to speak, at exact intervals. Women were
flightier, more happy-go-lucky creatures, when the solemnities of eating
were in question. She had been thoroughly grounded in this conception of
the matter by her husband. Amaldi guessed as much.
"My dear lady, if only you could know how often I make a meal off of rye
bread and cheese; when I'm out for a day's sailing," he said. "Really my
dinner hasn't the gigantic importance for me that your kindness
imagines."
He spoke rather stilted English sometimes when he was serious as now,
but Sophy loved it, because he was trying to make her feel less
self-reproachful.
"It's very, very good of you, Marchese, to want to make me feel less
dreadfully selfish," she now said. "But"--her tone was mournful--"these
hours on the water have made _me_ dreadfully hungry--so I can imagine
what _you_ are feeling!"
Amaldi laughed. At the same instant he had a veritable inspiration. Her
remark in reference to the servants showed him how far she was from any
conventional pruderies.
"I'll tell you what we can do--if you approve," he said. "The Isola
Pescatori is just over there to our left. Do you see? Where the lights
cluster in a little bunch there? We could land there and have an
excellent dinner."
"Oh, what fun! I should love it!" she cried, without an instant's
hesitation.
"_Benone! Benissimo!_" he said, lapsing into Italian as he always did
when excited or deeply moved.
It was now after eight. The purplish dusk was velvet overhead, and
silken smooth below. Stresa to the left, and Pallanza far away to the
northeast, fretted the twilight with points of orange. Between the
scudding clouds stars flitted in and out like fireflies. There was the
soft, orange glow from a rising moon behind the Sasso di Perro. Its huge
crouching bulk seemed steaming with phosphorus.
Now they were under the lee of the little island. Sophy saw the
clustered houses jutting above her, and a wide terrace, brightly
lighted, under its pergola of grape-vines. People were eating there at
little tables. She could see their heads above the wall. They had dined
already, for it was fruit and nuts that they were lifting to their
mouths. It seemed droll to see these greedy heads peeping above the
terrace.
They got out on the rough, stone quay, and climbing a stairway found
themselves on the terrace. It was very gay, with electric lights hung
from the lattice of the pergola. Half the terrace was uncovered. Sophy
hoped that they would sit at one of the tables out there under the
violet-blue, star-freckled sky. The Padrone came forward, followed by
one of his daughters. He was a much travelled man--had been a head
waiter in Vienna, London, New York. The daughter had a sweet, long,
pensive face under a big black pompadour.
He greeted Amaldi with respectful effusion. How well the Marchese
looked! He had not seen the Marchese for some years, but truly the
Marchese seemed to grow younger. And was this the Marchese's Signora
Marchesa? He had the honour to felicitate----
"Babbo! _Babbo!_" whispered the daughter. She had caught hold of her
parent's coat. She gave it two agitated but peremptory jerks as she
spoke. Her "Babbo" had been so long away from home that he did not
realise that the young Marchese's "Signora" was most unlikely to be with
him. The Padrone retreated backwards, saying, "Prego! Prego!"
confusedly.
They chose a table close to the edge of the terrace, near a big
terra-cotta vase filled with scarlet geraniums. The blood-red blossoms,
gleaming with electric light, stood out against the violet dusk. All
Italy was in these flowers burning against the night sky.
The meal that followed was veiled with poetry for them both. For Amaldi
because he loved her; for Sophy because she loved Italy. They were also
very hungry, and it is odd how it increases sympathy for two young and
hungry people to eat together. Sophy felt that she had known Amaldi a
long time when they rose from the little iron table on the terrace of
Isola Pescatori.
They went for a stroll through the crooked streets. As they passed the
Village Church--Sophy hesitated, then entered. He followed and they
stood side by side, glancing about them. Three peasant women and a man
were kneeling on the dark benches. The women glanced up at the
_forestieri_, frankly curious; only the man kept his anxious, faded blue
eyes on the image of the Virgin, that, life-sized and brightly tinted,
held out compassionate hands towards the suppliant. His lips moved
rapidly, without ceasing. Sophy imagined that he was pleading for the
life of some one dear to him--a little child maybe. She just touched
Amaldi's arm, and they went out again.
"I'm afraid it jarred on you--my going in there," she said softly,
looking up into his face in the gloom of the narrow street. "But the
places where the poor worship always draw me--they seem so real--I can't
explain--but they move me--deeply."
"I understand," said Amaldi. "It is so with me, too."
"But I thought----"
She broke off.
"The faith of the simple-hearted is always moving," he said. "It isn't
the faith of the people I question. It is the good faith of the Roman
Catholic Church towards the people."
"I see," Sophy said thoughtfully. Then she turned to him again.
