Sophy felt very anxious when she learned that Cecil had not brought
either Gaynor or Anne Harding with him. The letter that she received
next morning from Anne did not reassure her: "Mr. Chesney has certainly
done wonderfully for such a short time," it said; "but _he's not out of
the woods yet_, by any _manner_ of means! I don't mean that he hasn't
stopped taking all drugs, but that he hasn't _stopped long enough to go
it alone_." (Anne was a great underscorer--her letters reminded Sophy of
her vehement, italicised speech.) "He should have me with him this
minute. He won't be _entirely_ safe for _two years_. But we could do
nothing. His constitution is _amazing_. He really _is_ well--in _a
way_--but he isn't near as strong yet a while as he _thinks_ he
is--either mentally or physically. Dr. Carfew was _much_ displeased by
his leaving so abruptly; but, as I said--we could do _nothing_. This is
a free country--worse luck for it in some ways!"
And yet Cecil certainly seemed normal in all respects. His good temper
over inconveniences was astonishing in so fastidious and pampered a man.
Never since he was twenty had he been without a skilled valet. Now he
put up with Luigi's amateurish ministrations, as though it were a sort
of lark to have his boots treed rights on lefts, and his ties, socks,
and handkerchiefs mingled confusedly. Luigi himself was fully aware of
his shortcomings. He was a finished butler, but had never valeted any
one. Still he was intelligent. "Direct me ... direct me, milor'," he
would plead. "I shall improve with time, like wine."
So, far from being irritated by the lake, Chesney seemed to feel its
charm strongly. He questioned Sophy about her life of the past two
months; expressed himself much touched by the kindness shown her by the
Marchesa.
"You must take me there," he said. "We'll hire a steam-launch of our own
for the rest of the time we're here--from what's-his-name--the man at
Stresa.... What did you call him?"
"Taroni," said Sophy.
It was the day after his arrival. She still felt rather stunned, as
though a bolt had struck the quiet house of her content. She felt
blasted by his renewed, torrential passion and the quintessential
strength of his personality. Fortunately for her, she could be merely
the leaf in the storm--had only to let it sweep her along without effort
on her part. The storm does not take account of the leaves it whirls in
its imperious grasp. Chesney, in his present volcanic gusto of renewed
health, would as soon have thought of pausing to ask whether the partner
in his feast of love shared his transports as an eagle would think of
inquiring of a lamb whether it enjoys being devoured. He was fond of
calling her "Diana." He was sure that even with Endymion, the goddess
had been veiled and reticent. And Sophy had been "in love" with him
once. He took it for granted, in his lordly way--that, after all, had
something grandiose in it--that she was still in love with him. He had
been an "ill man" when he offended her--(sometimes it made him wince
that he must have offended even more terribly than he could recall). It
was, as Heine had said of _le Bon Dieu_, a woman's _metier_ to forgive.
And he rushed exuberantly to and fro, ordering a fast steam-launch from
Taroni; sweeping Sophy off in it to Intra to choose a piano--it vexed
him that she had no piano, had not been singing at all during her stay
in Italy; spending hours in trying to find a small sailing yacht to his
liking.
"That's a ripper your friend Amaldi's got," he said to Sophy. "_The
Wind-Flower_. Jolly name, by the way. Perhaps he'd help me find a good
'un. Let's go over to their place this afternoon. I want to thank the
old lady for being so decent to you and the little chap."
So they went tearing through the autumn-coloured water to Le Vigne, at a
rate that would have made the little _Fretta_ look like a water-snail.
And this new, powerful, highly-polished mahogany launch, glittering with
a sort of defiant grin of shining metal, hissing through the quiet lake
like an Express, seemed symbolical to Sophy of the ruthless power which
had suddenly seized her life and was hurling it blindly to some unknown
goal. As she sat quiet in the new launch, so she sat quiet in the grasp
of Chesney's will. So, she told herself, it was her duty to sit quiet.
Where she was now, her own act had placed her--besides, she still felt
affection for her husband, though love in its highest, divinest form was
gone forever. If only he would not stun her with those fiery crashes of
unshared passion! She felt like some sentient lyre, on which a giant
without sense of music strums with a mighty plectrum. The fine chords of
her nature snapped with the clashing shocks. She felt as though she had
been through some wild fever of which the delirium left her brain dazed
and numb.
What she now dreaded most was to see Amaldi. Not because of any feeling
that she had or might have had for him, but because he was so vividly a
part of something that was gone forever, and that had been so beautiful.
Yes, that tranquil dream of which he had been a part was as utterly
dispelled as the reflection in a quiet pool shattered by the crash of a
boulder. She felt that numbness, that lack of acute pain which it is
said a soldier experiences when in the heat of battle a limb is
suddenly shot away. She was maimed for life, she felt, and she regretted
it--but it was as if her mind rather than her heart suffered from this
regret.
