For the last seven weeks not a drop of rain has fallen on the island.
The great Scirocco of June brought none with it, and when that three
days' hurricane was over, we returned to the wonderful calm weather
that preceded it. Already nearly a month before the ordinary time the
grape clusters are beginning to grow tight-skinned on the vines, and
we expect an unprecedented vintage, for the Scirocco, though violent
enough on the south of the island, did no damage to the northern
slopes, where are the most of the vineyards. But the dearth of water
is already becoming serious, for depending, as we do, on the cisterns
where the rain is stored, it is full time that replenishment came to
their ebbing surfaces. For the last fortnight, unable to spare water
for other than household purposes, we have been obliged to maroon the
garden, so to speak, on a desert island, and already many householders
are buying water for purposes of ablution and cooking. Indeed, when,
last night, the sprightly Pasqualino announced that there was only
half a metre of water left in the second cistern (the first one we
improvidently emptied in order to clean it), and that the Signori would
have to have their risotto and macaroni boiled in the wine-juice, of
which there promised so remarkable a supply, Seraphina, who had come
upstairs for orders, told him pretty roundly that if this was meant for
a joke, it was in the worst possible taste, for it was she who ordered
the wine, and was responsible for the lowness of the Signori's bills.
Upon which Pasqualino sinuously retired with a deprecating smile,
leaving Seraphina, flushed with victory, in possession of the field....
In fact the situation is so serious, she proceeded to tell us, that the
priests have arranged that the silver image of San Costanzo is to-night
to be taken in procession from the cathedral, where it usually abides,
down to the Marina, where an altar is to be set up for him close to the
quay, and fireworks to be let off, so that he may be gratified and by
making intercession cause the rain we so sorely need to fall.
Certainly that seems a very sensible idea. The islanders adore
fireworks and processions, and it is only reasonable of them to endow
their saints with the same amiable tastes. San Costanzo, like all
sensible folk, whether saints or sinners, delights in fireworks and
processions, and of course he will be pleased to do his best after
that. (As a matter of fact, though I hate cynicism, I cannot help
remembering that the barometer has been falling these last three days,
and I wonder whether the priests who have arranged this _festa_ for San
Costanzo know that. I hope not.)
Seraphina's informant on these matters was not the priest, anyhow, but
Teresa of the cake shop.
"And is Teresa then going down to the Marina?" I asked.
Seraphina threw open her hands and tossed back her head in emphatic
denial. The Signor surely knew very well (or if he did not, Signorino
Francesco did) that it was twelve years now since Teresa had gone down
to the port, and never again would she set foot on that ill-omened
quay. _La povera!..._ And Seraphina stood in silence a moment, gravely
shaking her head. Then she threw off the melancholy train of thought
into which the mention of Teresa had led her.
"The meat comes from Naples to-morrow," she announced. "For dinner then
a piece of roast meat and the fish that Nino has promised and a soup of
vegetables. _Ecco!_ And there will be no cooking in wine as that scamp
said."
* * * * *
Afterwards Francis told me why Teresa of the cake shop never goes down
to the Marina, though _festas_ and fireworks beckon, and though San
Costanzo's silver image is borne there in solemn procession, so that he
may intercede for us, and cause to break up the brazen sky. It filled
up in the telling the studious or basking stage of our bathe next
morning.
"Fifteen years ago," he said, "when first I came to the enchanted
island, Teresa Stali was the prettiest maid and the daintiest cook in
all Alatri. That year I took for six months the Villa Bardi, which
belonged to her father, who told me that if I was in need of a cook he
could supply me with one of whom I should have no complaints. So, if I
had not already got one, Teresa would do everything I needed--cook my
food, look after the garden, and keep the house as bright as a Sunday
brooch. Teresa, he explained, was his daughter, a good girl, and would
I interview her. In answer to his loud cries of 'Teresa! Teresina!'
taken up by shrill voices along the street, there came to the door a
vision of tall black-haired maidenhood.
"'She is strong, too,' said her grinning parent, clapping her on the
shoulder. 'Eh, the Signor should have seen her bump the heads of
her two brothers together last week, when they threw stones at the
washing she had hung up to dry. Bang! bang! they will not meddle with
Teresina's washing again!'
"Of course I engaged this paragon, and never has a house been so
resplendent, never were such meals offered for the refreshment of
the esurient sons of men, as when Teresa was Prime Minister in the
Villa Bardi. She was scarcely capable, it seemed, of walking, for her
nimble feet broke into a run whenever more than a yard or two must
be traversed; household work was a festival to her, and she sang as
she emptied slops. Flowers, fresh every day, decked my table; you
could have eaten off the floors, and each morning my shoes shone with
speckless whitening. One thing alone had power to depress her, and that
if by chance I went out to dine with friends, so that there was no
opportunity that evening for her kitchen-magic. The antidote was that
on another day someone would dine with me, so that others beside her
own signor should taste the perfect fruits of her oven.
"Often, when the table was cleared in the evening, and she came to
get orders for next day before going back to her father's house for
the night, she would stop and talk to me, for, in that she was in my
household, she was of my family, identified with my interests and I
with hers. By degrees I learned her domestic history, how there was a
brother doing his military service, how there were two younger boys
still at home, whom Satan continually inspired to unspeakable deeds (of
which the stoning of her washing was among the milder); how her mother
had taught her all she knew of cooking, how her father was the best
carpenter in all South Italy, so that he had orders from Naples, from
Salerno, from Rome even. And, finally, she told me about herself, how
that she was engaged to Vincenzo Rhombo, of Santa Agatha, who had gone
to Buenos Ayres to seek his fortune, and was finding it, too, with both
hands. He had been gone for two years now, and last year he had sent
her seven hundred francs to keep for him. Every year he was going to
send her all he saved, and when he came home, Dio!...
