They’re a queer lot, these Italians. After twenty years spent among them I don’t yet understand them. Italy itself I love — every artist must. I love the very dirt. I love the squalid towns. I love the crumbling walls; I love every stone of them. When I came to the country first, I dropped into it like one to the manner born. I said on the mere threshold, by the slope of the Alps, stretching out my hands to the soil of Italy, ‘Ecco la mia patria!’ But the Italians! — ah, there! — that’s quite another question. I like them, understand well; I don’t say a word against them; but comprehend them? — no, no; they’re at once too simple and too complex, by far, for our Northern intelligence.
There was Cecca’s case, for example; what a very queer history! You must have noticed Cecca — that black-haired, flashing-eyed Neapolitan maid of ours, who goes out with my little ones. Have I never told you the story about Cecca’s strange courtship? Well, well; sit down here under the shade of the stone-pine, and light your cigarette while I tell you all about it. Be careful of your match, though; don’t throw it away lighted in the midst of the rosemary bushes; the myrtles and lentisks on these dry hillsides flare up like tinder; the white heath crackles and fizzes in a second; before you know where you are, the flame runs up the junipers and pine-trees, corkscrew-wise; and hi, presto! in rather less time than it takes to say so, the forest’s ablaze from Santa Croce to the Roya.
It was before we settled down here at Bordighera that the thing began; indeed, it was Cecca, indirectly speaking, that brought us to the coast here. We were living at Naples then, or, rather, near Castellamare. Cecca was our housemaid. Her full name’s Francesca. She’s handsome still, but she was beautiful then; the prettiest fisher-girl from Sorrento to Pozzuoli. Fanny took her from her parents when she was twelve years old, and trained her up in the house like an English servant. But the hot Neapolitan nature burnt strong in her, all the same; nobody could ever tame Cecca.
Well, she had a lover, of course; every girl has a lover — especially in Italy. He was a fisherman, like her own people; for the fishermen are a caste, and no well-bred fisher-girl ever dreams of marrying any man outside it. The fellow’s name was Giuseppe. Our children loved him. He used to bring them dried sea-horses with long curled tails, and queer shells with wings to them, and creepy great octopuses with staring goggle eyes, that they loved to see and yet shrank from in terror. He was a mighty hunter of sea-eggs and cuttle-fish. Cecca pretended not to care for him, Neapolitan fashion — for they are a crooked folk; but we could see very well she was madly in love with him for all that. If we sent her on the hills to take the children for a walk, we always found, in the end, she’d gone on the beach instead, if Giuseppe was hauling the seine, or mending his nets, or tarring and towing the gaping chinks in the hull of the Sant’ Elmo.
One morning I was sitting under the shadow of a boat, on the shingle by the sea, doing a little water-colour; the children were close by, playing with stranded jelly-fish; and Cecca was there to look after them, basking in the sun like a lizard. Presently, on the shore, Giuseppe’s boat drove in, and he hauled her up close by, with the aid of his brown-legged mates, never noticing us so near him. Cecca noted him stealthily, glancing askance at me to keep silence. The young man began sorting his fish — you know the kind of thing — strange frutti di mare that they make frittura of. All’s fish that comes to their net — mussels, squids, or sea-spiders. As he was doing it, another pretty fisher-girl strolled up that way, brown-skinned like himself, and with a bright red handkerchief twisted carelessly round that glossy black head of hers. Cecca crept closer, under shelter of the boat, her eyes like coals of fire, and listened to the talk of them. I heard it all, too; frank fisher-folk chaff, with frank fisher-folk words, in the frank fisher-folk dialect. A good part of it, don’t you see, would be totally unfit for publication in English.
‘Hey, my Lady, what a catch!’ says the girl, holding her head on one side, and looking down at the boat-load. ‘Crabs, sardines, and sea-wolf! You’ve fifty lire’s worth there if you’ve got ten soldi. You’ll be making your fortune soon, Giuseppe!’
