Never has there been a March so compounded of squalls and snows and
unseasonable inclemencies. Verily I believe that my _Lobgesang_ of that
spring day in February was maliciously transmitted to the powers of the
air, and, so far from being pleased with my distinguished approval,
they merely said: "Very well; we will see what else we can do, if you
like our arrangements so much." Indeed, it looks like that, for we all
know how the powers of Nature (the unpleasant variety of them) seem to
concentrate themselves on the fact of some harmless individual giving a
picnic, or other outdoor festivity, for which sun and fine weather is
the indispensable basis. But now in a few days I shall defy them, for I
do not believe that their jurisdiction extends to Italy.
Italy: yes, I said Italy, for at last an opportunity and a cause have
presented themselves, and I am going out there "at the end of this
month, D.V." (as the clergyman said), "or early in April, anyhow."
Rome is the first objective, and then (or I am much mistaken) there
will be an interval of Alatri, and then Rome again and Alatri again:
a sumptuous sandwich. How I have longed for something of the sort in
these two years and a half of insular northern existence I cannot hope
to convey. Perhaps at last I have reached that point of wanting which
ensures fulfilment, but though I am interested in fantastic psychology,
I don't really care how the fulfilment came now that it has come.
* * * * *
I have had no word from Francis since his letter last month from the
Italian front, announcing his departure for Rome. He mentioned that
he hoped to go to Alatri, and since he did not give me his address in
Rome, I telegraphed to the island, announcing my advent at the end of
March or early in April. Rather to my surprise I got the following
answer from Alatri:
"Was meaning to write. Come out end of March if
possible. Shall be here."
For no very clear reason this somewhat perturbed me. There was no cause
for perturbation, if one examined the grounds of disquietude, for if he
was ill he would surely have told me so before. Far the more probable
interpretation was that he had already forgotten about his discomforts
and his very depressed letter, and was snatching a few rapturous days
now and then from Rome, and spending them on the island. He might
foresee that he could do this again at the end of the month, and wanted
me to come then, because he would be back at the front in April. That
all held water, whereas the conjecture that he was ill did not. But
though I told myself this a good many times, I did not completely
trust my rendering, and his silence both before and after this telegram
was rather inexplicable. My reasonable self told me that there was no
shadow of cause for anxiety, but something inside me that observed from
a more intimate spy-hole than that of reason was not quite satisfied.
However, as the days of March went by and the time for my departure got
really within focus, this instinctive and unreasonable questioning grew
less insistent, and finally, as if it had been a canary that annoyed
me by its chatter, I put, so to speak, the green baize of reason quite
over it and silenced it. Soon I shall be sitting on the pergola, where
the shadows of the vine-leaves dance on the paving-stones, telling
Francis how yet another of my famous presentiments had been added the
list of failures.
And, indeed, there were plenty of other things to think about. Bellona,
goddess of war, has come out of her winter reverie, where, with her
mantle round her mouth, she has lain with steadfast eyes unclosed,
waiting her time. All these last months she has but moved a drowsy
hand, just sparring, but now she has sprung up and cast her mantle
from her mouth, and yelled to her attendant spirits "Wake! for winter
is gone and spring is here!" And, day by day, fresh news has come of
larger movements and the stir of greater forces. In Mesopotamia an
advance began late in February, and gathering volume, like an avalanche
rushing down a snow-clad cliff, it thundered on with ever-increasing
velocity till one morning we heard that the Baghdad city was reached
and fell into the hands of the British expedition. And still it rolls
on with its broad path swept clean behind it....
Simultaneously the advance on the French front has continued, though
without anything approaching a battle, as battles are reckoned
nowadays. The Germans have been unable to hold their line, and
retreating (I am sorry to say) in a masterly manner, have given us
hundreds of square miles of territory. The ridge of Bapaume, which held
out against the Somme offensive of last summer, has fallen into our
hands; so, too, has Peronne. True to the highest and noblest precepts
of _Kultur,_ the enemy in their retreat have poisoned wells, have
smashed up all houses and cottages with their contents, down to mirrors
and chairs; have slashed to pieces the plants and trees in gardens, in
vineyards and orchards; have destroyed by fire and bomb all that was
destructible, and have, of course, taken with them women and girls.
The movement has been on a very large scale, and the strategists who
stay at home have been very busy over telling us what it all means, and
the "best authority" has been very plentifully invoked. The optimist
has been informed that the enemy have literally been blown out of
their trenches, and tells us that a headlong retreat that will not
stop till it reaches the Rhine has begun, while the pessimist sees
in the movement only a strategical retreat which will shorten the
German line, and enable the enemy both to send reinforcements to other
fronts, and establish himself with ever greater security on what is
known as the "Hindenburg Line." The retreat, in fact, according to the
pessimist (and in this the published German accounts agree with him) is
a great German success, which has rendered ineffective all the Allies'
preparations for a spring offensive. According to the optimist, we have
taken, the French and we, some three hundred square miles of territory,
some strongly fortified German positions, at a minimum of cost. Out of
all this welter of conflicting opinion two incontestable facts emerge,
the one that the enemy was unable to hold their line, the other that
their retreat has cost them very little in men, and nothing at all in
guns.