They found the Marchesa alone at Le Vigne. She was sorry, she said, that
her son should miss the pleasure of seeing them. He had gone to Milan
for a few days. The relief of hearing this was so great that Sophy paled
with it. The elder woman thought she looked exhausted and oddly
listless. She firmly believed in the "Vampirising" qualities of some
people; taking in Chesney with her shrewd, lustrous eyes, she decided
that he was probably a most "Vampirising" person. By this, the Marchesa
did not mean that one actively plays the part of Vampire towards
another, but that, whether or no, some natures suck the vitality from
those with whom they are in contact. Yet Chesney attracted her in a way,
while at the same time he repelled her. She was too completely the woman
not to feel the force of his extraordinary vitality and superb physique,
but she was herself of too imperious and dominating a temperament not to
resist tacitly the stress of his somewhat overpowering personality. She
made herself perfectly charming, however.
"What a gorgeous old lady!" exclaimed Chesney, as they rushed home
again. "Amaldi must be a decent sort with a mater like that. Wish he'd
come back from his damned Milan. I want that yacht."
Amaldi returned in three days, and came for a formal call to Villa
Bianca. He had conquered the first well-nigh unbearable recoil from the
idea of Chesney's presence, and realised that certain civil forms were
obligatory, after the rather close relations that had grown up between
his mother and Sophy.
Chesney took one of his violent fancies to the young Lombard, on this
occasion. He had utterly forgotten the jealousy with which Amaldi had
once inspired him, when morphia ruled his moods.
He and Amaldi began talking boats and boating. Amaldi was afraid that
just then there was no such yacht as Chesney wished to hire on Lago
Maggiore. He might find one, however, he thought, at Costaguta's, in
Genoa. But Chesney didn't want to go such a long trip by rail. He looked
disgruntled and his big shoulders hunched with a boyish petulance,
rather engaging--had not his every gesture been salt on Amaldi's open
wound.
"I should be very glad if you would come with me in _The Wind-Flower_
whenever you like," said the latter. He had not once glanced towards
Sophy since he and her husband began their talk; but he saw, without
looking at her, the tall figure in its white serge gown, bending over
the masses of Michaelmas daisies that she had brought in from a walk,
and was arranging in one of the old apothecary jars from Intra.
It hurt Amaldi to look at Chesney as it hurts some people to look on
blood--gave him just that faint, gone feeling. The very fact that he was
so magnificent a man to look at hurt him that much more.
Chesney accepted this proposal about _The Wind-Flower_ with frank
alacrity.
"What d'you say to an all-day sail to-morrow?" he asked. "You're as keen
on sailing as I am, my wife tells me. If it's convenient...." he added;
then said quickly, laughing: "I must say, I've landed rather plump on
your offer, Marquis."
Amaldi murmured banal assurances of the pleasure that it would afford
him to sail all day with Mr. Chesney.
"Good!" Cecil exclaimed, much pleased. "And I say, suppose we drop the
'Mister' and the 'Marquis'--such rot, really--thanks. Well, Sophy--what
d'you think? Will you come along, too--eh?"
"No.... I don't think I can to-morrow, Cecil."
"Why not?"
"I ... I don't think I care to sail all day. The glare gives me a
headache if I'm out too long in it."
"Just as you like, of course. But I rather fancy 'twould do you good. A
bit of sunburn wouldn't hurt--you're looking a bit pale, I find. What do
you think, Amaldi? Don't you find Mrs. Chesney paler than she was in
England?"
"I don't think so," said Amaldi. His throat seemed to close.
He and Chesney went for that sail and several others. With a sort of
grim satisfaction Amaldi would tell himself on these occasions that the
more Chesney was with him the less his wife would see of him. He felt in
every fibre the relief it was to Sophy when her husband's towering
figure stepped over the side of _The Wind-Flower_ and was gone for long
hours together.
For the week following Chesney's arrival the weather had a crisp tang
quite autumnal; then suddenly it changed, becoming summer-like and even
sultry again. On the first day of this change Amaldi and Chesney were
out in _The Wind-Flower_ together. It was noon. The Tramontana had died
out. The Inverna had not yet risen. They had been running before the
wind, and now, when it suddenly ceased, the heat was intense.
Though Amaldi's sailor, Peppin, was always aboard, Chesney loved
handling the ropes himself when not at the tiller, which Amaldi insisted
on his taking most of the time. He had been springing about at a great
rate that morning, shifting the spinnaker. Now, all overheated and
sweltering in the breathless pause between the breezes of morning and
afternoon, he announced his intention of "going overboard for a swim."
Amaldi cautioned him that the September air played tricks on one, and
that the Inverna would probably blow rather strong that day.
"I don't think I'd do it," he said. "We've no extra coats aboard. You
might get badly chilled."
