Italy, Philip had always maintained, is only her true self in the height
of the summer, when the tourists have left her, and her soul awakes
under the beams of a vertical sun. He now had every opportunity of
seeing her at her best, for it was nearly the middle of August before he
went out to meet Harriet in the Tirol.
He found his sister in a dense cloud five thousand feet above the sea,
chilled to the bone, overfed, bored, and not at all unwilling to be
fetched away.
“It upsets one’s plans terribly,” she remarked, as she squeezed out her
sponges, “but obviously it is my duty.”
“Did mother explain it all to you?” asked Philip.
“Yes, indeed! Mother has written me a really beautiful letter. She
describes how it was that she gradually got to feel that we must rescue
the poor baby from its terrible surroundings, how she has tried by
letter, and it is no good--nothing but insincere compliments and
hypocrisy came back. Then she says, ‘There is nothing like personal
influence; you and Philip will succeed where I have failed.’ She says,
too, that Caroline Abbott has been wonderful.”
Philip assented.
“Caroline feels it as keenly almost as us. That is because she knows the
man. Oh, he must be loathsome! Goodness me! I’ve forgotten to pack the
ammonia!... It has been a terrible lesson for Caroline, but I fancy it
is her turning-point. I can’t help liking to think that out of all this
evil good will come.”
Philip saw no prospect of good, nor of beauty either. But the expedition
promised to be highly comic. He was not averse to it any longer; he
was simply indifferent to all in it except the humours. These would be
wonderful. Harriet, worked by her mother; Mrs. Herriton, worked by Miss
Abbott; Gino, worked by a cheque--what better entertainment could he
desire? There was nothing to distract him this time; his sentimentality
had died, so had his anxiety for the family honour. He might be a
puppet’s puppet, but he knew exactly the disposition of the strings.
They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams
broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the
people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink
wine and to be beautiful. And the train which had picked them at sunrise
out of a waste of glaciers and hotels was waltzing at sunset round the
walls of Verona.
“Absurd nonsense they talk about the heat,” said Philip, as they drove
from the station. “Supposing we were here for pleasure, what could be
more pleasurable than this?”
“Did you hear, though, they are remarking on the cold?” said Harriet
nervously. “I should never have thought it cold.”
And on the second day the heat struck them, like a hand laid over the
mouth, just as they were walking to see the tomb of Juliet. From
that moment everything went wrong. They fled from Verona. Harriet’s
sketch-book was stolen, and the bottle of ammonia in her trunk burst
over her prayer-book, so that purple patches appeared on all her
clothes. Then, as she was going through Mantua at four in the morning,
Philip made her look out of the window because it was Virgil’s
birthplace, and a smut flew in her eye, and Harriet with a smut in her
eye was notorious. At Bologna they stopped twenty-four hours to rest. It
was a FESTA, and children blew bladder whistles night and day. “What a
religion!” said Harriet. The hotel smelt, two puppies were asleep on
her bed, and her bedroom window looked into a belfry, which saluted her
slumbering form every quarter of an hour. Philip left his walking-stick,
his socks, and the Baedeker at Bologna; she only left her sponge-bag.
Next day they crossed the Apennines with a train-sick child and a
hot lady, who told them that never, never before had she sweated so
profusely. “Foreigners are a filthy nation,” said Harriet. “I don’t care
if there are tunnels; open the windows.” He obeyed, and she got another
smut in her eye. Nor did Florence improve matters. Eating, walking, even
a cross word would bathe them both in boiling water. Philip, who was
slighter of build, and less conscientious, suffered less. But Harriet
had never been to Florence, and between the hours of eight and eleven
she crawled like a wounded creature through the streets, and swooned
before various masterpieces of art. It was an irritable couple who took
tickets to Monteriano.
“Singles or returns?” said he.
“A single for me,” said Harriet peevishly; “I shall never get back
alive.”
“Sweet creature!” said her brother, suddenly breaking down. “How helpful
you will be when we come to Signor Carella!”
“Do you suppose,” said Harriet, standing still among a whirl of
porters--“do you suppose I am going to enter that man’s house?”
“Then what have you come for, pray? For ornament?”
“To see that you do your duty.”
“Oh, thanks!”
“So mother told me. For goodness sake get the tickets; here comes that
hot woman again! She has the impudence to bow.”
“Mother told you, did she?” said Philip wrathfully, as he went to
struggle for tickets at a slit so narrow that they were handed to him
edgeways. Italy was beastly, and Florence station is the centre of
beastly Italy. But he had a strange feeling that he was to blame for it
all; that a little influx into him of virtue would make the whole land
not beastly but amusing. For there was enchantment, he was sure of that;
solid enchantment, which lay behind the porters and the screaming and
the dust. He could see it in the terrific blue sky beneath which they
travelled, in the whitened plain which gripped life tighter than a
frost, in the exhausted reaches of the Arno, in the ruins of brown
castles which stood quivering upon the hills. He could see it, though
his head ached and his skin was twitching, though he was here as a
puppet, and though his sister knew how he was here. There was nothing
pleasant in that journey to Monteriano station. But nothing--not even
the discomfort--was commonplace.
“But do people live inside?” asked Harriet. They had exchanged
railway-carriage for the legno, and the legno had emerged from the
withered trees, and had revealed to them their destination. Philip, to
be annoying, answered “No.”
“What do they do there?” continued Harriet, with a frown.
“There is a caffe. A prison. A theatre. A church. Walls. A view.”
