Chapter 18

THE CORPORAL

One makes friends rapidly in Sicily. I made friends for life with all the coast-guards during three or four hours which I spent with them in their caserma. The corporal was the most demonstrative, and after I returned to England we exchanged post-cards for some months. Then he suddenly left off writing, and I drew the conclusion that it is as easy to unmake friends as to make them. But I was wrong. After four and a half years of undeserved neglect I received another post-card:

Since the death of one of my sisters and the occurrence of several other family troubles I have not been able before this day to write and assure you of the great affection which I continue to nourish towards you. For this I beg your pardon and your indulgence. I should have much pleasure in writing you a long letter and in telling you many things. Do you permit me to do so?

I gave the required permission, and presently received the long letter--much too long to be reproduced, but amounting to this:

That he was sorry to hear I had had a cold, and wished he could have had it instead; we could only hope that heaven would give me good health for a hundred years; that he was now writing the long letter about which there had been delay in consequence of his having been away at home on leave when the necessary permission reached him; that he had no words in which to express his joy at hearing that I was soon coming to Sicily, as it was now sixty-three months since he had been in my presence. "Year after year and I have not seen you, spring after spring and I have not seen you, autumn after autumn and I have not seen you, and I have always looked for your coming and have not seen you."

He went on to say that the young lady to whom he was engaged was a beautiful and honest girl, well educated and of a superior but unfortunately poor family. He was longing for the day when he might introduce her to me, for he had now been engaged over four years, and his misery was that he did not know when they could be married. He was thirty-five, and had been in service fifteen years and a half; on attaining forty he would be able to retire from the service and marry, but in the meantime he was losing all his youth under military discipline; he had applied for a permanent government post which might be given him at any moment, and then he could retire from the coast-guard service and return to his business; he was a carpenter by trade, and there would then be no obstacle to his marrying. And sometimes he was in despair because he could marry at once if only he could deposit 8000 francs--a sum that was beyond his means. He saw no way out of his trouble. He had been very unfortunate ever since he was born, and supposed he should continue to be so until he died; but he had always been economical, and had saved about half the sum required; if only he could get the remaining 4000 francs it would be a great good fortune, and in a few days he hoped to send me his photograph together with that of his young lady.

I replied congratulating him on his engagement and regretting that it was not in my power to help him to hasten his marriage. Even if there had been any reason why I should help him I should not have contemplated mixing myself up with the regulations regarding the marriage of coast-guards made by a friendly nation. If one were to begin, it would take a great deal of money to go round Italy endowing all the coastguards who want to marry; not that he had asked me to do this, he had not even asked me to help him, but it is as well to be prepared for what seems likely to happen next, and I was using a sanctified form of refusal.

In his reply he did not mention the subject; he said he had been transferred to Castellinaria and had been promoted. He was now Caporale Maggiore. I did not know before that coastguard corporals, like musical scales and Hebrew prophets, could be either major or minor.

I again congratulated him, and hoped his promotion might help to hasten his marriage. Next time I was at Castellinaria I asked Peppino where I should find the caserma of the Guardia di Finanza.

"It is in the church," said Peppino.

"What church? Not the duomo?"

"No; this other church where is no longer the praying and they shall enchant no more the Glory of the Mass with music and the bells are not ringing and there is the cortile near the sea. It is not very long far."

Then I knew he meant the disused church of S. Maria dell' Aiuto which I had often admired. I called there the following day about three in the afternoon and inquired for the corporal. His comrade who let me in took me along two sides of a beautiful cloister, with sculptured marble columns, and upstairs into the barber's shop, where we found the corporal with a towel round his neck being shaved. He was so surprised to see me that I was afraid there would be an accident, but the barber was clever and nothing serious happened. After the shaving he took me into the dormitory, which extends all along one side of the cloister on the first floor with windows looking on the grass and flowers of the cortile on one side and over the sea on the other--very fresh and healthy. Some of his comrades, who had been on duty all night, were sleeping in their beds, other beds were empty, and their owners were blacking their boots and polishing their buttons. He told them to entertain me, which they did while he finished his dressing. He then returned and proposed taking me out.

