The Marchesino nodded carelessly.
As the boat drew ever nearer to the point, running swiftly before the light breeze, its occupants were silent. Artois was watching the evening, with the eyes of a lover of nature, but also with the eyes of one who takes notes. The Marchesino seemed to be intent on his occupation of pilot. As to the two sailors, they sat in the accustomed calm and staring silence of seafaring men, with wide eyes looking out over the element that ministered to their wants. They saw it differently, perhaps, from Artois, to whom it gave now an intense aesthetic pleasure, differently from the Marchesino, to whom it was just a path to possible excitement, possible gratification of a new and dancing desire. They connected it with strange superst.i.tions, with gifts, with deprivations, with death. Familiar and mysterious it was purely to them as to all seamen, like a woman possessed whose soul is far away.
Just as the clocks of Posilipo were striking eight the Marchesino steered the boat into the quay of the Antico Guiseppone.
Although it was early in the season a few deal tables were set out by the waterside, and a swarthy waiter, with huge mustaches and a napkin over his arm, came delicately over the stones to ask their wishes.
"Will you let me order dinner, Emilio?" said the Marchesino: "I know what they do best here."
Artois agreed, and while the waiter shuffled to carry out the Marchesino"s directions the two friends strolled near the edge of the sea.
The breeze had been kindly. Having served them well it was now dying down to its repose, leaving the evening that was near to night profoundly calm. As Artois walked along the quay he felt the approach of calm like the approach of a potentate, serene in the vast consciousness of power. Peace was invading the sea, irresistible peace. The night was at hand. Already Naples uncoiled its chain of lamps along the Bay. In the gardens of Posilipo the lights of the houses gleamed. Opposite, but very far off across the sea, shone the tiny flames of the houses of Portici, of Torre del Greco, of Torre Annunziata, of Castellamare.
Against the gathering darkness Vesuvius belched slowly soft clouds of rose-colored vapor, which went up like a menace into the dim vault of the sky. The sea was without waves. The boats by the wharf, where the road ascends past the villa Rosebery to the village of Posilipo, scarcely moved. Near them, in a group, lounging against the wall and talking rapidly, stood the two sailors from Naples with the boatmen of the Guiseppone. Oil lamps glimmered upon two or three of the deal tables, round one of which was gathered a party consisting of seven large women, three children, and two very thin middle-aged men with bright eyes, all of whom were eating oysters. Farther on, from a small arbor that gave access to a fisherman"s house, which seemed to be constructed partially in a cave of the rock, and which was gained by a steep and crumbling stairway of stone, a mother called shrilly to some half-naked little boys who were fishing with tiny hand-nets in the sea. By the table which was destined to the Marchesino and Artois three ambulant musicians were hovering, holding in their broad and dirty hands two shabby mandolins and a guitar. In the distance a cook with a white cap on his head and bare arms was visible, as he moved to and fro in the lighted kitchen of the old ristorante, preparing a "zuppa di pesce" for the gentlemen from Naples.
"Che bella notte!" said the Marchesino, suddenly.
His voice sounded sentimental. He twisted his mustaches and added:
"Emilio, we ought to have brought two beautiful women with us to-night.
What are the moon and the sea to men without beautiful women?"
"And the fishing?" said Artois.
"To the devil with the fishing," replied the young man. "Ecco! Our dinner is ready, with thanks to the Madonna!"
They sat down, one on each side of the small table, with a smoking lamp between them.
"I have ordered vino bianco," said the Marchesino, who still looked sentimental. "Cameriere, take away the lamp. Put it on the next table.
Va bene. We are going to have "zuppa di pesce," gamberi and veal cutlets. The wine is Capri. Now then," he added, with sudden violence and the coa.r.s.est imaginable Neapolitan accent, "if you fellows play "Santa Lucia," "Napoli Bella," or "Sole mio" you"ll have my knife in you. I am not an Inglese. I am a Neapolitan. Remember that!"
He proved it with a string of gutter words and oaths, at which the musicians smiled with pleasure. Then, turning again to Artois, he continued:
"If one doesn"t tell them they think one is an imbecile. Emilio caro, do you not love to see the moon with a beautiful girl?"
His curious a.s.sumption that Artois and he were contemporaries because they were friends, and his apparently absolute blindness to the fact that a man of sixty and a man of twenty-four are hardly likely to regard the other s.e.x with an exactly similar enthusiasm, always secretly entertained the novelist, who made it his business with this friend to be accommodating, and who seldom, if ever, showed himself authoritative, or revealed any part of his real inner self.
"Ma si!" he replied; "the night and the moon are made for love."
"Everything is made for love," returned the Marchesino. "Take plenty of soaked bread, Emilio. They know how to make this zuppa here. Everything is made for love.--Look! There is a boat coming with women in it!"
At a short distance from the sh.o.r.e a rowing boat was visible; and from it now came shrill sounds of very common voices, followed by shouts of male laughter.
"Perhaps they are beautiful," said the Marchesino, at once on the alert.
The boat drew in to the quay, and from it there sprang, with much noise and many gesticulations, two over-dressed women--probably, indeed almost certainly, _canzonettiste_--and the two large young men, whose brown fingers and whose chests gleamed with false diamonds. As they pa.s.sed the table where the two friends were sitting, the Marchesino raked the women with his bold gray eyes. One of them was large and artificially blonde, with a spreading bust, immense hips, a small waist, and a quant.i.ty of pale dyed hair, on which was perched a bright blue hat. The other was fiercely dark, with ma.s.ses of coa.r.s.e black hair, big, blatant eyes that looked quite black in the dim lamplight, and a figure that suggested a self-conscious snake. Both were young. They returned the Marchesino"s stare with vigorous impudence as they swung by.