“Not for me, thank you,” said Harriet, after a weighty pause.
“Nobody asked you, Miss, you see. Now Lilia was asked by such a nice
young gentleman, with curls all over his forehead, and teeth just as
white as father makes them.” Then his manner changed. “But, Harriet, do
you see nothing wonderful or attractive in that place--nothing at all?”
“Nothing at all. It’s frightful.”
“I know it is. But it’s old--awfully old.”
“Beauty is the only test,” said Harriet. “At least so you told me when
I sketched old buildings--for the sake, I suppose, of making yourself
unpleasant.”
“Oh, I’m perfectly right. But at the same time--I don’t know--so
many things have happened here--people have lived so hard and so
splendidly--I can’t explain.”
“I shouldn’t think you could. It doesn’t seem the best moment to begin
your Italy mania. I thought you were cured of it by now. Instead, will
you kindly tell me what you are going to do when you arrive. I do beg
you will not be taken unawares this time.”
“First, Harriet, I shall settle you at the Stella d’Italia, in the
comfort that befits your sex and disposition. Then I shall make myself
some tea. After tea I shall take a book into Santa Deodata’s, and read
there. It is always fresh and cool.”
The martyred Harriet exclaimed, “I’m not clever, Philip. I don’t go in
for it, as you know. But I know what’s rude. And I know what’s wrong.”
“Meaning--?”
“You!” she shouted, bouncing on the cushions of the legno and startling
all the fleas. “What’s the good of cleverness if a man’s murdered a
woman?”
“Harriet, I am hot. To whom do you refer?”
“He. Her. If you don’t look out he’ll murder you. I wish he would.”
“Tut tut, tutlet! You’d find a corpse extraordinarily inconvenient.”
Then he tried to be less aggravating. “I heartily dislike the fellow,
but we know he didn’t murder her. In that letter, though she said a lot,
she never said he was physically cruel.”
“He has murdered her. The things he did--things one can’t even
mention--”
“Things which one must mention if one’s to talk at all. And things which
one must keep in their proper place. Because he was unfaithful to his
wife, it doesn’t follow that in every way he’s absolutely vile.” He
looked at the city. It seemed to approve his remark.
“It’s the supreme test. The man who is unchivalrous to a woman--”
“Oh, stow it! Take it to the Back Kitchen. It’s no more a supreme test
than anything else. The Italians never were chivalrous from the first.
If you condemn him for that, you’ll condemn the whole lot.”
“I condemn the whole lot.”
“And the French as well?”
“And the French as well.”
“Things aren’t so jolly easy,” said Philip, more to himself than to her.
But for Harriet things were easy, though not jolly, and she turned upon
her brother yet again. “What about the baby, pray? You’ve said a lot of
smart things and whittled away morality and religion and I don’t know
what; but what about the baby? You think me a fool, but I’ve been
noticing you all today, and you haven’t mentioned the baby once. You
haven’t thought about it, even. You don’t care. Philip! I shall not
speak to you. You are intolerable.”
She kept her promise, and never opened her lips all the rest of the way.
But her eyes glowed with anger and resolution. For she was a straight,
brave woman, as well as a peevish one.
Philip acknowledged her reproof to be true. He did not care about the
baby one straw. Nevertheless, he meant to do his duty, and he was fairly
confident of success. If Gino would have sold his wife for a thousand
lire, for how much less would he not sell his child? It was just a
commercial transaction. Why should it interfere with other things? His
eyes were fixed on the towers again, just as they had been fixed when he
drove with Miss Abbott. But this time his thoughts were pleasanter, for
he had no such grave business on his mind. It was in the spirit of the
cultivated tourist that he approached his destination.
One of the towers, rough as any other, was topped by a cross--the tower
of the Collegiate Church of Santa Deodata. She was a holy maiden of the
Dark Ages, the city’s patron saint, and sweetness and barbarity mingle
strangely in her story. So holy was she that all her life she lay upon
her back in the house of her mother, refusing to eat, refusing to play,
refusing to work. The devil, envious of such sanctity, tempted her in
various ways. He dangled grapes above her, he showed her fascinating
toys, he pushed soft pillows beneath her aching head. When all proved
vain he tripped up the mother and flung her downstairs before her very
eyes. But so holy was the saint that she never picked her mother up, but
lay upon her back through all, and thus assured her throne in Paradise.
She was only fifteen when she died, which shows how much is within the
reach of any school-girl. Those who think her life was unpractical need
only think of the victories upon Poggibonsi, San Gemignano, Volterra,
Siena itself--all gained through the invocation of her name; they need
only look at the church which rose over her grave. The grand schemes for
a marble facade were never carried out, and it is brown unfinished stone
until this day. But for the inside Giotto was summoned to decorate the
walls of the nave. Giotto came--that is to say, he did not come, German
research having decisively proved--but at all events the nave is covered
with frescoes, and so are two chapels in the left transept, and the
arch into the choir, and there are scraps in the choir itself. There the
decoration stopped, till in the full spring of the Renaissance a
great painter came to pay a few weeks’ visit to his friend the Lord of
Monteriano. In the intervals between the banquets and the discussions on
Latin etymology and the dancing, he would stroll over to the church, and
there in the fifth chapel to the right he has painted two frescoes of
the death and burial of Santa Deodata. That is why Baedeker gives the
place a star.
