Again the mother and daughter were together in the cool shade of their
terrace. Outside, it was very hot, for the morning breeze did not yet
stir the brown linen curtains which kept out the glare of the sea, and
myriads of locusts were fiddling their eternal two notes without pause
or change of pitch, in every garden from Massa to Scutari point, which
latter is the great bluff from which they quarry limestone for road
making, and which shuts off the amphitheatre of Sorrento from the view
of Castellamare to eastward. The air was dry, hot and full of life and
sound, as it is in the far south in summer.
"And when do you propose to marry me?" asked Beatrice in a discontented
tone.
"Dearest child," answered her mother, "you speak as though I were
marrying you by force to a man whom you detest."
"That is exactly what you are doing."
The Marchesa raised her eyebrows, fanned herself lazily and smiled.
"Are we to begin the old argument every morning, my dear?" she asked.
"It always ends in the same way, and you always say the same dreadful
things to me. I really cannot bear it much longer. You know very well
that you bound yourself, and that you were quite free to tell San
Miniato that you did not care for him. A girl should know her own mind
before she tells a man she loves him--just as a man should before he
speaks."
"San Miniato certainly knows his own mind," retorted Beatrice viciously.
"No one can accuse him of not being ready and anxious to marry me--and
my fortune."
"How you talk, my angel! Of course if you had no fortune, or much less
than you have, he could not think of marrying you. That is clear. I
never pretended the contrary. But that does not contradict the fact that
he loves you to distraction, if that is what you want."
"To distraction!" repeated Beatrice with scorn.
"Why not, dearest child? Do you think a man cannot love because he is
poor?"
"That is not the question, mamma!" cried Beatrice impatiently. "You know
it is not. But no woman can be deceived twice by the same comedy, and
few would be deceived once. You know as well as I that it was all a play
the other night, that he was trying to find words, as he was trying to
find sentiments, and that when the words would not be found he thought
it would be efficacious to seize my hand and kiss it. I daresay he
thought I believed him--of course he did. But not for long--oh! not for
long. Real love finds even fewer words, but it finds them better, and
the ring of them is truer, and one remembers them longer!"
"Beatrice!" exclaimed the Marchesa. "What can you know of such things!
You talk as though some man had dared to speak to you--"
"Do I?" asked the girl with sudden coldness, and a strange look came
into her eyes, which her mother did not see.
"Yes, you do. And yet I know that it is impossible. Besides the whole
discussion is useless and wears me out, though it seems to interest you.
Of course you will marry San Miniato. When you have got past this absurd
humour you will see what a good husband you have got, and you will be
very happy."
"Happy! With that man!" Beatrice's lip curled.
"You will," answered her mother, taking no notice. "Happiness depends
upon two things in this world, when marriage is concerned. Money and a
good disposition. You have both, between you, and you will be happy."
"I never heard anything more despicable!" cried the young girl. "Money
and disposition! And what becomes of the heart?"
The Marchesa smiled and fanned herself.
"Young girls without experience cannot understand these things," she
said. "Wait till you are older."
"And lose what looks I have and the power to enjoy anything! And you say
that you are not forcing me into this marriage! And you try to think, or
to make me think, that it is all for the best, and all delightful and
all easy, when you are sacrificing me and my youth and my life and my
happiness to the mere idea of a better position in society--because poor
papa was a sulphur merchant and bought a title which was only confirmed
because he spent a million on a public charity--and every one knows
it--and the Count of San Miniato comes of people who have been high and
mighty gentlemen for six or seven hundred years, more or less. That is
your point of view, and you know it. But if I say that my father worked
hard to get what he got and deserved it, and was an honest man, and that
this great personage of San Miniato is a penniless gambler, who does not
know to-day where he will find pocket money for to-morrow, and has got
by a trick the fortune my father got by hard work--then you will not
like it. Then you will throw up your hands and cry 'Beatrice!' Then you
will tell me that he loves me to distraction, and you will even try to
make me think that I love him. It is all a miserable sham, mamma, a vile
miserable sham! Give it up. I have said that I will marry him, since it
appears that I have promised. But do not try to make me think that I am
marrying him of my own free will, or he marrying me out of
disinterested, pure, beautiful, upright affection!"
