“My boat and my men are always at your disposal, Marchesa,” said Batiscombe, looking down at her, “and myself, too, if you will condescend to employ me as your skipper.”
“Thanks, you are very good,” said she. “But I thought you were only passing, and were to be off in a few days?” She glanced up at him, as though she meant to be answered.
“Oh, it is very uncertain,” said Batiscombe. “It depends,” he added in a lower voice and in English, “upon whether you will use the boat.” It was rather a bold stroke, but it told, and he was rewarded.
“I should like very much to go out again some day,” she said.
Those little words and sentences, what danger signals they ought to be to people about to fall in love! Batiscombe knew it; he knew well that every such speech, in her native language and in a half voice, was one step nearer to the inevitable end. But he was fast getting to the point when, as far as he himself was concerned, the die would be cast. His manner changed perceptibly during the day, as the influence gained strength. His voice grew lower and he laughed less, while his eyes shone curiously, even in the midday sun.
The boat ran into the cave, which was the largest on the shore, and would admit the mast and the long yards without difficulty. Within the light was green, and the water now and again plashed on the rocks. The men steadied the craft with their oars and the party proceeded to lunch. Most of “society” has a most excellent appetite, and when one reflects how very hard society works to amuse itself, it is not surprising that it should need generous nourishment. The unlucky cook had done his best, and the result was satisfactory. There were all manner of things, and some bottles of strong Falerno wine. Batiscombe drank water and very little of it.
“Somebody has said,” remarked Marcantonio with a laugh, “that one must distrust the man who drinks water when other people drink wine. We shall have to beware of you, Monsieur Batiscombe.” He had learned the name very well by this time.
“Perhaps there is truth in it,” said Batiscombe, “but it is not my habit I can assure you. The origin of the saying lies in the good old custom of doctoring other people’s draughts. The man who drank water at a feast two hundred years ago was either afraid of being poisoned himself, or was engaged in poisoning his neighbours.”
“Oh, the dear, good old time!” exclaimed Leonora, eating her salad daintily.
“Do you wish it were back again?” asked Batiscombe. “Are there many people you would like to poison?”
“Oh, not that exactly,” and she laughed. “But life must have been very exciting and interesting then.”
“Enfin,” remarked Marcantonio, “I am very well pleased with it as it is. There was no opera, no election, no launching of war-ships; and when you went out you had to wear a patent safe on your head, in case anybody wanted to break it for you. And then, there was generally some one who did. Yes, indeed, it must have been charming, altogether ravishing. Allez! give me the nineteenth century.”
“I assure you, Marchesa,” said Batiscombe, “life can be exceedingly exciting and interesting now.”
“I dare say,” retorted Leonora, “for people who go round the world in boats in search of adventures, and write books abusing their enemies. But we — what do we ever do that is interesting or exciting? We stay at home and pour tea.”
“And in those days,” answered Batiscombe, “the ladies stayed at home and knit stockings, or if they were very clever they worked miles and miles of embroidery and acres of tapestry. About once a month they were allowed to look out of the window and see their relations beating each other’s brains out with iron clubs, and running each other through the body with pointed sticks. As the Marchese says, it was absolutely delightful, that kind of life.”
“You are dreadfully prejudiced,” said Leonora.
“But I am sure it was very nice.”
And so they talked, and the men smoked a little, till they decided that they had had enough of it, and the oars plashed in the water together, sending the boat out again into the bright sun. In five minutes they were at the landing belonging to the Carantoni villa. There was a deep cleft in the cliffs just there, and the descent wound curiously in and out of the rock, so that in many places you could only trace it from below by the windows hewn in the solid stone to give light and air to the passage. The rocks ran out a little at the base, and there were steps carved for landing. There are few places so strikingly odd as this landing to the Carantoni villa. Leonora said it was “eerie.”
When it came to parting, the young couple were profuse in their thanks to Mr. Batiscombe for the enchanting trip.
