While the little party sat at table, the sailors gathered together at a
distance among the rocks, and presently the strong red light of their
fire shot up through the shadows, lending new contrasts to the scene.
And there they slung their kettle on an oar and patiently waited for the
water to boil, while the man known as the Gull, always cook in every
crew in which he chanced to find himself, sat with the salt on one side
of him and a big bundle of macaroni on the other, prepared to begin
operations at any moment.
Ruggiero stood a little apart, his back against a boulder, his arms
crossed and his eyes fixed on Beatrice's face. His keen sight could
distinguish the changing play of her expression as readily at that
distance as though he had been standing beside her, and he tried to
catch the words she spoke, listening with a sort of hurt envy to the
little silvery laugh that now and then echoed across the open space and
lost itself in the crannies of the rocks. It all hurt him, and yet for
nothing in the world would he have turned away or shut his ears. More
than once, too, the thoughts that had disturbed him while he was
steering in the afternoon, came upon him with renewed and startling
strength. He had in him some of that red old blood that does not stop
for trifles such as life and death when the hour of passion burns, and
the brain reels with overmastering love.
And Bastianello was not in a much better case, though his was less hard
to bear. The pretty Teresina had seated herself on a smooth rock in the
moonlight, not far from the table, and as the dishes came back, the
young sailor waited on her and served her with unrelaxed attention.
Since Ruggiero would not take advantage of the situation, his brother
saw no reason for not at least enjoying the pleasure of seeing the
adorable Teresina eat and drink as it were from his hand. Why Ruggiero
was so cold, and stood there against his rock, silent and glowering,
Bastianello could not at all understand; nor had he any thought of
taking an unfair advantage. Ruggiero was first and no one should
interfere with him, or his love; but Bastianello, judging from what he
felt himself, fancied that she might have given him some good advice.
Teresina's cheeks flushed with pleasure and her eyes sparkled each time
he brought her some dainty from the master's table, and she thanked him
in the prettiest way imaginable, so that her voice reminded him of the
singing of the yellow-beaked blackbird he kept in a cage at home--which
was saying much, for the blackbird sang well and sweetly. But
Bastianello only said each time that "it was nothing," and then stood
silently waiting beside her till she should finish what she was eating
and be ready for more. Teresina would doubtless have enjoyed a little
conversation, and she looked up from time to time at the handsome sailor
beside her, with a look of enquiry in her eyes, as though to ask why he
said nothing. But Bastianello felt that he was on his honour, for he
never doubted that the little maid was the cause of Ruggiero's disease
of the heart and indeed of all that his brother evidently suffered, and
he was too modest by nature to think that Teresina could prefer him to
Ruggiero, who had always been the object of his own unbounded devotion
and admiration. Presently, when there was nothing more to offer her, and
the party at the table were lighting their cigarettes over their coffee,
he went away and going up to Ruggiero drew him a little further aside
from the group of sailors.
"I want to tell you something," he began. "You must not be as you are, a
man like you."
"How may that be?" asked Ruggiero, still looking towards the table, and
not pleased at being dragged from his former post of observation.
"I will tell you. I have been serving her with food. You could have done
that instead if you had wished. You could have talked to her, and she
would have liked it. It is easy when a woman is sitting apart and a man
brings her good food and wine--you could have spoken a word into her
ear."
Ruggiero was silent, but he slowly nodded twice, then shook his head.
"You do not say anything," continued Bastianello, "and you do wrong.
What I tell you is true, and you cannot deny it. After all, we are men
and they are women. Are they to speak first?"
"It is just," answered Ruggiero laconically.
"But then, per Dio, go and talk to her. Are you going to begin giving
her the gold before you have spoken?"
From which question it will be clear to the unsophisticated foreigner
that a regular series of presents in jewelry is the natural
accompaniment of a well-to-do courtship in the south. The trinkets are
called collectively "the gold."
Ruggiero did not find a ready answer to so strong an argument. Little
guessing that his brother was almost as much in love with Teresina as he
himself was with her mistress, he saw no reason for undeceiving him
concerning his own feelings. Since Bastianello had discovered that he,
Ruggiero, was suffering from an acute attack of the affections, it had
become the latter's chief object to conceal the real truth. It was not
so much, that he dreaded the ridicule--he, a poor sailor--of being known
to love a great lady's daughter; ridicule was not among the things he
feared. But something far too subtle for him to define made him keep his
secret to himself--an inborn, chivalrous, manly instinct, inherited
through generations of peasants but surviving still, as the trace of
gold in the ashes of a rich stuff that has had gilded threads in it.