Having delivered herself of these particularly strong sentiments,
Beatrice was silent for a while. As for the Marchesa, she was either
too wise, or too lazy, to answer her daughter for the present and she
slowly fanned herself, lying quite still in her long chair, her eyes
half closed and her left hand hanging down beside her.
Indeed Beatrice, instead of becoming more reconciled with the situation
she had accepted, was growing more impatient and unhappy every day, as
she realised all that her marriage with San Miniato would mean during
the rest of her natural life. She had quite changed her mind about him,
and with natures like hers such sudden changes are often irrevocable.
She could not now understand how she could have ever liked him, or found
pleasure in his society, and when she thought of the few words she had
spoken and which had decided her fate, she could not comprehend the
state of mind which had led her into such a piece of folly, and she was
as angry with herself as, for the time being, she was angry with all the
world besides.
She saw, too, and for the first time, how lonely she was in the world,
and a deep and burning longing for real love and sympathy took
possession of her. She had friends, of course, as young girls have, of
much her own age and not unlike her in their inexperienced ideas of
life. But there was not one of them at Sorrento, nor had she met any one
among the many acquaintances she had made, to whom she would care to
turn. Even her own intimate associates from childhood, who were far away
in Sicily, or travelling elsewhere, would not have satisfied her. They
could not have understood her, their answers to her questions would have
seemed foolish and worthless, and they would have tormented her with
questions of their own, inopportune, importunate, tiresome. She herself
did not know that what she craved was the love or the friendship of one
strong, honest man.
It was strange to find out suddenly how wide was the breach which
separated her from her mother, with whom she had lived so happily
throughout her childhood and early youth, with whom she had agreed--or
rather, who had agreed with her--on the whole almost without a
discussion. It was hard to find in her now so little warmth of heart, so
little power to understand, above all such a display of determination
and such quiet force in argument. Very indolent women are sometimes very
deceptive in regard to the will they hold in reserve, but Beatrice could
not have believed that her mother could influence her as she had done.
She reflected that it had surely been within the limits of the
Marchesa's choice to take her daughter's side so soon as she had seen
that the latter had mistaken her own feelings. She need not have agreed
with San Miniato, on that fatal evening at Tragara, that the marriage
was definitely settled, until she had at least exchanged a word with
Beatrice herself.
The future looked black enough on that hot summer morning. The girl was
to be tied for life to a man she despised and hated, to a man who did
not even care for her, as she was now convinced, to a man with a past of
which she knew little and of which the few incidents she had learned
repelled her now, instead of attracting her. She fancied how he had
spoken to those other women, much as he had spoken to her, perhaps a
little more eloquently as, perhaps, he had not been thinking of their
fortunes but of themselves, but still always in that high-comedy tone
with the studied gesture and the cadenced intonation. She did not know
whether they deserved her pity, those two whom he pretended to have
loved, but she was ready to pity them, nameless as they were. The one
was dead, the other, at least, had been wise enough to forget him in
time.
Then she thought of what must happen after her marriage, when he had got
her fortune and could take her away to the society in which he had
always lived. There, of course, he would meet women by the score with
whom he was and long had been on terms of social intimacy far closer
than he had reached with her in the few weeks of their acquaintance.
Doubtless, he would spend such time as he could spare from gambling, in
conversation with them. Doubtless, he had many thoughts and memories and
associations in common with them. Doubtless, people would smile a little
and pity the young countess. And Beatrice resented pity and the thought
of it. She would rather pity others.