Santa Deodata was better company than Harriet, and she kept Philip in a
pleasant dream until the legno drew up at the hotel. Every one there was
asleep, for it was still the hour when only idiots were moving. There
were not even any beggars about. The cabman put their bags down in the
passage--they had left heavy luggage at the station--and strolled about
till he came on the landlady’s room and woke her, and sent her to them.
Then Harriet pronounced the monosyllable “Go!”
“Go where?” asked Philip, bowing to the landlady, who was swimming down
the stairs.
“To the Italian. Go.”
“Buona sera, signora padrona. Si ritorna volontieri a Monteriano!”
(Don’t be a goose. I’m not going now. You’re in the way, too.) “Vorrei
due camere--”
“Go. This instant. Now. I’ll stand it no longer. Go!”
“I’m damned if I’ll go. I want my tea.”
“Swear if you like!” she cried. “Blaspheme! Abuse me! But understand,
I’m in earnest.”
“Harriet, don’t act. Or act better.”
“We’ve come here to get the baby back, and for nothing else. I’ll not
have this levity and slackness, and talk about pictures and churches.
Think of mother; did she send you out for THEM?”
“Think of mother and don’t straddle across the stairs. Let the cabman
and the landlady come down, and let me go up and choose rooms.”
“I shan’t.”
“Harriet, are you mad?”
“If you like. But you will not come up till you have seen the Italian.”
“La signorina si sente male,” said Philip, “C’ e il sole.”
“Poveretta!” cried the landlady and the cabman.
“Leave me alone!” said Harriet, snarling round at them. “I don’t care
for the lot of you. I’m English, and neither you’ll come down nor he up
till he goes for the baby.”
“La prego-piano-piano-c e un’ altra signorina che dorme--”
“We shall probably be arrested for brawling, Harriet. Have you the very
slightest sense of the ludicrous?”
Harriet had not; that was why she could be so powerful. She had
concocted this scene in the carriage, and nothing should baulk her
of it. To the abuse in front and the coaxing behind she was equally
indifferent. How long she would have stood like a glorified Horatius,
keeping the staircase at both ends, was never to be known. For the young
lady, whose sleep they were disturbing, awoke and opened her bedroom
door, and came out on to the landing. She was Miss Abbott.
Philip’s first coherent feeling was one of indignation. To be run by
his mother and hectored by his sister was as much as he could stand. The
intervention of a third female drove him suddenly beyond politeness. He
was about to say exactly what he thought about the thing from beginning
to end. But before he could do so Harriet also had seen Miss Abbott. She
uttered a shrill cry of joy.
“You, Caroline, here of all people!” And in spite of the heat she darted
up the stairs and imprinted an affectionate kiss upon her friend.
Philip had an inspiration. “You will have a lot to tell Miss Abbott,
Harriet, and she may have as much to tell you. So I’ll pay my call on
Signor Carella, as you suggested, and see how things stand.”
Miss Abbott uttered some noise of greeting or alarm. He did not reply to
it or approach nearer to her. Without even paying the cabman, he escaped
into the street.
“Tear each other’s eyes out!” he cried, gesticulating at the facade of
the hotel. “Give it to her, Harriet! Teach her to leave us alone. Give
it to her, Caroline! Teach her to be grateful to you. Go it, ladies; go
it!”
Such people as observed him were interested, but did not conclude that
he was mad. This aftermath of conversation is not unknown in Italy.
He tried to think how amusing it was; but it would not do--Miss Abbott’s
presence affected him too personally. Either she suspected him of
dishonesty, or else she was being dishonest herself. He preferred to
suppose the latter. Perhaps she had seen Gino, and they had prepared
some elaborate mortification for the Herritons. Perhaps Gino had sold
the baby cheap to her for a joke: it was just the kind of joke that
would appeal to him. Philip still remembered the laughter that had
greeted his fruitless journey, and the uncouth push that had toppled him
on to the bed. And whatever it might mean, Miss Abbott’s presence spoilt
the comedy: she would do nothing funny.
During this short meditation he had walked through the city, and was out
on the other side. “Where does Signor Carella live?” he asked the men at
the Dogana.
“I’ll show you,” said a little girl, springing out of the ground as
Italian children will.
“She will show you,” said the Dogana men, nodding reassuringly. “Follow
her always, always, and you will come to no harm. She is a trustworthy
guide. She is my
daughter.”
cousin.”
sister.”
Philip knew these relatives well: they ramify, if need be, all over the
peninsula.
“Do you chance to know whether Signor Carella is in?” he asked her.
She had just seen him go in. Philip nodded. He was looking forward to
the interview this time: it would be an intellectual duet with a man
of no great intellect. What was Miss Abbott up to? That was one of the
things he was going to discover. While she had it out with Harriet, he
would have it out with Gino. He followed the Dogana’s relative softly,
like a diplomatist.
He did not follow her long, for this was the Volterra gate, and the
house was exactly opposite to it. In half a minute they had scrambled
down the mule-track and reached the only practicable entrance. Philip
laughed, partly at the thought of Lilia in such a building, partly in
the confidence of victory. Meanwhile the Dogana’s relative lifted up her
voice and gave a shout.
For an impressive interval there was no reply. Then the figure of a
woman appeared high up on the loggia.
“That is Perfetta,” said the girl.
“I want to see Signor Carella,” cried Philip.
“Out!”
“Out,” echoed the girl complacently.