“I hope,” said Marcantonio, “that you will come and dine with us very soon, and change your mind about the water-drinking, and give us another opportunity of thanking you.”
“I have enjoyed it very, very much,” said Leonora, giving Batiscombe her hand. Their eyes met, and for the first time she noticed the curious light in his glance. But he bowed very low and very elaborately, so to say.
“You will keep your promise,” he said, “and use the boat again?”
“Thanks so very much. But of course we will have a boat of our own now, and so I should not think of asking you.”
She smiled a little at him. Somehow he understood perfectly that he could nevertheless induce her to accept his offer. He stood hat in hand on the rocks as they disappeared into the dark stairway. Then he sprang into the boat, and the men pulled lustily away.
He leaned back in the stern with his hand on the tiller and his eyes half closed. In the bottom of the boat were the luncheon baskets, and one of Leonora’s roses had fallen from the stem and lay withering in the hot July sun. Batiscombe picked it up, looked at it, pulled a leaf or two, and threw it overboard, with a half sneer of dissatisfaction.
“They have forgotten the baskets, though,” he thought to himself. “If they had asked me to go up with them, as they should have done, I would have had them carried up. As it is I will — I will wait till they write for them. I could hardly take them myself.” And he lighted a cigarette.
As Leonora mounted the stairway, leaning on her husband’s arm, she turned to get a glimpse of the boat gliding away in the distance. She could just see it through one of the windows in the rock.
“Why did you not ask him to come up?” she inquired.
“Why did you not ask him, my angel?” returned Marcantonio.
“I thought you might not like it,” she answered.
“Comment donc! He is very amiable, I am sure. But I thought you were tired and had had enough of him, — in short, that you did not want him.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Leonora. She felt a little curious sense of pleasure, that was quite new to her, at the idea that her husband could have seriously thought she did not want Mr. Batiscombe.
“Naturally,” added Marcantonio, “we ought to have asked him.”
“I suppose so,” said she, indifferently enough.
“I will call on him to-morrow, and we will have him to dinner, if it is agreeable to you, my dear.”
“Oh yes — I do not mind at all,” said Leonora. She was thinking about something, and did not speak again till they reached the house.
It was very frivolous, but she was really thinking about the curious expression of Mr. Batiscombe’s eyes. She did not remember to have ever seen anything exactly like it. Besides, she had known him, more or less, for some time, and had never noticed it before. Perhaps it was the reflection from the water. But she dreamed that night that she saw those eyes very close to her, and the expression of them frightened her a little, but was not altogether disagreeable.
CHAPTER VII.
JULIUS BATISCOMBE WAS a restless man by day and night, after the trip to Castellamare. Marcantonio called upon him, but he was out, and then he received an invitation to dinner from Leonora, with a postscript about the unlucky baskets. He accepted the invitation. What else could he do?
But when the day came he regretted it. He wished he had refused and had g
one away. Then he made a fine resolution.
“I will not go to this dinner,” he said to himself, savagely, as he walked quickly up and down his room. “I will not go near her again. It is not right, and I will not do it. I will sail over to Naples at once, and send back a telegram of excuse, saying that a matter of the most urgent importance keeps me there. So it is — I should think so — a matter of very urgent importance. Oh! Julius Batiscombe, what an ass you are, to be sure!” With that he crammed some things into a bag, sent for his man, and descended in hot haste to the shore. There was no time to be lost, for it was already four o’clock in the afternoon and the invitation was for eight. He could just reach Naples and send his telegram in time to prevent the Carantoni from waiting for him.
The lazy breeze was dying away, and he wished he had had the sense to make up his mind sooner. But his men rowed lustily, and kept time, so that the boat spun along fairly enough.
“I shall do it,” said Julius Batiscombe to himself.
He was happy enough in the sensation that he was cheating his fate and was about to escape a serious affection. Then he laughed at the comic side of the case, and lit a cigar and blew great clouds of smoke over his shoulder. But fate and Batiscombe were old enemies, and fate generally got the better of it.