"The post used to arrive about half-past eight in the morning, and was
announced by sepulchral knocking on the garden door, on which Teresa,
if she was brushing and tidying upstairs, flew down to take in the
letters, duster in hand, or with whatever occupied her busy fingers at
the moment. From there she rushed along the garden terrace to where
I was breakfasting underneath the pergola, bringing me my letters.
But one morning, I saw her take them in, and instead of coming to me,
she sat down on the steps and remained there a long time, reading.
Eventually I called to her.
"'Nothing for me, Teresa?' I asked.
"Instantly she sprang up.
"'Pardon--a thousand pardons,' she said. 'There are two letters, and a
packet, a great packet.'
"'And you have had a packet?' I asked.
"'Jesu! Such a packet! May I show the Signor? Look, here is Vincenzo,
his very self! And again seven hundred francs. Ah, it _is_ Vincenzo! I
can hear him laughing.'
"She laid the photograph before me, and, indeed, you could hear
Vincenzo laughing. The merry handsome face was thrown back, with mouth
half open.
"'And such news!' she said. 'He has done better than ever this year,
and has bought a piece of land, or he would have sent even more money
home. And at the end----' she turned over the sheets, 'at the end he
writes in English, which he is learning. What does it mean, Signor?'
"This is what Vincenzo had written:
"'My corrospondence must now stopp, my Teresina, but never stopps my
love for you. Across the sea come my kisses, O my Teresina, and from
the Heart of your Vincenzo. I kiss my corrospondence, and I put it in
the envelop.'
"I translated this and turned to the dim-eyed Teresina.
"'And that is better than all the money,' she said.
"Then she became suddenly conscious that she was carrying my trousers,
which she was brushing when the knock of the postman came.
"'Dio! What a slut is Teresina!' she exclaimed. 'Scusi, Signor.'
"I went back to England at the termination of my lease of the Villa
Bardi, for interviews with stormy uncles, and the settlement of many
businesses, and it was some months later that I set off on my return
here, with finality in my movements. On the way I had intended to stop
half a week in Naples to take my last draught of European culture. But
the sight of Alatri on the evening I arrived there, harp-shaped and
swimming molten in a June sunset, proved too potent a magnet. Besides,
there was reputed to be a great deal of cholera in Naples, and I have
no use for cholera. So, early next morning I embarked at the Castello
d'Ovo to come back to my beloved island.
"It was a morning made for such islanders as I: the heat was
intense but lively, and the first thing to do on landing was to
'Mediterranizer' myself, as Nietzsche says, and bathe, wash off the
stain of the mainland and of civilization, and be baptized, finally
baptized, into this dreamland life. I often wonder whether dreams----"
"Stick to your story," said I. "It's about Teresa."
Francis shifted on his elbow.
"There was a bucketful of changes here," he said, "and I was
disconcerted, because I expected to find everything exactly as I had
left it. Alatri is the sleeping-beauty--isn't it true?--and the years
pass, and you expect to see her exactly as she was in the nineties.
But now they were talking of a funicular railway to connect the Marina
with the town, and Giovanni the boatman had married, and they said his
wife had already cured him of his habits. Oh, she brushed his hair for
him, she did! And a damned American had started a lending library, and
we were all going to enlarge our minds on a circulating system, and
there was a bathing establishment planned, where on Sunday afternoon
you could drink your sirop to the sound of a band, and see the sluts
from Naples. But it fell into the sea all right, and the posts of it
are covered with barnacles. Far more important it was that Teresa had
opened a cake-shop in a superb position, as you know, close to the
Piazza, so that when you come in from your walk you cannot help buying
a cake: the force of its suggestion is irresistible. She opened it with
good money, too, the money that Vincenzo had sent her back from Buenos
Ayres. The cake-shop was now proceeding famously, and it was believed
that Teresa was making twenty per cent. on her outlay, which is as much
as you can hope to get with safety. But it had been--the cake-shop--a
prodigious risk; for a month when the island was empty it had not
prospered, and Teresa's family distended their poor stomachs nightly
with the cakes that were left unsold that day, for Teresa had high
ideas, and would have nothing stale in her shop. She brought the unsold
things home every night in a bag, for fresh every morning must be her
cakes, and so the family ate the old ones and saved the money for their
supper. Rich they were, many of them, and stuffed with cream.
"But after an anxious four weeks the _forestieri_ began to arrive,
and under their patronage, up went Teresa's cake-shop like a rocket.
Customers increased and jostled; and Teresa, the daring, the audacious,
took good luck on the wing, and started a tea-place on the balcony
above the cake-shop, and bought four iron-legged, marble-topped
tea-tables, and linen napkins, no less. She washed these incessantly,
for her tea-place was always full, and Teresa would no more have dirty
napkins than she would have stale cakes. That is Teresa!
"Business expanded. One of the two young brothers (whose heads she so
soundingly knocked together) she now employed in the baking of her
cakes, and for the other she bought, straight off, a suit of white
drill with ten thousand bone buttons, and gave him employment in
bringing the tea-trays up to the customers in the balcony. She paid
them both good wages, but Satan, as usual, entered into their malicious
heads, and once in the height of the season they confabulated, and
thought themselves indispensable, and struck for higher wages. Else
they would no longer bake or hand the bakeries.
"A less supreme spirit than Teresa's might have given in, and raised
their wages. Instead she hurried their departure, and no whit
discouraged, she rose at four in the morning, and baked, and when
afternoon came had all ready, and flew upstairs and downstairs, and
never was there so good a tea as at Teresa's, nor so quickly served.
In three days she had broken the fraternal strike, and the baffled
brothers begged to be taken back. Then Teresa, who had been too busy
to attend to them before, for she was doing their work in addition to
her own, condescended to them, and told them what she really thought of
them. She sat in a chair, did Teresa, and loosed her tongue. There was
a blistering of paint that day on the balcony, though some said it was
only the sun which had caused it....