“Why on earth did you say he was in?” He could have strangled her
for temper. He had been just ripe for an interview--just the right
combination of indignation and acuteness: blood hot, brain cool. But
nothing ever did go right in Monteriano. “When will he be back?” he
called to Perfetta. It really was too bad.
She did not know. He was away on business. He might be back this
evening, he might not. He had gone to Poggibonsi.
At the sound of this word the little girl put her fingers to her
nose and swept them at the plain. She sang as she did so, even as her
foremothers had sung seven hundred years back--
Poggibonizzi, fatti in la,
Che Monteriano si fa citta!
Then she asked Philip for a halfpenny. A German lady, friendly to the
Past, had given her one that very spring.
“I shall have to leave a message,” he called.
“Now Perfetta has gone for her basket,” said the little girl. “When she
returns she will lower it--so. Then you will put your card into it. Then
she will raise it--thus. By this means--”
When Perfetta returned, Philip remembered to ask after the baby. It took
longer to find than the basket, and he stood perspiring in the evening
sun, trying to avoid the smell of the drains and to prevent the little
girl from singing against Poggibonsi. The olive-trees beside him were
draped with the weekly--or more probably the monthly--wash. What a
frightful spotty blouse! He could not think where he had seen it. Then
he remembered that it was Lilia’s. She had brought it “to hack about in”
at Sawston, and had taken it to Italy because “in Italy anything does.”
He had rebuked her for the sentiment.
“Beautiful as an angel!” bellowed Perfetta, holding out something which
must be Lilia’s baby. “But who am I addressing?”
“Thank you--here is my card.” He had written on it a civil request
to Gino for an interview next morning. But before he placed it in the
basket and revealed his identity, he wished to find something out. “Has
a young lady happened to call here lately--a young English lady?”
Perfetta begged his pardon: she was a little deaf.
“A young lady--pale, large, tall.”
She did not quite catch.
“A YOUNG LADY!”
“Perfetta is deaf when she chooses,” said the Dogana’s relative. At
last Philip admitted the peculiarity and strode away. He paid off the
detestable child at the Volterra gate. She got two nickel pieces and was
not pleased, partly because it was too much, partly because he did not
look pleased when he gave it to her. He caught her fathers and cousins
winking at each other as he walked past them. Monteriano seemed in
one conspiracy to make him look a fool. He felt tired and anxious and
muddled, and not sure of anything except that his temper was lost.
In this mood he returned to the Stella d’Italia, and there, as he was
ascending the stairs, Miss Abbott popped out of the dining-room on the
first floor and beckoned to him mysteriously.
“I was going to make myself some tea,” he said, with his hand still on
the banisters.
“I should be grateful--”
So he followed her into the dining-room and shut the door.
“You see,” she began, “Harriet knows nothing.”
“No more do I. He was out.”
“But what’s that to do with it?”
He presented her with an unpleasant smile. She fenced well, as he had
noticed before. “He was out. You find me as ignorant as you have left
Harriet.”
“What do you mean? Please, please Mr. Herriton, don’t be mysterious:
there isn’t the time. Any moment Harriet may be down, and we shan’t have
decided how to behave to her. Sawston was different: we had to keep up
appearances. But here we must speak out, and I think I can trust you to
do it. Otherwise we’ll never start clear.”
“Pray let us start clear,” said Philip, pacing up and down the room.
“Permit me to begin by asking you a question. In which capacity have you
come to Monteriano--spy or traitor?”
“Spy!” she answered, without a moment’s hesitation. She was standing
by the little Gothic window as she spoke--the hotel had been a palace
once--and with her finger she was following the curves of the moulding
as if they might feel beautiful and strange. “Spy,” she repeated, for
Philip was bewildered at learning her guilt so easily, and could not
answer a word. “Your mother has behaved dishonourably all through. She
never wanted the child; no harm in that; but she is too proud to let it
come to me. She has done all she could to wreck things; she did not tell
you everything; she has told Harriet nothing at all; she has lied or
acted lies everywhere. I cannot trust your mother. So I have come here
alone--all across Europe; no one knows it; my father thinks I am in
Normandy--to spy on Mrs. Herriton. Don’t let’s argue!” for he had begun,
almost mechanically, to rebuke her for impertinence. “If you are here to
get the child, I will help you; if you are here to fail, I shall get it
instead of you.”
“It is hopeless to expect you to believe me,” he stammered. “But I can
assert that we are here to get the child, even if it costs us all we’ve
got. My mother has fixed no money limit whatever. I am here to carry
out her instructions. I think that you will approve of them, as you have
practically dictated them. I do not approve of them. They are absurd.”
She nodded carelessly. She did not mind what he said. All she wanted was
to get the baby out of Monteriano.
“Harriet also carries out your instructions,” he continued. “She,
however, approves of them, and does not know that they proceed from you.
I think, Miss Abbott, you had better take entire charge of the rescue
party. I have asked for an interview with Signor Carella tomorrow
morning. Do you acquiesce?”
She nodded again.
“Might I ask for details of your interview with him? They might be
helpful to me.”
He had spoken at random. To his delight she suddenly collapsed. Her hand
fell from the window. Her face was red with more than the reflection of
evening.
“My interview--how do you know of it?”
“From Perfetta, if it interests you.”
“Who ever is Perfetta?”
“The woman who must have let you in.”
“In where?”
“Into Signor Carella’s house.”
“Mr. Herriton!” she exclaimed. “How could you believe her? Do you
suppose that I would have entered that man’s house, knowing about him
all that I do? I think you have very odd ideas of what is possible for
a lady. I hear you wanted Harriet to go. Very properly she refused.