It chanced that on this very day Leonora and Marcantonio had determined to go out in the new boat. For Marcantonio had wanted to give his wife a surprise, and had got from Naples a beautiful clean-built launch. He had said nothing about it, and had patiently borne her reproaches at his indifference to sailing, until on the previous evening he had taken her down the descent to the rocks and had shown her his purchase, which had just arrived by the steamer. Of course she was enchanted, and determined to make the most of it, for she was really fond of the water. Accordingly, on this very day, she and her husband sallied forth with six men, — for he had not dared to give her a smaller crew than Mr. Batiscombe’s. She was in such a hurry to go that she said she did not mind the sun in the least, — oh dear, no! she rather liked it. And so it came to pass that a few minutes after Julius had given his men the word to fall to their oars at the little beach of the town of Sorrento, a long low craft, painted in dark green and gold, and looking exceedingly trim and “fit” with its long lateen yards and raking masts, shot out from the cleft beneath Leonora’s villa.
Batiscombe looked straight before him, steering by the Naples shore, and intent on wasting neither time nor distance. He might have been out half an hour or more when a remark from one of his crew made him look round, and he was aware of a dark green boat two or three hundred yards astern, but rapidly pulling up to him. He started, for though he could not see the faces of the occupants, he recognised a parasol that Leonora had taken to Castellamare.
“It is the new boat of the Marchese Carantoni,” said the sailor who had first spoken to Batiscombe. The man had seen it arrive by the steamer on the previous evening, and had helped to put it into the water to be rowed down to the villa. Batiscombe gave one more look and groaned inwardly. He would make a fight for it, though, he thought. He encouraged his men not to allow themselves to be overtaken by a parcel of Neapolitans, as he derisively called the crew of Carantoni’s boat. His own men were tough fellows from the north of Italy, bearded, and broad, and bronzed; but his boat, built for rougher weather and rougher work than pleasure-rowing in the bay of Naples, was twice as heavy as the slight green craft astern. His sturdy men set their teeth and tugged hard, but the others gained on them.
Leonora and Marcantonio had recognised the cut of Batiscombe’s boat and crew from a distance; and, in profound ignorance of his amiable intentions of flight, they imagined nothing more amusing than to race him.
“If we cannot beat him,” said Leonora, breathless with excitement, “I will never come out in your boat again!”
She strained her eyes to make out if they were gaining way. Marcantonio spoke to the men: —
“Corraggio, Corraggio! Maccaroni con formaggio!”
The men repeated the rhyme to each other with a grin, and bent hard to their work. They were not Neapolitans as Batiscombe called them, but strong-backed, slim fishermen from the southern coast, as dark as Arabs and as merry as thieves, enjoying a race of all things best in the world, and well able to row it. Swiftly the dark green boat crept up to her rival, and soon Batiscombe could hear the remarks of the men. His own crew did their best, but it was a hopeless case.
“Monsieur Batiscombe, Monsieur Batiscombe,” shouted Marcantonio, almost as much excited as his wife, “we shall conquer you immediately!”
Julius turned and waved his hat, and made a gesture of submission. A few lengths more and they were beside him. He raised his hand, and his men hung on their oars.
“Kismet! it is my portion,” he said to himself as he gave up the fight.
“But where are you going in such a hurry, Mr. Batiscombe?” asked Leonora, who was delighted at having won the race. “You see it is no use running away; we can catch you so easily.”
“Yes,” said Batiscombe, laughing recklessly at the hidden truth of her words, “I see it is of no use, but I tried hard. It was a good race.”
He turned in his seat and leaned over, looking at his friends. The boats drifted together, and the men held them side by side, unshipping their oars. Batiscombe admired the whole turnout, and complimented Leonora upon it. Marcantonio was pleased with everything and everybody; he was delighted that his wife should have had the small satisfaction of victory, and he was proud that his boat had fulfilled his expectations. So they floated along side by side, saying the pleasantest manner of things possible to each other. Time flew by, and presently they turned homewards.