"Two sad-faced males returned to their work next day, at a stipend
of five francs per month less than they had hitherto received. The
island, which had watched the crisis with the intensest interest,
loudly applauded her spirit, and told the discouraged but repentant
labour-party that only a good-hearted sister would have taken them back
at all. She had not even smacked them, which she was perfectly capable
of doing, in spite of their increasing inches, but perhaps her tongue
was even more stinging than the flat of her hand. Great was Teresa of
the cake-shop!
"All this I heard, and the best news of all remained to tell, for
Vincenzo was even now on his way back from Buenos Ayres. He had made
a tremendous hit with the land he had bought last summer, had money
enough to pay off the mortgages on his father's farm at Santa Agatha,
and he and Teresa would marry at once. Then, alas! Alatri would know
Teresa no more, for she would live with her husband on the mainland.
Already she had been made a very decent offer for the appurtenances
and goodwill of the cake-shop, which, so she told me, she was secretly
inclined to accept. But according to the proper ritual of bargaining,
she had, of course, refused it, and told Giorgio Stofa that when he had
a sensible proposition to make to her, he might call again. Giorgio, a
mean man by all accounts, had been seen going to the bank that morning,
and Teresa expected him to call again very soon.
"This conversation took place in the cake-shop while all the time she
bustled about, now diving into the bake-house to stimulate the industry
of Giovanni, now flying up to the balcony to see if Satan's other limb
had put flowers on the marble-topped tables. Then, for a moment there
was peace, and love looked out of Teresa's eyes.
"'Eh, Signor,' she said. 'Vincenzo will be home, if God wills, by the
day of Corpus Domini. What a _festa! Dio!_ What a _festa_ will that be!'
"The serene island days began to unroll themselves again, with long
swimmings, long baskings on the beach, long siestas on grilling
afternoons, when the whole island lay mute till the evening coolness
began, and only the cicalas chirped in the oleanders. Then, as the heat
of the day declined, I would often have tea on Teresa's balcony, and
on one such afternoon the great news came, and Teresa put into my hand
the telegram she had just received from Naples, which told her that
Vincenzo's ship had arrived, and that her lover had come back. Business
necessary to transact would detain him there for a day, and for another
day he must be at Santa Agatha, but on the morning of Corpus Domini he
would come to Alatri, by the steamer that arrived at noon....
"'Six years since he went,' said Teresa. 'And oh, Signor, it is but as
a day. We shall keep the _festa_ together and see the fireworks.... We
shall go up into the rockets,' she cried in a sudden kindling of her
tongue. 'We shall be golden rain, Vincenzo and I.'
"'And I shall stand below, oh, so far below,' said I, 'and clap my
hands, and say "Eccoli!" That is, if I approve of Vincenzo.'
"Teresa put her hands together.
"'Eh! but will Vincenzo approve of me?' she said. 'Will he think I have
grown old? Six years! Oh, a long time.'
"'It is to be hoped that Vincenzo will not be a pumpkin,' I remarked.
'Give me the large sort of cake, Teresa. I will carry it up to the
Villa.'
"Teresa frowned.
"'The cakes are a little heavy to-day,' she said. 'I had a careless
hand. You had better take two small ones, and if you do not like them,
you will send back the second. _Grazie tante, Signor._'
"The news that Vincenzo was to arrive by the midday boat on Corpus
Domini, spread through the town, and all Teresa's family and friends
were down at the Marina to give him welcome. A heavy boat-load of
visitors was expected, and the little pier was cleared of loungers,
so that the disembarkation in small boats from the steamer might, be
unimpeded. But by special permission Teresa was given access to the
landing-steps, so that she might be the first to meet her lover, even
as he set foot on the shore, and there, bare-headed and twinkling with
all her _festa_ finery, she waited for him. In the first boat-load that
put off from the steamer he came, standing in the prow, and waving to
her, while she stood with clasped hands and her heart eager with love.
He was the first to spring ashore, leaping across to the steps before
the boat had come alongside, and with a great cry, jubilant and young,
he caught Teresa to him, and for a supreme moment they stood there,
clasped in each other's arms. And then he seemed to fall from her and
collapsed suddenly on the quay, and lay there writhing.... The cholera
that was prevalent in Naples had him in his grip, and in two hours he
was dead...."
Francis sat silent a little after the end of his story.
"So now you know," he said, "why for fourteen years Teresa of the
cake-shop has never gone down to the Marina."
* * * * *
That night, when the thud and reverberation of the fireworks began down
on the Marina, Francis and I went into the town to see them from above.
The Piazza was deserted, for all Alatri had gone down to the port to
take part in this procession and explosion in honour of San Costanzo,
so that he might make intercession and send rain to the parched island,
and we went out on to the broad paved platform which overlooks the
Marina. This, too, seemed to be deserted, and perched on the railing
that surrounds it, we watched the golden streaks of the ascending
rockets, and their flowering into many-coloured fires. At this distance
the reports reached the ear some seconds after their burstings; their
plumes of flame had vanished before their echoes flapped in the cliffs
of Monte Gennaro. The moon was not yet risen, and their splendour
burned brilliantly against the dark background of the star-sown sky.
By and by a whole sheaf of them went up together, and afterwards a
detonating bomb showed that the exhibition was over. And then we saw
that we were not alone, for in the dark at the far end of the railings
a black figure was watching. She turned and came towards us, and I saw
who it was.
"You have been looking at the fireworks, Teresa?" said Francis.
"_Sissignor._ They have been very good. San Costanzo should send us
rain after that. But who knows? It is God's will, after all."
"Surely. And how goes it?"
She smiled at him with that sweet patient face, out of which fourteen
years ago all joy and fire died.
