They had all drunk to each other in red Posilipo, and wished themselves and each other good luck, and Gina Lunelli had said, for the twentieth time, 'You won't find any place so good to live in as Naples,' and Tommy had said, 'You must come and stay with us some time at Santa Caterina—all of you,' with a comprehensive sweep of his arm, generous with the large hospitality of red Posilipo. Betty had said how Genoa, too, was a gay place, with plenty doing, only the winds that blew down its streets in winter were certainly evil and bitter, and one had to wear all one's clothes at once. But Santa Caterina was different; Italy certainly held no such other place, and they must, of course, one day all come and see.
Thus they talked, and laughed, and sang songs, and looked away from the city which held in its deep shadows so much of their life. It would have been quite easy then to slip down among the shadows and the colours and take that life again, broken as it was, in time perhaps forgetting everything. New beginnings were so hard, the call of the old things so insistent. The old things that they had of late so hated, as spoilers of their lives, they knew that they would not always hate—if now they went down into the shadowed streets and took them again, striving to forget, in the end all but forgetting, this cleavage which so lay across life. For all cleavages may be bridged with time.
So, sick-hearted, the Crevequers had looked at the old ways which so clogged them, which would possibly (why not?) always clog them, clinging heavily like mire; and at the new ways which they were seeking wearily, with no heart, with 'too late' echoing in their souls like a knell.
But this May morning, blown by a light wind that set the blue sea dancing and would soon make them very ill, astir with the thronging of ships in the harbour, and the hooting of voyages begun, was full of unquenchable hopes and unvanquished youth and gay beginnings.
Some one on the launch was playing 'Addio, bella Napoli' on a mandolin; the Crevequers called again 'Good-bye,' and leaned over the rail and watched the sea-face of the city, crowned by Castel St. Elmo on the hill, growing smaller in the distance. So much of life lay there....
They left it there, gold and dross, in that crucible which had so transmuted it. Gold or dross, it seemed to matter little; it had melted from them, burning their hands.
They looked at it once more, saw it dwindle far away, then turned together to the wide, blue newness of the sea.
Betty had to make both the boats, because Tommy could not yet use his right hand. She made them out of the pieces of red bark which flaked off the pine-trunks and lay in heaps by the edge of the pool. Each boat was about six inches long and two inches wide, square about the stern and pointed in the bows, with a pine-needle mast and an envelope sail. To prevent bitterness and evil speaking, Tommy had his choice of them when they were finished. Then they were launched, and the Crevequers lay and watched them, knowing that not for a long time need they go across to the other side to welcome them to port. They made a slow voyage in the windless afternoon. There was never much wind up here, though it was up among the hills, because the pines stood close and thick about the water, shutting it in to a deep green gloom.
The Crevequers lay by the water, upon the slippery brown needles, and drank in the warm resinous fragrance. It was always pleasant to step from the winding stone path, where the afternoon sun lay hot, where mule-carts climbed up and jingled their bells lazily, into this deep green shadowed place, where in the water the images of the pines nearly met from side to side, leaving a little circle of blue between. It had always been a favourite place; the Crevequers had spent much of their youth here, sailing pine-bark boats from side to side, hanging head downwards over the water with jars to catch water-beetles, bathing, or dangling an ineffectual line for fish.