To Leeward Part 6

"He walks like a cat, that gentleman," said Marcantonio as he sat himself down beside his wife.

"He is charming," said Leonora. "He has been so amusing." She looked at her husband furtively to see how he took the remark.

"Perhaps," thought she, "he is one of those men who have to be managed by being made jealous. I have read about them in novels."

But Marcantonio was very glad that she had been amused, and he merely smiled pleasantly and said so. It never entered his head to suppose that Leonora was not satisfied with his show of affection, because he knew in himself that his love was perfectly real. There is a little vanity in such men as Marcantonio, together with a great deal of honesty. Their vanity makes them quite sure that the woman they love is satisfied, and their honesty makes them think the woman would speak out if she were not, just as they themselves would do.

Leonora had vanity enough of a certain kind, but it was not personal.

She doubted her own powers and gifts more than she need have done, and there was enough uncertainty about her own affection to make her uncertain of her husband's love. In the meanwhile she was bored since Mr. Batis...o...b.. had gone, and she wished Marcantonio would talk and amuse her. But when he did begin to say something it was about local Roman politics, and she understood nothing about that sort of thing. She longed more and more for "a sensation." It would probably be different to-morrow, for her moods seldom lasted long. But this evening it was intolerable. She made the most absent-minded answers to her husband's remarks, and seemed so impatient that he suggested she must be tired and had better go to bed.

"But I am not tired at all--on the contrary," she objected. "There is nothing to tire me here,--a little driving, a great deal of sitting on the terrace, a great deal of reading, and very little conversation"--

"Very little conversation!" exclaimed Marcantonio. "Mais, ma chere, here it is two hours we have been talking, without counting the visit of the gentleman who walks like a cat--Bat--Botis--I cannot say his name, but I know him."

"Ah, yes--Mr. Batis...o...b... Yes," said Leonora languidly, "he was very amusing. He talked about all sorts of things."

"Shall we ask him to pa.s.s a few days with us? I should be very glad, if you like him."

Marcantonio was really delighted to do anything his wife might wish.

Leonora was touched. He was sitting beside her, and she put her arms round his neck and laid her head on his shoulder.

"You are so good," she said in a low voice. "Oh, I do not want anybody else here at all. I only want you--but all of you--and I feel as though I had not all yet."

For the moment she really loved him. He gently smoothed her hair with his delicate, olive-tinted hand.

Meanwhile Mr. Julius Batis...o...b.. had gone to his hotel, and, having eaten his dinner, was sitting on the tiled terrace over the sea, with a cup of coffee at his elbow, and a cigarette in his mouth. There were lamps on the terrace, and there was starlight on the water, and Mr. Batis...o...b.. was alone at his small table.

"I wish I had not gone there. I wish I had not asked them to go to Castellamare. I wish I were at sea in my boat." He said these things over and over to himself, and now and again he smiled a little scornfully, and sipped his coffee.

Julius Batis...o...b.. was generally in trouble. He was a strong man in all respects save one. He had conquered many difficulties in his life, and by sheer determination had turned evil fortune into good, winning himself a name and a position, and such a proportion of wealth as he needed. Of good family, and brought up in luxury and refinement, he had been left at twenty years of age without parents, without much money, and without a profession. He knew some half dozen languages, ancient and modern, and he had a certain premature knowledge of the world. But that was his whole stock-in-trade excepting an indomitable will and perseverance, combined with exceedingly good health, and a great desire for the luxuries of life. He had lived in all sorts of ways and places, getting his pen under control by endless literary hack-work. By and by he tried his hand at journalism, and was successively addicted to three or four papers, published in three or four languages in three or four countries. Last of all he wrote a book which unexpectedly succeeded.

Since then the aspect of life had changed for him, and though he still wandered, from force of habit, so to say, he no longer wandered in search of a fortune. A pen and a few sheets of paper can be got anywhere, and Julius Batis...o...b.. set up his itinerary literary forge wherever it best pleased him to work. He had fought with ill-luck, and had conquered it, and now he felt the confidence of a man who has swum through rough water and feels at last the smooth, clean sand beneath his feet. His success had not turned his head in the least; he was too much of an artist for that, striving always in his work to attain something that ever seemed to escape him. But he now felt that he might some day get nearer to what he aimed at, and there were moments, brief moments, of genuine happiness, when he believed that there was wrought by his pen some stroke of worth that should not perish. Ten minutes later he was dissatisfied with it all, and collected his strength for a new effort, still hoping, and striving, and labouring on, with his whole soul in his work.

Strong in body and strong in determination, he was yet very weak in one respect. He was eternally falling in love, everlastingly throwing himself at the feet of some woman and making mischief which he afterwards bitterly regretted. It seemed as though it were impossible for him to live six months without some affair of a more or less serious character. It made no difference whether he wandered off into the recesses of the Italian mountains, or went into hermitage in the Black Forest, or steamed and sweltered under a tropical sun; there was always a feminine element at hand to make trouble for him.

