We have had a month of the perfect weather, days and nights of flawless
and crystalline brightness, with the sun marching serene all day across
the empty blue, and setting at evening unveiled by cloud or vapour
into the sea, and a light wind pouring steadily as a stream from the
north. But one morning there gathered a cloud on the southern horizon
no bigger than a man's hand, which the weather-wise say betokens a
change. On that day, too, there appeared in the paper that other cloud
which presaged the wild tempest of blood and fire. Here in this secure
siren isle we hardly gave a thought to it. We just had it hot at
lunch and cold at dinner, and after that we thought of it no more. It
seemed to have disappeared, even as the column of smoke above Vesuvius
disappeared a few weeks ago.
It had been a very hot clear morning, and since, the evening before,
it had been necessary to tell Pasqualino that the wages he received,
the food he ate, and the room he occupied were not given him gratis by
a beneficent Providence in order that he should have complete leisure
to make himself smart and spend his whole time with his Caterina, he
had been very busy sweeping and embellishing the house, while it was
still scarcely light, in order to put into practice the fervency of
his reformed intentions. He had come into my bedroom while dawn was
yet grey, on tiptoe, in order not to awaken me, and taken away the
step-ladder which he needed. As a matter of fact, I was already awake,
and so his falling downstairs or throwing the step-ladder downstairs
a moment afterwards with a crash that would have roused the dead did
not annoy but only interested me, and I wondered what he wanted the
step-ladder for, and whether it was much broken. Soon the sound of
muffled hammering began from the dining-room below, which showed he was
very busy, and the beaming face with which he called me half an hour
later was further evidence of his delighted and approving conscience.
It was clear that he could hardly refrain from telling me what he
had been doing, but the desire to surprise and amaze me prevailed,
and he went off again with a broad grin. Soon I came downstairs, and
discovered that he had woven a great wreath of flowering myrtle, gay
with bows of red riband, and had nailed it up over the door into the
dining-room. A cataract of whitewash and plaster had been dislodged
in the fixing of it, which he was then very busy sweeping up, and
he radiantly told me that he had been on the hill-side at half-past
four to gather materials for his decoration. Certainly it looked very
pretty, and when the plaster and whitewash was cleared away, you could
not tell that any damage had been done to the fabric of the house. Soon
after Caterina came in with the week's washing balanced in a basket on
her head, and Pasqualino took her through to show her his wreath. She
highly approved, and he kissed her in the passage. I may remark that
she is sixteen and he seventeen, so there is plenty of time for him
to do a little work as domestic servant before he devotes himself to
Caterina. Of all the young things in the island these two are far the
fairest, and I have a great sympathy with Pasqualino when he neglects
his work and goes strutting before Caterina. But I intend that he shall
do his work all the same.
There is no such delicious hour in this sea-girt south as that of early
morning ushering in a hot day. The air is full of a warm freshness.
The vigour of sea and starlight has renewed it, and though for several
weeks now no drop of rain has fallen, the earth has drunk and been
refreshed by the invisible waters of the air. The stucco path that
runs along the southern face of the house, still shadowed by the
stone-pine, glistened with heavy dews, and the morning-glory along the
garden walls, drenched with moisture, was unfolding a new galaxy of wet
crumpled blossoms. Yet in spite of the freshness of the early hour,
there was a certain hint of oppression in the air, and strolling along
the lower terrace, I saw the cloud of which I have spoken, already
forming on the southern horizon. But it looked so small, so lost, in
the vast dome of blue that surrounded it, that I scarcely gave it a
second thought.
