To Leeward Part 14

"What a strange thing life is!" exclaimed Leonora, at last.

"Yes, it is very strange," he answered. "Here are we two, on the smallest provocation, swearing eternal friends.h.i.+p on the high road, as though we were going to storm a citadel, or head an Arctic expedition.

But I am really very glad, and very grateful."

Somehow the reflection did not sound light or flippant; and to tell the truth, Leonora was thinking precisely the same thing, wondering inwardly how she could possibly have gone to such a length with a mere acquaintance. But the land of friends.h.i.+p was an untried territory for Leonora, and she seemed to find in the idea a sudden rest from a sense of danger. A friend could never be a lover,--she knew that! This was the meaning of the dream. But she answered quietly enough.

"If things are real at all," she said, "they are as real at one time as at another."

"Yes," answered Batis...o...b... "Malakoff or Sorrento, it is all the same."

CHAPTER X.

"You will come in?" said Leonora when they reached the gate.

"Thanks; I should like to very much," answered Batis...o...b.., and he followed her through the gate into the garden. They pa.s.sed into the house, and Leonora received from the servant a telegram which had come when she was out. It was the one Marcantonio had dispatched when he had decided to stay a few days in Rome and to bring his sister to Sorrento.

Leonora opened it quickly and glanced over the message. It was very evident from her expression that she was annoyed and somewhat surprised.

Batis...o...b.. looked away.

"It is too bad!" she exclaimed; her companion examined the handle of his stick, as though there were something wrong with it. He was not curious, and he had very good manners. Leonora folded the dispatch and put it away.

"Let us go out again," she said, "it is so close indoors."

Batis...o...b.. followed her in silence, obediently. They sat down among the orange-trees on an old stone bench. The air was still and very warm, and the lizards were taking their last peep at the sun wherever they could, climbing up the trunks of the trees and the wall of the house to catch a glimpse of him before he set.

"My husband telegraphs that he will be away some time," said Leonora after a minute. "He has business that keeps him, and his sister is in Rome."

"You must be very lonely here," remarked Batis...o...b.. in answer.

"Do you know Madame de Charleroi?" asked Leonora, taking no notice of the observation.

"Yes," said Batis...o...b.., "I know her. Somebody told me she was in Pegli."

"So she was. But she had to come to Rome on business, and now my husband is going to bring her here."

"Indeed?" exclaimed Batis...o...b... "To pa.s.s the summer?"

"Oh no; only for a week, I suppose. Do you know? I am rather glad; I hardly know her at all, and she seems so hard to know."

"Hard to know?" repeated Julius. "Perhaps she is. It is always hard to know very charming women."

"Is it?" asked Leonora, smiling at the frankness of the remark; it seemed to her that he had found it easy enough to swear friends.h.i.+p with her half an hour ago. "Is it? Is she such a very charming woman?"

"Yes, indeed," he answered.

"Yes to which question?"

"Both," said Julius. "Madame de Charleroi is charming, and it is very hard to know women of her sort well. Think how long it is since I first met you, Marchesa, and we are just beginning to know each other."

"Do you think we are?" asked Leonora. She was full of questions.

"I think so--yes. At least, I hope so," he said with a pleasant smile.

"If you were writing a book about us, Mr. Batis...o...b.., would you say that we were beginning to know each other? no one would believe that we stopped in the road and shook hands and swore to be friends. It would be very amusing, would it not? I do not know why we did it; I wish you would explain." She laughed a little, and stuck the point of her parasol into the earth. Batis...o...b.. laughed too.

"When people have known each other in society for a long time," he said, "and then begin to be friends, there is always some ice to break, and it always seems odd for a little while after it is broken."

"I suppose that is the reason that such things always seem improbable in books, until you know about them yourself."

"Amusing books, and interesting ones, are made up of improbabilities,"

answered Julius. "And the people who write them are even more improbable. It is always improbable that a man who has lived a great deal should have the talent, or the patience if you like, to make stories out of his own experience,--or that a man who has not seen a great deal of the world should be able to evolve a good novel out of his inner consciousness. The probabilities for most men are that they will eat and drink and wear out their clothes and be buried. All those things are a great bore to do, a greater bore to describe, and an intolerable bore to read about. The most amusing books are either true stories of a very exceptional kind, or else they are rank, glaring, stupendous improbabilities, invented to ill.u.s.trate a great theory, or a great play of pa.s.sions,--like Bulwer's 'Coming Race,' or Goethe's 'Faust.' I am sure I am boring you dreadfully."

"Oh no!" cried Leonora, who was interested and taken out of herself by his talk. "But I think I prefer the 'exceptional true stories,' as you call them, like Shakespeare,--the historical part, I mean."

"The worst of it is," said Batis...o...b.., "that the true stories are generally the ones that no one believes. Critics always say that such things are a tissue of utter impossibilities."

"Oh, the critics," exclaimed Leonora; "they must be the most horrid people. I wonder you authors let them live!"

"Thanks," said Batis...o...b.., laughing, "I was a critic myself before I was an author, and I do not think I was a very horrid person."

"That is different," said Leonora. "Of course a man may do ever so many things before he finds his real vocation."

"Authors owe a great deal to critics," continued Julius. "More men have come to grief at their hands by over-praise than by too much discouragement. A very little praise is often enough to ruin a man, and a man who has much talent will always survive a great deal of abuse and disappointment. If any one asked my advice about adopting literature as a career, I would certainly tell him to have nothing to do with it; I should be quite sure that if he were born to it nothing would keep him from it for long."

"That is the way with other things," said Leonora, looking rather wistfully away at the setting sun, just below the green leaves of the orange grove. "It is the way with everything, good and bad. Some people are born to be saints, and some people are quite sure to turn out the most dreadful sinners, whatever they do."

"What a depressing theory!" exclaimed Batis...o...b.., who had much more cause to think so than Leonora.

"Depressing is no name for it," she answered. "One makes such mistakes in life, and then there is no way out of it but to make others."

"And the worst of it is, that one knows one is making them, and cannot help it."

"Yes," said she, "one always knows,--if one only knew." Then she laughed suddenly. "What a ridiculous speech!"

"No," said Batis...o...b.., "I understand exactly what you mean. Just when one is doing the wrong thing, there is always a little instinct against it. But it is often so very little, that one does not quite know it from ever so many other instincts. And then, before one is quite sure that one knows what is right,--before one's mind has time to think it over logically,--one has done the wrong thing. At least, it seems afterwards as if that were what happened; but I suppose it is because we are weak."

Leonora looked at Julius, who seemed deep in his thoughts. He had exactly put her idea into words, but she could not tell whether he believed what he said, or was merely amusing himself with his faculty for explanation. He interested her extremely. It was just this kind of introspection that most delighted her,--this cutting up and skinning of conscience and soul. Nevertheless she did not think that Batis...o...b.. was the man to a.n.a.lyse his own actions. It was more likely, she thought, that he was very clever, and could talk to please his listener. But he interested her greatly, and she was curious to know how he had got his knowledge of human nature.

"You must have had a wonderful life," she said, presently, saying aloud what she was thinking, rather than hoping to draw him on to talk about himself.

"Oh no--very commonplace, I a.s.sure you," said he, with a laugh that sounded natural enough. "Only, you see, I have had to make capital of what I know. But it spoils one's own enjoyment to a.n.a.lyse anything, and I shall have to give it up, or resign myself to a miserable existence."

"I wonder whether you are right," said Leonora, reflectively.

"Of course I am," he answered gayly. "The man who carves the pheasant does not enjoy it, but the man who eats it does."