"If I did begin with the gold," he said at last, "and if she would not
have me when I spoke afterwards, she would give the gold back."
"Of course she would. What do you take her for?" Bastianello asked the
question almost angrily, for he loved Teresina and he resented the
slightest imputation upon her fair dealing.
Ruggiero looked at him curiously, but was far too much preoccupied with
his own thoughts to guess what the matter was. He turned away and went
towards the fire where the Gull was already tasting a slippery string of
the macaroni to find out whether it were enough cooked. Bastianello
shrugged his shoulders and followed him in silence. Before long they
were all seated round the huge earthen dish, each armed with an iron
fork in one hand and a ship biscuit in the other, with which to catch
the drippings neatly, according to good manners, in conveying the full
fork from the dish to the wide-opened mouth. By and by there was a sound
of liquid gurgling from a demijohn as it was poured into the big jug,
and the wine went round quickly from hand to hand, while those who
waited for their turn munched their biscuits. Some one has said that
great appetites, like great passions, are silent. Hardly a word was said
until the wine was passed a second time with a ration of hard cheese and
another biscuit. Then the tongues were unloosed and the strange, uncouth
jests of the rough men circulated in an undertone, and now and then one
of them suffered agonies in smothering a huge laugh, lest his mirth
should disturb the "excellencies" at their table. The latter, however,
were otherwise engaged and paid little attention to the sailors.
The Marchesa di Mola, having eaten about six mouthfuls of twice that
number of delicacies and having swallowed half a glass of champagne and
a cup of coffee, was extended in her cane rocking-chair, with her back
to the moon and her face to the lamp, trying to imagine herself in her
comfortable sitting room at the hotel, or even in her own luxurious
boudoir in her Sicilian home. The attempt was fairly successful, and the
result was a passing taste of that self-satisfied beatitude which is
the peculiar and enviable lot of very lazy people after dinner. She
cared for nothing and she cared for nobody. San Miniato and Beatrice
might sit over there by the water's edge, in the moonlight, and talk in
low tones as long as they pleased. There were no tiresome people from
the hotel to watch their proceedings, and nothing better could happen
than that they should fall in love, be engaged and married forthwith.
That was certainly not the way the Marchesa could have wished the
courtship and marriage to develop and come to maturity, if there had
been witnesses of the facts from amongst her near acquaintance. But
since there was nobody to see, and since it was quite impossible that
she should run after the pair when they chose to leave her side,
resignation was the best policy, resignation without effort, without
fatigue and without qualms. Moreover, San Miniato himself had told her
that in some of the best families in the north of Italy it was
considered permissible for a man to offer himself directly to a young
lady, and San Miniato was undoubtedly familiar with the usages of the
very best society. It was quite safe to trust to him.
San Miniato himself would have greatly preferred to leave the
negotiations in the hands of the Marchesa and would have done so had he
not known that she possessed no power whatever over Beatrice. But he saw
that the Marchesa, however much she might desire the marriage, would
never exert herself to influence her daughter. She was far too indolent,
and at heart, perhaps, too indifferent, and she knew the value of money
and especially of her own. San Miniato made up his mind that if he won
at all, it must be upon his own merits and by his own efforts.
He had not found it hard to lead Beatrice away from the lamp when dinner
was over, and after walking about on the rocks for a few minutes he
proposed that they should sit down near the water, facing the moonlit
sea. Beatrice sat upon a smooth projection and San Miniato placed
himself at her feet, in such a position that he could look up into her
face and talk to her without raising his voice.
"So you are glad you came here, Donna Beatrice," he said.
"Very glad," she answered. "It is something I have never seen
before--something I shall never forget, as long as I live."
"Nor I."
"Have you a good memory?"
"For some things, not for others."
"For what, for instance?"
"For those I love---"
"And a bad memory for those whom you have loved," suggested Beatrice
with a smile.
"Have you any reason for saying that?" asked San Miniato gravely. "You
know too little of me and my life to judge of either. I have not loved
many, and I have remembered them well."
"How many? A dozen, more or less? Or twenty? Or a hundred?"
"Two. One is dead, and one has forgotten me."
Beatrice was silent. It was admirably done, and for the first time he
made her believe that he was in earnest. It had not been very hard for
him either, for there was a foundation of truth in what he said. He had
not always been a man without heart.
"It is much to have loved twice," said the young girl at last, in a
dreamy voice. She was thinking of what had passed through her mind that
afternoon.
"It is much--but not enough. What has never been lived out, is never
enough."
"Perhaps--but who could love three times?"
"Any man--and the third might be the best and the strongest, as well as
the last."