Evil thoughts crossed her young brain, and she said to herself that she
might perhaps be revenged upon the world for what she was suffering,
for the pain that had already come into her young life, for the wretched
years she anticipated in the future, for her mother's horrible logic
which had forced her into the marriage, above all for San Miniato's
cleverly arranged scene by which the current of her existence had been
changed. San Miniato had perhaps gone too far when he had said that
Beatrice was kind. She, at least, felt that there was anything but
kindness in her heart now, and she desired nothing so much as to make
some one suffer something of what she felt. It was wicked, doubtless, as
she admitted to herself. It was bad and wrong and cruel, but it was not
heartless. A woman without heart would not have felt enough to resent
having felt at all, and moreover would probably be perfectly well
satisfied with the situation.
The expression of hardness deepened in the young girl's face as she sat
there, silently thinking over all that was to come, and glancing from
time to time at her mother's placid countenance. It was really amazing
to see how much the Marchesa could bear when she was actually roused to
a sense of the necessity for action. Her constitution must have been
far stronger than any one supposed. She must indeed have been in
considerable anxiety about the success of her plans, more than once
during the past few days. Yet she was outwardly almost as unruffled and
as lazy as ever.
"Dearest child," she said at last, "of course, as I have said, I cannot
argue the point with you. No one could, in your present state of mind.
But there is one thing which I must say, and which I am sure you will be
quite ready to understand."
Beatrice said nothing, but slowly turned her head towards her mother
with a look of inquiry.
"I only want to say, my angel, that whatever you may think of San
Miniato, and however much you may choose to let him know what you think,
it may be quite possible to act with more civility than you have used
during the last few days."
"Is that all?" asked Beatrice with a hard laugh. "How nicely you turn
your phrases when you lecture me, mamma! So you wish me to be civil.
Very well, I will try."
"Thank you, Beatrice carissima," answered her mother with a sigh and a
gentle smile. "It will make life so much easier."
Again there was a long silence, and Beatrice sat motionless in her
chair, debating whether she should wait where she was until San Miniato
came, as he was sure to do before long, or whether she should go to her
room and write a letter to some intimate friend, which would of course
never be sent, or, lastly, whether she should not take Teresina and go
down to her bath in the sea before the midday breakfast. While she was
still hesitating, San Miniato arrived.
There was something peculiarly irritating to her in his appearance on
that morning. He was arrayed in perfectly new clothes of light gray,
which fitted him admirably. He wore shoes of untanned leather which
seemed to be perfectly new also, and reflected the light as though they
were waxed. His stiff collar was like porcelain, the single pearl he
wore in his white scarf was so perfect that it might have been false.
His light hair and moustache were very smoothly brushed and combed and
his face was exasperatingly sleek. There was a look of conscious
security about him, of overwhelming correctness and good taste, of pride
in himself and in his success, which Beatrice felt to be almost more
than she could bear with equanimity. He bent gracefully over the
Marchesa's hand and bowed low to the young girl, not supposing that hers
would be offered to him. In this he was mistaken, however, for she gave
him the ends of her fingers.
"Good morning," she said gently.
The Marchesa looked at her, for she had not expected that she would
speak first and certainly not in so gentle a tone. San Miniato inquired
how the two ladies had slept.
"Admirably," said Beatrice.
"Ah--as for me, dearest friend," said the Marchesa, "you know what a
nervous creature I am. I never sleep."
"You look as though you had rested wonderfully well," observed Beatrice
to San Miniato. "Half a century, at least!"
"Do I?" asked the Count, delighted by her manner and quite without
suspicion.
"Yes. You look twenty years younger."
"About ten years old?" suggested San Miniato with a smile.
"Oh no! I did not mean that. You look about twenty, I should say."
"I am charmed," he answered, without wincing.
"It may be only those beautiful new clothes you have on," said Beatrice
with a sweet smile. "Clothes make so much difference with a man."
San Miniato did not show any annoyance, but he made no direct answer and
turned to the Marchesa.
"Marchesa gentilissima," he said, "you liked my last excursion, or were
good enough to say that you liked it. Would you be horrified if I
proposed another for this evening--but not so far, this time?"
"Absolutely horrified," answered the Marchesa. "But I suppose that if
you have made up your mind you will bring those dreadful men with their
chair, like two gendarmes, and they will take me away, whether I like it
or not. Is that what you mean to do?"