"'Chilled'?" echoed Chesney, with his most good-natured grin. "My dear
chap, that's what I'm hoping...."
He was getting out of his flannels as he spoke.
"I really wouldn't, you know," repeated Amaldi.
But Chesney only whipped his shirt over his head for reply; his feet
were already bare. And against the blazing mainsail, in the full glare
of sunshine, he stood there naked--a magnificent, glistering shape of
manhood that caused Peppin's eyes to shine.
And Amaldi, too, could not withhold his admiration. So superb was this
huge, stripped man--so perfectly proportioned--so admirably free from
the least ounce of unnecessary fat.
"_Accidenti! Che Marc Antoni!_" (Lord! What a Mark Antony of a man!)
breathed Peppin, as the sunlit body flashed off into the water.
But its very splendour as of the supremacy of flesh sickened Amaldi.
Were they primitive men--men of the Stone Age--and should they grapple,
man to man, what chance would he, Amaldi, have against those mighty
thews and sinews?
Chesney swam a few strokes, his white body greenish under the clear
water, like the silver belly of a fish; then dived beneath the yacht,
came up the other side, swam on his side, his back, dived again; then
swung himself aboard, gleaming with wet like a great mother-o'-pearl
image. He took the towel that Peppin handed him with a "Ha!" of gusto.
"I feel like Jupiter!" he called, rubbing his sides, and back, standing
on one foot to dry the other, his glossy skin all rosed in patches from
his vigorous rubbing.
Getting quickly into his shirt and trousers, he announced that he was
"hungry as ten hunters."
Peppin opened the luncheon hamper. There were sandwiches of salami and
anchovies, purple and white figs, a fiasco of red wine from Solcio.
"By God! this is living! Eh? What?" asked Chesney, his lips fresh and
ruddy with wine. He grinned with the sheer lust of life, splitting a
fig, and laying its seedy pulp against his tongue as Peppin had shown
him how to eat them without getting the rough bite of the skin. "When
you find rye-bread and fish and raw fruit better than pressed ducklings
at Voisin's--you're jolly thoroughly alive, I take it. What are you
peering at? Wind coming?"
"Yes," said Amaldi.
Chesney leaped up, still munching the other half of his fig. All about
them the water lay in long, smooth fluctuations as of molten glass; but
here and there a dark-blue patch spread widening like a stain on some
shining fabric. The sails filled, though near by the water still shone
clear and smooth as glass. Far out, beyond the point of the Fortino,
there was a band of indigo, stretched right across the lake.
"The Inverna," said Amaldi, pointing. "Won't you take the tiller?" he
added.
Chesney grasped it willingly. All his blood was beating in little
pleasant hammer-strokes of exultant health and strength. Yet as the
first chill breaths of the coming breeze played over him, he felt a
shivery sensation not altogether agreeable.
"Going to be a bit of a blow--eh?" he asked, screwing up his eyes
against the sun to watch the iron-blue band that was widening every
second. "Think I'll just get my coat on in that case," he added.
Amaldi took the tiller while Chesney got into his coat. Now there came
white flashes from the band of blue.
"_Un Invernung, Scior Marchese_," grinned Peppin.
"What's he say?" asked Chesney.
"That we're going to have an '_Invernung_'--'a big Inverna'--'a stiff
breeze,'" translated Amaldi patiently.
And indeed the South Wind pounced on them in a few moments, blowing more
than a capful. As the full gust struck her, the little _Wind-Flower_
heeled till her shrouds were under water. The spray came from her
dipping bows in a silver sluice, drenching them even where they sat.
Against the wind they ran, and the sails bulged full and hard as though
carved from marble--only a slight flutter near the mast showed how close
to the wind Chesney was holding her. He shouted like a Viking with the
fierce fun of it, as the spume slapped his face now and then with the
topping of a bigger wave--exultant with that exultation in sheer health
known only to the lately redeemed morphinomaniac. Amaldi thought him
strangely effusive in his pleasure, for an Englishman. The more he saw
of him the more distasteful he found Chesney. He sat balanced on the
upper side of the cock-pit, gazing steadily forward. Peppin lay flat on
deck to windward. The whole lake was now one welter of white and indigo.
But though for a while his delight in this wild game with wind and water
shut out lesser things, by the time that the Inverna had romped with him
for half an hour, Chesney felt chilled to the bone. Pride kept him from
admitting it. He was vexed to think that Amaldi's warning had been
justified. Also, it annoyed him that he should not have sufficient vital
force to resist getting chilled by a whiff of wind on a day so mild as
this. Anne Harding had told him that he was not yet so "almighty strong
as he thought himself, by a long shot."
He reached Villa Bianca two hours later, feeling rather moody, and with
a nasty, teasing pain in his legs and the small of his back.