"To me it seems impossible."
San Miniato had got his chance and he knew it. He was nervous and not
sure of himself, for he knew very well that she had but a passing
attraction for him, beyond the very solid inducement to marry her
offered by her fortune. But he knew that the opportunity must not be
lost, and he did not waste time. He spoke quietly, not wishing to risk a
dramatic effect until he could count on his own rather slight histrionic
powers.
"So it seems impossible to you, Donna Beatrice," he said, in a musing
tone. "Well, I daresay it does. Many things must seem impossible to you
which are rather startling facts to me. I am older than you, I am a man,
and I have been a soldier. I have lived a life such as you cannot dream
of--not worse perhaps than that of many another man, but certainly not
better. And I am quite sure that if I gave you my history you would not
understand four-fifths of it, and the other fifth would shock you. Of
course it would--how could it be otherwise? How could you and I look at
anything from quite the same point of view?"
"And yet we often agree," said Beatrice, thoughtfully.
"Yes, we do. That is quite true. And that is because a certain sympathy
exists between us. I feel that very much when I am with you, and that is
one reason why I try to be with you as much as possible."
"You say that is one reason. Have you many others?" Beatrice tried to
laugh a little, but she felt somehow that laughter was out of place and
that a serious moment in her life had come at last, in which it would be
wiser to be grave and to think well of what she was doing.
"One chief one, and many little ones," answered San Miniato. "You are
good to me, you are young, you are fresh--you are gifted and unlike the
others, and you have a rare charm such as I never met in any woman. Are
those not all good reasons? Are they not enough?"
"If they were all true, they would be more than enough. Is the chief
reason the last?"
"It is the last of all. I have not given it to you yet. Some things are
better not said at all."
"They must be bad things," answered Beatrice, with an air of innocence.
She was beginning to understand, at last, that he really intended to
make her a declaration of love. It was unheard of, almost inconceivable.
But there he was at her feet, looking very handsome in the moonlight,
his face turned up to hers with an unmistakable look of devotion in its
rather grave lines. His voice, too, had a new sound in it. Indifferent
as he might be by daylight and in ordinary life, the magic of the place
and scene affected him a little at the present moment. Perhaps a memory
of other years, when his pulse had quickened and his voice had trembled
oddly, just touched his heart now and it responded with a faint thrill.
For a moment at least he forgot his sordid plan, and Beatrice's own
personal attraction was upon him.
And she was very lovely as she sat there, looking down at him, with
white folded hands, hatless in the warm night, her eyes full of the
dancing rays that trembled upon the softly rippling water.
"If they are not bad things," she said, speaking again, "why do you not
tell them to me?"
"You would laugh."
"I have laughed enough to-night. Tell me!"
"Tell you! Yes--that is easy to do. But it would be so hard to make you
understand! It is the difference between a word and a thought, between
belief and mere show, between truth and hearsay--more than that--much
more than I can tell you. It means so much to me--it may mean so little
to you, when I have said it!"
"But if you do not say it, how can I guess it, or try to understand it?"
"Would you try? Would you?"
"Yes."
Her voice was soft, gentle, persuasive. She felt something she had never
felt, and it must be love, she thought. She had always liked him a
little better than the rest. But surely, this was more than mere
liking. She had a strange longing to hear him say the words, to start,
as her instinct told her she must, when he spoke them, to be told for
the first time that she was loved. Is it strange, after all? Young,
imaginative and full of life, she had been brought up to believe that
she was to be married to some man she scarcely knew, after a week's
acquaintance, without so much as having talked five minutes with him
alone; she had been taught that love was a legend and matrimony a matter
of interest. And yet here was the man whom her mother undoubtedly wished
her to marry, not only talking with her as they had often talked before,
with no one to hear what was said, but actually on the verge of telling
her that he loved her. Could anything be more delicious, more original,
more in harmony with the place and hour? And as if all this were not
enough, she really felt the touch and thrill of love in her own heart,
and the leaping wonder to know what was to come.
