Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 22

Ferragut felt alarmed at such words. What kind of sacrifice was this woman about to propose to him?... But he grew calmer as he listened to her. It was all a fancy of her disordered imagination. "She is crazy,"

again affirmed the hidden counselor in his brain.

"I have dreamed many times," she continued, "of a man who would rob for me, who would kill if it was necessary and might have to pa.s.s the rest of his years in prison.... My poor thief!... I would live only for him, spending night and day near the walls of his prison, looking through the bars, working like a woman of the village in order to send a good dinner to my outlaw.... That is genuine love and not the cold lies, the theatrical vows of our world."

Ulysses repeated his mental comment, "She certainly is crazy"--and his thought was so clearly reflected in his eyes that she guessed it.

"Don't be afraid, Ferragut," she said, smiling. "I have no thought of exacting such a sacrifice of you. All this that I am talking about is merely fancy, a whimsy invented to fill the vacancy of my soul. 'Tis the fault of the wine, of our exaggerated libations,--that to-day have been without water,--to the G.o.ds.... Just look!"

And she pointed with comical gravity to the two empty bottles that were occupying the center of the table.

Night had fallen. In the dark sky twinkled infinite eyes of starry light. The immense bowl of the gulf was reflecting their sparkles like thousands of will o' the wisps. The candle shades in the restaurant were throwing purplish spots upon the table covers, casting upon the faces of those who were eating around them violent contrasts of light and shade. From the locked rooms were escaping sounds of kisses, pursuit and falling furniture.

"Let us go!" ordered Freya.

The noise of this vulgar orgy was annoying her as though it were dishonoring the majesty of the night. She needed to move about, to walk in the darkness, to breathe in the freshness of the mysterious shade.

At the garden gate they hesitated before the appeals of various coachmen. Freya was the one who refused their offers. She wished to return to Naples on foot, following the easy descent of the road of Posilipo after their long inaction in the restaurant. Her face was warm and flushed because of the excess of wine.

Ulysses gave her his arm and they began to move through the shadows, insensibly impelled in their march by the ease of the downward slope.

Freya knew just what this trip would mean. At the very first step the sailor advised her with a kiss on the neck. He was going to take advantage of all the windings of the road, of the hills and terraces cut through in certain places to show the phosph.o.r.escent gulf across the foliage, and of the long shadowy stretch broken only now and then by the public echoes or the lanterns of carriages and tramways....

But these liberties were already an accepted thing. She had taken the first step in the Aquarium: besides, she was sure of her ability to keep her lover at whatever distance she might choose to fix.... And convinced of her power of checking herself in time, she gave herself up like a lost woman.

Never had Ferragut had such a propitious occasion. It was a trysting-place in the mystery of the night with plenty of time ahead of them. The only trouble was the necessity of walking on, of accompanying his embraces and protests of love with the incessant activity of walking. She protested, coming out from her rapture every time that the enamored man would propose that they sit down on the side of the road.

Hope made Ulysses very obedient to Freya, desirous of reaching Naples as soon as possible. Down there in the curve of the light near the gulf was the hotel, and the sailor looked upon it as a place of happiness.

"Say yes," he murmured in her ear, punctuating his words with kisses, "say that it will be to-night!..."

She did not reply, leaning on the arm that the captain had pa.s.sed around her waist, letting herself be dragged along as if she were half-fainting, rolling her eyes and offering her lips.

While Ulysses was repeating his pleadings and caresses the voice in his brain was chanting victoriously, "Here it is!... It's settled now....

The thing now is to get her to the hotel."

They roamed on for nearly an hour, fancying that only a few minutes had pa.s.sed by.

Approaching the gardens of the _Villa n.a.z.ionale_, near the Aquarium, they stopped an instant. There were fewer people and more life here than in the road to Posilipo. They avoided the electric lights of the _Via Caracciolo_ reflected in the sea,--the two instinctively approaching a bench, and seeking the ebony shade of the trees.

Freya had suddenly become very composed. She appeared annoyed at herself for her languor during the walk. Finding herself near the hotel, she recovered her energy as though in the presence of danger.

"Good-by, Ulysses! We shall see each other again to-morrow.... I am going to pa.s.s the night in the doctor's home."

The sailor withdrew a little in the shock of surprise. "Was it a jest?..." But no, he could not think that. The very tone of her words displayed firm resolution.

He entreated her humbly with a thick and threatening voice not to go away. At the same time his mental counselor was rancorously chanting, "She's making a fool of you!... It's time to put an end to all this....

Make her feel your masculine authority." And this voice had the same ring as that of the dead _Triton_.