Giuseppe glanced up at her as she stood there so saucy, with one hand on her hip, and one, coquettish, by the corner of her rich red mouth, and he shrugged his shoulders.
‘Pretty well,’ he says, opening his hands, just so, in front of him — you know their way. ‘A fair catch for the season!’
The girl sidled nearer. Her name was Bianca (though she was brown as a berry), and I knew her well by sight.
‘You’ll be marrying Cecca before long,’ she said. ‘You’ll need it all — then! She’ll want red shoes and silk stockings, your Cecca will.’
‘Who said I was going to marry Cecca?’ Giuseppe answers, quite short, out of pure contrariety. That’s the Neapolitan way. Talking to one pretty girl, in the heat of the moment, he couldn’t bear she should think he cared for another one. Your Neapolitan would like to make love to them all at once, or rather each in turn, and pretend to every one of them he didn’t care a pin for any of the others.
Well, there they fell straight into an Italian chaffing-match, half fun, half earnest; Bianca pretending Giuseppe was head over ears in love with Cecca, to her certain knowledge; while Giuseppe pretended he never cared for the mincing thing at all, and was immensely devoted to no one but Bianca. It was pure Neapolitan devilry on his part, of course; he couldn’t help saying sweet things to whatever pretty girl with a pair of black eyes was nearest him at the moment, and depreciating by comparison every other she spoke of.
But Cecca sat hard by, her hand curved round her ear, shell-wise, so, to listen, and her brow like thunder. I dared not say a word lest she should rise and rush at him.
‘And you’ve chosen so well, too!’ says Bianca, half satirically, don’t you see? ‘She’s so sweet! so pretty! Such lips for a kiss! Such fine eyes to flirt with! Not a girl on the beach with eyes like Cecca’s!’
‘Eyes!’ Giuseppe answers, coming closer and ogling her. ‘You call her eyes fine? Why, I say she squints with them.’
‘Not squints,’ says Bianca condescendingly. ‘Just a very slight cast.’
And indeed, as you may have noticed, though Cecca’s so handsome, they’re not quite straight in her head, when you come to look hard at them.
‘You may call it a cast,’ Giuseppe continues, counting over his dories; ‘but I call it squinting. Whereas your eyes, Bianca — —’
Bianca pouted her lips at him.
‘That’s the way of you men,’ she says, mighty pleased all the same. ‘Always flattering us to our faces; while behind our backs — —’
‘And then, her temper!’ says Giuseppe.
‘Well, she has a temper, I admit,’ Bianca goes on with angelic candour. And so for twenty minutes such a game between them, pulling poor Cecca to pieces, turn about, till, morally and physically, she hadn’t the ghost of a leg left to stand upon.
But Cecca! you should have seen her meanwhile. There she sat, under the boat, drinking in every word, herself unseen, with the eye and the face of a tigress just ready to spring, straining forward to listen. It was awful to look at her; she seemed one whirlwind of suppressed passion. Little fists clenched hard, neck stretched out to the utmost, frowning brow, puckered eyes, nostrils wide and quivering. I’d have given anything to paint her as she sat there that minute. I tried it from memory afterwards — you remember the piece, my ‘Italian Idyll,’ in the ‘84 Academy.
By and by she rose and faced them. Then came the tug of war. If it was tragedy to see Cecca with her heart on fire, like the pinewoods in summer, it was comedy to see those two disappear into their shoes when Cecca fronted them. The Three Furies were nothing to it. Bianca dodged and vanished. Giuseppe stood sheepish, jaw dropped and eye staring, anxious at first to find out whether she’d heard them or not; then pretending he’d known all the time she was there, and just did it to tease her; lastly, throwing himself on her mercy, and setting it all down, as was really the case, to the time-pleasing, fickle Neapolitan temperament that was common to both of them. ‘You’d have done it yourself, Cecca,’ he said, ‘with any other man, you know, if he’d begun to chaff you about your fellow, Giuseppe.’