Presently afterwards Francis and I set out to walk down to the
bathing-place. We stopped in the Piazza to order a cab to come down
to the point where the road approaches nearest to the beach from which
we bathed, for the midday walk up again would clearly be intolerable
in the heat that was growing greater every moment, and set out through
narrow ways between the vineyards, in order to avoid the dust of the
high road. The light north wind, which for the past month had given
vigour to the air, had altogether fallen, and not a breath disturbed
the polished surface of the bay, where twenty miles away Naples and
the hills above it were unwaveringly mirrored on the water. So clear
was it that you could see individual houses there, so still that the
hair-like stalks of the campanulas which frothed out of the crevices
of the walls stood stiff and motionless, as if made of steel. Above us
the terraced vineyards rose in tiers to the foot of the sheer cliffs
of Monte Gennaro, fringed with yellow broom; below they stretched, in
an unbroken staircase down to the roofs of the Marina, to which at
midday comes the steamer from Naples carrying our post and a horde of
tourists who daily, for the space of three or four hours, invade the
place. Still downwards we went between vines and lemon orchards, and an
occasional belt of olive-trees, till the bay opened before us again and
the flight of steps that led to the enchanted beach of the _Palazzo a
mare_.
Here on the edge of the sea the Emperor Tiberius built one of his seven
island palaces, but in the course of centuries this northern shore has
subsided, so that the great halls that once stood on the margin of the
bay are partly submerged, and the waves wash up cubes of green and red
marble from tesselated pavements that once formed the floors of the
palace. Portions of the cliff-side are faced with the brickwork of its
walls, from the fissures in which sprout spurge and tufts of valerian,
and tumbled fragments of its foundations lie about on the beach and
project into the water, in lumps twenty feet thick of compounded stone
and mortar. The modern historian has been busy lately with Tiberius,
devoting to his memory pailfuls of antiquarian whitewash, and here,
where tradition says there lay the scene of infamous orgies, we are
told now to reconstruct a sort of Sunday-school presided over by an
aged and benevolent emperor, who, fatigued with affairs of state, found
here an innocent and rural retreat, where he could forget his purple,
and refresh himself with the beauties of Nature. Whatever the truth
of that may be, there is no doubt that he built this palace in a most
delectable place, and I sincerely hope that he was as happy in it as I
am every morning among its ruins.
At one end of this little bay project huge masses of the palace walls,
forming the promontory round which the fat and thwarted German swam,
the day that he brought Luigi down to carry his clothes and his towels
and his shoes. These latter were to enable him to cross the shingly
beach, which, when the feet are unaccustomed to it, is undeniably
painful. Along it, and by the edge of this tideless water, are pockets
and streaks of grey sand, and to-day the sea lies as motionless as
if it was the surface of some sheltered lake. Not a ripple disturbs
it, not a breath of wind ruffles its surface. Standing knee-deep in
it and looking down, you might think, but for a certain fullness and
liquid clarity in the pebbles that lie at the bottom, that there was
no water there at all, so closely does its translucence approach to
invisibility. But it is impossible to stand dry-skinned there for long,
so hotly does the sun strike on the shoulders, and soon I fall forward
in it, and lie submerged there like a log, looking subaqueously at the
bright diaper of pebbles, with a muffled thunder of waters in my ears,
longing to have a hundred limbs in order to get fuller contact with
this gladdest and loveliest of all the creatures of God.
But even in this hedonistic bathing one's ridiculous mind makes tasks
for itself, and it has become an affair of duty with me to swim
backwards and forwards twice to a certain rock that lies some three
hundred yards away. There (for Luigi is not alone in this island in
the matter of caches) I have what you may really call an emporium
stowed away in a small seaweed-faced nook which I believe to be
undiscoverable. If you know exactly where that nook is (it lies about
two feet above the surface of the water), and put your hand through the
seaweed at exactly the right spot, you will find a tin box containing
(_i_) a box of matches, (_ii_) a handful of cigarettes, (_iii_) a
thermometer. The first time that I arrive at the rock I have no truck
with my cache, but only touch the rock with a finger, and swim back
to the beach again. There I touch another rock with my finger (these
two rocks, in fact, are like the creases at cricket, which you must
touch with your bat in order to score a run), and swim back for the
second time to my wicket out at sea. Then, oh then, after a cautious
survey, in order to see that no one, not even Francis, can observe my
movements, I take the tin box from its place, get out of the water on
to the rock, and having dried my fingers on wisps of seaweed, light
a cigarette and smoke it. As I smoke it, I submerge the thermometer
in the sea, and when the cigarette is finished, read the temperature.