"Of course, dearest Marchesa," he replied.
"Donna Beatrice has taught me that there is no other way of
accomplishing the feat. And certainly no other way could give you so
little trouble."
"What is the excursion to be, and where?" asked Beatrice pretending a
sudden interest.
"Crab-hunting along the shore, with torches. It is extremely amusing, I
am told."
"After horrid red things that run sidewise and are full of legs!" The
Marchesa was disgusted.
"They are green when they run about, mamma," observed Beatrice. "I
believe it is the cooking that makes them red. It will be delightful,"
she added, turning to San Miniato. "Does one walk?"
"Walk!" exclaimed the Marchesa, a new horror rising before her mental
vision.
"We go in boats," said San Miniato. "In the sail boat first and then in
a little one to find the crabs. I suppose, Marchesa carissima, that
Donna Beatrice may come with me in the skiff, under your eye, if she is
accompanied by your maid?"
"Of course, my dear San Miniato! Do you expect me to get into your
little boat and hunt for reptiles? Or do you expect that Beatrice will
renounce the amusement of getting wet and covered with seaweed and
thoroughly unpresentable?"
"And you, Donna Beatrice? Do you still wish to come?"
"Yes. I just said so."
"But that was at least a minute ago," answered San Miniato.
"Ah--you think me very changeable? You are mistaken. I will go with you
to find crabs to-night. Is that categorical? Must you consult my mother
to know what I mean?"
"It will not be necessary this time," replied the Count, quite unmoved.
"I think we understand each other."
"I think so," said Beatrice with a hard smile.
The Marchesa was not much pleased by the tone the conversation was
taking. But if Beatrice said disagreeable things, she said them in a
pleasant voice and with a moderately civil expression of face, which
constituted a concession, after all, considering how she had behaved
ever since the night at Tragara, scarcely vouchsafing San Miniato a
glance, answering him by monosyllables and hardly ever addressing him
at all.
"My dear children," said the elder lady, affecting a tone she had not
assumed before, "I really hope that you mean to understand each other,
and will."
"Oh yes, mamma!" assented Beatrice with alacrity. "With you to help us I
am sure we shall come to a very remarkable understanding--very
remarkable indeed!"
"With originality on your side, and constancy on mine, we may accomplish
much," said San Miniato, very blandly.
Beatrice laughed again.
"Translate originality as original sin and constancy as the art of
acting constantly!" she retorted.
"Why?" enquired San Miniato without losing his temper. He thought the
question would be hard to answer.
"Why not?" asked Beatrice. "You will not deny me a little grain of
original sin, will you? It will make our life so much more varied and
amusing, and when I say that you act constantly--I only mean what you
said of yourself, that you are constant in your actions."
"You so rarely spare me a compliment, Donna Beatrice, that you must
forgive me for not having understood that one sooner. Accept my best
thanks--"
"And agree to the expression of my most distinguished sentiments, as the
French say at the end of a letter," said Beatrice, rising. "And now that
I have complimented everybody, and been civil, and pleased everybody,
and have been thanked and have taken all the original sin of the party
upon my own shoulders, I will go and have a swim before breakfast.
Good-bye, mamma. Good-bye, Count."
With a quick nod, she turned and left them, and went in search of
Teresina, whose duty it was to accompany her to the bath. The maid was
unusually cheerful, though she had not failed to notice the change in
Beatrice's manner which had taken place since the day of the betrothal,
and she understood it well enough, as she had told Bastianello. Moreover
she pitied her young mistress sincerely and hated San Miniato with all
her heart; but she was so happy herself that she could not possibly hide
it.
"You are very glad that I am to be married, Teresina," said Beatrice as
they went out of the house together, the maid carrying a large bag
containing bathing things.
"I, Signorina? Do you ask me the real truth? I do not know whether to be
glad or sorry. I pray you, Signorina, tell me which I am to be."
"Oh--glad of course!" returned Beatrice, with a bitter little laugh. "A
marriage should always be a matter for rejoicing. Why should you not be
glad--like every one else?"