Cecca knew she would in her heart, I dare say, but she wouldn’t acknowledge it; having heard it all, you see, made all the difference. It’s the way of men, Giuseppe told her, craning eagerly forward, to disparage even the girl they love best, when they want to make themselves momentarily agreeable to another one. It’s the way of men, all the world over, I’m afraid; but, as far as I’ve observed, the woman they love never lets them off one penny the easier on account of its universality.
Well, they parted bad friends; Giuseppe went off in a huff, and Cecca, proud and cold, with the mien of a duchess, stalked home by the children’s side in silence. For a day or two we heard nothing more at all about the matter. Giuseppe didn’t come round in the evenings, as usual, to the villa gate; and Cecca’s eyes in the morning were red with crying. Not that she minded a bit, she told Fanny, with a toss of her pretty head; for her own part, indeed, she was rather glad than otherwise it was off altogether, for Giuseppe, she always knew, wasn’t half good enough for her. In a moment of weakness she had encouraged his suit — a mere common fisherman’s, when the head waiter at the Victoria, that distinguished-looking gentleman in a swallow-tail coat and a spotless white tie, was dying of love for her. For Cecca had been raised one degree in the social scale by taking service in a foreign family, and, whenever she wanted to give herself airs, used to pretend that nowadays she looked down upon mere fishermen.
Towards the end of the week, however, old Catarina, our cook, brought in evil tidings. She had no business to tell it, of course, but, being a Neapolitan, she told it on purpose, in order to stir up a little domestic tragedy between Cecca and her lover. Giuseppe was paying his court to Bianca! They had been seen walking out in the evening together! He had given her a lace scarf, and it was even said — and so forth, and so forth! Well, we knew very well, Fanny and I, what Giuseppe was driving at. He only wanted to make Cecca as jealous as an owl, and so bring her back to him. I don’t pretend to understand Italians, as I told you; but this much I know, that they always go to work the crooked way, if they can, to attain their ends, by a sort of racial instinct. So I wasn’t astonished when Catarina told us this. But Cecca — she was furious. She went straight out of the house like a wild cat on the prowl, and crept along the shore in the direction of Naples.
At ten o’clock she came back. I never saw her look so proud or so beautiful before. There was a disdainful smile upon her thin curled lips. Her eyes were terrible. She had a knife in her hand. ‘Well, I’ve done it!’ she cried to Fanny, flinging the knife on the ground, so that it stuck by its point in the floor and quivered. ‘I’ve done it at last! I’ve finished the thing! I’ve stabbed him!’
Fanny was so aghast she hardly knew what to do. ‘Not Giuseppe!’ she cried, all horror-struck. ‘Oh, Cecca, don’t say so.’
‘Yes, I do say so,’ says Cecca, flinging herself down in a chair. And with that, what does she do but bury her face in her hands, and rock herself up and down, like a creature distraught, and burst into floods of tears, and moan through her sobs, ‘Oh, I loved him so! I loved him!’
Queer sort of way of showing you love a man, to go sticking a knife into him! but that’s the manner of these Italians. Fanny and I had got used to them, you see, so we didn’t make much of it. Fanny tried to comfort the poor child, for we were really fond of her. ‘Perhaps he won’t die,’ she said, bending over her; ‘you mayn’t have stabbed him badly.’
‘Oh yes, he will,’ Cecca sobbed out, her eyes flashing fire. ‘He’ll die, I’m sure of it. I drove the knife home well, so that he shouldn’t recover and let that nasty Bianca have him.’
‘Go out and see about it, Tom,’ says my wife, turning round to me, quite frightened; ‘for if Giuseppe dies of it, then, of course, it’ll be murder.’
Well, out I went, and soon heard all the news from the people at the corner. Giuseppe had been found, lying stabbed upon the road, and been carried at once to the civic hospital. Nobody seemed to think very much of the stabbing; some woman, no doubt, or else a quarrel about a woman with some fisherman of his acquaintance. But they considered it very probable Giuseppe would die. He was stabbed twice badly in two dangerous places.
