A Draught of Capri.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XVI, 14 October 1899, Page 661

A Draught of Capri.

BY

ANNIE E. P. SEARING.

It was on the wharf at Naples, where you take your life in your hands and deposit it in a wobbling skiff, to be rowed by half-naked sailors to the little steamer that rides up and down . on the swells in the harbour. All this If you want to go to Capri, and every one who goes to Italy wants to do that, and then to stay there. Joconda and I had started ' with that intention, and, in an evil moment before embarking, had stopped to chaffer on the quay for cherries- —fabulous cherries, as large and round and firm as plums. And then Joconda got one of her perverse spells and refused to be cheated out of a few extra centimes, that tribute one pays, as a foreigner, to every Neapolitan with something to sell. Suddenly we were the centre of a gesticulating, protesting crowd of venders, with their friends and allies and relatives unto the fourth generation, while in shrill cries and unexpected falsettoes, the whole scheme of the distribution of wealth, the niggardliness of Americans, and the duty of man to his neighbour was hurled at us in exclamatory scraps flavoured with invective. The merest trifle will serve in Naples to centre the attention of an entire quarter. It was at this dramatic juncture that the Signor Antonino strode into our horizon, and began to cut a figure. He was a small, wiry man. with hair and eyes and moustache of the blackest, swarthy, clear-cut features, and gleaming white teeth that made his smile the most brilliantly unexpected thing you ever saw. Joconda once said, long afterward, that all the trouble came from the ever-present temptation to make him smile. “It’s like fishing.” she said, “it’s not the fish you want, but the excitement of the bite. Joconda has manv charms, but she lacks imagination; she could never put herself at the point of view of the fish. She is an intensely subjective creature; with all her experience of men —and heaven knows she should understand them by this time—she seems never to have troubled herself to observe them sufficiently to analyse their tastes and temperaments. 1 am not sure that she is a beauty, but she has that gift of the gods so much more powerful—charm. Beauty may lay down her life to win favour and meet with naught but repulsion, while eharm, with quite an ordinary facemask, has only to hold out her hand. So it was with Joconda. I have sometimes thought it a doubtful gift. But Joconda is a young maid, and I am beginning to be called an old one, so we look at things differently. On the whole, we have lived together very happily without any tie of kinship. but that is because we have each of us a free foot with no moorings, and we are artists —that is,. I am. Joconda thinks she is, which is much the same thing. But if we don’t get off the wharf we shall never get to the steamer, and so never see Capri, a sequence of events resting on that preliminary step as inevitably as the old woman’s dumplings were dependent on the butcher, the rope, the mouse, and the rest of it. Before we quite realised what had happened we found the crowd pressing back, the cherries bought and paid for at the lower price, and ourselves deposited in the skiff with our luggage in the bow., while Signor Antonino was bowing us off. as if we were somebodies, with a low-voiced assurance that he would join us later on the steamer, and give himself the further pleasure of assuring our comfort!

“Well, he certainly is a sudden person, whoever he is!” And Joeonda proceeded forthwith to wring from the grinning boatman a dialect account of him, of which all we could make out was that he was regarded as the Neapolitan equivalent of “some pumpkins” on the steamer line. When he did rejoin us. he proceeded to smooth the way to us at every turn, making himself at once guide, philosopher, and friend. He pointed out everything we most wanted to see, including the villa of a famous writer at Sorrento, and told us in a most delightful way the peasant gossip anent that great

man’s doings. How he went off with the fishermen, and ate with them out of the common dish, and how some thought these eccentricities were in pursuit of health, but others, with whom he spent those long days on the water, more shrewdly suspected he was putting them all into his books, and behaved accordingly. As we steamed along across that enchanting bay. a great luminous blue cup with the olive orchards rising around it. the cliffs towering, and the pennon of Vesuvius streaming away in the distance, we went off our head's a bit. standing by the rail together. “It’s too strong a draught all at once.” said Joconda. “I am drunk with the excitement of all this beauty! I want to shut my eyes and think—but I can't!”

