At the first moment she had been startled and had almost uttered a short cry, half of delight and half of fear. But she had no wish to alarm her mother and the quick thought stifled her voice. She tried to withdraw her hand, but he held it tightly in his own which were cold as ice, and she sat still listening to all he said.
“Ah, Beatrice!” he was saying, “you have given me back life itself! Can you guess what I have lived through in these days? Can you imagine how I have thought of you and suffered day and night, and said to myself that I should never have your love? Can you dream what it must be to a man like me, lonely, friendless, half heart-broken, to find the one jewel worth living for, the one light worth seeking, the one woman worth loving — and then to long for her almost without hope, and so long? It is long, too. Who counts the days or the weeks when he loves? It is as though we had loved from the beginning of our lives! Can you or I imagine what it all was like before we met? I cannot remember that past time. I had no life before it — it is all forgotten, all gone, all buried and for ever. You have made everything new to me, new and beautiful and full of light — ah, Beatrice! How I love you!”
Rather a long speech at such a moment, an older woman would have thought, and not over original in choice of similes and epithets, but fluent enough and good enough to serve the purpose and to turn the current of Beatrice’s girlish life. Yet not much of a love-speech. Ruggiero’s had been better, as a little true steel is better than much iron at certain moments in life. It succeeded very well at the moment, but its ultimate success would have been surer if it had reached no ears but Beatrice’s. Neither she nor San Miniato were aware that a few feet below them a man was lying on his back, with white face and clenched hands, staring at the pale moonlit sky above him, and listening in stony despair to every word that was spoken.
The sight would have disturbed them, had they seen it, though they both were fearless by nature and not easily startled. Had Beatrice seen Ruggiero at that moment, she would have learned once and for ever the difference between real passion and its counterfeit. But Ruggiero knew where he was and had no intention of betraying himself by voice or movement. He suffered almost all that a man can suffer by the heart alone, but he was strong and could bear torture.
The hardest of all was that he understood the real truth, partly by instinct and partly through what he knew of his master. Those rough southern sailors sometimes have a wonderful keenness in discovering the meaning of their masters’ doings. Ruggiero held the key to the situation. He knew that San Miniato was poor and that the Marchesa was very rich. He knew very well that San Miniato was not at all in love, for he knew what love really meant, and he could see how the Count always acted by calculation and never from impulse. Best of all he saw that Beatrice was a mere child who was being deceived by the coolly assumed passion of a veteran woman-killer. It was bitterly hard to bear. And he had felt a foreboding of it all in the afternoon — and he wished that he had risked all and brought down the brass tiller on San Miniato’s head and submitted to be sent to the galleys for life. He could never have forgotten Beatrice; but San Miniato could never have married her, and that satisfaction would have made chains light and hard labour a pastime.
It was too late to think of such things now. Had he yielded to the first murderous impulse, it would have been better. But he had never struck a man from behind and he knew that he could not do it in cold blood. Yet how much better it would have been! He would not be lying now on the rock, holding his breath and clenching his fists, listening to his Excellency the Count of San Miniato’s love making. By this time the Count of San Miniato would be cold, and he, Ruggiero, would be handcuffed and locked up in the little barrack of the gendarmes at Sorrento, and Beatrice with her mother would be recovering from their fright as best they could in the rooms at the hotel, and Teresina would be crying, and Bastianello would be sitting at the door of his brother’s prison waiting to see what happened and ready to do what he could. Truly all this would have been much better! But the moment had passed and he must lie on his rock in silence, bound hand and foot by the necessity of hiding himself, and giving his heart to be torn to pieces by San Miniato’s aristocratic fine gentleman’s hands, and burned through and through by Beatrice’s gentle words.
“And so you really love me?” said San Miniato, sure at last of his victory.
“Do you doubt it, after what I have done?” asked Beatrice in a very soft voice. “Did I not leave my hand in yours when you took it so roughly and — you know—”
“When I kissed it — but I want the words, too — only once, from your beautiful lips—”
“The words—” Beatrice hesitated. They were too new to her lips, and a soft blush rose in her cheeks, visible even in the moonlight.
Ruggiero’s heart stood still — not for the first time that day. Would she speak the three syllables or not?
As for San Miniato, his excitement had cooled, and he threw all the tenderness he could muster into, his last request, with instinctive tact returning to the more quiet tone he had used at the beginning of the conversation.
“I ask you, Beatrice mia, to say—” he paused, to give the proper effect in the right place— “I love you,” he said, completing the sentence very musically and looking up most tenderly into her eyes.
She sighed, blushed again, and turned her head away. Then quite suddenly she looked at him once more, pressed his hand nervously and spoke.
“I love you, carissimo,” she said, and rose at the same moment from her seat. “Come — it is time. Mamma will be tired,” she added, while he held her hand and pressed it to his lips.