There was no time to be lost. Fanny and I made up our minds at once. We were Italianate enough ourselves to think a great deal less of the crime than of poor Cecca’s danger. You know the proverb, Inglese Italianato è diavolo incarnato. I hope it’s not quite true, but, at any rate, Fanny’s Italianate, and she was determined poor Cecca’s head shouldn’t fall off her neck if she could prevent it. Fanny had always a conscientious objection to the guillotine. So we saw at a glance Cecca must disappear — disappear mysteriously. Before she began to be suspected she must be smuggled out of the way, of course without our seeming to know anything about it.
No sooner thought than done. ’Twas the moment for action. We called up Cecca, and held a council of war over her. Just at first the poor child absolutely refused to leave Naples on any account while Giuseppe was in such danger; why, he might die, she said, any moment — crying over him, you must know, as if it was somebody else, not herself, who had stabbed him. That dear man might die — the blessed Madonna save him! — and she not there to comfort him in his last hour, or to burn a candle for the repose of his soul after he’d gone to purgatory. No, not till Giuseppe was healed or dead: she should stop at Castellamare!
But after a time Fanny talked her over. Fanny’s so rational. Everything would be done at the hospital for Giuseppe, she said; and, supposing he died, why, we’d promise to waste our substance riotously in hiring a reckless profusion of priests to sing masses for his soul, if only Cecca’d take our advice and save herself. The end of it all was, Cecca consented at last. She even volunteered a suggestion on her own account. There was a Bordighera coasting-vessel in the port that night, she said, whose skipper, Paolo Bolognini, was a very good man and a friend of her father’s. The vessel was bound out to-morrow morning for Bordighera direct, with a cargo of white Capri and country figs. If Cecca could only go on board to-night, disguised as a boy, she might get clear away beyond sea undetected. She seemed to think, poor soul, that if that once happened there could be no more question of arresting her at all; she was too childish to be aware that the law of Italy runs even as far from her native Naples as this unknown coast here.
Well, it’s no use being seriously angry and taking the high moral standpoint with a naughty girl like that. You might as well preach the Decalogue at a three-year-old baby. So we cut all Cecca’s hair short — she cried over its loss quite as bitterly at the time as she had cried over Giuseppe — and we dressed her up in a suit of her brother’s clothes; and a very pretty fisher-boy she made, after all, with a red cap on her head and a crimson sash round her waist for girdle. She laughed for three good minutes when she saw herself in the glass. Then we started her off, alone, for the Bordighera sloop, along the dim, dark shore, while Fanny and I stole after, at a discreet distance, to observe what happened.
At the very last moment, to be sure, Fanny had qualms of conscience about letting a pretty girl like Cecca go alone on board a ship among all those noisy Italian sailors. The British matron within her still wondered whether the girl ought to be allowed to go off without a chaperon. But I soon put a stopper on all that — revolutions and rosewater — you can’t stick at trifles when you’re escaping from an impending charge of murder; and besides, Cecca could take care of herself (with a knife, if necessary) among a hundred sailors. A boatman of our acquaintance rowed her out to the sloop, which was anchored in the bay. She went on board at once, and signified to us, by a preconcerted signal with a light, that she was well received and would be taken to Bordighera.
As soon as she was gone we expected every hour the police would come up and make full inquiries. If they did come (having lost all moral sense by this time), I was prepared to aid them in searching the house through, with the most innocent face, for that missing Cecca. But they never came at all. We learned why afterwards. Giuseppe had been staunch; true as steel to the girl. In his bed at the hospital, half dead with the wound, he never said for a moment it was Cecca who had done it. That was partly his pride, I believe; he didn’t like to confess he’d been stabbed by a woman; and partly his desire to avenge himself personally. He even concocted a cock-and-bull story about a mysterious-looking fellow in a brigand-like cloak and a slouch hat who attacked him unawares on the high road, without the slightest provocation. The police didn’t believe that, of course, but they never suspected Cecca. They set it down to a quarrel with some other man over a girl, and thought he refused out of motives of honour to betray his opponent.