She had told him to speak and she waited for his voice. He, on his part,
knew that much was at stake, for he saw that she was moved, and that
all depended on his words. The fewer the better, he thought, if only
there could be a note of passion in them, if only one of them could ring
as all of poor Ruggiero's had rung when he had spoken that afternoon. He
hesitated and hesitation would be fatal if it lasted another five
seconds. He grew desperate. Where were the words and the tone that had
broken down the will of other women, far harder to please than this mere
child? He felt everything at once, except love. He saw her fortune
slipping from him at the very moment of getting it, he felt a little
contempt for the part he was playing and a sovereign scorn for his own
imbecility, he even anticipated the Marchesa's languid but cutting
comments on his failure. One second more, and all was lost--but not a
word would come. Then, in sheer despair and with a violence that
betrayed it, he seized one of Beatrice's hands in both of his and kissed
it madly a score of times. As she interpreted the action, no eloquence
of words could have told her more of what she wished to hear. It was
unexpected, it was passionate; if it had been premeditated, it would
have been a stroke of genius. As it was, it was a stroke of luck for
San Miniato. With the true gambler's instinct he saw that he was winning
and his hesitation disappeared. His voice trembled passionately now with
excitement, if not with love--but it was the same to Beatrice, who heard
the quick-spoken words that followed, and drank them in as a thirsty man
swallows the first draught of wine he can lay hands on, be it ever so
acid.
At the first moment she had been startled and had almost uttered a short
cry, half of delight and half of fear. But she had no wish to alarm her
mother and the quick thought stifled her voice. She tried to withdraw
her hand, but he held it tightly in his own which were cold as ice, and
she sat still listening to all he said.
"Ah, Beatrice!" he was saying, "you have given me back life itself! Can
you guess what I have lived through in these days? Can you imagine how I
have thought of you and suffered day and night, and said to myself that
I should never have your love? Can you dream what it must be to a man
like me, lonely, friendless, half heart-broken, to find the one jewel
worth living for, the one light worth seeking, the one woman worth
loving--and then to long for her almost without hope, and so long? It is
long, too. Who counts the days or the weeks when he loves? It is as
though we had loved from the beginning of our lives! Can you or I
imagine what it all was like before we met? I cannot remember that past
time. I had no life before it--it is all forgotten, all gone, all buried
and for ever. You have made everything new to me, new and beautiful and
full of light--ah, Beatrice! How I love you!"
Rather a long speech at such a moment, an older woman would have
thought, and not over original in choice of similes and epithets, but
fluent enough and good enough to serve the purpose and to turn the
current of Beatrice's girlish life. Yet not much of a love-speech.
Ruggiero's had been better, as a little true steel is better than much
iron at certain moments in life. It succeeded very well at the moment,
but its ultimate success would have been surer if it had reached no ears
but Beatrice's. Neither she nor San Miniato were aware that a few feet
below them a man was lying on his back, with white face and clenched
hands, staring at the pale moonlit sky above him, and listening in stony
despair to every word that was spoken.
The sight would have disturbed them, had they seen it, though they both
were fearless by nature and not easily startled. Had Beatrice seen
Ruggiero at that moment, she would have learned once and for ever the
difference between real passion and its counterfeit. But Ruggiero knew
where he was and had no intention of betraying himself by voice or
movement. He suffered almost all that a man can suffer by the heart
alone, but he was strong and could bear torture.
The hardest of all was that he understood the real truth, partly by
instinct and partly through what he knew of his master. Those rough
southern sailors sometimes have a wonderful keenness in discovering the
meaning of their masters' doings. Ruggiero held the key to the
situation. He knew that San Miniato was poor and that the Marchesa was
very rich. He knew very well that San Miniato was not at all in love,
for he knew what love really meant, and he could see how the Count
always acted by calculation and never from impulse. Best of all he saw
that Beatrice was a mere child who was being deceived by the coolly
assumed passion of a veteran woman-killer. It was bitterly hard to bear.
And he had felt a foreboding of it all in the afternoon--and he wished
that he had risked all and brought down the brass tiller on San
Miniato's head and submitted to be sent to the galleys for life. He
could never have forgotten Beatrice; but San Miniato could never have
married her, and that satisfaction would have made chains light and hard
labour a pastime.
It was too late to think of such things now. Had he yielded to the first
murderous impulse, it would have been better. But he had never struck a
man from behind and he knew that he could not do it in cold blood. Yet
how much better it would have been! He would not be lying now on the
rock, holding his breath and clenching his fists, listening to his
Excellency the Count of San Miniato's love making. By this time the
Count of San Miniato would be cold, and he, Ruggiero, would be
handcuffed and locked up in the little barrack of the gendarmes at
Sorrento, and Beatrice with her mother would be recovering from their
fright as best they could in the rooms at the hotel, and Teresina would
be crying, and Bastianello would be sitting at the door of his brother's
prison waiting to see what happened and ready to do what he could. Truly
all this would have been much better! But the moment had passed and he
must lie on his rock in silence, bound hand and foot by the necessity of
hiding himself, and giving his heart to be torn to pieces by San
Miniato's aristocratic fine gentleman's hands, and burned through and
through by Beatrice's gentle words.