"You are so much more serious about it than the other Italians I've
known, who were anti-clerical. They seemed just to shrug their shoulders
over it--took it half laughingly."
"A man shouldn't take it with a shrug or half laughingly that the women
of his country are under the thumb of a hierarchy," said Amaldi with
some vehemence. "There is a great hour coming for women, all over the
world--yet a true Italian can't wish this for his country-women, as long
as their fuller power would be just another weapon in the hands of
priests."
"You look far ahead, Marchese. Your mother told me to-day of another
movement that you foresaw. Something about 'Iconoclasts.'"
"Yes," he said, "lands that have been saturated with beauty as Italy has
must precipitate some reactionary movement sooner or later. First we
have the mere inertia of saturation--the numbness to beauty--the
incapacity to produce or even appreciate it. Next will come the positive
reaction--the rise of the Image-Breakers. What queer name they will call
themselves by I can't divine--but I can forefeel their rising."
Sophy walked on in silence for a moment, then she said:
"It must be wonderful to have such a country as Italy for your
birthright, and to love it as much as you do."
He glanced at her with a changed look.
"Yes--I love it," he said. But he was thinking how much more than any
country he loved her.
When they left, Signorina Rosalia accompanied them down to the little
landing. The engine of the _Fretta_ took up its busy hum again. Swiftly
they backed away from Isola Pescatori, and spun round towards Pallanza.
"_Buona sera, Signora! Buona sera, Signor Marchese!_" called the
Padrone's daughter in her high, fluting voice. She stood on the little
quay in the moonlight till they were some distance out upon the lake.
"_Gli amanti--gli amanti_," she was thinking sentimentally. She stood
there thrilled with the romance that she felt rushing away from her into
the ecstatic moonlight....
And out there in the soft magnificence of the summer night Sophy and
Amaldi sat silent, with only the little steering wheel between them.
They felt the sense of exhilaration that comes from being close to the
prow of a boat speeding low on the water: they were so intimately breast
to breast with the vastness of air and lake. Stresa lay behind them, a
tangle of yellow sparks. The Barromean Islands brooded sleeping on their
shadows. Pallanza was a faint spangle to the left. Far away in front,
towards Switzerland, what seemed a silvery mist shaped like mountains,
floated against the pearl dust of the sky.
Sophy leaned towards him suddenly. Her eyes looked dark and mysterious
under her white, moonlit brow.
"Need we go quite so fast?" she said. "It seems a pity to hurry through
such beauty."
Her obvious faith in him gave him joy and pain at the same time. If she
had felt one hundredth part for him what he felt for her, she could not
have suggested so simply a thing that meant their being longer together.
He set the engine to a slower speed. They had passed Pallanza, and were
running near enough the shore to see the ghostly loveliness of white
roses and oleanders pouring above the walls of villa gardens. Where the
shore was wild and overgrown, tangles of honeysuckle showered them with
voluptuous fragrance. Above, on the hills, the little villages shone in
the moonlight, like handfuls of scattered mica.
Now they had passed Intra. The dark foliage of the Villa Bianca came
into view. They could see the colonnade of its old eucalyptus trees,
above the retaining-wall of granite.
"Oh, why should such lovely hours have to end--when they need not,"
sighed Sophy. "I hate convention when it lops off such hours as these
like a grudging old Procrustes. Don't you hate the sheer tyranny of
convention, Marchese?"
"Indeed--yes," said Amaldi.
Glancing back at their evening together, as he spoke, Sophy thought that
he had been unusually taciturn. He was not a talkative man, but it
really seemed to her, now that she thought of it, that he had been
almost oddly silent most of the time. She wondered if he were worried
about something.
High up above the thirty-foot retaining-wall, behind its palms and
pollard acacias, the chalet was pouring forth a stream of light from its
open door. The faithful Luigi was evidently sitting up for her.
Amaldi stepped out and held out his hand to her. Sophy was close to
Amaldi on the narrow plank of the _banchetta_. That look in his face
hurt her. Then his eyes turned suddenly away.
"Thank your mother for me, please, Marchese," she said, "for the lovely
day she gave me, and for lending me her cloak."
She slipped it from her shoulders as she spoke and put it, all warm
with herself, into Amaldi's arms. He shivered as he felt the warmth of
the folds under his hands. Murmuring some civil commonplace, he stood
aside to let her pass. She went up the little pathway followed by Luigi.
As she entered the doorway in the terrace-wall, the clock in the
Campanile of San Maurizio, on the hill above, began slowly striking
midnight. Amaldi stood until it had finished, then started the
_Fretta_'s engine. He sat with one hand upon the wheel, the other
grasping the folds of the grey cloak. Suddenly he bent and pressed his
face upon it. It was still warm, and this warmth gave forth a fresh,
faint scent of citron....