After that the thermometer has to be dried, and is put back in the box
with the cigarettes and matches, and the treasure is stowed away again
in its seaweed-fronted cave. Once a fortnight or so I must go through
a perilous manoeuvre, for I have to bring the box back to be refilled.
This entails swimming with one hand in the air holding the box like
Excalibur above the sea, and it can only be done on very calm mornings,
for otherwise there is danger of some ripples intruding through the
hinges or edge of the lid, which does not shut very well. And all the
time the risk of detection is imminent, for if Francis saw me swimming
to land with a bright tin box in my hand, he would be certain to make
inquires. But so far no such heartbreaking disaster has befallen, and
without detection (and I humbly trust without suspicion) the cache-box
has been twice taken back to be refilled and gone on its return journey
again to its romantic hiding-place. Sometimes I have been within an
ace of discovery, as when, to my horror, two days ago Francis swam out
to my rock, instead of going to his own, while I was in the middle of
my cigarette. I had time to put the box back, but somehow it never
occurred to me to throw the cigarette away. By a special dispensation
of Providence, however, it was not permitted that it should occur to
him as odd that I should be seated on a rock in the middle of the sea,
smoking. He was accustomed to the sight, I must suppose, of my smoking
on land, and the question of locality did not occur to him. But it
seemed a weary, weary time before he slid off into the sea again, I
airily remarking that I should sit there a little longer. Sometimes,
when Francis has been unusually communicative about private matters
that concern himself alone, I wonder whether I ought to tell him about
my cache. But I don't, for those who understand the true science of
caches understand that if you have made a cache alone, you might just
as well not have made it at all if you share your secret with anybody.
You can have joint caches, of course....
* * * * *
This morning the thermometer registered seventy-six degrees, which
gave me a feeling of personal pride in the sea and Italy generally,
and I swam lazily back through the warm clinging water. The sun flamed
overhead, and the line of the beach was reeling and dancing in the
heat. But if you think that now my bathe was over, you are miserably
mistaken; you might as well suppose that the play of _Hamlet_ was
finished when the ghost appeared. The swim to the rock is only the
first act, the main bathe; and now begins the second or basking act,
which may or may not be studious.
Some dozen bathers, English and American, for the most part, are dotted
about the beach. Francis is already out of the water, and is lying on
his back in a pocket of sand, with his hands across his eyes to keep
the glare out, and I take my volume of "The Ring and the Book," which I
have made it my task to read through, put on a hat, and, wet and cool,
sit down propped up against a smooth white rock. This is so hot that I
must needs hang a towel over it, and then I open my book where I last
turned down the page. For ten minutes perhaps I am a model of industry,
and then insensibly my eye wanders from the dazzling white page where
the words by some optical delusion seem printed in red....
The sea is still a mirror of crystal; some little way out a big
steamer, high in the water, so that the screw revolves in a smother
of foam, is kicking her way into Naples, and soon the dark blue lines
of her wash will come creaming to land. Otherwise nothing stirs; the
sun-burned figures disposed about the beach might be asleep, and on the
steep hill-side behind there is no sound or movement of life. Perhaps
a little draught draws downward towards the sea, for mixed with the
aromatic smells of the dried seaweed on the beach there is a faint
odour of the broom flower that flames on the slope. Already my book
has slipped from my knee on to the pebbles, and gradually--a phenomenon
to which I am getting accustomed in these noonday baskings--thought
fades also, and I am only conscious, though very vividly conscious; I
know vividly, acutely, that this is Italy, that here is the sea and the
baking beach, and the tumbled fragments of Tiberius's palace, that a
dozen yards away Francis, having sat up, is clasping his knees with his
arms, and is looking seaward, but all these things are not objects of
thought, but only of consciousness. They seem part of me, or I of them;
the welding of the world to me gets closer and more complete every
moment; I am so nearly _the same thing_ as the stones on the beach, and
the liquid rim of the sea; so nearly too, am I Francis, or, indeed,
any other of these quiet dreaming basking figures. The line of the
steamer's wash which is now on the point of breaking along the shore
is so nearly realizable as one with the sun or the sky, or me, or any
visible or tangible part of the whole, for each is the expression of
the Absolute....