“I wonder how long it will be,” thought Batiscombe as he held the tiller hard over and his boat swung about, “before I tell her where I was going ‘in such a hurry’?” And he smiled in a grim sort of irony at himself, for he knew that he was lost.
“Eight o’clock — don’t forget!” cried Leonora. She had a pleasant voice that carried far over the water. Batiscombe waved his hat, and smiled and bowed. They were soon separated, and their courses became more and more divergent as they neared the land.
Batiscombe swore a little over his dressing, quite quietly and to himself, but he bestowed much care upon his appearance. He knew just how much always depends on appearance at the outset, and how little it is to be relied on at a later stage. So he gave an unusual amount of thought to his tie, and was extremely fastidious about the flower in his coat.
As for Leonora, she was on the point of a change of mood. She had been very gay and happy all day long, and the adventure with the boat had still further raised her spirits. But that was all the more reason why they should sink again before long, for her humours were mostly of short duration, though of strong impulse. This evening she felt as though there were something the matter, or as though something were going to happen, and her gayety seemed to be the least bit fictitious to herself. She and her husband stood on the terrace in the sunset, awaiting their guest.
“My dear,” said Marcantonio, “I am in despair. I shall be obliged to go to Rome to-morrow or the next day. My uncle, the cardinal, writes me that it is very important.” Leonora’s face fell; she had a sharp little sense of pain.
“Oh, Marcantoine,” she said, “do not go away now!”
“It is only for a day or two, my angel,” he said, drawing her arm through his.
“Must you really go?” she asked, not looking at him.
“Hélas, yes.”
“Then I will go with you,” said she, in a determined tone.
“Ah, I thank you for the wish, chérie,” he answered. “But you will tire yourself, and be so hot and uncomfortable. See, I will only be away a day and a half.”
“But I do not want to be alone here without you,” she pleaded. She could not for her life have told why she was so distressed at the idea, but it gave her pain, and she insisted.
“As you wish,” said Marcantonio, ki
ssing her hand. “I will make every arrangement for your comfort, and do what I can to make the journey pleasant.”
He was a little surprised, but, manlike, he was flattered at his wife’s show of affection. There are moments in a woman’s life when, whether she loves her husband or not, she turns to him and holds to him with an instinctive sense of reliance.
A moment later Julius Batiscombe was announced, and the three went in to dinner. It was a strange position, though it is by no means an uncommon one. A man, his wife, and another man, an outsider; the outsider loving the woman, the husband supremely happy and unconscious, and the woman feeling the evil influence, not altogether opposing it, and yet clinging desperately to her husband’s love. Three lives, all trembling in the balance of weal and woe. But no one could have suspected it from their appearance, for they were apparently the gayest and most thoughtless of mortals.
The adventure in the afternoon, the expedition to Castellamare, the baskets and even the cook, — then, the events of the past winter, their many mutual acquaintances, and the whole unfathomable cyclopædia of society facts and fictions, — everything was reviewed in turn, and talked of with witty comments, good-natured or ill-natured as the case might be. Batiscombe was full of strange stories, generally about people they all knew, but he was not a gossip by nature, and he avoided saying disagreeable things. Leonora, on the other hand, would be gay and brilliant for a few moments, and then would let fall some bitter saying that sounded oddly to Batiscombe, though it made her husband laugh.
“You would have us believe you terribly disillusioned, Marchesa,” said Batiscombe, after one of these sallies. Leonora laughed, and her eyes flashed again as she looked at him across the table.
“You, who are so fond of Eastern magic,” she said, “should give back to this age all the illusions we have lost.”
“Were I to do so,” answered Batiscombe, looking into her eyes as he spoke, “I fear that you, who are so fond of Western philosophy, would tear them all to pieces.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 61