For a week the poor fellow hovered between life and death. We waited eagerly for news of him, which old Catarina brought us. Of course we were afraid to inquire ourselves, lest suspicion should fall upon us; but Fanny had promised Cecca that a letter should be awaiting her when she reached Bordighera with a full, true, and particular account of how the patient was progressing. The letter contained a couple of hundred francs as well; for Fanny was wild about that girl, and really talked as if stabbing one’s lover was the most natural thing in the world — an accident that might happen to any lady any day. That’s the sort of feeling that comes of living too long at a stretch in Italy.
By and by, to everybody’s immense astonishment, in spite of his wounds, Giuseppe began to mend. It was really quite a miracle. If you doubt it you can look at the ex voto in the chapel on the hill over yonder, where you may see Giuseppe with a dagger through his heart, and a very wooden Madonna with a simpering smile descending in a halo of golden light, from most material clouds, to pluck the thing out for him. He prayed hard that he might live — to stick a knife into Cecca — and our Lady heard him. At any rate, miracle or no miracle, the man recovered. Meanwhile, we had heard from Cecca of her safe arrival at Bordighera. But that was not all; the girl was foolish enough to write to her people as well; who confided the fact to their dearest friend; who told it under the utmost pledge of secrecy to a dozen of her cronies; who retailed it to the marketwomen; who noised it abroad with similar precautions to all Castellamare. In a week it was known to all and sundry (except the police) that Giuseppe had really been stabbed by Cecca, who had fled for her life to a place beyond sea called Bordighera.
Presently old Catarina brought us worse news still. Giuseppe was up and out, breathing forth fire and slaughter against the girl who stabbed him. He meant to follow her to the world’s end, he said, and return blow for blow, exact vengeance for vengeance. The next thing we heard was that he had sailed in a ship bound for Genoa direct, and we doubted not he knew now Cecca was at Bordighera.
Well, nothing would satisfy poor Fanny after that but off we must all pack, bag and baggage, to the north, to look after Cecca. Not that she put it on that ground, of course; British matronhood forbid! It was getting too hot for the neighbourhood of Naples, she said, and time for our annual villeggiatura in the mountains. We could take Bordighera on the way to the Lakes, and carry Cecca with us to Lugano or Cadenabbia. For now that Giuseppe hadn’t died after all, there was no murder in the case, and we might proceed more openly.
So off we started, children, nursemaid, and all, and came round here by rail, post haste to Bordighera. We settled in for a few days at the Belvedere while we looked about us. Fanny hunted up Cecca at once in her lodgings in the town, and took her back as head nurse. ‘How do you know,’ I said, ‘she won’t stick a knife one day into one of the children?’ But Fanny treated my remark with deserved contempt, and observed with asperity that we men had no feeling. Italianate, you see! completely Italianate!
We hadn’t been in Bordighera but a week and day, as the old song says, and I was walking along the Strada Romana one morning, looking out on the blue sea through the branches of the olives, when who should I perceive coming gaily towards me but my friend Giuseppe. He had a red sash round his waist, with a knife stuck in it ostentatiously. He was fingering the haft as he went. When he saw me he smiled and showed all his white teeth. But ’twas an ugly smile; I didn’t like the look of it.
‘Buon giorno, Giuseppe,’ says I, trying to look unconcerned, as if I’d expected to meet him. ‘Glad to see you so well again.’
‘Buon giorno, signore,’ he answered in his politest tone. Then he tapped his knife gaily: ‘I’ve come to look for Cecca!’
I hurried home in hot haste, as fast as my legs would carry me. At the Belvedere I saw Fanny sitting out sunning herself near the stunted palm-tree in the front garden.
‘Fanny, Fanny,’ I cried, ‘where’s Cecca? Keep her out of the way, for Heaven’s sake! Here’s Giuseppe at Bordighera, with a knife at his side, going about like a roaring lion to devour her.’
Fanny clapped her hands to her ears.
‘Oh, Tom,’ she cried, ‘what shall we do? She’s down on the beach somewhere, playing with the children.’