Eighteen months ago I might have done such a thing. But I trust I have
learnt how to behave by now.”
Philip began to see that there were two Miss Abbotts--the Miss Abbott
who could travel alone to Monteriano, and the Miss Abbott who could
not enter Gino’s house when she got there. It was an amusing discovery.
Which of them would respond to his next move?
“I suppose I misunderstood Perfetta. Where did you have your interview,
then?”
“Not an interview--an accident--I am very sorry--I meant you to have the
chance of seeing him first. Though it is your fault. You are a day late.
You were due here yesterday. So I came yesterday, and, not finding you,
went up to the Rocca--you know that kitchen-garden where they let you
in, and there is a ladder up to a broken tower, where you can stand
and see all the other towers below you and the plain and all the other
hills?”
“Yes, yes. I know the Rocca; I told you of it.”
“So I went up in the evening for the sunset: I had nothing to do. He was
in the garden: it belongs to a friend of his.”
“And you talked.”
“It was very awkward for me. But I had to talk: he seemed to make me.
You see he thought I was here as a tourist; he thinks so still. He
intended to be civil, and I judged it better to be civil also.”
“And of what did you talk?”
“The weather--there will be rain, he says, by tomorrow evening--the
other towns, England, myself, about you a little, and he actually
mentioned Lilia. He was perfectly disgusting; he pretended he loved
her; he offered to show me her grave--the grave of the woman he has
murdered!”
“My dear Miss Abbott, he is not a murderer. I have just been driving
that into Harriet. And when you know the Italians as well as I do, you
will realize that in all that he said to you he was perfectly sincere.
The Italians are essentially dramatic; they look on death and love as
spectacles. I don’t doubt that he persuaded himself, for the moment,
that he had behaved admirably, both as husband and widower.”
“You may be right,” said Miss Abbott, impressed for the first time.
“When I tried to pave the way, so to speak--to hint that he had not
behaved as he ought--well, it was no good at all. He couldn’t or
wouldn’t understand.”
There was something very humorous in the idea of Miss Abbott approaching
Gino, on the Rocca, in the spirit of a district visitor. Philip, whose
temper was returning, laughed.
“Harriet would say he has no sense of sin.”
“Harriet may be right, I am afraid.”
“If so, perhaps he isn’t sinful!”
Miss Abbott was not one to encourage levity. “I know what he has
done,” she said. “What he says and what he thinks is of very little
importance.”
Philip smiled at her crudity. “I should like to hear, though, what he
said about me. Is he preparing a warm reception?”
“Oh, no, not that. I never told him that you and Harriet were coming.
You could have taken him by surprise if you liked. He only asked for
you, and wished he hadn’t been so rude to you eighteen months ago.”
“What a memory the fellow has for little things!” He turned away as he
spoke, for he did not want her to see his face. It was suffused with
pleasure. For an apology, which would have been intolerable eighteen
months ago, was gracious and agreeable now.
She would not let this pass. “You did not think it a little thing at the
time. You told me he had assaulted you.”
“I lost my temper,” said Philip lightly. His vanity had been appeased,
and he knew it. This tiny piece of civility had changed his mood. “Did
he really--what exactly did he say?”
“He said he was sorry--pleasantly, as Italians do say such things. But
he never mentioned the baby once.”
What did the baby matter when the world was suddenly right way up?
Philip smiled, and was shocked at himself for smiling, and smiled again.
For romance had come back to Italy; there were no cads in her; she was
beautiful, courteous, lovable, as of old. And Miss Abbott--she, too, was
beautiful in her way, for all her gaucheness and conventionality.
She really cared about life, and tried to live it properly. And
Harriet--even Harriet tried.
This admirable change in Philip proceeds from nothing admirable, and
may therefore provoke the gibes of the cynical. But angels and other
practical people will accept it reverently, and write it down as good.
“The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset,” he
murmured, more to himself than to her.
“And he never mentioned the baby once,” Miss Abbott repeated. But she
had returned to the window, and again her finger pursued the delicate
curves. He watched her in silence, and was more attracted to her than he
had ever been before. She really was the strangest mixture.
“The view from the Rocca--wasn’t it fine?”
“What isn’t fine here?” she answered gently, and then added, “I wish I
was Harriet,” throwing an extraordinary meaning into the words.
“Because Harriet--?”
She would not go further, but he believed that she had paid homage
to the complexity of life. For her, at all events, the expedition was
neither easy nor jolly. Beauty, evil, charm, vulgarity, mystery--she
also acknowledged this tangle, in spite of herself. And her voice
thrilled him when she broke silence with “Mr. Herriton--come here--look
at this!”
She removed a pile of plates from the Gothic window, and they leant out
of it. Close opposite, wedged between mean houses, there rose up one of
the great towers. It is your tower: you stretch a barricade between it
and the hotel, and the traffic is blocked in a moment. Farther up, where
the street empties out by the church, your connections, the Merli and
the Capocchi, do likewise. They command the Piazza, you the Siena gate.
No one can move in either but he shall be instantly slain, either by
bows or by crossbows, or by Greek fire. Beware, however, of the
back bedroom windows. For they are menaced by the tower of the
Aldobrandeschi, and before now arrows have stuck quivering over the
washstand. Guard these windows well, lest there be a repetition of the
events of February 1338, when the hotel was surprised from the rear, and
your dearest friend--you could just make out that it was he--was thrown
at you over the stairs.