"Like you, Signorina?" asked Teresina with a glance at the young girl's
face.
"Yes: Like me." And Beatrice laughed again in the same way.
"Very well, Signorina. I will be as glad as you are. I shall find it
very easy."
It was Beatrice's turn to look at her, which she did, rather
suspiciously. It was clear enough that the girl had her doubts.
"Just as glad as you are, Signorina, and no more," said Teresina again,
in a lower voice, as though she were speaking to herself.
Beatrice said nothing in answer. As they reached the end of the path
through the garden, they saw Ruggiero and his brother sitting as usual
by the porter's lodge. Both got up and came quickly forward.
Bastianello took the bag from Teresina's hand, and the maid and the two
sailors followed Beatrice at a little distance as she descended the
inclined tunnel.
It was pleasant, a few minutes later, to lie in the cool clear water and
look up at the blue sky above and listen to the many sounds that came
across from the little harbour. Beatrice felt a sense of rest for the
first time in several days. She loved the sea and all that belonged to
it, for she had been born within sight of it and had known it since she
had been a child, and she always came back to it as to an element that
understood her and which she understood. She swam well and loved the
easy, fluent motion she felt in the exercise, and she loved to lie on
her back with arms extended and upturned face, drinking in the light
breeze and the sunshine and the deep blue freshness of sky and water.
While she was bathing Bastianello and Teresina sat together behind the
bathing-house, but Ruggiero retired respectfully to a distance and
busied himself with giving his little boat a final washing, mopping out
the water with an old sponge, which he passed again and again over each
spot, as though never satisfied with the result. He would have thought
it bad manners indeed to be too near the bathing-place when Beatrice was
in swimming. But he kept an eye on Teresina, whom he could see talking
with his brother, and when she went into the cabin, he knew that
Beatrice had finished her bath, and he found little more to do in
cleaning the old tub, which indeed, to a landsman's eye, presented a
decidedly smart appearance in her new coat of white paint, with a
scarlet stripe. When he had finished, he sauntered up to the wooden
bridge that led to the bathing cabins and sat down on the upper rail,
hooking one foot behind the lower one. Bastianello, momentarily
separated from Teresina, came and stood beside him.
"A couple of fenders would save the new paint on her, if we are going
for crabs," he observed, thoughtfully.
Ruggiero made that peculiar side motion of the head which means assent
and approval in the south.
"And we will bring our own kettle for the crabs, and get the milk from
the hotel," continued the younger brother, who anticipated an extremely
pleasant evening in the society of Teresina. "And I have told Saint
Peter to bring the torches, because he knows where to get them good,"
added Bastianello who did not expect Ruggiero to say anything. "What
time do we go?"
"Towards an hour and a half of the night," said Ruggiero, meaning two
hours after sunset. "Then the padroni will have eaten and the rocks will
be covered with crabs, and the moon will not be yet risen. It will be
dark under Scutari till past midnight, and the crabs will sit still
under the torch, and we can take them with our hands as we always do."
"Of course," answered Bastianello, who was familiar with the sport, "one
knows that."
"And I will tell you another thing," continued Ruggiero, who seemed to
warm with the subject. "You shall pull stroke and I will pull bow. In
that way you will be near to Teresina and she will amuse herself the
better, for you and she can take the crabs while I hold the torch."
"And the Signorina and the Count can sit together in the stern," said
Bastianello, who seemed much pleased with the arrangement. "The best
crabs are between Scutari and the natural arch."
"One knows that," assented Ruggiero, and relapsed into silence.
Presently the door of the cabin opened and Beatrice came out, her cheeks
and eyes fresh and bright from the sea. Of course Bastianello at once
ran to help Teresina wring out the wet things and make up her bundle,
and Beatrice came towards Ruggiero, who took off his cap and stood
bareheaded in the sun as she went by, and then walked slowly behind her,
at a respectful distance. To reach the beginning of the ascent they had
to make their way through the many boats hauled up beyond the slip upon
the dry sand. Beatrice gathered her light skirt in her hand as she
passed Ruggiero's newly painted skiff, for she was familiar enough with
boats to know that the oil might still be fresh.