I do not know whether this is Paganism or Pantheism, or what, but that
it is true seems beyond all power of doubt; it is certain, invariable,
all that varies is our power of feeling it. To me personally the sense
of home that Italy gives quickens my perception and assimilation
of it, and this is further fulfilled by the intimacy with external
things produced by these sun-soaked and sea-pickled mornings. Here in
the south one gets closer to the simple facts of the world, one is
welded to sun and sea; the communications between soul and body and
the external world are cleaned and fortified. It is as if the buzz
and clatter of a telephone suddenly cleared away, and the voice came
through unhindered. In England the distraction and complications that
necessarily crowd in on one in the land where one lives and earns one's
living, and is responsible for a house and is making arrangements
and fitting them into the hours of the day, choke the lines of
communication; here I strip them off even as I strip off my clothes to
wallow in the sea and lie in the sand. The barriers of individualism,
in which are situated both the sense of identity, and the loneliness
which the sense of _being oneself_ brings, are drawn up like the
sluices of a lock, letting the pour of external things, of sun and sea
and human beings into the quiet sundered pool. I begin to realize with
experience that I am part of the whole creation to which I belong.
You will find something of this consciousness in all that school of
thought known as mysticism; it is, indeed, the basis of mysticism,
whether that mysticism is pagan or Christian. In Greek thought you will
find it, expressed guardedly and tentatively, and it undoubtedly lies
at the base of some of their myths. It lurks in that myth of Narcissus,
the youth who, beholding his own fair image in tranquil water, was
drawn in by the spirits of the stream, and became a flower on the bank
of the pool where he had lost himself, becoming merged in creation. So,
too, in the story of Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved. Him, as he was
playing with the discus, the sun-god inadvertently slew, and from his
blood came up the flowers that bear his name. And more especially, for
here we get not the instance only but the statement of the idea itself,
we find it in the myth of Pan, the god of all Nature, the spirit of all
that is. He was not to be found in town or market-place, nor where men
congregate, but it might happen that the lonely wayfarer, as he passed
through untenanted valley or over empty hill-side, might hear the sound
of his magical fluting of the tune that has no beginning and no ending,
for it is as young as spring and as old as Time. He might even see him
seated in some vine-wreathed cave, and though the sight of him meant,
even as to Narcissus or to Hyacinthus, the death of the body, who shall
doubt that he to whom that vision was vouchsafed died because he had
utterly fulfilled himself as an individual, and his passing was the
bursting of his heart with the greatness of the joy that illuminated
him? He had beheld Nature--Nature itself with true eyes, and could no
longer exist in separate individual consciousness; seeing the spirit of
the All, he knew and was merged in his union with it.
Here is the pagan view of the All-embracing, All-containing God, and it
is hardly necessary to point out how completely it is parallel to, even
identical with, the revelations of Christian mysticism. The bridal of
the soul with her Lord, as known to St. Theresa, the dissolution and
bathing of the soul in love, its forsaking of itself and going wholly
from itself, which is the spirit of what Thomas à Kempis tells us of
the true way, are all expressions of the same spiritual attainment. To
them it came in the light of Christian revelation, but it was the same
thing as the Greek was striving after in terms of Pan. And in every
human soul is planted this seed of mystic knowledge, which grows fast
or slow, according to the soil where it is set, and the cultivation
it receives. To some the knowledge of it comes only in fitful faraway
flashes; others live always in its light. And the consciousness of it
may come in a hundred manners: to the worshipper when he receives the
mystery of his faith at the altar, to the lover when he beholds his
beloved, to the artist when the lift of cloud or the "clear shining
after rain" suddenly smites him personally and intimately, so that for
the moment he is no longer an observer but is part of what he sees.