“It reaches up to heaven,” said Philip, “and down to the other place.”
The summit of the tower was radiant in the sun, while its base was in
shadow and pasted over with advertisements. “Is it to be a symbol of the
town?”
She gave no hint that she understood him. But they remained together at
the window because it was a little cooler and so pleasant. Philip
found a certain grace and lightness in his companion which he had never
noticed in England. She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness of
wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm. He did not suspect
that he was more graceful too. For our vanity is such that we hold our
own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have
changed, even for the better.
Citizens came out for a little stroll before dinner. Some of them stood
and gazed at the advertisements on the tower.
“Surely that isn’t an opera-bill?” said Miss Abbott.
Philip put on his pince-nez. “‘Lucia di Lammermoor. By the Master
Donizetti. Unique representation. This evening.’
“But is there an opera? Right up here?”
“Why, yes. These people know how to live. They would sooner have a thing
bad than not have it at all. That is why they have got to have so much
that is good. However bad the performance is tonight, it will be alive.
Italians don’t love music silently, like the beastly Germans. The
audience takes its share--sometimes more.”
“Can’t we go?”
He turned on her, but not unkindly. “But we’re here to rescue a child!”
He cursed himself for the remark. All the pleasure and the light went
out of her face, and she became again Miss Abbott of Sawston--good, oh,
most undoubtedly good, but most appallingly dull. Dull and remorseful:
it is a deadly combination, and he strove against it in vain till he was
interrupted by the opening of the dining-room door.
They started as guiltily as if they had been flirting. Their interview
had taken such an unexpected course. Anger, cynicism, stubborn
morality--all had ended in a feeling of good-will towards each other
and towards the city which had received them. And now Harriet
was here--acrid, indissoluble, large; the same in Italy as in
England--changing her disposition never, and her atmosphere under
protest.
Yet even Harriet was human, and the better for a little tea. She did not
scold Philip for finding Gino out, as she might reasonably have done.
She showered civilities on Miss Abbott, exclaiming again and again
that Caroline’s visit was one of the most fortunate coincidences in the
world. Caroline did not contradict her.
“You see him tomorrow at ten, Philip. Well, don’t forget the blank
cheque. Say an hour for the business. No, Italians are so slow; say two.
Twelve o’clock. Lunch. Well--then it’s no good going till the evening
train. I can manage the baby as far as Florence--”
“My dear sister, you can’t run on like that. You don’t buy a pair of
gloves in two hours, much less a baby.”
“Three hours, then, or four; or make him learn English ways. At Florence
we get a nurse--”
“But, Harriet,” said Miss Abbott, “what if at first he was to refuse?”
“I don’t know the meaning of the word,” said Harriet impressively. “I’ve
told the landlady that Philip and I only want our rooms one night, and
we shall keep to it.”
“I dare say it will be all right. But, as I told you, I thought the man
I met on the Rocca a strange, difficult man.”
“He’s insolent to ladies, we know. But my brother can be trusted to
bring him to his senses. That woman, Philip, whom you saw will carry the
baby to the hotel. Of course you must tip her for it. And try, if you
can, to get poor Lilia’s silver bangles. They were nice quiet things,
and will do for Irma. And there is an inlaid box I lent her--lent, not
gave--to keep her handkerchiefs in. It’s of no real value; but this is
our only chance. Don’t ask for it; but if you see it lying about, just
say--”
“No, Harriet; I’ll try for the baby, but for nothing else. I promise
to do that tomorrow, and to do it in the way you wish. But tonight, as
we’re all tired, we want a change of topic. We want relaxation. We want
to go to the theatre.”
“Theatres here? And at such a moment?”
“We should hardly enjoy it, with the great interview impending,” said
Miss Abbott, with an anxious glance at Philip.
He did not betray her, but said, “Don’t you think it’s better than
sitting in all the evening and getting nervous?”
His sister shook her head. “Mother wouldn’t like it. It would be most
unsuitable--almost irreverent. Besides all that, foreign theatres
are notorious. Don’t you remember those letters in the ‘Church Family
Newspaper’?”
“But this is an opera--‘Lucia di Lammermoor’--Sir Walter
Scott--classical, you know.”
Harriet’s face grew resigned. “Certainly one has so few opportunities
of hearing music. It is sure to be very bad. But it might be better than
sitting idle all the evening. We have no book, and I lost my crochet at
Florence.”
“Good. Miss Abbott, you are coming too?”
“It is very kind of you, Mr. Herriton. In some ways I should enjoy
it; but--excuse the suggestion--I don’t think we ought to go to cheap
seats.”
“Good gracious me!” cried Harriet, “I should never have thought of that.
As likely as not, we should have tried to save money and sat among the
most awful people. One keeps on forgetting this is Italy.”
“Unfortunately I have no evening dress; and if the seats--”
“Oh, that’ll be all right,” said Philip, smiling at his timorous,
scrupulous women-kind. “We’ll go as we are, and buy the best we can get.
Monteriano is not formal.”
So this strenuous day of resolutions, plans, alarms, battles, victories,
defeats, truces, ended at the opera. Miss Abbott and Harriet were both
a little shame-faced. They thought of their friends at Sawston, who were
supposing them to be now tilting against the powers of evil. What would
Mrs. Herriton, or Irma, or the curates at the Back Kitchen say if they
could see the rescue party at a place of amusement on the very first day
of its mission? Philip, too, marvelled at his wish to go. He began
to see that he was enjoying his time in Monteriano, in spite of the
tiresomeness of his companions and the occasional contrariness of
himself.
