“I hope not.”
By and by the two went down to the beach again, and Sebastiano looked about him for a crew. The Marchesa wanted four men in her boat, or even five, and Sebastiano picked out at once the Gull, the Son of the American, Black Rag — otherwise known as Saint Peter from his resemblance to the pictures of the Apostle as a fisherman — and the Deaf Man. The latter is a fellow of strange ways, who lost his hearing from falling into the water in winter when overheated, and who has almost lost the power of speech in consequence, but a good sailor withal, tough, untiring, and patient.
They all set to work with a good will, and before four o’clock that day the two boats were launched, ballasted and rigged, the sails were bent to the yards and the brasses polished, so that Ruggiero and Sebastiano went up to their respective masters to ask if there were any orders for the afternoon.
CHAPTER IV.
RUGGIERO FOUND OUT before long that his master for the summer was eccentric in his habits, judging from the Sorrentine point of view in regard to order and punctuality. Ruggiero’s experience of fine gentlemen was limited indeed, but he could not believe that they all behaved like San Miniato, whose temper was apparently as changeable as his tastes. Sometimes he went to bed at nine o’clock and rose at dawn. Sometimes on the other hand he got up at seven in the evening and went to bed by daylight. Sometimes everything Ruggiero did was right, and sometimes everything was wrong. There were days when the Count could not be induced to move from the Marchesa di Mola’s terrace between noon and midnight or later, and again there were days when he went off in his boat in the morning and did not return until the last stragglers on the terrace of the hotel were ready to go to bed. He was irregular even in playing, which was after all his chief pastime. Possibly he knew of reasons why it should be good to gamble on one day and not upon another. Then he had his fits of amateur seamanship, when he would insist upon taking the tiller from Ruggiero’s hand. The latter, on such occasions, remained perched upon the stern in case of an emergency. San Miniato was a thorough landsman and never understood why the wind always seemed to change, or die away, or do something unexpected so soon as he began to steer the boat. From time to time Ruggiero, by way of a mild hint, held up his palm to the breeze, but San Miniato did not know what the action meant. Ruggiero trimmed the sails to suit the course chosen by his master as well as possible, but straightway the boat was up in the wind again if she had been going free, or was falling off if the tacks were down and the sheets well aft. San Miniato was one of those men who seem quite incapable of doing anything sensible from the moment they leave the land till they touch it again, when their normal common sense returns, and they once more become human beings.
On the other hand nothing frightened him, though he could not swim a stroke. More than once Ruggiero allowed him almost to upset the boat in a squall, and more than once, when, steering himself, and when there was a fresh breeze, drove her till the seas broke over the bows, and the green water came in over the lee gunwale — just to see whether the Count would change colour. In this, however, he was disappointed. San Miniato’s temper might change and his tastes might be as variable as the moon, or the weather, but his face rarely expressed anything of what he felt, and if he felt anything at such times it was assuredly not fear. He had good qualities, and courage was one of them, if courage may be called a quality at all. Ruggiero was not at all sure that his new master liked the sea, and it is possible that the Count was not sure of the fact himself; but for the time, it suited him to sail as much as possible, because Beatrice Granmichele was fond of it, and would therefore amuse herself with excursions hither and thither during the summer. As her mother rarely accompanied her, San Miniato could not, according to the customs of the country, join her in her boat, and the next best thing was to keep one for himself and to be as often as possible alongside of her, and ready to go ashore with her if she took a fancy to land in some quiet spot.
The Marchesa di Mola, having quite made up her mind that her daughter should marry San Miniato, and being almost too indolent about minor matters to care for appearances, would have allowed the two to be together from morning till night under the very least shadow of a chaperon’s supervision, if Beatrice herself had shown a greater inclination for San Miniato’s society than she actually did. But Beatrice was the only one of the party who had arrived at no distinct determination in the matter. San Miniato attracted her, and was very well in his way, but that was all. Amidst the shoals of migratory Neapolitans with magnificent titles and slender purses, who appeared, disported themselves and disappeared again, at the summer resort, it was quite possible that one might be found with more to recommend him than San Miniato could boast. Most of them were livelier than he, and certainly all were noisier. Many of them had very bright black eyes, which Beatrice liked, and they were all dressed a little beyond the extreme of the fashion, a fact of which she was too young to understand the psychological value in judging of men. Some of them sang very prettily, and San Miniato did not possess any similar accomplishment. Indeed, in the young girl’s opinion, he approached dangerously near to being a “serious” man, as the Italians express it, and but for his known love of gambling he might have seemed to her altogether too dull a personage to be thought of as a possible husband. It is not easy to define exactly what is meant in Italian by a “serious” man. The word does not exactly translate the French equivalent, still less the English one. It means something in the nature of a Philistine with a little admixture of Ciceronism — pass the word — and a dash of Cato Censor to sour the whole — a delight to school-masterly spirits, a terror to lively damsels, the laughing-stock of the worldly wise and only just too wise to find a congenial atmosphere in the every-day world. However, as San Miniato just escaped the application of the adjective I have been trying to translate, it is enough to say that he was not exactly a “serious man,” being excluded from that variety of the species by his passion for play, which was dominant, and by the incidents of his past history, which had not been dull.