It was not only the universal woman calling to him to follow, it was the universal woman seizing him and carrying him away by main force. For it was no matter of inclination. He struggled hard enough to deserve victory, but without any perceptible result.

What gave him most pain was the dreary consciousness of his own insincerity in his love-making, the consciousness that came to him after the affair was over. While it lasted he was carried away and blinded by a sort of madness that took possession of him and allowed him no time for thought. But when it was over he remembered, bitterly enough, how untrue it had all been, to himself and to the one woman whom he had loved, and whom, down in the depths of his turbulent heart, he loved still. His other loves were like horrible creations of black magic, bodies with no soul, when he looked back on them. And yet while they lasted they seemed to him real, and high, and n.o.ble.

At first he fought against every new inclination, and cursed his folly in advance; and sometimes he conquered, but not always. If once the fatal point were pa.s.sed there was no salvation, for then he deceived himself and the deception was complete. It was no wonder people thought so differently about him. He had been known to do brave and generous things, and things that showed the utmost delicacy of feeling and courtesy of temper; and he had been known to act with a sheer, ma.s.sive, selfish disregard of other people, that made cynics look grave and mild-eyed society idiots stare with horror. The fact was that Julius Batis...o...b.. in love was one person, and Julius Batis...o...b.. out of love, repentant and trying to make up to the world for the mischief he had done, was quite another; and he knew it himself. He was perfectly conscious of his own duality, and liked the one state,--the state of no love,--and he loathed and detested the other both before and after.

And now he sat over his coffee, and the prophetic warning of his soul told him that he was in danger, so that he was angry at himself and feared the future. He had known Miss Carnethy, as has been said, for some time, and had danced with her and sat beside her at dinner more than once, without giving her a thought; he therefore had found it perfectly natural to call when he discovered that she was at Sorrento.

But his impression after his visit was very different. The Marchesa Carantoni was not Miss Carnethy at all.

She had looked so magnificent as she sat in the evening sunshine, and he had gazed contentedly at her with a sense of artistic satisfaction, thinking no evil. But now he could think of nothing else. The sun seemed to rise again out of the dark sea, turning back on its course till it was just above the horizon, with a warm golden light; by his side sat the figure of a woman with glorious red hair, and he was speaking to her; the whole scene was present to him as he sat there, and he knew very well what it was that he felt. Why had he not known it at first? He would surely have had the sense not to propose such a thing as a day together. "A day together" had so often entailed so much misery.

Nevertheless he would not invent an excuse, nor go away suddenly. It would be quite possible, he knew, and perhaps also he knew in his heart that it would be altogether right. But it seemed so uncourteous, he was really anxious to see the launch of the great ship and--and--he would not be such a fool as to fancy he could not look at a woman without falling in love with her on the spot. At his age! Five and thirty--he seemed so old when he thought of all he had done in that time. No. He would not only go with them, but he would be as agreeable as he could, if only to show himself that he was at last above that kind of thing.

Some human hearts are like a great ship that has no anchor, nor any means of making fast to moorings. The brave vessel sails through the stormy ocean, straining and struggling fiercely, till she lies at last within a fair harbour. But she has no anchor, and by and by the soft, smooth tide washes her out to sea, so gently and cruelly, out among the crests and the squalls and the rushing currents, and she must fain beat to windward again or perish on the grim lee sh.o.r.e.

Julius Batis...o...b.. went to bed that night knowing that he was adrift, and yet denying it to himself; knowing that in a month, a week perhaps, he should be in trouble--in love--pah! how he hated the idea!

CHAPTER VI.

During the time that elapsed between Mr. Batis...o...b..'s visit and the expedition to see the launch, Leonora had an access of the religious humour. The little scene with her husband had made a deep impression on her mind, and as was usual when she received impressions, she tried to explain it and understand it and reason about it, until there was little of it left. That is generally the way with those people who make a study of themselves; when they have a good thought or a good impulse, they dissect the life out of it and crow over the empty sh.e.l.l.

It was clear, thought Leonora, that the sudden outburst of affection which made her tell her husband that she wanted "all of him" was the result of some sensation of dissatisfaction, of some unfulfilled necessity for a greater sympathy. But, if at the very beginning she had not the key to his heart, if he did not wholly love her now, it was clear that he never would at all. Why was it clear? Oh! never mind the "why,"--it was quite clear. Moreover, if he could never love her wholly as she wished and desired, she was manifestly a misunderstood woman, a most unhappy wife, a condemned existence,--loving and not being loved in return. And he, the heartless wretch, was anxious about the cook! Good heavens! the cook--when his wife's happiness was in danger! In this frame of mind there was evidently nothing more appropriate for her to do than to take a prayer-book and to hide her face in a veil, and slip away to the little church on the road, a hundred yards from the house. For a wrecked existence, thought Leonora, there is no refuge like the Church.