He had been to this theatre many years before, on the occasion of a
performance of “La Zia di Carlo.” Since then it had been thoroughly done
up, in the tints of the beet-root and the tomato, and was in many other
ways a credit to the little town. The orchestra had been enlarged,
some of the boxes had terra-cotta draperies, and over each box was now
suspended an enormous tablet, neatly framed, bearing upon it the number
of that box. There was also a drop-scene, representing a pink and purple
landscape, wherein sported many a lady lightly clad, and two more ladies
lay along the top of the proscenium to steady a large and pallid clock.
So rich and so appalling was the effect, that Philip could scarcely
suppress a cry. There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy;
it is not the bad taste of a country which knows no better; it has not
the nervous vulgarity of England, or the blinded vulgarity of Germany.
It observes beauty, and chooses to pass it by. But it attains to
beauty’s confidence. This tiny theatre of Monteriano spraddled and
swaggered with the best of them, and these ladies with their clock would
have nodded to the young men on the ceiling of the Sistine.
Philip had tried for a box, but all the best were taken: it was rather
a grand performance, and he had to be content with stalls. Harriet was
fretful and insular. Miss Abbott was pleasant, and insisted on praising
everything: her only regret was that she had no pretty clothes with her.
“We do all right,” said Philip, amused at her unwonted vanity.
“Yes, I know; but pretty things pack as easily as ugly ones. We had no
need to come to Italy like guys.”
This time he did not reply, “But we’re here to rescue a baby.” For
he saw a charming picture, as charming a picture as he had seen for
years--the hot red theatre; outside the theatre, towers and dark gates
and mediaeval walls; beyond the walls olive-trees in the starlight and
white winding roads and fireflies and untroubled dust; and here in the
middle of it all, Miss Abbott, wishing she had not come looking like a
guy. She had made the right remark. Most undoubtedly she had made the
right remark. This stiff suburban woman was unbending before the shrine.
“Don’t you like it at all?” he asked her.
“Most awfully.” And by this bald interchange they convinced each other
that Romance was here.
Harriet, meanwhile, had been coughing ominously at the drop-scene, which
presently rose on the grounds of Ravenswood, and the chorus of Scotch
retainers burst into cry. The audience accompanied with tappings and
drummings, swaying in the melody like corn in the wind. Harriet, though
she did not care for music, knew how to listen to it. She uttered an
acid “Shish!”
“Shut it,” whispered her brother.
“We must make a stand from the beginning. They’re talking.”
“It is tiresome,” murmured Miss Abbott; “but perhaps it isn’t for us to
interfere.”
Harriet shook her head and shished again. The people were quiet, not
because it is wrong to talk during a chorus, but because it is natural
to be civil to a visitor. For a little time she kept the whole house in
order, and could smile at her brother complacently.
Her success annoyed him. He had grasped the principle of opera in
Italy--it aims not at illusion but at entertainment--and he did not want
this great evening-party to turn into a prayer-meeting. But soon the
boxes began to fill, and Harriet’s power was over. Families greeted each
other across the auditorium. People in the pit hailed their brothers and
sons in the chorus, and told them how well they were singing. When Lucia
appeared by the fountain there was loud applause, and cries of “Welcome
to Monteriano!”
“Ridiculous babies!” said Harriet, settling down in her stall.
“Why, it is the famous hot lady of the Apennines,” cried Philip; “the
one who had never, never before--”
“Ugh! Don’t. She will be very vulgar. And I’m sure it’s even worse here
than in the tunnel. I wish we’d never--”
Lucia began to sing, and there was a moment’s silence. She was stout
and ugly; but her voice was still beautiful, and as she sang the theatre
murmured like a hive of happy bees. All through the coloratura she
was accompanied by sighs, and its top note was drowned in a shout of
universal joy.
So the opera proceeded. The singers drew inspiration from the audience,
and the two great sextettes were rendered not unworthily. Miss Abbott
fell into the spirit of the thing. She, too, chatted and laughed and
applauded and encored, and rejoiced in the existence of beauty. As for
Philip, he forgot himself as well as his mission. He was not even an
enthusiastic visitor. For he had been in this place always. It was his
home.
Harriet, like M. Bovary on a more famous occasion, was trying to follow
the plot. Occasionally she nudged her companions, and asked them what
had become of Walter Scott. She looked round grimly. The audience
sounded drunk, and even Caroline, who never took a drop, was swaying
oddly. Violent waves of excitement, all arising from very little, went
sweeping round the theatre. The climax was reached in the mad scene.
Lucia, clad in white, as befitted her malady, suddenly gathered up her
streaming hair and bowed her acknowledgment to the audience. Then from
the back of the stage--she feigned not to see it--there advanced a kind
of bamboo clothes-horse, stuck all over with bouquets. It was very ugly,
and most of the flowers in it were false. Lucia knew this, and so did
the audience; and they all knew that the clothes-horse was a piece of
stage property, brought in to make the performance go year after year.
None the less did it unloose the great deeps. With a scream of amazement
and joy she embraced the animal, pulled out one or two practicable
blossoms, pressed them to her lips, and flung them into her admirers.
They flung them back, with loud melodious cries, and a little boy in one
of the stageboxes snatched up his sister’s carnations and offered them.