Suddenly occurred a violent, brutal, dishonorable thing. Ulysses threw himself upon her as though he Were going to kill her, holding her tightly in his arms, and the two fell upon the bench, panting and struggling. But this only lasted an instant.

The vigorous Ferragut, trembling with emotion, was only using half of his powers. He suddenly sprang back, raising his two hands to his shoulders. He felt a sharp pain, as though one of his bones had just broken. She had repelled him with a certain j.a.panese fencing trick that employs the hands as irresistible weapons.

"Ah!... _Tal!_..." he roared, hurling upon her the worst of feminine insults.

And he fell upon her again as though he were a man, uniting to his original purpose the desire of maltreating her, of degrading her, of making her his.

Freya awaited him firmly... Seeing the icy glitter of her eyes, Ulysses without knowing why recalled the "eye of the morning," the companionable reptile of her dances.

In this furious onslaught he was stopped by the simple contact on his forehead of a diminutive metal circle, a kind of frozen thimble that was resting on his skin.

He looked... It was a little revolver, a deadly toy of s.h.i.+ning nickel.

It had appeared in Freya's hand, drawn secretly from her clothes, or perhaps from that gold-mesh bag whose contents seemed inexhaustible.

She was looking at him fixedly with her finger on the trigger. He surmised her familiarity with the weapon that she had in her hand. It could not be the first time that she had had recourse to it.

The sailor's indecision was brief. With a man, he would have taken possession of the threatening hand, twisting it until he broke it, without the slightest fear of the revolver. But he had opposite him a woman ... and this woman was entirely capable of wounding him, and at the same time placing him in a ridiculous situation.

"Retire, sir!" ordered Freya with a ceremonious and threatening tone as though she were speaking to an utter stranger.

But it was she who retired finally, seeing that Ulysses stepped back, thoughtful and confused. She turned her back on him at the same time that the revolver disappeared from her hand.

Before departing, she murmured some words that Ferragut was not able to understand, looking at him for the last time with contemptuous eyes.

They must be terrible insults, and just because she was uttering them in a mysterious language, he felt her scorn more deeply.

"It cannot be.... It is all ended. It is ended forever!..."

She said this repeatedly before returning to her hotel. And he thought of it during all the wakeful night between agonizing attacks of nightmare. When the morning was well advanced the bugles of the _bersaglieri_ awakened him from a heavy sleep.

He paid his bill in the manager's office and gave a last tip to the porter, telling him that a few hours later a man from the s.h.i.+p would come for his baggage.

He was happy, with the forced happiness of one obliged to accommodate himself to circ.u.mstances. He congratulated himself upon his liberty as though he had gained this liberty of his own free will and it had not been imposed upon him by her scorn. Since the memory of the preceding day pained him, putting him in a ridiculous and gross light, it was better not to recall the past.

He stopped in the street to take a last look at the hotel. "Adieu, accursed _albergo_!... Never will I see you again. Would that you might burn down with all your occupants!"

Upon treading the deck of the _Mare Nostrum_, his enforced satisfaction became immeasurably increased. Here only could he live far from the complications and illusions of terrestrial life.

All those aboard who in previous weeks had feared the arrival of the ill-humored captain, now smiled as though they saw the sun coming out after a tempest. He distributed kindly words and affectionate grasps of the hand. The repairs were going to be finished the following day....

Very good! He was entirely content. Soon they would be on the sea again.

In the galley he greeted Uncle Caragol.... That man _was_ a philosopher. All the women in the world were not in his estimation worth a good dish of rice. Ah, the great man!... He surely was going to live to be a hundred! And the cook flattered by such praises, whose origin he did not happen to comprehend, responded as always,--"That is so, my captain."

Toni, silent, disciplined and familiar, inspired him with no less admiration. His life was an upright life, firm and plain, as the road of duty. When the young officials used to talk in his presence of boisterous suppers on sh.o.r.e with women from distant countries, the pilot had always shrugged his shoulders. "Money and pleasure ought to be kept for the home," he would say sententiously.

Ferragut had laughed many times at the virtue of his mate who, timid and torpid, used to pa.s.s over a great part of the planet without permitting himself any distraction whatever, but would awake with an overpowering tension whenever the chances of their voyage brought him the opportunity of a few days' stay in his home in the _Marina_.

And with the tranquil grossness of the virtuous stay-at-home, he was accustomed to calculate the dates of his voyages by the age of his eight children. "This one was on returning from the Philippines....

This other one after I was in the coast trade in the Gulf of California...."

His methodical serenity, incapable of being perturbed by frivolous adventures, made him guess from the very first the secret of the captain's enthusiasm and wrath. "It must be a woman," he said to himself, upon seeing him installed in a hotel in Naples, and after feeling the effects of his bad humor in the fleeting appearances that he made on board.