She was not a Catholic, but that made no difference; in great distress like this, she could very well be comforted by any kind of religion short of her father's, which latter, to her exalted view, consisted of four walls and a bucket of whitewash, seasoned with pious discourses and an occasional psalm-tune.

What she could not see, what was really at the bottom of the small tempest she rashly whirled up in her over-sensitive soul, was her own disillusionment. She had deceived herself into believing that she loved her husband, and the deception had cost her an effort. She was beginning to realise that the time was at hand when she might strive in vain to believe in her own sincerity, when her heart would not submit to any further equivocation, and when she should know in earnest what hollowness and weariness meant. As yet this was half unconscious, for it seemed so easy to make herself the injured party.

Poor Marcantonio was not to blame. He was the happiest of mortals, and went calmly on his way, doubting nothing and thinking that he was of all mortal men the most supremely fortunate.

Meanwhile Leonora kneeled in the rough little church, solacing herself with the catalogue of those ills she thought she was suffering. The stones were hard; there was a wretched little knot of country people, squalid and ill-savoured, who stared at the great lady for a moment, and then went on with their rosaries. A dirty little boy with a cane twenty feet long was poking a taper about and lighting lamps, and he dropped some of the wax on Leonora's gown. But she never shrank nor looked annoyed.

"All these things are very delightful," she said to herself, "if you only consider them as mortifications of the flesh."

She remembered how often just such little annoyances had sent her out of other churches disgusted and declaring that religion was a vain and hollow thing; and now, because she could bear with them and was not angry, she felt quite sure it was genuine.

"Yes," said she piously, as, an hour later, she picked her way home through the dusty road, "yes, the Church is a great refuge. I will go there every day."

Indeed, she was so resigned and subdued that evening at dinner, that Marcantonio asked whether she had a headache.

"Oh no," she answered, "I am perfectly well, thank you."

"Because if you are indisposed, ma bien-aimee," continued her husband with some anxiety, "we will not go to Castellamare to-morrow."

"I will certainly go," she said. "I would go if I had twenty headaches,"

she might have added, for it would have been true.

"The occasion will be so much the more brilliant, ma tres chere,"

remarked Marcantonio gallantly, as they went out into the garden under the stars.

"It is a hollow sham," said Leonora to herself. "He does not mean it."

But whether it was the effect of the morning, or the magic influence of Mr. Batis...o...b..'s personality, is not certain; at all events when that gentleman appeared at the appointed hour to announce that his boat was in readiness, Leonora looked as though she had never known what care meant. She doubtless still remembered all she had thought on the previous afternoon, and she was still quite sure that her existence was a wreck and a misery,--but then, she argued, why should we poor misunderstood women not take such innocent pleasures as come in our way?

It would be very wrong not to accept humbly the little crumbs of happiness,--and so on. So they went to Castellamare.

It is not far, but the wind seldom serves in the morning, and it was an hour and a half before the six stout men in white clothes and straw hats pulled the boat round the breakwater of the a.r.s.enal. Everything was ready for the ceremony. Half a dozen Italian ironclads lay in the harbour, decked from stem to stern with flags; the royal personages had arrived, and were boring each other to death in a great temporary balcony, gaudily decorated with red and gold, which had been reared on the sh.o.r.e within reach of the nose of the new ship. The ship herself, a huge, ungainly thing, painted red and bearing three enormous national flags, lay like a stranded monster in the cradle, looking for all the world like a prehistoric boiled lobster with its claws taken off. The small water room opposite the a.r.s.enal was crowded with every kind of craft, and little steamers arrived every few minutes from Naples to swell the throng. The July sun beat fiercely down and there was not a breath of air. The boatmen were all wrangling in a dozen southern dialects, and no one seemed to know why the ceremony was delayed any longer. Nevertheless, as is usual in such cases, there was half an hour to wait before the thing could be done.

"I am afraid you will find this a dreadful bore," said Batis...o...b.. to Leonora in English, while Marcantonio was busy trying to make out some of his friends on sh.o.r.e through a field-gla.s.s. Batis...o...b.. had sat in the stern-sheets to steer during the trip, and having Leonora on one side of him and her husband on the other, had gone through an endless series of polite plat.i.tudes. If it had not been that Leonora attracted him so much he must himself have been bored to extinction. But then in that case he would probably not have put himself in such a position at all.

"Oh, nothing of this kind bores me," said Leonora cheerfully.

"You say that as though there were many kinds of things that did, though," observed Batis...o...b.., looking at her. It was a natural remark, without any intention.