"The cake-shop?" she said. "Oh, it prospers. It always prospers. I am
trying a new recipe to-morrow--a meringue."
"And you--you yourself?" he asked.
"I? I am always well. But often I am tired of waiting. _Pazienza!_
Shall I send some of the new meringues up to the Villa, if they turn
out well, Signor?"
Francis had an inexplicable longing that evening to play chess, and
as he despises the sort of chess I play with the same completeness
as I despise parsnips, I left him with someone less contemptible at
the café, and strolled up to the Villa again alone, going along the
paved way that overlooks the sea to the south. High up was hung an
amazing planet, and I felt rather glad I was no astronomer, and knew
not which it was, for the noblest of names would have been unworthy
of that celestial jewel. As if it had been a moon, the reflection of
its splendour made a golden path across the sea, and posturing in its
light, I found that it actually cast a vague shadow of me against a
whitewashed wall. To the east the rim of the hill, where is situated
the wireless station, was beginning to stand out very black against a
dove-coloured sky, and before I had reached the steep steps that lead
past the garden wall, the rim of the full moon had cut the hill-top,
dimming the stars around it, and swiftly ascending, a golden bubble
in the waters of the firmament, it had shot up clear of the horizon
and refashioned the world again in ivory and black. All the gamut of
colours was dipped anew; blues were translated into a velvety grey,
so too were greens, and though the eye could see the difference, it
was impossible to say what the difference was. Simply what we call
blue by daylight became some kind of grey; what we call green a
totally distinct kind of grey and blacker than the darkest shadow of
the stone-pine was the shouting scarlet of the geraniums. No painter
(pace the Whistlerians) has ever so faintly suggested the magic of
moon-colouring, and small blame to him, since the tone of it cannot be
rendered in pictures that are seen in the daylight. But if you take the
picture of a sunny day, and look at it in moonlight, you will see, not
a daylight picture, but a moonlight scene. The same thing holds with
daylight scents and night-scents, and the fragrance of the verbena by
the house wall was not only dimmer in quality, but different in tone.
It was recognizable but different, ghost-like, disembodied without the
smack of the sun in it.
I strolled about for a little, and then having (as usual) writing
on hand that should have been done days before, I went reluctantly
into the house. I was quite alone in it, for Seraphina had gone home,
Pasqualino was down at the Marina taking part in fireworks and
_festa,_ and I had left Francis in a stuffy café pondering on gambits.
We had dined early by reason of the fireworks, and before going up to
my sitting-room to work, I foraged for cake and wine in the kitchen,
and carried these upstairs. It was very hot, and I went first into the
studio, where I set the windows wide, and next into Francis's room and
Pasqualino's, where I did the same. Then I came back to my own room,
exactly opposite the studio, and, stripped to shirt and trousers, with
door and windows wide, I sat down for an hour's writing.
* * * * *
There is no such incentive to constructive thought as the knowledge
that, humanly speaking, interruption is impossible. Seraphina would
not return till morning, while _festa_ and chess would undoubtedly
detain Pasqualino and Francis for the next couple of hours. I had a
luxurious sense of security; should I be so fortunate as to strike
the vein I was delving for, I could go on mining there without let
or hindrance. Reluctant though I had been to begin, I speedily found
myself delightfully engrossed in what I was doing. Probably it did not
amount to much, but the illusion in the author's mind, when he tinkers
away at his tale, that he is doing something vastly important, is one
that is never shaken, even though he continually finds out afterwards
that the masterpiece has missed fire again. While he is engaged on his
scribbling (given that his pen is in an interpreting frame of mind,
and records without too many stumblings the dictation his brain gives
it), he is in that Jerusalem that opens its gates of pearl only to
the would-be artist, be he painter or poet or writer or sculptor. He
is constructing, recording his impressions, and though (I hasten to
repeat) they may be totally unworthy of record, he doesn't think so
when he is engaged on them, for if he did, he would be conscious of
external affairs, his mind would wander, and he would stop. Often, of
course, that happens, but there are other blessed occasions when he is
engulfed by his own imaginings, and absorbed in the reproduction of
them.
It was so with me that night, when I sat quite alone in the silent
house, knowing that none could disturb me for a couple of hours to
come. Italy, even the fact that I was in Italy, vanished from my mind,
and for the sake of the curious, at the risk of egoism, I may mention
that I was with Mrs. Hancock in her bedroom in her horrid villa called
Arundel, and looking over her jewels with her, to see what she could
spare, without missing it, as a wedding present for her daughter.
Engaged in that trivial pursuit, I lost conscious touch with everything
else.
Quite suddenly a very ordinary noise, though as startling as the
ringing of a telephone-bell at my elbow, where there was no telephone,
snatched me away from my imaginings. There was a step in the studio
just opposite, and I made no doubt that Francis had got home, had come
upstairs without my hearing him, and no doubt thinking that I was at
work, had passed into the studio. But then, looking at my watch, which
lay on the table before me, I saw that it was still only half-past
ten, and that I had been at work (and he at chess) for barely half an
hour. But there was no reason that I should not go on working for an
hour yet, and though my sense of security from interruption was gone,
I anchored myself to my page again. But something had snapped; I could
not get back into Mrs. Hancock's bedroom again, and after a few feeble
sentences, and a corresponding number of impatient erasures, I came to
a full stop.
I sat there for some ten minutes more, vainly endeavouring to
concentrate again over Mrs. Hancock's jewels, but Francis's steps were
in some way strangely disturbing. They passed up the studio, paused
and returned, and paused and passed up again. Then, but not till then,
there came into my mind the fact that Seraphina and Pasqualino had at
different times heard (or thought they heard) footsteps in the studio,
and on investigation had found it empty, and I began to wonder, still
rather dimly and remotely, whether these were indeed the pacings of
Francis up and down the room. My reasonable mind told me that they
were, but the recollection of those other occasions became momently
more vivid, and I got up to see.