It is true that a liking for cards and a reputation for success gained in former love affairs are not in any sense a substitute for the outward and attractive expressions of a genuine and present passion, but they are better than nothing when they serve to combat such a formidable imputation as that of “seriousness.” Anything is better than that, and as Beatrice Granmichele was inclined to like the man without knowing why, she made the most of the few stories about him which reached her maiden ears, and of his taste for gaming, in order to render him interesting in her own eyes. He did, indeed, make more or less pretty speeches to her from time to time, of a cheerfully complimentary character when he had won money, of a gracefully melancholy nature when he had lost, but she was far too womanly not to miss something very essential in what he said and in his way of saying it. A woman may love flattery ever so much and have ever so strong a moral absorbent system with which to digest it; she does not hate banality the less. There is no such word as banality in the English tongue, but there might be, and if there were, it would mean that peculiarly tasteless and saltless nature of actions and speeches done and delivered by persons who are born dull, or who are mentally exhausted, or are absent-minded, or very shy, but who, in spite of natural or accidental disadvantages are determined to make themselves agreeable. The standard of banality differs indeed for every woman, and with every woman for almost every hour of the day, and men of the world who husband their worldly resources are aware of the fact. Angelina at three in the afternoon, fresh from rest and luncheon — if both agree with her — is wreathed in smiles at a little speech of Edwin’s which would taste like sweet camomile tea after dry champagne, at three in the morning, when the Hungarian music is ringing madly in her ears and there are only two more waltzes on the programme. Music, dancing, lights and heat are to a woman of the world what strong drinks are to a normal man; they may not intoxicate, but they change the humour. Fortunately for San Miniato the young lady whom he wished to marry was not ju
st at present exposed to the action of those stimulants, and her moods were tolerably even. If he had been at all eloquent, the same style of eloquence would have done almost as well after dinner as after breakfast. But the secret springs of love speech were dried up in his brain by the haunting consciousness that much was expected of him. He had never before thought of marrying and had not yet in his life found himself for any length of time constantly face to face in conversation with a young girl, with limitations of propriety and the fear of failure before his eyes. The situation was new and uncomfortable. He felt like a man who has got a hat which does not belong to him, which does not fit him and which will not stay on his head in a high wind. The consequence was that his talk lacked interest, and that he often did not talk at all. Nevertheless, he managed to show enough assiduity to keep himself continually in the foreground of Beatrice’s thoughts. Being almost constantly present she could not easily forget him, and he held his ground with a determination which kept other men away. When a man can make a woman think of him half-a-dozen times a day and can prevent other men from taking his place when he is beside her, he is in a fair way to success.
On a certain evening San Miniato had a final interview with the Marchesa di Mola in which he expressed all that he felt for Beatrice, including a little more, and in which he described his not very prosperous financial condition with mitigated frankness. The Marchesa listened dreamily in the darkness on the terrace while her daughter played soft dance music in the dimly lighted room behind her. Beatrice probably had an idea of what was going on outside, upon the terrace, and was trying to make up her own mind. She played waltzes very prettily, as women who dance well generally do, if they play at all.
When San Miniato had finished, the Marchesa was silent for a few seconds. Then she tapped her companion twice upon the arm with her fan, in a way which would have seemed lazy in any one else, but which, for her, was unusually energetic.
“How well you say it all!” she exclaimed.
“And you consent, dear Marchesa?” asked the Count, with an eagerness not all feigned.
“You say it all so well! If I could say it half so well to Beatrice — there might be some possibility. But Beatrice is not like me — nor I like you — and so—”
She broke off in the middle of the sentence with an indolent little laugh.
“If she were like you,” said San Miniato, “I would not hesitate long.”
There was an intonation in his voice that pleased the middle-aged woman, as he had intended.
“What would you do?” she asked, fanning herself slowly in the dark.
“I would speak to her myself.”
“Heavens!” Again the Marchesa laughed. The idea seemed eccentric enough in her eyes.
“Why not?”
“Why not? Dearest San Miniato, do not try to make me argue such insane questions with you. You know how lazy I am. I can never talk.”
“A woman need not talk in order to be persuaded. It is enough that the man should. Let me try.”
“I will shut my ears.”
“I will kneel at your feet.”
“I shall go to sleep.”
“I could wake you.”
“How?”
“By telling you that I mean to speak to Donna Beatrice myself.”
“Such an idea would wake the dead!”
“So much the better. They would hear me.”
“They would not help you, if they heard you,” observed the Marchesa.
“They could at least bear witness to the answer I should receive.”
“And suppose, dear friend, that the answer should not be what you wish, or expect — would you care to have witnesses, alive or dead?”
“Why should the answer be a negative?”
“Because,” replied the Marchesa, turning her face directly to his, “because Beatrice is herself uncertain. You know well enough that no man should ever tell a woman he loves her until he is sure that she loves him. And that is not the only reason.”
“Have you a better one?” asked San Miniato with a laugh.
