To Leeward. F. Marion Crawford
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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-aimée," 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 très chère," 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. Batiscombe'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 arsenal. 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 shore 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 arsenal 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 Batiscombe to Leonora in English, while Marcantonio was busy trying to make out some of his friends on shore through a field-glass. Batiscombe 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 platitudes. 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 Batiscombe, looking at her. It was a natural remark, without any intention.
"Dear me, yes!" exclaimed Leonora. "Life is not all roses, you know." She therewith assumed a thoughtful expression and looked away.
"I should not have supposed there were many thorns in your path, Marchesa. Would it be indiscreet to inquire of what nature they may be?"
Leonora was silent, and put up her glass to examine the proceedings on shore.
Batiscombe, who had come out that day with the sworn determination not to say or do anything to increase the interest he felt in the Marchesa, found himself wondering whether she were unhappy. The first and most natural conclusion was that she had been married to Marcantonio by designing parents, and that she did not care for him. Society said it had been a love-match, but what will society not say? "Poor thing," he thought, "I suppose she is miserable!"
"Forgive me," he said, in a low voice. "I did not know you were in earnest."
Leonora blushed faintly and glanced quickly at him. He had the faculty of saying little things to women that attracted their attention.
"What lots of poetry one might make about a launch," he said laughing—for it was necessary to change the subject—"ship—dip; ocean—motion; keel—feel; the rhymes are perfectly endless."
"Yes," said Leonora; "you might make a sonnet on the spot. Besides, there is a great deal of sentiment about the launching of a great man-of-war. The voyage of life—and that sort of thing—don't you know? How hot it is!"
"I will have another awning up in a minute," and he directed the sailors, helping to do the work himself. He stood upon the gunwale to do it.
"I am sure you will fall," said Leonora, nervously. "Do sit down!"
"If I had a millstone round my neck there would be some object in falling," said Batiscombe. "As it is, I should not even have the satisfaction of drowning."
"What an idea! Should you like to be drowned?" she said, looking up to him.
"Sometimes," he answered, still busy with the awning. Then he sat down again.
"You should not say that sort of thing," said Leonora. "Besides, it is rude to say you should like to be drowned when I am your guest."
"Great truths are not always pretty. But how could any man die better than at your feet?" He laughed a little, and yet his voice had an earnest ring to it. He had judged rightly when he foresaw that he must fall in love with Leonora.
Marcantonio, who did not understand English, was watching the proceedings on shore.
"Ah! it is magnificent!" he cried, with great enthusiasm. The royal personage who was to christen the ship had just broken the bottle of wine, and the little crowd of courtiers, officers, and maids of honour clapped their hands and grinned. They all looked hot and miserable and exhausted, but they grinned right nobly, like so many Cheshire cats. There was a sound of knocking and hammering, a final shout of warning from the dock officers, a slight trembling of the great hull, and then the ship began to move, slowly at first, and ever more quickly, till with a mighty rush and a plunge and a swirl she was out in the water. The people yelled till they were hoarse, the boatmen cursed each other by all the maledictions ever invented to meet the exigencies of a lost humanity, the royal personages stood together on their platform looking like a troupe of marionettes in a toy theatre, and congratulating each other furiously as though they had done it all themselves; everything was noise and sunshine and tepid water; Marcantonio was flourishing his hat, and Leonora