The door of my room and that of the studio were exactly opposite each
other, with the width of a narrow passage between them. Both doors
were open, and on going into the passage I saw that the studio was
dark within. It seemed odd that Francis should walk up and down, as he
was still continuing to do, in the dark.
I suddenly felt an intense curiosity to know whether this was Francis
walking up and down in the dark, or rather an intense desire to satisfy
myself that it was not. The switch of the electric light was just
inside the door, and even as my hand fumbled for it I still heard the
steps quite close to me. Next moment the studio leaped into light as I
pressed the switch, and I looked eagerly up and down it. There was no
one there, though half a second before I had heard the footsteps quite
close to me.
I stood there a moment, not conscious of fear, though I knew that
for some reason my heart was creaking in my throat, and that I felt
an odd prickly sensation on my head. But my paramount feeling was
curiosity as to who or what it was that went walking here, my paramount
consciousness that, though I could see no one, and the steps had
ceased, there was someone close to me all the time, watching me not
unkindly. But beyond doubt, for all visible presence, the studio was
empty, and I knew that the search which I now carried out, visiting the
darker corners, and going on to the balcony outside, from which there
was no external communication further, was all in vain. Whatever it was
that I, like Pasqualino and Seraphina, had heard, it was not a thing
that hid itself. It was there, waiting for us to perceive it, waiting
for the withdrawal of the shutter that separates the unseen world from
the seen. The shutter had been partly withdrawn, for I had heard it; I
had also the strong sense of its presence. But I had no conception as
to what it was, except that I felt it was no evil or malignant thing.
I went back to my room, and, oddly enough, directly after so curious
an experience, I found myself able to concentrate on Mrs. Hancock
again without the slightest difficulty, and spent an absorbed hour.
Then I heard the garden gate open, there were steps on the stairs, and
a moment afterwards Francis came up. I told him what had happened,
exactly as I have set it down. He asked a few slightly scornful
questions, and then proceeded to tell me how he had lost his king's
bishop. I could not ask scornful questions about that, but it seemed
very careless of him.
* * * * *
The very next morning there turned up information which seems to
my mind (a mind which Francis occasionally describes as credulous)
to bear upon the watcher and walker in the studio, and it happened
in this wise. Ten days before, the careful Seraphina had collected
certain table-cloths, sheets and socks that needed darning, and with a
view to having them thoroughly well done, and with, I make no doubt,
another motive as well in her superstitious mind, had given the job to
Donna Margherita, a very ancient lady, but nimble with her needle,
to whom we are all very polite. Even Francis (though he has admirable
manners with everybody) goes out of his way to be civil to Donna
Margherita, and no one, who is at all prudent, will fail to give her
a "Good day" if he passes her in the street. But if the wayfarer sees
Donna Margherita coming in his direction, and thinks she has not yet
seen him, he will, if he is prudent, turn round and walk in another
direction. I have known Francis to do that on some paltry excuse (and
he says I have a credulous mind!), but his real reason is that though
he would not admit it, he is aware that Donna Margherita has the evil
eye. Consequently we islanders must not vex her or be other than
scrupulously civil to her, though we keep out of her way if we can,
and when we must pass her it is wise to make the sign of the Cross
surreptitiously. We do not talk about her much, for it is as well not
to get near the confines of dangerous things; but before now Pasqualino
has told me of various occurrences which to his mind put it beyond all
doubt that Donna Margherita has the _jettatura._ There was the affair
of his uncle's fig-tree: he had been foolish and said sharp things to
her because her goat strayed into his vineyard. And Donna Margherita
just looked at the fig-tree which grows by his gate, and said: "You
have a fine fig-tree there; there will be plenty of fruit this summer."
Within a fortnight all the crop of little half-ripe figs dropped off.
There was her landlord who threatened to turn her out unless her
quarter's overdue rent was paid the same evening. Was it paid? Not
a bit of it; but the very same day the landlord's kitchen roof fell
in.... There is no end to such evidence, and so when ten days ago Donna
Margherita asked Seraphina if there was not any mending for her to do,
it is no wonder (especially since she is so neat with her needle) that
Seraphina gave her our lacerated linen.
* * * * *
Such is the history of Donna Margherita, and so when this morning,
as we were breakfasting, her knock came at the garden door, and she
entered, Francis jumped up, and called Seraphina from the kitchen to
pay for the mending and give Donna Margherita a glass of wine on this
hot morning. It was cool and shady under the pergola where we were
breakfasting, and as the old lady had a fancy to sit down for a little
after her walk, she came along and sat down with us. And, vying with
each other in courtesies, Pasqualino brought her a slice of cake, and
Seraphina a glass of wine, and then hastily retired from the dangerous
neighbourhood, and looked out on the interview with troubled faces from
an upper window.
To judge by her dried-apple cheek, and her gnarled and knotted hands,
Donna Margherita might almost number the years with which Alatri
credits her, asserting that she is a hundred summers old. Eighty, at
any rate, she must be, since she has good recollection of the events of
more than seventy years ago, and as she sipped her wine and clinked
the soldi Seraphina (grossly overpaying) had given her, she talked
amiably enough about our house and her early memories of it.
"Yes, it's a fine villa that the Signori have," she said; "but I can
remember it as but a farm-house before additions were made to it. The
farm buildings used to lean against it on the north, where later the
big room was built by the English artist; byre and cow-house were
there, and when I was a little girl a strange thing happened."
She mumbled her cake a little in her toothless jaws and proceeded:
"The farm in those days belonged to Giovanni Stofa, long since dead,
and there he lived alone with his son, who is long dead also. One night
after the house was shut up, and they sat together before going to bed,
there came a noise and a clatter from the cow-house, very curious to
hear. Giovanni thought that one of the cows had convulsions and ran out
of the house and round by the kitchen, and into the shed where the two
cows were stabled. And as he opened the door he was near knocked down,
for both of them ran out with hoofs in the air and tails switching.
