To Leeward

To Leeward by F. Marion Crawford

Marcantonio Carantoni, a young Roman marquis, falls in love with Leonora Carnethy, an English girl of mixed English and Russian parentage who has steeped herself in fashionable philosophy and professes a fatigued disbelief in everything. His sister, the beautiful and stately Diana, Vicomtesse de Charleroi, distrusts the match and urges him to wait, but Marcantonio is obstinate and presses his suit. At a Roman ball he formally proposes; Leonora, though privately unsure whether she truly loves him, accepts him on impulse, swayed more by the romance of the moment than by settled feeling. Their engagement becomes the talk of Roman society, and after the required Church dispensation for a mixed marriage, they wed in the spring. The newly married couple travel and then settle for the summer in a villa at Sorrento. Marcantonio is completely happy and full of grand, unspoken plans to lead his clever wife gently toward his own Catholic faith, but Leonora quickly grows restless with domestic quiet and with her husband's practical, undemonstrative affection, which she mistakes for coldness. Into this restlessness comes Julius Batiscombe, an English author and inveterate wanderer, sailing round Italy in an open boat. He calls on Leonora, and Marcantonio cordially draws him into an outing to watch the launch of a warship at Castellamare, followed by a race between the two households' boats, a dinner, and growing familiarity. Batiscombe, who has a long history of falling disastrously in love and then regretting it, resolves privately not to let himself become entangled with a married woman, but finds himself unable to stay away. Called to Rome by his uncle, Cardinal Carantoni, who wishes to settle an inheritance of land on him during his own lifetime while providing Diana an equivalent sum, Marcantonio leaves Leonora alone at Sorrento, over her reluctant protest. During his absence Batiscombe visits Leonora daily; they talk, sail, and read together, and he becomes indispensable to her spirits, drawing her out of the moods of hollow, self-conscious unhappiness to which she is prone. One evening he follows her to a small local church, where he finds her weeping alone before the altar over the dawning realization that she does not truly love her husband. Moved by what he has witnessed, he asks to be her "friend," and she accepts, and the two persuade themselves that an avowed, name-only friendship is safe, even as their mutual attraction visibly deepens. Marcantonio returns from Rome bringing his sister Diana with him, hoping the two women will become close friends. He learns in passing, to his surprise, that Diana and Batiscombe had once been near to an engagement years earlier, before Batiscombe had made his fortune and his literary name, though he dismisses the old story as harmless. Wanting company for his household and unaware of what has passed between his wife and their new acquaintance, Marcantonio impulsively invites Batiscombe to stay on at the villa for a week, delighting in the idea of a cheerful foursome. Leonora is startled and uneasy at the invitation but says nothing of her private understanding with Batiscombe. Diana, arriving with her habitual composure and quiet perceptiveness, senses at once that her brother's marriage is not the harmonious match he believes it to be, and that Leonora does not truly love him. She also notices that Batiscombe, ordinarily eager for her company, now conspicuously avoids her, which she attributes, half with relief and half with a lingering pang, to his having finally forgotten his old feeling for her. During a sultry, sirocco-laden afternoon she goes down to the shaded rock stairway leading to the sea to escape the heat, and comes unexpectedly upon Leonora and Batiscombe sitting alone together in one of the archways cut into the cliff. Nothing improper is said or done in her presence, and the encounter passes off in polite conversation about the beauty of the spot and a debate on the "talent of supremacy" in women, but Diana's suspicion is quietly, unmistakably aroused. The household settles into an uneasy quartet of politeness, in which Marcantonio remains contentedly oblivious, Diana watches and says nothing, and Leonora and Batiscombe continue to seek reasons and occasions to be near one another.

By F. Marion Crawford · First published 1904 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Romance, Social Commentary · 24 chapters · 116,518 words

First lines

There are two Romes. There is the Rome of the intelligent foreigner, consisting of excavations, monuments, tramways, hotels, typhoid fever, incense, and wax candles; and there is the Rome within, a city of antique customs, good and bad, a town full of aristocratic prejudices, of intrigues, of religion, of old-fashioned honour and new-fashioned scandal, of happiness and unhappiness, of just people and unjust. Besides all this, there is a very modern court and a government of the future, which may almost be said to make up together a third city.

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Adventure · Romance · Sea Story · Nautical Fiction · Historical Fiction · 19th Century · Sailing Ships · Maritime History · Pirates · Treasure Hunt · Island Life · Tropical Setting

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More by F. Marion Crawford