As we went along he asked whether he might take me to see his young lady. I was surprised to hear she was in the town, knowing it was not her native place, and asked whether the remaining 4000 francs had dropped from heaven. He replied that he was still waiting. He was to have a month's leave soon, and intended to take the girl to his home and introduce her to his family; in the meantime he had hired a room, and it was very expensive--twenty francs a month, in the house of most respectable people. I foresaw complications when they should arrive at home, at least I thought the journey might provoke remark among the friends of the family, but I said nothing, and we went to the house of the respectable people. Here I was introduced to the fidanzata, whose name was Filomena, and who appeared to be, as he had said, rather above him in station and of refined and lady-like manners. She was embroidering the top part of a sheet--the part that is turned down and lies over the pillow when the bed is made--no doubt for her trousseau. The design had been traced and traced again from the tracing so often that it was difficult to say what it represented. There was a balustrade of columns like those that were taken from old Kew Bridge and sold to support sun-dials; there were cauliflowery arabesques, and among the spiky foliage there were meaningless ponds of open-work made by gathering the threads of the linen together into wonderful patterns. In the middle of all this stood one who after a few more tracings will have quite lost the semblance of a woman; the five fingers of her hands and the five toes of her feet had already become so conventionalised that all one could be sure of was that there were still five of each. The corporal said that this monster was Helen gazing out to sea from the topless towers of Ilium. She was really looking the other way, exhibiting to the spectator all that remained of the face that launched the thousand ships of which half a dozen were shown riding at anchor behind her back. I did not venture to criticise, because the corporal knew all about it, having seen the _Story of Hector_ done by the marionettes. Filomena was embroidering this most beautifully; I should say that the needle-working of it was as much above all praise as the design of it was beneath all blame.

Most of the room was taken up by a bed large enough to hold three or four Filomenas without crowding, and upon it lay a mandoline and a guitar. The corporal called for music; Filomena cheerfully complied, left her broidery-frame, and took up the mandoline, whose only title to be considered a musical instrument is that Mozart uses it for the pizzicato accompaniment which Don Giovanni plays while he sings "Deh Vieni." Filomena, knowing nothing about Mozart, used her mandoline for the delivery of a melody which she performed with great skill, though it was but a silly tune and sounded sillier than it was because of the irritating tremolo. It was like her embroidery--very well done but not worth doing. She had been taught the mandoline by the nuns, who had also taught her needlework. I expected the corporal to accompany her on the guitar; he admitted that he was passionately devoted to music, but excused himself from performing on the ground that he had not studied it. This is not usually put forward as an objection; the rule is for them to play and tell one, unnecessarily but with some pride, that they are doing it all by ear. And in their accompaniment they show themselves to be artists of the school that preaches "Simplify, simplify, simplify" in that they exclude all harmonies except those of the tonic, dominant and sub-dominant. But they make the mistake of not being careful always to play each in its right place; they carry their simplifying process to the length of using their chosen harmonies in regular order, one after the other, two bars each--it may come right and it may not, and when it does not the resulting complexities ruin the simplicity. This sort of thing might become unbearable, but I know how to escape from people of the corporal's class without being rude. I do not tell them I have another engagement--that is not accepted because, as there is no time in Sicily, punctuality is not recognised. If they have a proverb about it, it ought to be, "Never put off till to-morrow what can be done the day after." Nor do I say I have letters to write--that only provokes discussion:

"We thought you had come all this way to see us, and now you want to write to England! You can talk to your English friends when you are at home."

The course is to say one wants to sleep; one need not sleep, but no objection is made, and one is usually allowed to depart at once. I have not ventured to try this among my aristocratic friends, I doubt whether it would work with them--besides, they disarm me by handing round tea--but with corporals I employ it freely, and the knowledge that I can always get away in a moment, even if I choose to remain, imparts to their company a sense of freedom which I regret to say I have sometimes looked for in vain in the educated drawing-rooms of the upper classes.

Before Filomena could begin her third piece I put my method in practice, and for once it did not work quite smoothly, but the result was not unsatisfactory.

Certainly I might sleep, said the corporal; but why go away? He hoped I should dine with them. I might name my own hour and, as for sleeping, there was the bed. Besides, his brother was coming to dinner:

"I want you to know my brother," said the corporal; "he is not like me."