"It is quite dry, Excellency," he said. "The boat belongs to me."
Beatrice turned with a smile, looked at it and then at Ruggiero.
"What did I tell you the other day, Ruggiero?" she asked, still smiling.
"You were to call me Signorina. Do you remember?"
"Yes, Signorina. I beg pardon."
Beatrice saw that Teresina had not yet left the cabin with her bag, and
that Bastianello was loitering before the door, pretending or really
trying to help her.
"Do you know what Teresina has been telling me, Ruggiero?" asked
Beatrice, stopping entirely and turning towards him as they stood in the
narrow way between Ruggiero's boat and the one lying next to her.
"Of Bastianello, Signorina?"
"Yes. That she wants to marry him. She told me while I was dressing. You
know?"
"Yes, Signorina, and I laughed when he told me the story the other day,
over there on the pier."
"I heard you laughing, Ruggiero," answered Beatrice, remembering the
unpleasant impression she had received when she had looked down from the
terrace. His huge mirth had come up as a sort of shock to her in the
midst of her own trouble. "Why did you laugh?" she asked.
"Must I tell you, Signorina?"
"Yes."
"It was this. Bastianello had a thought. He imagined to himself that I
loved Teresina--I!--"
Ruggiero broke off in the sentence and looked away. His voice shook with
the deep vibration that sometimes pleased Beatrice. He paused a moment
and then went on.
"I, who have quite other thoughts. And so he said with himself,
'Ruggiero loves and is afraid to speak, but I will speak for him.' But
it was honest of him, Signorina, for he loved her himself. And so he
asked her for me first. But she would not. And then, between one word
and another, they found out that they loved. And I am very glad, for
Teresina is a good girl as she showed the other day in the garden, and
the little boy of the Son of the Fool saw it when she threw the gold at
that man's feet--"
He stopped again, suddenly realising what he was saying. But Beatrice,
quick to suspect, saw the look of pained embarrassment in his face and
almost guessed the truth. She grew pale by degrees.
"What man?" she asked shortly.
Ruggiero turned his head and looked away from her, gazing out to
seaward.
"What was the man's name?" she asked again with the stern intonation
that anger could give her voice.
Still Ruggiero would not speak. But his white face told the truth well
enough.
"On what day was it?" she enquired, as though she meant to be answered.
"It was the day when you talked with me about my name, Signorina."
"At what time?"
"It must have been between midday and one o'clock."
Beatrice remembered how on that day San Miniato had given a shallow
excuse for not remaining to breakfast at that hour.
"And what was his name?" she now asked for the third time.
"Excellency--Signorina--do not ask me!" Ruggiero was not good at lying.
"It was the Conte di San Miniato, Ruggiero," said Beatrice in a low
voice that trembled with anger. Her face was now almost as white as the
sailor's.
Ruggiero said nothing at first, but turned his head away again.
"Per Dio!" he ejaculated after a short pause. But there was no mistaking
the tone.
Beatrice turned away and with bent head began to walk towards the
ascent. She could not help the gesture she made, clenching her hands
once fiercely and then opening them wide again; but she thought no one
could see her. Ruggiero saw, and understood.
"She is saying to herself, 'I must marry that infamous animal,'" thought
Ruggiero. "But I do not think that she will marry him."
At the foot of the ascent, Beatrice turned and looked back. Teresina and
Bastianello were coming quickly along the little wooden bridge, but
Ruggiero was close to her.
"You have not done me a good service to-day, Ruggiero," she said, but
kindly, dreading to wound him. "But it is my fault, and I should not
have pressed you as I did. Do not let the thought trouble you."
"I thank you, Signorina. And it is true that this was not a good
service, and I could bite out my tongue because it was not. But some
Saint may give me grace to do you one more, and that shall be very
good."
"Thank you, Ruggiero," said Beatrice, as the maid and the other sailor
came up.