To Leeward Part 4

Leonora was pacified, as she almost always was when he was particularly affectionate.

"But, of course," he continued, "you will enjoy the being able to read and study your favourite books."

"I never want to read them now," said Leonora, who chanced that day to be not very philosophically disposed. She had been perusing the latest French impossibility,--she found it rather amusing to be allowed to have what she liked now that she was married.

"I should be glad if you never read any more philosophy," said Marcantonio, unwisely saying what was uppermost in his thoughts.

"Really, though," answered Leonora, "I know it all so very superficially that I feel I must go back and be much more thorough. I think I shall take a sound course of Voltaire and Hegel, and that sort of thing, this summer."

Her husband was silent. He began to suspect his wife of being capable of an occasional contradiction for the mere love of it. Besides, he saw no particular connection between the two authors she named. But then he knew very little about them. He looked at Leonora. There was not a trace of unpleasant expression in her face, and she seemed to have merely made the remark in the air, without the least intention of being contradictory or captious. He liked to look at her, she was so fresh and fair. Neither heat nor cold seemed to touch her delicate white skin,--her hair was so thick and strong, and her blue eyes so bright.

She was the very incarnation of life. What if her features were not quite cla.s.sic in their proportion?

"I am not so beautiful as Diana," she said laughingly one day to Marcantonio, "but I am sure I am much more alive than she is." He laughed too, well pleased at the distinction drawn. He was glad that his sister should be thought cold, and he believed that his wife loved him.

He kissed her hand tenderly.

They had been married two months when they came to stay in Sorrento. It is a beautiful place. Perhaps in all the orange-scented south there is none more perfect, more sweet with gardens and soft sea-breath, more rich in ancient olive-groves, or more tenderly nestled in the breast of a bountiful nature. A little place it is, backed and flanked by the volcanic hills, but having before it the glory of the fairest water in the world. Straight down from the orange gardens the cliffs fall to the sea, and every villa and village has a descent, winding through caves and by stairways to its own small sandy cove, where the boats lie in the sun through the summer's noontide heat, to shoot out at morning and evening into the coolness of the breezy bay. Among the warm, green fruit trees the song-birds have their nests, and about the eaves of the scattered houses the swallows wheel and race in quick, smooth circles.

Far along through the groves echoes the ancient song of the southern peasant, older than the trees, older than the soil, older than poor old Pompeii lying off there in the eternal ashes of her gorgeous sins. And ever the sapphire sea kisses the feet of the cliffs as though wooing the rocks to come down, and plunge in, and taste how good a thing it is to be cool and wet all over.

To this place Marcantonio and his wife came at the beginning of July, having picked up numerous possessions and a few servants in Rome. They both had a taste for comfort, though they enjoyed the small privations of travelling for a time. To luxurious people it is pleasant to be uncomfortable when the fancy takes them, in order that they may the better enjoy the tint of their purple and the softness of their fine linen by the contrast. For contrast is the magnifying gla.s.s of the senses.

At sunset they walked side by side in their terraced garden overlooking the sea. They had travelled all night and had rested all day in consequence, and now they were refreshed and alive to the magic things about them.

"How green it is!" said Leonora, stopping to look at the thick trees.

"Yes," answered Marcantonio, "it is very green."

He was thinking of something else, and Leonora's very natural and simple remark did not divert his thoughts. The cook had arrived with a touch of the fever, and he was debating whether to send for the doctor at once or to wait till the next day. For he was very good to his servants, and took care of them. But Leonora wanted something more enthusiastic.

"But it is so very fresh and green!" she repeated. "Do you not see how lovely it all is?" She laid her hand on his arm.

"Oui, cherie," said he, getting rid of the cook by an effort, "and green is the colour of hope." Then it struck him that the saying was rather commonplace, and he began to realise what she wanted. "It is a perfect fairyland," he went on, "and we will enjoy it as long as we please. Are you fond of sailing, my dear?"

"Oh, of all things!" exclaimed Leonora, enthusiastically. "I love the sea and the beautiful colours, and everything"--

She stopped short and put her arm through his and made him walk again.

She was conscious, perhaps, that she was making an effort,--why, she could not tell,--and that she had not much to say.

