As Rose sat there her eyes filled with tears. They were not for herself, though her own heart was sore; they were for the poor woman whose husband had so cruelly left her all alone on her honeymoon. And when Rose thought how happy she was herself, and how soon she would tell Léon, with her cheek against his cheek, that she was sorry she had been horrid, her heart ached for that other bride who had no lover to appease; and who must be looking at all this great sparkling sea and wonderful bright earth with such sad, different eyes! And so Rose sat there and cried for Madame Gérard--and Madame Gérard, two hundred yards away, waited for Rose’s husband.
He came at last, hurriedly, quietly, with hanging head, like a thief. He was ashamed, ashamed of his anger against Rose, of his incredible folly, of his silly, intemperate desires. He passed close by the rock on which Rose sat. Her heart moved suddenly against her side; it betrayed her; stubbornly it beat as if it knew itself in danger, and yet, Rose said to herself, there was no danger. It was only Léon hurrying by, looking as if he were ashamed.
She saw him get into the little carriage, and then turn and look back. She could not see his face, but it seemed to her as if he were reluctant to be driven away. Of course he would be back for dinner.
Perhaps, after all, that was Madame Gérard, and Léon was driving her down to the eight o’clock boat? Probably she was going to Naples to join her husband, and Léon had offered to see her off. He would be very late for dinner. If she hadn’t been cross he would have told her what he meant to do. The little Capri ponies plunged forward and the carriage disappeared in a cloud of dust. A long while after she saw the little steamer pushing its way across the crystal sea and leaving behind it a long purple trail. She watched it till it lost itself beyond Castellamare. Léon would soon be back now. She walked slowly towards the hotel and when she got there she was conscious of something strange about it. The Padrone met her with a bunch of flowers, and the stout Padrona bustled out from the office to ask Rose if there wasn’t anything extra she would like--would she not dine now in the garden?
“Oh, no, not now,” Rose said quickly. “I will wait for my husband.” A shadow passed over the Padrona’s face. She hesitated and then said with urgent kindness, “The Signora has only to ask for anything she wants.” The waiter, too, looked at Rose with strange, sympathetic eyes. He suggested her feeding the pigeons, and hurried to offer her new bread off the table of some traveling Germans.
“These people,” he said, “Tedeschi will not know the difference. Take it, Signora mia, for your birds.”
The pigeons had already gone to roost.
Peppina, the chambermaid, watched Rose from the balcony. She should have been at her supper, but she stood for some time gazing down into the garden at the figure of the young wife. Suddenly she also bethought herself of something and hurried down into the garden carrying a black kitten in her apron which she deposited on Rose’s lap. “Behold,” she said, “the little one of fortune. A black cat brings luck. Talk to it, Signora, perhaps it will stay with you.” But the black kitten jumped off Rose’s lap. It wanted to play with its own shadow in the grass, and to stalk birds. It was not too young for that.
The sky changed slowly from rose color to a clear, pale blue. One by one the stars came out, but they made no place in the sky, till the evening waned and night came, velvety and black, to Capri, embracing it like a dropped mantle, and then, through the curtain of the mysterious dark, the stars grew enormous and shone down upon the scented lemon gardens and over the vague wide sea.
Outside the gate a mandolin struck up a hungry, empty little tune.