But to none of us does the complete realization come until the time
when our individuality, as known to us here and now, breaks like the
folded flower from the sheath of the body. Often we seem nearly to get
there; we feel that if only we could stay in a state of mind that is
purely receptive and quiescent, the sense of it would come to us with
complete comprehension. But as we get near it, some thought, like a
buzzing fly, stirs in our brain, and with a jerk we are brought back
to normal consciousness, with the feeling that some noise has brought
us back from a dream that was infinitely more vivid and truer than the
world we awake to.
So it happened to me now. I saw and heard the hissing of the wash of
the steamer break on the shore, observing it and thinking about it. I
saw, too, that Francis had got up and was walking along towards me,
ankle-deep in the shallow water. He groped among the pebbles with his
hand, and picked something up. Then he came and lay down alongside, and
before he spoke I think I knew the gist of what he was going to say.
He held out to me what he had picked up. It was one of those fragments
of green mottled marble, such as we often find here, washed up from the
ruined pavements of the palace.
"What is it?" he said. "What is it really? God somehow, you know."
"Or you or me?" I suggested.
"Yes, of course. Either, both. But there is something, Someone, call it
the Absolute or the First Cause or God, which is quite everywhere. It
can't be local. That's the only explanation of All-there-is which will
hold water, and it holds water and everything else. But you don't get
at it by discussion and arguments, or even by thought. You've got to
open the windows and doors; let the air in. Perhaps you've got to knock
down and blow up the very house of your identity, and sit on the ruins
and wait. But it's the idea of that which makes me so busy in my lazy
life."
The ripple of the steamer's wash died away again.
"Funny that you should have said that just now," I remarked.
"Why? Just because you had been thinking about it? I don't see that. If
the wind blew here, it would be odder that it didn't blow when I was
sitting over there."
"But did you know I had been thinking about it?"
"Well, it seemed likely. Let's have another swim before we dress.
There's trouble coming in the sky. It's the last of the serene days for
the present."
"But there was a high barometer this morning."
"There won't be when we get up to the Villa again," he said. "The sun
has got the central-heating touch to-day. It's been stuffy heat for the
last hour, not the heat of the fire. And look at the sky."
Certainly a curious change had taken place all over the firmament. It
was as if some celestial painter had put body-colour into what had been
a wash of pure blue; there was a certain white opacity mingled with
the previous clarity of it. The sun itself, too, was a little veiled,
and its heat, as Francis had said, seemed more like the radiation from
hot-water pipes than the genial glow of an open fire. Round it at a
distance of three or four of its diameters ran a pale complete halo, as
of mist. Yet what mist could live in such a burning and be unconsumed?
"'Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,'"
quoted Francis. "But here we have the two things occurring
simultaneously, which Shakespeare did not mean. But what, after all,
_didn't_ Shakespeare mean?"
We swam out round the fat German's promontory, floated, drifting with
the eastward setting current, came lazily in again, and even more
lazily walked up through the narrow cobbled path to where the rickety
little victoria was waiting for us on the road. The tourist boat had
arrived, and clouds of dust hung in the air, where their vehicles
had passed, undispersed by any breeze. The intolerable oppression of
the air was increasing every moment; the horse felt himself unable
to evolve even the semblance of a trot, and the driver, usually the
smartest and most brisk of charioteers, sat huddled up on his box,
without the energy to crack his whip or encourage his steed to a
livelier pace. Usually he sits upright and sideways, with bits of
local news for his passengers, and greetings for his friends on the
road; to-day he had nothing beyond a grunt of salutation, and a shrug
of the shoulders for the tip which he usually receives with a wave of
his hat, and a white-toothed "_Tante grazie!_" The Piazza, usually a
crowded cheerful sort of outdoor club at midday, was empty, but for a
few exhausted individuals who sat in the strips of narrow shadow, and
the post-office clerk just chucked our letters and papers at us. The
approach of Scirocco, though as yet no wind stirred, made everyone
cross and irritable, and set every nerve on edge, and from the kitchen,
when we arrived at the Villa, we heard sounds of shrill altercation
going on between Pasqualino and Seraphina, a thing portentously
unusual with those amicable souls. Pasqualino banged down the macaroni
on the table, and spilt the wine and frowned and shrugged till Francis
told him abruptly to mend his manners or let Seraphina serve us; on
which for a moment the sunny Italian child looked out from the clouds
and begged pardon, and said it was not he but the cursed Scirocco. And
then, following on the cloud in the sky that had spread so quickly over
the heavens, came the second cloud.
