The Children of the King Part 22

Ruggiero was sitting alone on one of the stone pillars on the little pier, gazing at the sea, or rather, at a vessel far away towards Ischia, running down the bay with every st.i.tch of canvas set from her jibs to her royals. He looked round as Bastianello came up to him.

"Ruggiero," said the latter in a quiet tone. "If you want to kill me, you may, for I have betrayed you."

Ruggiero stared at him, to see whether he were in earnest or joking.

"Betrayed me? I do not understand what you say. How could you betray me?"

"As you shall know. Now listen. We were talking about Teresina to-day, you and I. Then I said to myself, 'I love Teresina and Ruggiero loves her, but Ruggiero is first. I will go to Teresina and ask her if she will marry him, and if she will, it is well. But if she will not, I will ask Ruggiero if I may court her for myself.' And so I did. And she will tell you the truth, and I spoke well for you. But she said she never loved you. And then, I do not know how it was, but we found out that we loved each other and we said so. And that is the truth. So you had better get a pig of iron from the ballast and knock me on the head, for I have betrayed my brother and I do not want to live any more, and I shall say nothing."

Then Ruggiero who had not laughed much for some time, felt that his mouth was twitching raider his yellow beard, and presently his great shoulders began to move, and his chest heaved, and his handsome head went back, and at last it came out, a mighty peal of Homeric laughter that echoed and rolled down the pier and rang clear and full, up to the Marchesa's terrace. And it chanced that Beatrice was there, and she looked down and saw that it was Ruggiero. Then she sighed and drew back.

But Bastianello did not understand, and when the laugh subsided at last, he said so.

"I laughed--yes. I could not help it. But you are a good brother, and very honest, and when you want to marry Teresina, you may have my savings, and I do not care to be paid back."

"But I do not understand," repeated Bastianello, in the greatest bewilderment. "You loved her so--"

"Teresina? No. I never loved Teresina, but I never knew you did, or I would not have let you believe it. It is much more I who have cheated you, Bastianello, and when you and Teresina are married I will give you half my earnings, just as I now put them in the bank."

"G.o.d be blessed!" exclaimed Bastianello, touching his cap, and staring at the same vessel that had attracted Ruggiero's attention.

"She carries royal studding-sails," observed Ruggiero. "You do not often see that in our part of the world."

"That is true," said Bastianello. "But I was not thinking of her, when I looked. And I thank you for what you say, Ruggiero, and with my heart.

And that is enough, because it seems that we know each other."

"We have been in the same crew once or twice," said Ruggiero.

"It seems to me that we have," answered his brother.

Neither of the two smiled, for they meant a good deal by the simple jest.

"Tell me, Ruggiero," said Bastianello after a pause, "since you never loved Teresina, who is it?"

"No, Bastianello. That is what I cannot tell any one, not even you."

"Then I will not ask. But I think I know, now."

Going over the events of the past weeks in his mind, it had suddenly flashed upon Bastianello that his brother loved Beatrice. Then everything explained itself in an instant. Ruggiero was such a gentleman--in Bastianello's eyes, of course--it was like him to break his heart for a real lady.

"Perhaps you do know," answered Ruggiero gravely, "but if you do, then do not tell me. It is a business better not spoken of. But what one thinks, one thinks. And that is enough."

A crowd of brown-skinned boys were in the water swimming and playing, as they do all day long in summer, and dashing spray at each other. They had a shabby-looking old skiff with which they amused themselves, upsetting and righting it again in the shallow water by the beach beyond the bathing houses.

"What a boat!" laughed Bastianello. "A baby can upset her and it takes a dozen boys to right her again!"

"Whose is she?" enquired Ruggiero idly, as he filled his pipe.

"She? She belonged to Black Rag's brother, the one who was drowned last Christmas Eve, when the Leone was cut in two by the steamer in the Mouth of Procida. I suppose she belongs to Black Rag himself now. She is a crazy old craft, but if he were clever he could patch her up and paint her and take foreigners to the Cape in her on fine days."

"That is true. Tell him so. There he is. Ohe! Black Rag!"

Black Rag came down the pier to the two brothers, a middle-aged, bow-legged, leathery fellow with a ragged grey beard and a weather-beaten face.

"What do you want?" he asked, stopping before them with his hands in his pockets.

"Bastianello says that old tub there is yours, and that if you had a better head than you have you could caulk her and paint her white with a red stripe and take foreigners to the Bath of Queen Giovanna in her on fine days. Why do you not try it? Those boys are making her die an evil death."