Then, not knowing what should meet his eyes, he turned the lantern that
he carried into the cow-house, and there standing in the middle was a
_strega_ (witch). But she looked at him not unkindly, and said: 'I have
come to guard the house, and from henceforth I shall always guard it,
walking up and down, ever walking up and down.'
"The _strega_ smiled at him as she spoke, and his knees ceased to
tremble, for this was no black visitant.
"'Your cattle will not be frightened again,' she said. 'Look, even now
they come back.'
"As she spoke, first one and then the other of the cows came into the
stable again, and walked right up to where the _strega_ stood, blowing
hard through their nostrils. And next moment they lay down close to
her, one on each side.
"'You will often hear me walking about here,' said the _strega;_ 'but
have no fear, for I guard the house.'
"And with that there came just one puff of wind, and Giovanni's lantern
flickered, and lo! when the flame was steady again there was no
_strega_ there."
* * * * *
Donna Margherita took a sip of wine after her recitation.
"And does she still walk up and down where the cow-house was?" I asked.
"Surely; but fat ears cannot hear even the thunder," quoted Donna
Margherita. "And now, Signori, I will be walking. And thanks for the
soldi and the cake and the wine."
Francis got up too.
"You are active still, Donna Margherita," he said.
Donna Margherita stepped briskly down the path.
"Eh, yes, Signor," she said. "I am old but active; I can still do such
a day's work as would surprise you."
Francis's eye and mine met; we were behind her, so that she could not
see the exchanged glance. What was in both our minds was the affair of
Pasqualino's uncle's fig-tree, for that had certainly been a surprising
day's work. But after she had gone, he alluded again to the steps I
had heard in the studio in a far more respectful manner. The fact is,
so I made bold to tell him, that he does not like Donna Margherita's
unconscious innuendo that he has fat ears.
The hot, serene days pursued their relentless course without our
experiencing any of the watery benefits we had hoped for from the treat
of fireworks that we had given to San Costanzo, for immediately after
that improvised _festa_ the falling barometer retraced its downward
steps, and the needle stood, steady as if it had been painted there, on
the "V" of "Very Dry." Miss Machonochie's cistern, so she informed us,
had barely a foot of water in it, and she came up to ask if she might
borrow a few pailfuls from ours of a morning. "Borrow" was good, since
naturally she could not pay it back till the rain came and replenished
her store, and the moment the rain came it would be a foolish thing
to go carrying pailfuls of water from one house to another when all
were plentifully supplied. But she made a great point of putting down
exactly how many pailfuls she borrowed, and also made a great point of
coming to thank Francis every other afternoon about tea-time for his
kindness. She did not care about thanking me, though I had been just as
kind as Francis, and eventually, owing to the awful frequency of these
visits, we posted Pasqualino on the balcony overlooking the path to
give warning (like Brangäene from her tower) of Miss Machonochie's fell
approach, while we had tea, so that we could effect an exit through
the kitchen door, and live, like outlaws, in the heather, till Miss
Machonochie had left her gratitude behind her. It was not sufficient to
instruct Pasqualino to say we were out, for then Miss Machonochie would
sit and rest in the garden for a little, or come up to the studio to
write a letter of thanks (always to Francis). But with Pasqualino on
the balcony, we can sit in peace over tea, till with a broad grin that
occasionally explodes into laughter, he comes in to say that the Scotch
Signorina's sunshade is a-bobbing up the path. Then we hastily scald
ourselves with tea and go for a walk, for no longer in this dearth of
water can the garden be refreshed, but must needs lie waterless, till
the rain revisits us.
To-day we made an expedition up Monte Gennaro, the great crag that
rises sheer from the south side of the island in two thousand feet of
unscalable cliff. From the west the ascent is a mild, upward path over
a stony hill-side, and the more delectable way is on its east side,
where a very steep ascent burrows among thick growing scrub of laburnum
and arbutus till it reaches the toppling precipices that frown above
it. There, squeezing through interstices and fissures, it conducts to
a huge grassy upland, unsuspected from below, that sweeps upward to the
summit. A pine-tree or two stand sentinel here, but there is little
anchorage of soil for trees, and for the most part the hill-side is
clothed in long jungle grasses and spaces of sunny broom, the scent
of which hangs sweet and heavy in the windless air. Here the dews
are thicker, and the heat less intense, and though the rain has been
so long withheld, the hill-side is still green and unwithered, and
deep among the grasses we saw abundance of the great orange-coloured
lilies that we had come to gather. But that task was for the downward
journey, and first we ascended to the peak itself. As we climbed, the
island dwindled below us, and at last at the summit it had shrunk to a
pin's-head in the girdle of the dim sea, domed with huge blue.
West, south and north, straight to the high horizon, stretched the
untarnished and liquid plain; here and there, like some minute fly
walking on a vast sheet of sapphire glass, moved an ocean-going
steamer. Eastwards there floated, distant and dreamlike but curiously
distinct, the shores and peaks of the mainland, and from it, on this
side and that, there swam the rocks of the Siren isles, as if trying
to join Alatri, the boldest swimmer of them all. The remoteness and
tranquillity of mountain tops lay round us, and curious it was to think
that down there, where Naples sparkled along the coast, there moved a
crowd of insatiable ant-like folk, busy on infinitesimal things that
absorbed and vexed and delighted them. Naples itself was so little; it
was as if, in this great emptiness of sea and sky, some minute insect
was seen, and one was told that that minute insect swarmed with other
minute forms of life. To look at it was to look at a piece of coral,
and remember that millions of animalculæ built up the structure that
was but a bead in a necklace. And here, lying at ease on the grass,
were just two more of the coral-insects that mattered so much to
themselves and to each other....