"Marcantoine"--she began. They spoke French together, though she knew Italian better. She thought his name long, but had not yet decided how to abbreviate it.

"Yes, what would you say, my dear?" he asked pleasantly.

"I think I could--no--Marcantoine, now that we are married, are you quite sure that you love me--quite, quite?" Marcantonio's face turned strangely earnest and quiet. He looked into her eyes as he answered.

"Yes, my very dear wife, I am quite sure. And you, are you sure, Leonora?"

"How serious you are!" she exclaimed, laughingly. "Well, perhaps I am not so sure as you are,--but I think I could." Somehow he did not smile; he took some things so seriously.

Honeymoon conversations are insignificant enough, but it would be well if they were still more so. They should be limited by an international law to the phrases contained in the works of M. Ollendorff.

"Is it a fine day, sir?"

"Yes, madam, it is a very fine day, but the baker has the green hat of the officer."

"Has the baker also the red cow of the general's wife?"

"No, madam, the baker has not the red cow of the general's wife, but the undertaker has the penknife of the aunt of the good butcher."

It would be hard for the most ill-disposed couple to quarrel if confined to this simple elegance of dialectics, where truths of the broadest kind are clothed in the purest and most energetic words. Young married people are allowed too much lat.i.tude when they are turned loose upon a whole language with a sort of standing order to make conversation. When they have exhausted a certain fund of stock poetry and enthusiasm, they have very little to fall back upon, except their personal relation to each other; and unless they are equally serious or equally frivolous, the discussion of such matters is apt to get them into trouble.

Like most Italians Marcantonio had difficulty in understanding English humour. When Leonora said she was not quite sure she loved him, she had meant it for a jest, and if the jest had a deeper meaning and a possibility of truth for herself, that was no reason, she thought, why Marcantonio should consider it no jest at all. She was somewhat annoyed, and she made up her mind that there must be an element of Philistinism in his character. She hated and feared Philistines, partly because they were bores, and partly because she had met one or two of them who had known vastly more than she did, and who had not scrupled to show it.

But, after all, how could Marcantonio be really like them? He did not know very much, nor did he pretend to, and he had very good taste and was altogether very nice,--no, he was not a Philistine; he loved her, and that was the reason he was serious. All this she thought, springing from one idea to another, and ending by drawing her arm closer through his and moving along the terrace by his side.

The sun had set over there in front of them, and the air was cool and purple with the afterglow. They stood by the wall and looked out silently, without any further effort at conversation. Talking had been a failure, probably because they were tired, and for a brief s.p.a.ce they were content to watch the clouds, and to listen to the swift rush of the swallows and the faint, soft fall of the small waves on the sand far below them. There they were, linked together, for better for worse, to meet the joys and the sorrows of life hand in hand; to stand before the world as representatives of their cla.s.s, to play a part in public, and in their homes to be all in all to each other, man and wife.

Man and wife! Ah me! for the greatness and the littleness of the bonds those names stand for! Is there a man so poor and thin-souled in the world that he has not dreamed of calling some woman "wife"? Is there any wretch so mean and miserable in spirit that he has not looked on some maiden and said, "I would marry her, if I could"? Or has any woman, beautiful or ugly, fair or dark, straight or crooked, not thought once, and more than once, that a man would come, and love her, and take her, and marry her?

But have all the woes and ills of humanity, ma.s.sed together and piled up in their dismal weight, ever called forth one half the sorrow that has ensued from this wedding and being wedded? Alas and alack for the tears that have fallen thick and fast from women's eyes,--and for the tears that have stood and burned in the eyes of strong men, good and bad! Who shall count them, or who shall measure them? Who shall ever tell the griefs that are beyond words, the sorrows that all earthly language, wielded by all earthly genius, cannot tell? Will any man make bold to say that he can describe what pain his neighbour feels? He may tell us what he does, for he can see it; he may tell us what he thinks, for perhaps he can guess it; but he cannot tell us what he suffers. The most he can do is to strike the sad minor chord that in every man's heart leads to a dirge and a death-song of his own.