Francis had just opened the Italian paper which we had got at the
post-office and gave one glance at it.
"Horrible thing!" he said. "The Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the
Austrian throne, and his wife have been murdered at Serajevo. Where is
Serajevo? Pass the mustard, please."
* * * * *
Pasqualino's myrtle wreath fell down during lunch (he told us that it
had done the same thing a good deal all morning), and he, exhausted by
his early rising to pick it, and the increasing tension of Scirocco,
went and lay down on the bench by the cistern in the garden as soon as
his ministrations were over, and after the fashion of Italians took off
his coat and put it over his head, which seemed odd on this broiling
and airless day. From the kitchen came the choking reverberation of
snores, and looking in, I saw Seraphina reposing augustly on the floor,
with her back propped up against the kitchen dresser and her mouth
wide, as if for presentation to a dentist. Francis retired to his
bedroom to lie down and sleep, and, feeling like Oenone that "I alone
awake," I went to my sitting-room to read the paper, and, if possible,
write a letter that ought to have been sent quite a week ago.
This room is furnished exactly as I chose to furnish it; consequently
it has got exactly all that I want in it, and, what is even more
important, it has nothing that I don't want. There is a vast table made
of chestnut wood, so big that a week's arrears can accumulate on it,
and yet leave space to write, to play picquet at the corner and to have
tea. (If there are any other uses for a table, I don't know them.) This
table stands so that the light from the window number one falls on it,
and close behind it along the wall is the spring mattress of a bed. On
it lies another thick comfortable mattress; above that a stamped linen
coverlet, and on that are three enormous cushions and two little ones.
The debilitated author, therefore, when the fatigue of composition
grows to breaking-point, can thus slide from his chair at the enormous
table, and dispose the cushions so as to ensure a little repose.
Opposite this couch stands a bookcase, where are those few works that
are necessary to salvation, such as "Wuthering Heights," "Emma," and
"The Rubáiyát," books that you can open anywhere and be instantly
wafted, as on a magic carpet, to familiar scenes that never lose the
challenge of novelty (for this is the reason of a book, just as it is
also of a friend). After the bookcase comes the door into my bedroom,
and after that, on the wall at right angles, window number two, looking
south. A chair is set against the wall just beyond it, and beyond again
(coming back to window number one, which looks west) another chair,
big, low and comfortable, convenient to which stands a small table, on
which Pasqualino has placed a huge glass wine-flask, and has arranged
in it the myrtle that was left over from his wreath. The walls of this
abode of peace are whitewashed and ungarnished by pictures, the ceiling
is vaulted, the tiled floor is uncarpeted, and outside window number
one is a small terrace, on the walls of which stand pots of scarlet
geraniums, where, when nights are too hot within, I drag a mattress, a
pillow and a sheet. There are electric lamps on both tables and above
the couch, and I know nothing that a mortal man can really want, which
is not comprised in this brief catalogue.
I wrote the letter that should have been written a week ago, found that
it didn't meet the case, and after tearing it up, lay down on the couch
(completely conscious of my own duplicity of purpose) in order, so I
said to myself, to think it over. But my mind was all abroad, and I
thought of a hundred other things instead, of the bathe, of the garden,
and wondered whether if I went into the studio and played the piano
very softly, it would disturb anybody. Then I had the idea that there
was someone in the studio, and found myself listening as to whether I
heard steps there or not. Certainly I heard no steps, but the sense
that there was someone there was rather marked. Then, simultaneously
I remembered how both Pasqualino and Seraphina had heard steps there,
when the house was otherwise empty, and had gone there, both singly and
together, to see if Francis or I had come in. But even as I did now,
they have entered and found the studio empty. Often I have hoped that
a ghost might lurk in those unexplained footfalls, but apparently the
ghost cannot make itself more manifest than this.