"And so you really love me?" said San Miniato, sure at last of his
victory.
"Do you doubt it, after what I have done?" asked Beatrice in a very soft
voice. "Did I not leave my hand in yours when you took it so roughly
and--you know---"
"When I kissed it--but I want the words, too--only once, from your
beautiful lips---"
"The words---" Beatrice hesitated. They were too new to her lips, and a
soft blush rose in her cheeks, visible even in the moonlight.
Ruggiero's heart stood still--not for the first time that day. Would she
speak the three syllables or not?
As for San Miniato, his excitement had cooled, and he threw all the
tenderness he could muster into, his last request, with instinctive tact
returning to the more quiet tone he had used at the beginning of the
conversation.
"I ask you, Beatrice mia, to say--" he paused, to give the proper effect
in the right place--"I love you," he said, completing the sentence very
musically and looking up most tenderly into her eyes.
She sighed, blushed again, and turned her head away. Then quite suddenly
she looked at him once more, pressed his hand nervously and spoke.
"I love you, carissimo," she said, and rose at the same moment from her
seat. "Come--it is time. Mamma will be tired," she added, while he held
her hand and pressed it to his lips.
Her confusion had made it easy for him. He would have had difficulty in
ending the scene artistically if she had not unconsciously helped him.
Ruggiero clenched his hands a little tighter and tried not to breathe.
"It is a lie," he said in his heart, but his lips never moved, nor did
he stir a limb as he listened to the departing footsteps on the ledge
above.
Then with the ease of great strength he drew himself along through
cranny and hollow till he was far from where they sat, and had reached
the place where the boats were made fast. It would seem natural to every
one that he should suddenly be standing there to see that all was right,
and that none of the moorings had slipped or chafed against the jagged
rocks. There he stood, gazing at the rippling water, at the tall yards
as they slowly crossed and recrossed the face of the moon, with the
rocking of the boats, at the cliffs to the right and left, at the dim
headland of the Campanella, at all the sights long familiar to
him--seeing none of them and yet feeling that they at least were his own
people, that they understood him and knew what he felt--what he had no
words with which to tell any one, if he had wished to tell it.
For he who loves and is little loved, or not at all, has no friend, be
he of high estate or low, beyond nature, the deep-bosomed, the
bountiful, the true; and on her he may lean, trusting, and know that he
will not be betrayed. And in time her language will be his. But she will
be heard alone when she speaks with him, and without rival, with the
full right of a woman who gives all her love and asks for a man's soul
in return, recking little of all the world besides. But not all know how
kind she is, how merciful and how sweet. For she does not heal broken
hearts. She takes them as they are into her own, with all the memory and
all the sin, perhaps, and all the bitter sorrow which is the reward of
faith and faithlessness alike. She takes them all, and holds them kindly
in her own breast, as she has taken the torn limbs of martyred saints
and tortured sinners and has softly turned them all into a fragrant
dust. And though the ashes of the heart be very bitter, they are after
all but dust, which cannot feel of itself any more. Yet there may be
something left behind, in the place where it lived and was broken and
died, which is not wholly bad, though there be little good in this
earth where there is no heart.
Moreover, nature is a silent mistress to all but those who love her, and
she tells no tales as men and women do, and forgets none of the secrets
which are told to her, for they are our treasures--treasures of love and
of hate, of sweetness and of poison, which we lay up in her keeping when
we are alone with her, sure that we shall find again all we have given
up if we require it of her. But as the years blossom, bloom, and fade in
their quick succession, the day will come when we shall ask of her only
the balm and be glad to leave the poison hidden, and to forget how we
would have used it in old days--when we shall ask her only to give us
the memory of a dear and gentle hand--dear still but no longer kind--of
the voice that was once a harmony, and whose harsh discord is almost
music still--of the hour when love was twofold, stainless and supreme.
Those things we shall ask of her and she, in her wonderful tenderness,
will give them to us again--in dreams, waking or sleeping, in the sunlit
silence of lonely places, in soft nights when the southern sea is still,
in the greater loneliness of the storm, when brave faces are set as
stone and freezing hands grasp frozen ropes, and the shadow of death
rises from the waves and stands between every man and his fellows. We
shall ask, and we shall receive. Out of noon-day shadow, out of the
starlit dusk, out of the driving spray of the midtempest, one face will
rise, one hand will touch our own, one loving, lingering glance will
meet ours from eyes that have no look of love for us in them now. These
things our lady nature will give us of all those we have given her. But
of the others, we shall not ask for them, and she will mercifully forget
for us the bitterness of their birth, and life, and death.