A man who tries to tell of great suffering is rebuked. "No human creature," says the critic, "could suffer as this man describes, and live. There can therefore be no such suffering in the world." But does any critic or reader or other intelligent person say, when he reads about great happiness, "This joy is too much for humanity; there is no such joy in the world"?

We shrink from suffering, in others as in ourselves, and we turn to happiness and cannot get enough of it, so that however the tale ends, we would have made it end yet more joyfully; for so would we do with our own lives if we could. The strength of half mankind is spent in trying to remedy mistakes made at the outset, and I suppose that there is not one man in ten millions who is not striving to make himself happier, in his own fashion. A man is only happy when he believes himself to be so, in whatever way the proposition be turned, and no man believes himself so happy but what he might be happier.

Marcantonio Carantoni was in just such a position. He was more than contented, for he looked forward to much in the future that he had not yet attained, and he looked forward to it with certainty. His wife Leonora was trying hard to be as happy as he, but there had been a doubt--a cruel, hot little doubt--in her soul from the first. She had deceived herself--with the best intention--until she could hardly ever be sure that what she felt was genuine. She had asked questions of her heart until it was weary of answering them, and would as soon speak false to her as true.

And here ends the prologue of this story.

CHAPTER V.

A few days after the arrival of the Carantoni establishment in Sorrento, Leonora was sitting alone on a terrace of the villa with a book and a great variety of small possessions in the way of needle-work, shawls, cushions, flowers, parasols, fans, and a white cat. Marcantonio was gone to the town alone, intending to buy more possessions; for Sorrento is famous for its silk-weaving and its exquisite carved work of olive wood, and Leonora loved knickknacks.

"I would give anything in the world for a sensation," she thought, as she looked out over the sea.

It was towards evening, and the water was as smooth as gla.s.s and tinged with red.

Marcantonio was right after all. It was very dull in Sorrento, with no one but one's husband to speak to,--and he had made such a fuss about the cook's illness. Of course, it was very beautiful and all that; but life with the beauties of nature is so very tiresome after a time. She longed for some of her friends,--even her mother, she thought, would be a relief. But no one had called, excepting some very proper people of the Roman set, who all had gout and rheumatism and a dictionary-ful of diseases, and were taking sulphur baths at Castellamare.

She was wishing with all her might that some amusing person would call, when, as though in answer to her thoughts, a servant brought her a card.

Then she yawned slightly, supposing it to be some toothless old princess of Rome or some other wearisome bore. But as she looked at the name,--"Mr. Julius Batis...o...b..,"--she gave a little start and her light fingers touched her lace and ribbons, and her thick hair, and she said she would receive.

Mr. Julius Batis...o...b.. was a man of five and thirty years of age, and a person sure to attract attention anywhere. He was tall and looked strong, but he trod as lightly as a woman; none of his movements were clumsy or awkward. Not that he stepped daintily or affected any feminine grace of movement; there was something in his build and proportion that made it always seem easy for him to move, as though his strength were perfectly under control.

People were divided in opinion concerning his appearance. Some said he was handsome and some said he was coa.r.s.e. Some said he was refined and some said he looked ill-tempered. As a matter of fact he had a rather small head, set upon a strong neck. His nose was large and broad, and decidedly aquiline, and he had a remarkably clean-cut and determined jaw. His mouth was comparatively too small for his face, but well shaped and well closed, shaded by a black moustache of very moderate dimensions. His blue eyes were set deep in his head and far apart. Of hair he had an unusual quant.i.ty, of a blue black colour, and he brushed it carefully. A single deep line scored its mark across, just above his brows. He had an odd way of looking at things, hiding the half of the iris under the upper lid, showing the white of the eye a little beneath the coloured portion. His complexion was of that brilliant kind which sometimes goes with black hair and blue eyes, and is known as an especial characteristic of the Irish race. Moreover he was noticeably well dressed, in a broad, neat fashion of quiet colour, and he wore no jewelry nor ornament except an old seal ring.

Opinions varied almost as much about Mr. Julius Batis...o...b..'s character and reputation as about his claims to be thought good-looking. He had no intimate friends, or was supposed to have none; and he never answered many questions, because he asked none. It was known that he was an Englishman or an Irishman by birth, but that he had never lived long in his own country, whereas he seemed to have lived everywhere else under the sun.