“Che carino!” exclaimed the singer. She darted at the little boy and
kissed him. Now the noise became tremendous. “Silence! silence!” shouted
many old gentlemen behind. “Let the divine creature continue!” But
the young men in the adjacent box were imploring Lucia to extend her
civility to them. She refused, with a humorous, expressive gesture. One
of them hurled a bouquet at her. She spurned it with her foot. Then,
encouraged by the roars of the audience, she picked it up and tossed it
to them. Harriet was always unfortunate. The bouquet struck her full in
the chest, and a little billet-doux fell out of it into her lap.
“Call this classical!” she cried, rising from her seat. “It’s not even
respectable! Philip! take me out at once.”
“Whose is it?” shouted her brother, holding up the bouquet in one hand
and the billet-doux in the other. “Whose is it?”
The house exploded, and one of the boxes was violently agitated, as if
some one was being hauled to the front. Harriet moved down the gangway,
and compelled Miss Abbott to follow her. Philip, still laughing
and calling “Whose is it?” brought up the rear. He was drunk with
excitement. The heat, the fatigue, and the enjoyment had mounted into
his head.
“To the left!” the people cried. “The innamorato is to the left.”
He deserted his ladies and plunged towards the box. A young man was
flung stomach downwards across the balustrade. Philip handed him up the
bouquet and the note. Then his own hands were seized affectionately. It
all seemed quite natural.
“Why have you not written?” cried the young man. “Why do you take me by
surprise?”
“Oh, I’ve written,” said Philip hilariously. “I left a note this
afternoon.”
“Silence! silence!” cried the audience, who were beginning to have
enough. “Let the divine creature continue.” Miss Abbott and Harriet had
disappeared.
“No! no!” cried the young man. “You don’t escape me now.” For Philip was
trying feebly to disengage his hands. Amiable youths bent out of the box
and invited him to enter it.
“Gino’s friends are ours--”
“Friends?” cried Gino. “A relative! A brother! Fra Filippo, who has come
all the way from England and never written.”
“I left a message.”
The audience began to hiss.
“Come in to us.”
“Thank you--ladies--there is not time--”
The next moment he was swinging by his arms. The moment after he shot
over the balustrade into the box. Then the conductor, seeing that the
incident was over, raised his baton. The house was hushed, and Lucia di
Lammermoor resumed her song of madness and death.
Philip had whispered introductions to the pleasant people who had pulled
him in--tradesmen’s sons perhaps they were, or medical students, or
solicitors’ clerks, or sons of other dentists. There is no knowing who
is who in Italy. The guest of the evening was a private soldier. He
shared the honour now with Philip. The two had to stand side by side in
the front, and exchange compliments, whilst Gino presided, courteous,
but delightfully familiar. Philip would have a spasm of horror at the
muddle he had made. But the spasm would pass, and again he would be
enchanted by the kind, cheerful voices, the laughter that was never
vapid, and the light caress of the arm across his back.
He could not get away till the play was nearly finished, and Edgardo was
singing amongst the tombs of ancestors. His new friends hoped to see him
at the Garibaldi tomorrow evening. He promised; then he remembered that
if they kept to Harriet’s plan he would have left Monteriano. “At ten
o’clock, then,” he said to Gino. “I want to speak to you alone. At ten.”
“Certainly!” laughed the other.
Miss Abbott was sitting up for him when he got back. Harriet, it seemed,
had gone straight to bed.
“That was he, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes, rather.”
“I suppose you didn’t settle anything?”
“Why, no; how could I? The fact is--well, I got taken by surprise,
but after all, what does it matter? There’s no earthly reason why we
shouldn’t do the business pleasantly. He’s a perfectly charming person,
and so are his friends. I’m his friend now--his long-lost brother.
What’s the harm? I tell you, Miss Abbott, it’s one thing for England and
another for Italy. There we plan and get on high moral horses. Here
we find what asses we are, for things go off quite easily, all by
themselves. My hat, what a night! Did you ever see a really purple sky
and really silver stars before? Well, as I was saying, it’s absurd to
worry; he’s not a porky father. He wants that baby as little as I do.
He’s been ragging my dear mother--just as he ragged me eighteen months
ago, and I’ve forgiven him. Oh, but he has a sense of humour!”
Miss Abbott, too, had a wonderful evening, nor did she ever remember
such stars or such a sky. Her head, too, was full of music, and that
night when she opened the window her room was filled with warm, sweet
air. She was bathed in beauty within and without; she could not go to
bed for happiness. Had she ever been so happy before? Yes, once before,
and here, a night in March, the night Gino and Lilia had told her of
their love--the night whose evil she had come now to undo.
She gave a sudden cry of shame. “This time--the same place--the same
thing”--and she began to beat down her happiness, knowing it to be
sinful. She was here to fight against this place, to rescue a little
soul--who was innocent as yet. She was here to champion morality and
purity, and the holy life of an English home. In the spring she had
sinned through ignorance; she was not ignorant now. “Help me!” she
cried, and shut the window as if there was magic in the encircling air.
But the tunes would not go out of her head, and all night long she was
troubled by torrents of music, and by applause and laughter, and angry
young men who shouted the distich out of Baedeker:--
Poggibonizzi fatti in la,
Che Monteriano si fa citta!
Poggibonsi was revealed to her as they sang--a joyless, straggling
place, full of people who pretended. When she woke up she knew that it
had been Sawston.