Her confusion had made it easy for him. He would have had difficulty in ending the scene artistically if she had not unconsciously helped him.
Ruggiero clenched his hands a little tighter and tried not to breathe.
“It is a lie,” he said in his heart, but his lips never moved, nor did he stir a limb as he listened to the departing footsteps on the ledge above.
Then with the ease of great strength he drew himself along through cranny and hollow till he was far from where they sat, and had reached the place where the boats were made fast. It would seem natural to every one that he should suddenly be standing there to see that all was right, and that none of the moorings had slipped or chafed against the jagged rocks. There he stood, gazing at the rippling water, at the tall yards as they slowly crossed and recrossed the face of the moon, with the rocking of the boats, at the cliffs to the right and left, at the dim headland of the Campanella, at all the sights long familiar to him — seeing none of them and yet feeling that they at least were his own people, that they understood him and knew what he felt — what he had no words with which to tell any one, if he had wished to tell it.
For he who loves and is little loved, or not at all, has no friend, be he of high estate or low, beyond nature, the deep-bosomed, the bountiful, the true; and on her he may lean, trusting, and know that he will not be betrayed. And in time her language will be his. But she will be heard alone when she speaks with him, and without rival, with the full right of a woman who gives all her love and asks for a man’s soul in return, recking little of all the world besides. But not all know how kind she is, how merciful and how sweet. For she does not heal broken hearts. She takes them as they are into her own, with all the memory and all the sin, perhaps, and all the bitter sorrow which is the reward of faith and faithlessness alike. She takes them all, and holds them kindly in her own breast, as she has taken the torn limbs of martyred saints and tortured sinners and has softly turned them all into a fragrant dust. And though the ashes of the heart be very bitter, they are after all but dust, which cannot feel of itself any more. Yet there may be something left behind, in the place where it lived and was broken and died, which is not wholly bad, though there be little good in this earth where there is no heart.
Moreover, nature is a silent mistress to all but those who love her, and she tells no tales as men and women do, and forgets none of th
e secrets which are told to her, for they are our treasures — treasures of love and of hate, of sweetness and of poison, which we lay up in her keeping when we are alone with her, sure that we shall find again all we have given up if we require it of her. But as the years blossom, bloom, and fade in their quick succession, the day will come when we shall ask of her only the balm and be glad to leave the poison hidden, and to forget how we would have used it in old days — when we shall ask her only to give us the memory of a dear and gentle hand — dear still but no longer kind — of the voice that was once a harmony, and whose harsh discord is almost music still — of the hour when love was twofold, stainless and supreme. Those things we shall ask of her and she, in her wonderful tenderness, will give them to us again — in dreams, waking or sleeping, in the sunlit silence of lonely places, in soft nights when the southern sea is still, in the greater loneliness of the storm, when brave faces are set as stone and freezing hands grasp frozen ropes, and the shadow of death rises from the waves and stands between every man and his fellows. We shall ask, and we shall receive. Out of noon-day shadow, out of the starlit dusk, out of the driving spray of the midtempest, one face will rise, one hand will touch our own, one loving, lingering glance will meet ours from eyes that have no look of love for us in them now. These things our lady nature will give us of all those we have given her. But of the others, we shall not ask for them, and she will mercifully forget for us the bitterness of their birth, and life, and death.
CHAPTER VII.
“I THOUGHT I was never to see you again,” observed the Marchesa, as Beatrice and San Miniato came to her side.
“Judging from your calm, you were bearing the separation with admirable fortitude,” answered the Count.
“Dearest friend, one has to bear so much in this life!”
Beatrice stood beside the table, resting one hand upon it and looking back towards the place where she had been sitting. San Miniato took the Marchesa’s hand and raised it to his lips, pressed it a little and then nodded slowly, with a significant look. The Marchesa’s sleepy eyes opened suddenly with an expression of startled satisfaction, and she returned the pressure of the fingers with more energy than San Miniato had suspected. She was evidently very much pleased. Perhaps the greatest satisfaction of all was the certainty that she was to have no more trouble in the matter, since it had been undertaken, negotiated and settled by the principals between them. Then she raised her eyebrows and moved her head a little as though to inquire what had taken place, but San Miniato made her understand by a sign that he could not speak before Beatrice.
“Beatrice, my angel,” said the Marchesa, with more than usual sweetness, “you have sat so long upon that rock that you have almost reconciled me to Tragara. Do you not think that you could go back and sit there five minutes longer?”
Beatrice glanced quickly at her mother and then at San Miniato and turned away without a word, leaving the two together.
“And now, San Miniato carissimo,” said the Marchesa, “sit down beside me on that chair, and tell me what has happened, though I think I already understand. You have spoken to Beatrice?”