"But, my dear Corporal, that is no recommendation," I replied. "Is he also a coast-guard?"

"No. He is a dentist and very clever. He is an artificial dentist and he had to work to learn his profession."

"Well, I suppose every dentist must learn his profession before he is qualified. Dentists have to be made, they are not like poets. No one is a natural born dentist."

"He had to work very hard. For a whole year he went to the hospital every day four times a week."

"A clever dentist is a useful ally. I should like to know him. I might want his help while I am here. What is his name?"

"Ah yes! That will interest you, he has an English name." Then he said something that sounded like "He ran away" with the "r" and the "w" both misty. As I did not recognise it, he wrote it down for me--"Ivanhoe."

"If you send him your teeth," continued the corporal, "he will repair them and return them to you as good as new."

"Some of them are getting loose," I admitted, "but they wouldn't come out so easily as you think, and how should I ever get them in again?--Oh, I see what you mean, he is a dentist in artificial teeth."

"Of course. When I say he is not like me, I mean that he is a man of great learning, really well educated. He is very clever. You will see him at dinner. I must not keep you talking, you wish to sleep. There is the bed; why not lie down? If only we were in my own house at home--" and so on.

There was the bed, certainly, if I could conquer my bashfulness and make use of it. Filomena treated the proposal as quite natural, and put the guitar and the mandoline on the chest of drawers, though there would have been plenty of room for them on the bed with me; she and the corporal prepared to leave the room, and I accepted their hospitality with excuses which I fancy I made with some realism because Peppino had kept me up talking half the night. They went away, I took off my boots, lay down on Filomena's bed, and was asleep in a moment.

At about six o'clock the noise of the corporal opening the door woke me. He hoped he had not disturbed me, he had been in several times to fetch things and had tried to make no noise. I had known nothing about it. Ivanhoe had come and was very hungry. Then he showed me the cupboard containing the basin and water for me to wash, and told his fidanzata we were ready for the dinner which she had been cooking while I slept. He seemed to consider the room as his instead of hers--but then it was he who was paying the twenty francs a month. Still I had a sense as though there was something wrong.

I was introduced to Ivanhoe, and we sat down to Filomena's dinner, which was like her embroidery and like her music--it was very well cooked, but the materials on which her skill had been expended were not worth cooking, they ought not to have been bought. The young lady was one of those artists who think more of treatment than of subject. The corporal, on the other hand, in the management of his matrimonial affairs, had chosen a good subject but was treating it in a way which my English prejudices made me think too free.

"I have not asked after your cold," said the corporal to his brother. "I hope it is better."

"It is quite well, thank you," replied Ivanhoe. "I have cured it with a remedy that never fails."

"I wish you could tell me what it is," I said.

"Willingly," said Ivanhoe. "You take a pail of water and a piece of iron; you make the iron red-hot and plunge it into the water; at first the water fizzles, but when the iron is cold the water is still; you put the water into bottles and drink one every day with your dinner. It always cures a cold."

"I must try it," I said. But I don't think I shall.

"Surely you know how to cure colds in England, where you all live in a perpetual fog and everyone is so rich that they can afford to make experiments?"

"We have poor people also in England."

But Ivanhoe knew better. "No," he said, smiling indulgently, "that is your English modesty; there are no poor people in your country."

"I assure you I have seen plenty. And as for modesty, I don't care very much about modesty--not for myself; I don't mind it in others."

"Ah! but you English are so practical."

"You have great men in England," said the corporal. "Chamberlain, Lincoln, you call him il presidente, and Darwin and--"

"Yes," interrupted Ivanhoe, "and great poets, Byron and Milton--il Paradiso Perduto--and that other one who wrote the drama named--what is his name? Gladstone."

"Some of our poets have written drama," I said. "What particular drama do you mean?"

"The one--it is from the History of Rome," replied Ivanhoe. "A man kills his wife, but I do not remember his name."

"Was it Romeo?" suggested the corporal.

"No; not Romeo. This was a black man. I read that Giovanni Grasso acted it in London."

"It was Amleto," said the corporal.