"What sympathetic creatures!" he murmured. "They are two angels.
I believe I have seen one of them at the Margherita. What was her name--Maria Leoni, I fancy."
He looked enviously at the young men. The arrival of the lobster distracted his attention for the moment; but it was obvious that the appearance of these women had increased the feeling of sentimentality already generated in him by the softness and stillness of the night.
The three musicians, rendered greedy rather than inspired by the presence of more clients, now began to pluck a lively street tune from their instruments; and the waiter, whose mustaches seemed if possible bigger now that night was truly come, poured the white wine into the gla.s.ses with the air of one making a libation.
As the Marchesino ate, he frequently looked towards the party at the neighboring table. He was evidently filled with envy of the two men whose jewels glittered as they gesticulated with their big brown hands.
But presently their pleasure and success recalled to him something which he had momentarily forgotten, the reason why he had planned this expedition. He was in pursuit. The recollection cheered him up, restored to him the strength of his manhood, put him right with himself. The envy and the almost sickly sentimentality vanished from him, and he broke into the usual gay conversation which seldom failed him, either by day or night.
It was past nine before they had finished their coffee. The two boatmen had been regaled and had drunk a bottle of wine, and the moon was rising and making the oil lamps of the Guiseppone look pitiful. From the table where the canzonettiste were established came peals of laughter, which obviously upset the seven large and respectable women who had been eating oysters, and who now sat staring heavily at the gay revellers, while the two thin middle-aged men with bright eyes began to look furtively cheerful, and even rather younger than they were. The musicians pa.s.sed round a small leaden tray for soldi, and the waiter brought the Marchesino the bill, and looked inquiringly at Artois, aware that he at least was not a Neapolitan. Artois gave him something and satisfied the musicians, while the Marchesino disputed the bill, not because he minded paying, but merely to prove that he was a Neapolitan and not an imbecile. The matter was settled at last, and they went towards the boat; the Marchesino casting many backward glances towards the two angels, who, with their lovers, were becoming riotous in their gayety as the moon came up.
"Are we going out into the Bay?" said Artois, as they stepped into the boat, and were pushed off.
"Where is the best fishing-ground?" asked the Marchesino of the elder of the two men.
"Towards the islet, Signorino Marchesino," he replied at once, looking his interlocutor full in the face with steady eyes, but remaining perfectly grave.
Artois glanced at the man sharply. For the first time it occurred to him that possibly his friend had arranged this expedition with a purpose other than that which he had put forward. It was not the fisherman"s voice which had made Artois wonder, but the voice of the Marchesino.
"There are generally plenty of sarde round the islet," continued the fisherman, "but if the Signori would not be too tired it would be best to stay out the night. We shall get many more fish towards morning, and we can run the boat into the Pool of San Francesco, and have some sleep there, if the Signori like. We others generally take a nap there, and go to work further on in the night. But of course it is as the Signori prefer."
"They want to keep us out all night to get more pay," said the Marchesino to Artois, in bad French.
He had divined the suspicion that had suddenly risen up in his friend, and was resolved to lay it to rest, without, however, abandoning his purpose, which had become much more ardent with the coming of the night.
The voices of the laughing women were ringing in his ears. He felt adventurous. The youth in him was rioting, and he was longing to be gay, as the men with those women were being gay.
"What do you think, Emilio caro?" he asked.
Then before Artois could reply, he said:
"After all, what do a few soldi matter? Who could sleep in a room on such a night? It might be August, when one bathes at midnight, and sings canzoni till dawn. Let us do as he says. Let us rest in the--what is the pool?" he asked of the fishermen, pretending not to know the name.
"The pool of San Francesco, Signorino Marchesino."
"Pool of San Francesco. I remember now. That is the place where all the fishermen along the coast towards Nisida go to sleep. I have slept there many times when I was a boy, and so has Viviano. To-night shall we do as the fishermen, Emilio?"
There was no pressure in his careless voice. His eyes for the moment looked so simple, though as eager as a child"s.
"Anything you like, mon ami," said Artois.
He did not want to go to San Francesco"s Pool with the Marchesino, but he did not wish to seem reluctant to go. And he said to himself now that his interior hesitation was absurd. Night had fallen. By the time they reached the Pool the inmates of the Case del Mare would probably be asleep. Even if they were not, what did it matter? The boat would lie among the vessels of the fishermen. The Marchesino and he would share the fishermen"s repose. And even if Hermione and Vere should chance to be out of doors they would not see him, or, if they did, would not recognize him in the night.
His slight uneasiness, prompted by a vague idea that the Marchesino was secretly mischievous, had possibly some plan in his mind connected with the islet, was surely without foundation.
He told himself so as the fisherman laid hold of their oars and set the boat"s prow towards the point of land which conceals the small harbor of the Villa Rosebery.
The shrill voices of the two singers died away from their ears, but lingered in the memory of the Marchesino, as the silence of the sea took the boat to itself, the sea silence and the magic of the moon.
He turned his face towards the silver, beyond which, hidden as yet, was the islet where dwelt the child he meant to know.