“It is always so. Signora.” said the soft voice of Signor Antonino beside us. “it is like an enchanted wine, and once it gets into the blood one wishes to go not away for ever.”

" He’s certainly interesting,” said Joconda, when he walked away, “and —yes, paintable. He can’t be a* gentleman, but he’s wonderfully gentlemanlike. He’s not unlike an object held under the water in the Blue Grotto, in that alembic it is silver. This man gives me the feeling of having been dipped into some sort of social fluid—he’s not sterling silver, but he’s been silver-plated, I’m really too lazy to do more than guess about him. Charlie (my name is Carlotta), you may amuse yourself unravelling "his mystery.”

As we approached the landing at Capri, where the nets are drawn up to the very doors of the white stone houses of the fishermen, and the more pretentious villas hold themselves closely on the upper terraces, where the great mountain soars up aloft in bare crags that gather cloud veils out cf sunny skies, and the hills between climb and circle, bearing on their rocky sides olive trees and walled gardens and all flowers that grow, we began to wonder about things to eat and where we were going. But the omniscient Signor Antonino had arranged everything.

“ That,” he said, pointing above our heads to where a pink stuccoed house, with a green arbor seaward, was perched on a rocky wall that dropped a sheer fifty feet to the water’s edge, “that is my little hotel.”

Joeonda looked at me, and murmured an unseemly remark in German (Signor Antonino spoke English perfectly), about the milk in every cocoanut. The man frowned darkly. “ Pardon, Signorina,” he said, with the air of an injured prince, “I understand German.”

Joconda laughed ; she was always doing that ; it came so easily to her, sat so prettily, and proved so contagious.

"And every other language, Senor?” “ Nearly every modern language of Europe, Signorina, a little. 1 was long a courier”—this proudly, as if he had said he was formerly Minister of the Interior.

\Ve found ourselves, quite without effort on our part, transferred to a carriage, and drawn up steep, winding grades, to be deposited in the curious airy, all rose-embowered, and guarded over which heavyscented jessamines and trumpet vines ran rampant, that Signor Antonino called his hotel. It was like a fortress. garlanded and extinguished in blossoms. On the ramparts, near a giant rose-vine that dangled its creamtinted blooms to tempt us, we ate our mid-day breakfast. Away in front of us spread the wonderful blue water. Naples a faint gleaming line of white l>eyond. while nearer toward the right nestled Sorrento, a glittering jewel beneath her cliffs. Below, as our eyes wandered back, was the village, and the chatter of the fishing girls, passing back and forth with their baskets on their heads, floated up to us, and further along the water went lapping, with long hungry sighs, under our feet. Joconda got up now and then to drop a rose-bud over, and watch the tiny splash as she leaned on the wall. The most delightful dishes were set before us and removed with quick and neat-handed service, and the

wine of Capri was an experience to remember—that wine that tradition ascribes a spell to. We felt it all to lie too good to be true, such a pension made to our hand, and were halfminded to unpack and stay until the episode of the bambino. We were in the enjoyment of a perfect salad, when Joconda laid down her fork and napkin. moving forward with outstretched hands and those inarticulate and idiotic sounds that indicate the presence of a baby. I turned and saw him—unmistakably. Antonino’s bambino. He was swaddled like the Della Robbia babies in Florence, and he was held, or rather clutched, in the arms of a splendidly handsome and slouchy girl, who looked like a threatening thunder-storm. “ What a love !” cried Joconda. and the child eyed her solemnly. “He's the Signor Antonino’s bambino, is he not ?”

“ And mine also.” said the woman fiercely. “ I am the Signora Antonino.’