“The impossibility of it all! Imagine, in our world, a man deliberately asking a young girl to marry him!”
San Miniato smiled, but the Marchesa could not see the expression of his face.
“We do not think it so impossible in Piedmont,” he answered quietly.
“I am surprised at that.” The lady’s tone was rather cold.
“Are you? Why? We are less old-fashioned, that is all.”
“And is it really done in — in good families?”
“Often,” answered San Miniato, seeing his advantage and pressing it. “I could give you many instances without difficulty, within the last few years.”
“The plan certainly saves the parents a great deal of trouble,” observed the Marchesa, lazily shutting her eyes and fanning herself again.
“And it places the decision of the most vital question in life in the hands of the two beings most concerned.”
San Miniato spoke rather sententiously, for he knew how to impress his companion and he meant to be impressive.
“No doubt,” answered the Marchesa. “No doubt. But,” she continued, bringing up the time-honoured argument, “the two young people most concerned are not always the people best able to judge of their own welfare.”
“Of course they are not,” assented San Miniato, readily enough, and abandoning the point which could be of no use to him. “Of course not. But, dearest Marchesa, since you have judged for us — and there is no one else to judge — do you not think that you might leave the rest in my hands? The mere question to be asked, you know, in the hope of a final answer — the mere technicality of love-making, with which you can only be familiar from the woman’s point of view, and not from the man’s, as I am. Not that I have had much experience—”
“You?” laughed the Marchesa, touching his hand with her fan. “You without much experience! But you are historical, dearest friend! Who does not know of your conquests?”
“I, at least, do not,” answered San Miniato with well-affected modesty. “But that is not the question. Let us get back to it. This is my plan. The moon is full to-morrow and the weather is hot. We will all go in my boat to Tragara and dine on the rocks. It will be beautiful. Then after dinner we can walk about in the moonlight — slowly, not far from you, as at the end of this terrace. And while you are looking on I, in a low voice, will express my sincere feelings to Donna Beatrice, and ask the most important of all questions. Does not that please you? Is it not well combined?”
“But why must we take the trouble to go all the way to Capri? What sense is there in that?”
“Dearest Marchesa, you do not understand! Consider the surroundings, the moonlight, the water rippling against the rocks, the soft breeze — a little music, too, such as a pair of mandolins and a guitar, which we could send over — all these things are in my favour.”
“Why?” asked the Marchesa, not understanding in the least how he could attach so much value to things which seemed to her unappreciative mind to be perfectly indifferent.
“Besides,” she added, “if you want to give a party, you can illuminate the garden of the hotel with Chinese lanterns. That would be much prettier than to picnic on uncomfortable rocks out in the sea with nothing but cold things to eat and only the moon for an illumination. I am sure Beatrice would like it much better.”
San Miniato laughed.
“What a prosaic person you are!” he exclaimed. “Can you not imagine that a young girl’s disposition may be softened by moonlight, mandolins and night breezes?”
“No. I never understood that. And after all if you want moonlight you can have it here. If it shines at Capri it will shine at Sorrento. At least it seems to me so.”
“No, dearest Marchesa,” answered San Miniato triumphantly. “There you are mistaken.”
“About the moon?”
“Yes, about the moon. When it rises we do not see it here, on account of the mountains beh
ind us.”
“But I have often seen the moon here, from this very place,” objected the Marchesa. “I am sure it is not a week ago that I saw it. You do not mean to tell me that there are two moons, and that yours is different from mine!”
“Very nearly. This at least I say. When the moon is full we can see it rise from Tragara, and we can not see it from this place.”
“How inexplicable nature is!” exclaimed the Marchesa fanning herself lazily. “I will not try to understand the moon any more. It tires me. A lemonade, San Miniato — ring for a lemonade. I am utterly exhausted.”
“Shall I ask Donna Beatrice’s opinion about Tragara?” inquired San Miniato rising.
“Oh yes! Anything — only do not argue with me. I cannot bear it. I suppose you will put me into that terrible boat and make me sit in it for hours and hours, until all my bones are broken, and then you will give me cold macaroni and dry bread and warm wine and water, and the sailors will eat garlic, and it will be insufferable and you will call it divine. And of course Beatrice will be so wretched that she will not listen to a word you say, and will certainly refuse you without hesitation. A lemonade, San Miniato, for the love of heaven! My throat is parched with this talking.”
When the Marchesa had got what she wanted, San Miniato sat down beside Beatrice at the piano, in the sitting room.
“Donna Beatrice gentilissima,” he began, “will you deign to tell me whether you prefer the moon to Chinese lanterns, or Chinese lanterns to the moon?”
“To wear?” asked the young girl with a laugh.
“If you please, of course. Anything would be becoming to you — but I mean as a question of light. Would you prefer a dinner by moonlight on the rocks of Tragara with a couple of mandolins in the distance, or would you like better a party in the hotel gardens with an illumination of paper lanterns? It is a most important question, I assure you, and must be decided very quickly, because the moon is full to-morrow.”
“What a ridiculous question!” exclaimed Beatrice, laughing again.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 581