"Bastianello always has such thoughts!" laughed the sailor. "Why does he not buy her of me and paint her himself? The paint would hold her together another six months, I daresay."

"Give her to me," said Ruggiero. "I will give you half of what I earn with her."

Black Rag looked at him and laughed, not believing that he was in earnest. But Ruggiero slowly nodded his head as though to conclude a bargain.

"I will sell her to you," said the sailor at last. "She belonged to that blessed soul, my brother, who was drowned--health to us--to-day is Sat.u.r.day--and I never earned anything with her since she was mine. I will sell her cheap."

"How much? I will give you thirty francs for her."

Bastianello stared at his brother, but he made no remark while the bargain was being made, nor even when Ruggiero finally closed for fifty francs, paid the money down and proceeded to take possession of the old tub at once, to the infinite and forcibly expressed regret of the lads who had been playing with her. Then the two brothers hauled her up upon the sloping cement slip between the pier and the bathing houses, and turned her over. The boys swam away, and Black Rag departed with his money.

"What have you bought her for, Ruggiero?" asked Bastianello.

"She has copper nails," observed the other examining the bottom carefully. "She is worth fifty francs. Your thought was good. To-morrow she will be dry and we will caulk the seams, and the next day we will paint her and then we can take foreigners to the Cape in her if we have a chance and the signori do not go out. Lend a hand, Bastianello; we must haul her up behind the boats."

Bastianello said nothing and the two strong men almost carried the old tub to a convenient place for working at her.

"Do you want to do anything more to her to-night?" asked Bastianello.

"No."

"Then I will go up."

"Very well."

Ruggiero smiled as he spoke, for he knew that Bastianello was going to try and get another glimpse of Teresina. The ladies would probably go to drive and Teresina would be free until they came back.

He sat down on a boat near the one he had just bought, and surveyed his purchase. He seemed on the whole well satisfied. It was certainly good enough for the foreigners who liked to be pulled up to the cape on summer evenings. She was rather easily upset, as Ruggiero had noticed, but a couple of bags of pebbles in the right place would keep her steady enough, and she had room for three or four people in the stern sheets and for two men to pull. Not bad for fifty francs, thought Ruggiero. And San Miniato had asked about going after crabs by torchlight. This would be the very boat for the purpose, for getting about in and out of the rocks on which the crabs swarm at night. Black Rag might have earned money with her. But Black Rag was rather a worthless fellow, who drank too much wine, played too much at the public lottery and wasted his substance on trifles.

Ruggiero's purchase was much discussed that evening and all the next day by the sailors of the Piccola Marina. Some agreed that he had done well, and some said that he had made a mistake, but Ruggiero said nothing and paid no attention to the gossips. On the next day and the day after that he was at work before dawn with Bastianello, and Black Rag was very much surprised at the trim appearance of his old boat when the brothers at last put her into the water and pulled themselves round the little harbour to see whether the seams were all tight. But he pretended to put a good face on the matter, and explained that there were more rotten planks in her than any one knew of and that only the nails below the water line were copper after all, and he predicted a short life for Number Fifty Seven, when Ruggiero renewed the old licence in the little harbour office. Ruggiero, however, cared for none of these things, but ballasted the tub properly with bags of pebbles and demonstrated to the crowd that she was no longer easy to upset, inviting any one who pleased to stand on the gunwale and try.

"But the ballast makes her heavy to pull," objected Black Rag, as he looked on.

"If you had arms like the Children of the King," retorted the Cripple, "you would not trouble yourself about a couple of hundredweight more or less. But you have not. So you had better go and play three numbers at the lottery, the day of the month, the number of the boat and any other one that you like. In that way you may still make a little money if you have luck. For you have made a bad bargain with the Children of the King, and you know it."

Black Rag was much struck by the idea and promptly went up to the town to invest his spare cash in the three numbers, taking his own age for the third. As luck would have it the two first numbers actually turned up and he won thirty francs that week, which, as he justly observed, brought the price of the boat up to eighty. For if he had not sold her he would never have played the numbers at all, and no one pretended that she was worth more than eighty francs, if as much.

Then, one morning, San Miniato found Ruggiero waiting outside his door when he came out. The sailor grew leaner and more silent every day, but San Miniato seemed to grow stouter and more talkative.

"If you would like to go after crabs this evening, Excellency," said the former, "the weather is good and they are swarming on the rocks everywhere."