Sometimes I do not know whether Joconda is most stupid or wicked or innocent. I have weathered her through some stormy episodes, when she appeared to be either or all in lightning transitions, and. as there is usually a man in the case, I have to assume that she is innocent, or I should never be able to circumvent her. A mere tyro in the experience of the world could have read the situation at a glance, and yet she persistently ignored it. A jealous fury of a peasant girl married to a man who had dropped out of his class, but knew himself above her, so much was palpably plain. I do not know to this day, when I look back over our Capri experience. whether Joconda was really obtuse, whether she was amusing herself and laughing at me in her sleeve, or whether she had underneath her careless exterior a secret weakness for Antonino. Certain it is that he had many attractions. He had travelled all over the world, and lived for several years with an English nobleman. who had made of him a companion rather than a courier, his nominal position. He had picked up a wonderful store of information, a certain culture, and very delightful manners. He had the most caressing voice, with his disarming smile, and if he could do you a service he took possession of you for the time being, and managed you with so much address and distinction, that you felt much as royalty must when waited on by a prince of the blood. Of course we stayed at Capri. I felt that first day that it would be better to go at once, but I was unable to resist Joeonda, and the magic of the island, and my own inclination at one and the same time. At the Villa Antonino I refused to remain, for I had an inner conviction that I should awake some morning to find Joconda pinned to her bed by the dagger of the jealous wife—the dagger I felt sure she carried in her stocking, as so many Capri girls do. We took rooms, and kept house in a sketchy way. provided for in all our needs by

the Signor, who became a veritable Mau Friday, coming and going between his l»oat trips, and ministering in a thousand ways to our comfort and convenience. Everything we wanted, from a model to a cook, from fresh tigs to fuel, or flowers to paint, he made it his pleasure to find and send to us.

And then Joconda took a whim to paint the Signora Antoinino and the bambino. Day after day the beautiful, untidy creature would come ami stand in those natural statuesque poses, holding her boy with strong, graceful arms, and looking black hatred at Joconda’s head, bent over the canvas. Glancing at the little group thus one day. I was tilled with foreboding for my friend, and with pity for the |M>or.. unintelligent girl, who had nothing in the world but her beauty, and her half-mad worship of her indifferent husband, that was embittered by constant jealousy. I took a sudden resolve, and. seizing a fresh canvas, began to draw in a rapid “ketch. Joconda leaned back, and rested, palette in hand. “So you are going to take a try at the Signora : that’s a good idea ; then I’ll come and take a look at your flesh tint. I’m off on her colouring, but isn’t it something superb !” “ No.” I answered, as I worked, “you’ll take no notes of this. It’s a little memento for the Signora's eye alone.”

I flatter myself I made rather a hit of it, but I denied my hand the joy of lingering over the fascinating details, such as the curve of her exquisite ear. the gleaming circle of gold ear-ring against the olive skin, and the blue black of her hair, where it drooped over her low forehead, almost meeting the black arch of her brow. I was filled with my purpose, and I thought I saw a way of protecting Joconda by showing the Signora her own evil self. In about an hour the sketch was done. Joconda made no further move to see it. but went on with her work when I announced it. She was sulky. “ 'I our mysteries always bore me. < harlie.” she said, as she mixed the paint on her palette industriously. The Signorina Antonino laid down the bambino, now fast asleep, and came over to my easel at my bidding to see the result. She looked at the sketch. then she drew back and caught her breath fiercely, showing her teeth between her parted lips, and glaring at me like an animal divided between rage and fear. I had painted her coming’ upon Joconda from behind as she sat at her easel, and in the woman's dark face I had put all the hate I saw there, and a little more, and in the outstretched hand a dagger gleaming above my friend's averted shoulder.

The Signora gave a sudden cry. and then, whipping out a knife, she cut and slashed the picture to shreds, crying out meanwhile: “No, no, Holy Mother. lam not like that ! lam not so bad—but. yes, I hate her—she has the evil eve !”

Casting one wild glance at Joconda. she ran and seized her baby and fled from the house.