"No, it was not," replied Ivanhoe. "And now I remember he was not black; he lived in Holland."

"Where is Holland?" inquired the corporal.

"Holland is in the north. The people who live there are called Aragonesi."

While Filomena prepared the coffee, I asked the corporal whether she allowed smoking in her bedroom. She did, so I gave him a cigarette and he admired my case saying it was sympathetic. I also gave Ivanhoe a cigarette, but Filomena did not smoke. There is a prejudice against ladies smoking in Sicily unless they wish to be considered as belonging either to the very highest or to the very lowest class, and Filomena is content to belong to her own class. So she looked on while we smoked and drank our coffee.

I said: "When we were speaking of English poets just now, you mentioned a name which we are more accustomed to associate with politics, the name of Gladstone."

"Ah! politics!" said Ivanhoe. "You have now in England a struggle between your House of Lords and your House of Commons, is it not so?"

I replied that I had heard something about it.

"It is civil war," said Ivanhoe, "that is, it would have been civil war some years ago, but people are now beginning to see that it is intolerable that everyone should not be allowed to have his own way."

"I am afraid I do not quite follow you," I said.

"Well," he explained, "it is not difficult. Your House of Commons is composed entirely of poor men, so poor that they cannot afford to pay for legislation. Your House of Lords is rich, and rich people are egoists and will not pay; so the House of Commons is angry."

I did not ask where all the poor Members of the House of Commons were found in a country that had no poor people; Ivanhoe was too full of his subject to give me an opportunity.

"If the House of Lords still continues refusing to pay for legislation there will be no war, but the House of Lords will be abolished--annihilated."

"My dear Ivanhoe," I exclaimed, "what a head you have for politics!"

"Politics are quite simple if one studies the newspapers. I know all the politics of Italy, of France, Germany, England, Argentina, Russia. Don't you read the papers?"

"Yes, I read the papers, but I do not find our English papers--"

"Perhaps they are not so well edited as ours?"

"That may be the explanation," I agreed. "They certainly do not state things so clearly and simply as you do."

"Surely," he continued, "you do not approve of war?"

I replied that war was a "terrible scourge."

"It is worse," said Ivanhoe. "It is a survival of barbarism that men should make a living out of killing each other. War must be abolished."

"Will not that be rather difficult?" I objected.

"Not at all," he replied. "Soldiers are the instruments of war. If there were no soldiers there would be no war; just as if there were no mandolines there would be no music. And the money we now pay to the soldiers could then be distributed among the poor--an act pleasing to God and the saints."

But this did not suit the corporal who, being a coastguard, had no sympathy with cutting down the pay of the army.

"It is better as it is," said the corporal. "It is better to pay the money to soldiers, who are earning an honest living, than to pay it to poor people and encourage them in their idleness."

"But soldiers are receiving money for making war possible and that is not earning an honest living. There must be no more war. Soldiers must be abolished--obliterated."

"Obliterated" woke the corporal up thoroughly. It was all very well to talk about annihilating the House of Lords, which he had understood to mean demolishing some palace, but the army was a body of men, and if we were to begin obliterating them--why, he had friends in the army and it would never do, because--and so on, with interruptions by Ivanhoe, until Filomena began to grow restless about washing up and I began to take my leave. I thanked her for her charming hospitality and the corporal and Ivanhoe accompanied me back to the Albergo della Madonna. On the way I said:

"Please tell me, Corporal, you say that Filomena is your fidanzata, but it seems to me you are as good as--"

"We are not married," he interrupted, "but she has consented to become the mother of my children."

"Do I understand that you have already taken steps to ensure the attainment of that happy result?"

He said he had, and that she was coming home with him in order that the baby might be born there. His people, who understood the sincerity of his nature and the purity of his motives--

"Ah yes, indeed," interrupted Ivanhoe, "my brother has a heart of gold and we are all satisfied with his conduct."

"But Filomena's family," continued the corporal, "are suspicious and unfriendly and dissatisfied. Her adorata mamma and all her aunts and female cousins wept when she left home, and they are still weeping. But what else could we do? She was getting ill after waiting so long and could not--"

"Yes," interrupted Ivanhoe, "she was becoming like Ettorina, and my poor brother also was unhappy."