I stood there a moment still feeling that there was somebody there,
though I neither saw nor heard anything, and then went quietly along
the passage, under the spur of the restlessness that some people
experience before Scirocco bursts, and looked into Francis's room, the
door of which was open. He lay on his bed in trousers and opened shirt,
sleeping quietly. From here I could catch the sound of Seraphina's
snoring, and from the window could see the head-muffled Pasqualino
spread out in the shade of the awning above the garden cistern. And
feeling more Oenone-ish than ever, I went back and lay down again. It
was impossible in this stillness and stagnation of the oppressed air to
do more than wait, as quiescently as possible, for the passing of the
hours.
I was not in the least sleepy, but I had hardly lain down when the
muddle and blur of sudden slumber began to steal over my brain. I
thought I remembered seeing the murdered Archduke once in London, and
was I wrong in recollecting that he always wore a fur-tippet over
his mouth? I recognized that as nonsense, for I had never seen him at
all, and fell to thinking about Francis lying there on his bed, with
doors and windows open. It seemed to me rather dangerous that he should
lie there, relaxed and defenceless, for it was quite possible that
Miss Machonochie, recognizing that everything was one (even as I had
felt this morning on the beach) might easily prove to be Artemis, and
coming in moon-wise through Francis's window might annex her Endymion.
This seemed quite sensible ... or Caterina might float into the garden
in similar guise, and carry off Pasqualino ... perhaps both of these
love-disasters might happen, and then Seraphina and I alone would
be left.... I should certainly swim away to my _cache_, and live on
cigarettes and seaweed, and mercury from the thermometer.... I should
have to break the bulb to get at it, and I thought that I was actually
doing so.
It broke with a terrific crash, which completely awoke me. Another
crash followed and a scream: it was the second shutter of my window
that faced south being blown against the sash, and the scream was that
of the pent-up wind that burst with the suddenness of lightning out of
the sky. On the instant the house was full of noises, other shutters
clattered and banged, my open door slammed to, as the Scirocco howled
along the passage, as if making a raid to search the house. My pile of
unanswered businesses rose like a snowdrift from the table, and were
littered over the room; the wine flask and its myrtle overturned; a
pot of geraniums on the edge of the terrace came crashing down. In a
moment the whole stagnation of the world was rent to ribands, and the
ribands went flying on the wings of the wind. There was no doubt about
footsteps now: Pasqualino came rushing in from the garden, Seraphina
left her kitchen and bundled upstairs, and I collided with Francis as
we ran into the studio to close the windows. Never have I known so
surprising a pounce of the elemental forces of the world. A volcano
bursting in flame and lava at one's feet, a war suddenly springing
full-armed in a peaceful country, could not have shattered stillness
with so unheralded an uproar.
Five minutes served to bolt and bar the southern and western aspects
of the house from the quarter of the gale, and five more to repair
the damage of its first assault. After that we listened with glee to
its bellowing, and while Seraphina made tea, I went out of an eastern
entrance to gain further acquaintance with this savage south-wester
at first hand. It threw me back like a hot wave when I emerged from
the sheltered side of the house into its full blast, but soon, leaning
against it, I crept across the garden to the lower terrace. The
olive-trees were bending to it, as if some savage, invisible fish had
taken a bait they held out; twigs and branches were scurrying along
the paths, and mixed with them were the petals and the buds of flowers
that should have made July gay for us. A whirl of blue blossoms was
squibbing off the tangle of morning-glory; even the red pillar-trunk
of the stone-pine groaned as the wind drove through its umbrella of
dense foliage. The sun was quite hidden; only a pale discolourment
in the sky showed where it travelled, and to the south the sea was
already a sheet of whipped wave-tops under this Niagara of wind. It was
impossible to stand there long, and soon I let myself be blown back
up the garden and round the corner of the house into calm. Upstairs
Francis was already at tea; he had picked up the sheet of the Italian
paper which he had only glanced at during lunch.
"Serajevo appears to be in Servia," he said, "or Bosnia. One of those
countries."
"Oh, the murder!" said I. "The garden's in an awful mess."
"I suppose so. Tea?"