“ Well,” said Joconda. standing now amazed, “for a quiet sort of woman you seem to be able to stir up about the biggest tempest in the smallest teapot, and with less cause ; see here, what was on that canvas ?” But I was gathering up the wreck, and 1 never answered her question.

The Man Friday continued to come daily, but his morning offering of flowers was now to Joconda alone. To her ear also was addressed most of his conversation. Any woman but one who was a fool or a knave or in love with the man. could have seen that he had taken up a “ grand passion.” Only one who has some acquaintance with the Italian abandonment in matters of the heart can fully estimate what this means. Love is a fetich, a real god. the one absorbing cult to the Italian. Fortunately, it is more often toward his own wife he exercise: it than toward the wife of his neighbour.

But it was .Taconda herself who finally drove me to desperate measures. She came to a place where she not only ceased to poke fun at Antonino, hut even to regard him facetiously. When a woman shows offence at the smallest joke at a.man’s expense, she is in a parlous state. She treated with silent contempt all my efforts to get her away from Capri ; she no longer even deigned to argue the question with me. I could not chloroform her and carry her off. and her fatuous state of mind was one that seemed to preclude reasoning. I had done what I could with the poor Signora ; I was obviously wasting my ammunition and fighting in ambuscade with Joconda. I resolved to make an attack on Antonio himself. It took two days of my utmost guile and devotion to the project to secure an interview with him alone and unknown to her. When I secured my uninterrupted interval it was under the great wall of an orange orchard on a stone seat that may have accommodated Roman conspirators, as far as age is concerned. “ What can I do to-day for the Signorina ?” The man had a way of stroking his moustache that irritated

“ You can keep away from us,” I said, bluntly.

He bowed and answered nothing. This irritated me still more.

“ There is nothing to be gained by beating about the bush. Signor Antonio ; let us come to the point. You have seen enough of the world, as well as 1, to know that the meaning of your conduct is quite clear ; you are no Capri peasant !” “My family,” he said, stiffening. “ is as good as yours. Signorina, or—as hers I”

He reached up and broke off a bunch of orange blossoms and stood twirling it in his slim, brown fingers. “ 1 see you have guessed my little secret.” he said, and his voice and manner were so complacent I could have struck him.

“ Your little secret ” I cried, hotly. I should hardly call a thing you have blazoned on every side and heralded from the house-tops a secret ! Since your ‘ little secret ’ is an insult to iny friend you might at least have the grace to be ashamed of it—one might have been able to expect that of oven a Capri peasant who was a married man !” Signer Antonio bent his brows and glowered at me. I confess my weakness; when the man looked at me like that I felt the strength of his will so powerfully that I shuddered to think how absolutely a nature like his could dominate a woman of weaker resolution, already, perhaps, half in love with him —in short, Joconda.

Then he said, quietly, pausing- after every word, “ T am not a married man —mine was a Capri wedding I” T recoiled from him in disgust. I stood up and shrunk against the wall. To think that such a pestilential condition of society could so nearly have touched my Joconda ! That is the way with us American women. We grow used to the distorted conditions of old-world morality; we learn to live on beside them without comment or protest, but to be associated with any of it breeds at once a horror in the heart. ‘ you

“In the sight of God,” I said, have a wife I”

“11> the sight of the church.” he said, with a sort of u triumph in his tones. “ 1 have none, but 1 do love the

bambino ! 1 hate the mother,” he said, bitterly, "but I love the child !”

“ In Joconda's eyes,” 1 went on further. " you have both wife and child !”