They admitted that the situation, though the best possible, was not ideal. The corporal has to sleep at the caserma and pretend to the authorities that he is a free bachelor, he can only visit the mother of his future children in his spare time. And this regrettable state of things had arisen in consequence, or partly in consequence, of my respect for law and order. I did not put it like that to him. I pointed out that if I had sent the 4000 francs I should have been obliged to deny myself the pleasure of coming to see him in Sicily. He concurred and thanked me for my consideration. His experience of life had already taught him that the same money cannot be spent on two different objects, and he was grateful to me for choosing the one which gave him the pleasure of making me acquainted with his fidanzata. The 4000 francs from some other source or the government appointment might drop into his lap at any moment, and at the latest, he could regularise his position in five years, when he should be forty, by leaving the service, returning to the carpentry, marrying and legitimising any children that might have been born.

So I said good-bye to the brothers, wished the corporal every happiness and gave him my sympathetic cigarette-case as a non-wedding present, or rather as something that by an enharmonic change should become transformed into a wedding present on the solemnisation of his marriage, and he swore to keep it till death as a ricordo of our friendship.

* * * * *

Next morning Ivanhoe called upon me and said:

"My dear Signor Enrico, I am in want. Would it be possible for you to lend me five francs till next week?"

I replied, "My dear Ivanhoe, it distresses me to hear you are in want and it lacerates my heart that you should have made a request which I am compelled to decline."

"I do not ask for myself. It is for my children."

"Would you mind telling me, merely as a matter of idle curiosity and without prejudice to the question of the five francs, whether the mother of your children is your wife or your fidanzata?"

"She is my wife. We have been married thirteen months."

"And how many children have you?"

"I have two."

"Only two!"

"I am expecting another in a few weeks."

"Bravo. Of course that alters the situation. Now suppose we settle it this way: Let us pretend that you ask me to lend you three francs, one for each child; I refuse, but propose, instead, to give you one franc on the faith of the new baby."

"Do you mean you abandon all hope of ever seeing the one franc again?"

"I do."

"Make it two francs and I agree."

"No, Ivanhoe. One franc is quite enough for an unborn baby."

"If you think so."

So I gave him one franc.

"I am very much obliged to you," he said, "and now there is one more favour I wish to ask of you. Will you hold the new baby at the baptismal font and thus do me the honour of becoming my compare?"

This did not suit me at all. I replied: "My dear Ivanhoe, let us forget all we have said since you told me you were expecting another baby, let us return to your original request and here--take four more francs. It will be better for me in the end than if I become your compare."

"If you think so," said Ivanhoe.

I had no doubt about it, so I gave him four more francs and abandoned all hope of ever seeing them again; but I got my money's worth, or part of it, in the shape of a registered letter soon after my return to London; in English the letter runs thus, and I was brutal enough to leave it unanswered:

CASTELLINARIA.

My most esteemed friend, Signor Enrico!

First of all I must inform you that my health is excellent and I hope that yours also is good. I wish you all the happiness that it is possible for anyone to have in this world and I would that I could transport my presence into London so that I might be with you for a few days and thus augment your domestic joy. But there is one thing wanting--I allude to money. So many misfortunes have happened to me in this sad year that I have not the means to undertake a long journey. I should be much obliged to you if you would kindly forward me 300 francs, of which I am in urgent need as I have to pay a debt. This money I will repay you immediately the next time I have the pleasure of seeing you in Castellinaria or, if you prefer it, I will promise to pay you in seven months from this date by sending the money through the post; it is for you to choose which course would suit you best. You will find in me an honest man. You will be doing me a favour for which I shall be grateful all the rest of my life, for you will be extricating me from a position of extreme discomfort. The Padre Eterno will bless your philanthropic and humane action and I shall have a memory sculptured on my heart as long as I live.

I will ever pray for your health and for that of all your family. The favour I am now asking I should like you to grant during the week after you receive this letter. I will not write more except to say that, relying on the goodness of your heart, I thank you cordially and await your favourable reply.

With infinite salutations, I subscribe myself yours for life, IVANHOE.

EARTHQUAKE ECHOES