We slewed round again seawards, and looked over the precipitous
southern cliffs. A little draught of wind blew up them, making the
grasses at the rim shake and tremble. From below a hawk swooped
upwards over the cliff edge, saw us, and fell away again with a rustle
of reversed feathers into the air. Round the base of the cliffs the
sapphire of the sea was trimmed with brilliant bottle-green, and not
the faintest line of foam showed where it met the land. To the left on
the island, the town of Alatri, with all its house-roofs and spires,
looked as flat as on a map, and on the hill-side above it we could
just make out the stone-pine cutting the white façade of the Villa
Tiberiana. For a moment that anchored me to earth; but slipping my
cable again, I spread myself abroad in the openness and the emptiness.
Was I part of it, or it part of me? That did not matter much; we were
certainly both part of something else, something of tumultuous energy
that whirled the stars on their courses, and was yet the peace that
passed understanding....
* * * * *
The days had slipped away. Before the orange lilies, which we gathered
that afternoon on Monte Gennaro, were withered, there remained to me
but a week more for the present of island life, which flowed on hour
by hour in the normal employments that made up the day. But all the
small events, the sights and sounds, had to me then, as they have now,
a curious distinctness, as when before a storm outlines of hills and
houses are sharp and defined, and the details of the landscape are
etched vividly in the metallic tenseness of the preceding calm. But, as
far as I knew, there were in life generally no threats of approaching
storm, no clouds that broke the serenity of the sky. Privately, my
friendships and affairs were prosperous, and though by the papers it
appeared that politicians were turning anxious eyes to Ireland, where
ferment was brewing over Home Rule, I supposed, in the happy-go-lucky
way in which the average English citizen goes whistling along, that
those whose business it was to attend to such things would see to it.
Personally I intended to go back to England for a couple of months, and
then return here for the warm golden autumn that often lasts into the
early days of December. Established now, in this joint house, "_piccolo
nido in vasto mar,_" I meant to slide back often and for prolonged
periods down the golden cord that has always bound me to Italy. But
though these days were so soon to be renewed, I found myself clinging
to each minute as it passed with a sense that they were numbered; that
the sands were running out, and that close behind the serenity of the
heavens there lurked the flare of some prodigious judgment. Yet, day
by day there was nothing to warrant those ominous presages. I swam
to my cache, smoked my cigarette, basked on the beach, and continued
weaving the adventures of Mrs. Hancock. The same sense of instability,
I found, beset Francis also, and this in spite of the fact that the
beleaguerings of Miss Machonochie were suddenly and celestially put a
stop to.
We had strolled down to the Piazza one evening after dinner, and
mingled with the crowd that stood watching a great display of
thunderstorm that was bursting over the mainland twenty miles away.
Above us here was a perfectly clear sky, in which the full moon rode
high, and by its light we could see that the whole of the coast was
smothered in cloud, out of which broke ten times to the minute flashes
of lightning, while the low, remote roar of the thunder, faintly echoed
on the cliffs of Monte Gennaro, boomed without ceasing. Then we saw
that long streamers of cloud were shooting out of that banked rampart
towards us, and we had barely got back to the Villa again before the
moon and the stars were obscured, and hot single drops of rain, large
as a five-franc piece, steamed and vanished on the warm cement of the
terrace.
All night long the rain fell in sheets, and through the slats of
the shutters I saw the incessant flashes, while the thunder roared
and rattled overhead, and the pipe from the house-roof, that feeds
our depleted cistern, gurgled and gulped and swallowed the rain it
was thirsting for. Hour after hour the downpour continued, and when
morning broke the garden-paths were riddled with water-courses, and
the gathered waters gleamed in the cisterns, and Miss Machonochie need
"borrow" no more, nor come up about tea-time to thank Francis for his
largesse, and hound us from our tea to seek refuge on arid hill-sides.
Pasqualino remarked that San Costanzo had been a long time thanking us
for the fireworks; did I suppose that----And as Pasqualino's remarks
about the hierarchy of Heaven are sometimes almost embarrassingly
child-like in their reasonableness, I skilfully changed the subject by
telling him to measure the water in the cistern.
But though Francis need no longer be afraid of Miss Machonochie, "the
arrow that flieth by day" so constantly transfixing him, and though
after prolonged thought he confessed that there was nothing else in
life which bothered him, except that in two years' time Pasqualino
would have to go for his military service, and he himself would have
to find another servant (which really seemed a trial, the fieriness of
which need not be allowed to scorch so soon), he shares my sense of
instability and uneasiness, and, like me, cannot in any way account
for it. To encourage him and myself on the morning of my departure as
we had our last bathe, I was noble enough to let him into the secret
of my cache of cigarettes in the seaweed-hung recess in the rock, and
together we lit the farewell incense to the _Palazzo a mare,_ sitting
on the rock.
"And there are two left," said I, "which we will smoke together here
the first day that I come back."
"Is that a promise?" he said.
"Surely."
"And when will you keep it?"
"About the middle of September."
"And if you don't?" he asked.
"Well, it will only mean that I have been run over by a motor-car, or
got cancer, or something of the sort, or that you have. If we are still
in control of ourselves we'll do it. I wonder if those two cigarettes
will be mouldy or pickled with brine by that time?"
"Kippered or mouldy or pickled, I will smoke one of them on the day you
return," said he.
"And I the other. But I hope it won't be mouldy. Or I shall be sick,"
said I.
"Likely. Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to sit on a rock all wet
in the blaze of the sun! I wonder if it's all too pleasant--whether
Nemesis has her wooden eye on me? Oh, Mother Nemesis, beautiful, kind
Lady Nemesis, remove your wooden eye from me! Your wooden eye offends
me; pluck it out and cast it from thee! I don't do much harm; I sit in
the sea and eat my food, and have a tremendous quantity of great ideas,
none of which ever come to anything."