“I have spoken — yes — and the result is favourable. I am the happiest of men.”
“Do you mean to say that she answered you at once?” asked the Marchesa, affecting, as usual, to be scandalised.
“She answered me — yes, dear Marchesa — she told me that she loved me. It only remains for me to claim the maternal blessing which you so generously promised in advance.”
Somehow it was a relief to him to return to the rather stiff and over-formal phraseology which he always used on important occasions when speaking to her, and which, as he well knew, flattered her desire to be thought a very great lady.
“As for my blessing, you shall have it, and at once. But indeed, I am most curious to know exactly what she said, and what you said — I, who am never curious about anything!”
“Two words tell the story. I told her I loved her and she answered that she loved me.”
“Dearest friend, how long it took you to say those two words! You must have hesitated a good deal.”
“To tell the truth, there was more said than that. I will not deny the grave imputation. I spoke of my past life—”
“Dio mio! To my daughter! How could you—” The Marchesa raised her hands and let them fall again.
“But why not?” asked San Miniato, suppressing a smile. “Have I been such an impossibly bad man that the very mention of my past must shock a young girl — whom I love?” In the last words he found an opportunity to practise the expression of a little passion, and took advantage of it, well knowing that it would be useful in the immediate future.
“I never said that!” protested the Marchesa. “But we all know something about you, dear Don Juan!”
“Calumnies, nothing but calumnies!”
“But such pretty calumnies — you might almost accept them. I should think none the worse of you if they were all true.”
“You are charming, dearest Marchesa. I kiss your generous hand! As a matter of fact, I only told Donna Beatrice — may I call her Beatrice to you now, as I have long called her in my heart? I only told her that I had been unhappy, that I had loved twice — once a woman who is dead, once another who has long ago forgotten me. That was all. Was it so very bad? Her heart was softened — she is so gentle! And then I told her that a greater and stronger passion than those now filled my present life, and last of all I told her that I loved her.”
“And she returned the compliment immediately?” asked the Marchesa, slowly selecting a sugared chestnut from the plate beside her, turning it round, examining it and at last putting it into her mouth.
“How lightly you speak of what concerns life and death!” sighed San Miniato. “No — Beatrice did not answer immediately. I said much more — far more than I can remember. How can you ask me to repeat word for word the unpremeditated outpourings of a happy passion? The flood has swept by, leaving deep traces — but who can remember where the eddies and rapids were?”
“You are very poetical, caro mio. Your language delights me — it is the language of the heart. Pray give me one of those little cigarettes you smoke. Yes — and a light — and now the least drop of champagne. I will drink your health.”
“And I both yours and Beatrice’s,” answered San Miniato, filling his own glass.
“You may put Beatrice first, since she is yours.”
“But without you there would be no Beatrice, gentilissima,” said the Count gallantly, when he had emptied his glass.
“That is true, and pretty besides. And so,” continued the Marchesa in a tone of languid reflection, “you have actually been making love to my daughter, beyond my hearing, alone on the rocks — and I gave you my permission, and now you are engaged to be married! It is too extraordinary to be believed. That was not the way I was married. There was more formality in those days.”
Indeed, she could not imagine the deceased Granmichele throwing himself upon his knees at her feet, even upon the softest of carpets.
“Then I thank the fates that those days are over!” returned San Miniato.
“Perhaps I should, too. I am not sure that the conclusion would have been so satisfactory, if I had undertaken to persuade Beatrice. She is headstrong and capricious, and so painfully energetic! Every discussion with her shortens my life by a year.”
“She is an angel in her caprice,” answered the Count with conviction. “Indeed, much of her charm lies in her changing moods.”
“If she is an angel, what am I?” asked the Marchesa. “Such a contrast!”
“She is the angel of motion — you are the angel of repose.”
“You are delightful to-night.”
While this conversation was taking place, Beatrice had wandered away over the rocks alone, not heeding the unevenness of the stones and taking little notice of the direction of her walk. She only knew that she would not go back to the place where she had sat, not for all the
world. A change had taken place already and she was angry with herself for what she had done in all sincerity.
She was hurt and her first illusion had suffered a grave shock almost at the moment of its birth. She asked herself how it could be possible, if San Miniato loved her as he had said he did, that he should not feel as she felt and understand love as she did — as something secret and sacred, to be kept from other eyes. Her instinct told her easily enough that San Miniato was at that very moment telling her mother all that had taken place, and she bitterly resented the thought. It would surely have been enough, if he had waited until the following day and then formally asked her hand of the Marchesa. It would have been better, more natural in every way, just now when they had gone up to the table, if he had said simply that they loved one another and had asked her mother’s blessing. Anything rather than to feel that he was coolly describing the details of the first love scene in her life — the thousandth, perhaps, in his own.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 585