I pleaded with him then for the poor ignorant girl and his own honour, but it was of no use. His moral and religious standing were centuries and civilisations away from mine. The sort of alliance he had entered into, he said, was as recognised and respectable in Capri as morganatic marriage was in royal circles, and as compatible with his idea of religion. He had meant to remain true to it during his life, though he had long despised his wife for the animal she was ! But now the grand, the noble passion of love had arrived; that was another thing ! And Joconda—the divine, the angelic—“Joconda will despise you when she knows I” T raged at him. He leaned against the trunk of a tree. Hi stood facing me. pulling gently at his moustache. Then he suddenly flashed out that gleaming smile : “She knows already'!” The solid ground seemed sliding out beneath my feet. “Jcccnda knows!” I gasped, “and —and receives you !” “ And accepts my flowers and now and then looks into my eyes and smiles! It is encouraging, Signorina, is it not? If she can forgive it is possible she also loves. You who have seen so much of the world, Signorina,” he bowed his. head ironically, “you also must read thus my answer, is it not so?” I stood a moment anl waited for myself. I felt the need of patience with my own slow mental processes. Hard and fast I compared probabilities, calculated Joconda’s severity of moral outlook, her weakness of purpose, and her terrible capacity for repentance. I knew as well as if I saw into their brains what each was doing. She was fighting a losing battle between her duty and her longing. He was quietly waiting the issue before he spoke openly to her of his love. He was wily enough to give her time to readjust her point of view. If Joconda was to be saved from this man of an alien race and an alien training—from herself—there was no one but me to do it. How? My better and worser self entered upon an immediate pitched battle over the plan of that salvation, and I have never known which it was that came off victor in the-issue.

“Signor Antonino,” I said. “I have tried every other way to convince you of the impossibility of any further relation between my friend and yourself. 1 hoped not to have to use this last persuasion. You are a man of honour”—how I inwardly gulped over that lie —“may I trust you with a confidence?”

He bowed, with his heels together, in a way I detest.

Joconda is already married!”

It was a last throw, and it cost me dear, for, up to that point in my experience. I had been used to look myself in the face as a truthful woman. I never have since. I always see that lie! But the shot went home; he believed me. I felt a pity, not unmixed with contempt, for him as he cowered down on the stone seat, and, covering his face with his hands, cried audibly like a child that has been beaten. His race prejudices were hard hit, for he knew if Joconda was married it was in good Anglo-Saxon hard and-fast legal way. He was religious, which, in some countries and in some natures, is quite a different thing from being moral, and at once he conceived the barrier between them to be insurmountable. I leaned over at last and shook him by the shoulder, partly to secure his attention, and partly to satisfy my own impatience at his shameless emotion.

“And now,” I said, with reluctant concession to his power, “you will in some way release my friend from this wicked spell you seem to have put upon her!” Then I walked away home in the sunshine, between the white walls of the gardens and the orchards, pursued by troops of little barefooted beggars, turning somersaults and beating each other back, yelling “soldi, soldi, Signora!” I turned and threw some centimes far behind me, and escaped to the vine-covered hut we called our studio, where passion flowers and heavy-scented jessamines pushed their way in at every open window. The next morning, as we sat painting in silence, a note was handed to

Joeonda by one of the fisherboys from the wharf. She turned a little pale about the lips, and I knew it was from Antonino, but I made no comment. Jaconda and I never rouse sleeping dogs between us. “Signor Antonino can not bring the things we wanted from Naples to-day; he has gone away on a journey to Palermo.” We worked on in silence for some time, then Joconda raised her hands above her head in an exaggerated yawn.

"I think I am getting a little bored with this place,” she said, “when shall we move on?”

“’l’s-day,” I agreed, and so it came about that within the we?-< v.e were in Koine, at work and at home, for we

wanderers make and unmake homes as quickly a».d as easily as the gypsies.

We have never seen Signor Antonino nor Capri since then, nor do we ever speak of either, though from Joconda’s light heart and ready laugh, not to speak of the retired English officer who now haunts the studio, I assume that she has forgotten our experience. However that may be she maintains silence, and if she ever longs, as I do, for that gay little islaqd, with its flower-scented breezes, its cloudveiled mountain peak, where the Madonna, enshrined aloft, watches ever the wide bay. spread in blue splendour below, if she ever remembers and longs to return she does not tell me.