"You might be called lazy, you know," said I. "Lady Nemesis would
explain that to you before she beat you."
"I might be called whatever you choose to call me," said he, "but it
need not be applicable. I'm not lazy; my brain is an exceedingly busy
one, though it doesn't devote itself to the orthodox pursuits of losing
money in the city and labelling yourself a financier, or playing bridge
in a country town and labelling yourself a soldier, or writing a lot of
weary stories and calling yourself an author."
"I never did," said I hastily.
"Well, you permit other people to do so, if you will put on the cap
like that. Don't rag, or I shall push you into the sea. I was saying
that I was not lazy, because I think. Most people imagine that energy
must be spent in action, and they will tell you quite erroneously (as
you did just now) that if you don't sit in an office, or something of
that kind, or do something, that you are indolent. The reason is that
most people can't think, and so when they cease from acting they are
unemployed. But people who can think are never so busy as when they
cease from action. Most people are beavers; they build a dam, in which
they shut up their souls. And they call it civilization. The world as
pictured by such Progressionists will be an awful place. There will
be wonderful drainage, and milk for children, and capsuled food, and
inoculation against all diseases, and plenty of peace and comfort for
everybody, and a chromolithograph of Mr. H. G. Wells on every wall.
Then the millennium will come, the great vegetable millennium, in which
the whole human race will stretch from world's end to world's end like
rows of cabbages, each in his own place in straight lines, and all
seated on the ground, as the hymn says. Why, the whole glory of the
human race is that we're not content, not happy, missing something
always, yearning for something that eludes us and glorifies our
search...."
He paused a moment, and drew the thermometer out of the water.
"It's an affair of conscience," he said; "I do what my conscience tells
me is of most importance."
I felt rather sore at the fact that this afternoon I had to start on
my northern career across Europe in a dusty train, with the knowledge
that Francis would be here, still cool and clean, in the sea, while the
smuts poured in on to the baked red velvet of my carriage, and that
here he would remain, while I, dutiful and busy, saw the sooty skies
of the town on the Thames, which seemed a most deplorable place of
residence. Some of this soreness oozed into my words.
"Your conscience is very kind to you," I said. "It tells you that it is
of the highest importance that you should live in this adorable island
and spend your day exactly as you choose."
"But if it said I should go back to England, and sweep a crossing
in--what's the name of that foul street with a paddock on one side of
it?--Oh, yes, Piccadilly--sweep a crossing in Piccadilly, I should
certainly go!" said he.
Unfortunately for purposes of argument, I knew that this was true.
"I know you would," I said, "but on the day of departure you must
excuse my being jealous of such a well-ordered conscience. Oh, Francis,
how bleak the white cliffs of our beloved England will look! Sometimes
I really wish Heaven hadn't commanded, and that Britain had remained
at the bottom of the azure main instead of arising from out of it.
How I shall hate the solemn, self-sufficient faces of the English.
English faces always look as if they knew they were right, and they
generally are, which makes it worse. A quantity of them together are
so dreadful, large and stupid and proper and rich and pompous, like
rows of well-cooked hams. Italian faces are far nicer; they're a bed of
pansies, all enjoying the sun and nodding to each other. I don't want
to go to England! Oh, not to be in England now that July's here! I wish
you would come, too. Take a holiday from being good, and doing what
your conscience tells you, and spending your days exactly as you like.
Come and eat beef and beer, and feel the jolly north-east wind and the
rain and the mud and the fogs, and all those wonderful influences that
make us English what we are!"
Francis laughed.
"It all sounds very tempting, very tempting indeed," he said. "But I
shall resist. The fact is I believe I've ceased to be English. It's
very shocking, for I suppose a lack of patriotism is one of the most
serious lacks you can have. But I've got it. Even your sketch of
England doesn't arouse any thrill in me. Imagine if war was possible
between England and Italy. Where would my sympathies really be? I know
quite well, but I shan't tell you."
The daily tourist steamer, the same that in a few hours' time would
take me away, came churning round the point, going to the Marina, where
it would lie at anchor till four o'clock. It was obviously crammed with
passengers--Germans, probably, for the most part, and the strains of
the "Watch by the Rhine" played by the ship's band (cornet, violin and
bombardon) came fatly across the water to us. Francis got up.
"Sorry, but it's time to swim back and dress," he said. "There's the
steamer."
"There's the cart for Tyburn," said I mournfully.
So we put the tin box with the thermometer and the two cigarettes to
be smoked on the rock one day in the middle of September, back in its
curtained cave, and swam to land, lingering and lying on the sea and
loath to go. Then we dressed and walked through the dappled shade of
the olive trees on the cobbled paths between the vineyards to where on
the dusty road our carriage waited for us, and so up to the Villa.
I had but little to do in the way of packing, for with this house
permanently ours and the certainty (in spite of qualms) of coming back
in a couple of months' time, I was making deposit of clothes here,
and a few hours later I stood on the deck of the crowded steamer and
saw the pier, with Francis standing white and tall on the end of it,
diminish and diminish. The width of water between me and the enchanted
island increased, and the foam of our wash grew longer, like a white
riband endlessly laid out on a table of sapphire blue. All round me
were crowds of German tourists, gutturally exclaiming on the beauty of
the island and the excellence of the beer. And soon the haze of hot
summer weather began to weave its veil between us and Alatri: it grew
dim and unsubstantial; the solidity of its capes and cliffs melted
and lost its clarity of outline till it lay dream-like and vague, a
harp-shaped shell of grey floating on the horizon to the west. Already,
before we got to Naples, it seemed years ago that I sat on its beaches
and swam in its seas with a friend called Francis.