Of course this was serious. If Giuseppe came upon her unwarned, I didn’t doubt for a moment he’d carry out in real earnest his threat of stabbing her. So off I sent the porter to find her, if possible, and set her on her guard, telling him to bring her home, if he could, by the back way over the hillside. Then Fanny and I sat out, under the Japanese medlar on the terrace, where we could command a good view of the road either way, and watch if the girl was coming. Meanwhile, Giuseppe kept prowling under the olives on the plain, and bandying chaff now and again with the Bordighera cabmen.
Presently, to our horror, Cecca hove suddenly in sight, round the corner by the Angst, with the children beside her. She was carrying a great bunch of anemones and asphodel. Evidently the porter had failed to warn and find her. My heart stood still within me with suspense. I rushed to the edge of the terrace. But quicker than I could rush, Cecca had seen Giuseppe, and Giuseppe Cecca. With a wild cry of joy, she flung down the flowers and darted upon him like a maniac. She threw her arms around him in a transport of delight. She covered him with kisses. I never saw a woman give any man such a welcome. One would think they were lovers on the eve of marriage. And not three weeks before, mind you, she had tried her level best with a knife in his breast to murder him at Naples!
‘Giuseppe!’ she cried, ‘Giuseppe! Oh, carissimo! How I love you!’
Giuseppe shook her off and glared at her angrily. He drew the dagger from his belt, and held it, irresolute, in his hand for a moment.
But Cecca laughed when she saw it. She laughed a merry laugh of amusement and astonishment. ‘No, no, caro mio,’ she cried, seizing his arm, quite unconcerned, with her pretty fingers. ‘Not now, when I rejoice to see you again, my own, are you going to stab me!’ She wrenched the knife from his grasp and flung it, all glittering, far away among the olive groves. It gleamed in the air and fell. Giuseppe watched her do it, and followed its flight with his eyes. Then he stood there, sheepish. He didn’t know what to do next. He just stared and looked glum, in spite of all her endearments.
Cecca was more than a match for him, however. It was a picture to see her. She began with her blandishments, making such heartfelt love to him that no man in England, let alone in Italy, could possibly have resisted her. In just about two minutes by the watch he gave way. ‘But what did you stab me for, little one?’ he asked rather sullenly.
Cecca stood back a pace and looked at him in amazement. She surveyed him from head to foot like some strange wild animal. ‘What did I stab you for!’ she repeated. ‘And he asks me that! Oh, Giuseppe, because I loved you! I loved you! I loved you! I loved you so much I couldn’t bear you out of my sight. And you to go and walk with that Thing Bianca!’
‘I won’t do it again,’ Giuseppe answered, all penitence.
Cecca fell upon him once more, kisses, tears, and tenderness. ‘Oh, Giuseppe,’ she cried, ‘you can’t think what I’ve suffered all these days without you! I was longing for you to come. I was praying to our Lady every hour of the night; and, now you’re here, that horrid Bianca shall never again get hold of you.’
We left them alone for half an hour, with half a flask of Chianti to compose their minds upon. At the end of that time Cecca came back to us smiling, and Giuseppe, looking more sheepish than ever, beside her.
‘Well, signora,’ she said, overjoyed, ‘it’s all arranged now. As soon as we can get the announcement published, Giuseppe and I are going to get married.’
That settled our fate. Willy-nilly, we were tied to Bordighera. Cecca declared she would never go back to Naples again, to let that horrid Bianca practise her wiles and her evil eye on Giuseppe. Fanny declared she could never get on without Cecca for the children. Giuseppe declared he would never leave us. I shrugged my shoulders. The upshot of it all was that we took our present villa, on the slope of the Cima, and Giuseppe forswore the sea, turned gardener on the spot, and married Cecca. Married her, fair and square, at church, and before the Sindaco. He lives in our cottage. That’s him you see down yonder there, uncovering the artichokes. And now I daresay you’ll perceive what I mean when I say I never can understand these Italians.
But the worst of it is, they make us in the end almost as bad as they are. Have another cigarette? And be careful with your match, please.