In the midst of the excitement in the West has come a prodigious
happening from Russia. For several days there had been rumours of
riots and risings in Petrograd, but no authentic news came through
till one morning we woke to find that a revolution had taken place,
that the Tzar had abdicated for himself and the Tzarevitch, and that
already a National Government had been established, which was speedily
recognized by the Ambassadors of the various Powers. At one blow all
the pro-German party in Russia, which had for its centre the ministers
and intriguers surrounding the Imperial Family, had been turned out by
the revolutionists, and the work that began with the murder of Rasputin
at the end of December had been carried to completion. The Army and
the Navy had declared for the new National Government, and the work
of the National Government after the extirpation of German influence
was to be the united effort of the Russian people to bring the war
to a victorious close. The thing was done before we in the West knew
any more than muttered rumours told us; it came to birth full-grown,
as Athene was born from the head of Zeus. There are a thousand
difficulties and dangers ahead, for the entire government of a huge
people, involving the downfall of autocracy, cannot be changed as you
change a suit of clothes, but the great thing has been accomplished,
and at the head of affairs in Russia to-day are not the Imperial
marionettes bobbing and gesticulating on their German wires, but those
who represent the people. A thousand obscure issues are involved in the
movement: we do not know for certain yet whether the Grand Duke Michael
is Tzar of all the Russias, or the Grand Duke Nicholas the head of the
Russian armies, or whether the whole family of Romanoffs have peeled
off and thrown aside like an apple-paring; what is certain is that
some form of national government has taken the place of a Germanized
autocracy. How stable that will prove itself, and whether it will be
able to set the derelict steam-roller at work again and start it on its
way remains to be seen. For myself, I shout with the optimists, but
certainly, if the crisis is over and there actually is now in power a
firm and national Government, capable of directing the destinies of
the country, it will have been the most wonderful revolution that ever
happened.
And then, even earlier than I had dared to hope, for I had not expected
to get away before the last week in March, came that blessed moment,
when one night at Waterloo Station the guard's whistle sounded, and we
slid off down the steel ribands to Southampton. In itself, to any who
has the least touch of the travelling or gipsy mind, to start on a long
journey, to cross the sea, to go out of one country and into another
where men think different thoughts and speak a different language, is
one of the most real and essential refreshments of life, even when he
leaves behind him peace and entertainment and content. For two years
and a half, if you except those little niggardly journeys that are
scarce worth while getting into the train for, I had lived without
once properly moving, and, oh, the rapture of knowing that when I got
out of this train, it was to get on to a boat, and when I got out of
the boat (barring the exit entailed by a mine or a submarine), it
would be to get into another train, and yet another train, and at the
Italian frontier another train yet, all moving southwards. Then once
more there would be a boat, and after that the garden at Alatri, and
the stone-pine and Francis. Even had I been credibly informed by the
angel Gabriel or some such unimpeachable authority that the chances
were two to one that the Southampton boat would be torpedoed, I really
believe I should have gone, and taken the other chance in the hope of
getting safely across and, for the present, leaving England (which I
love) and all the friends whom I love also, firmly and irrevocably
behind. I wanted (as the doctors say) a change, not of climate only,
but of everything else that makes up life, people and things and moral
atmosphere and occupations. I was aware that there were some thousands
of people then in London who wanted the same thing and could not get
it, and I am afraid that that added a certain edge to ecstasy. To get
away from the people I knew and from the nation to which I belonged
was the very pith of this remission. A few hours ago, too, I had been
hunting the columns of newspapers and watching the ticking tape to
get the very last possible pieces of information about all the events
of which I have just given the summary, and now part and parcel of my
delight was to think that for many hours to come I should not see a
tape or a newspaper. The war had been levelled at me, at point-blank
range; for two years and a half I had never been certain that the very
next moment some new report would not be fired at me (and, indeed, I
intentionally drew such fire upon myself); but now I had got out of
that London newspaper office, and was flying through the dark night
southwards. Here in England everything was soaked in the associations
of war (though the most we had seen of it was two or three futile
Zeppelins), but in Alatri, which I had never known except in conditions
of peace and serenity, its detonation and the smoke of its burning
would surely be but a drowsy peal of thunder, a mist on the horizon,
instead of that all-encompassing fog out of which leaped the flash of
explosions. I wanted desperately, selfishly, unpatriotically, to get
out of it all for a bit, and Alatri, in intervals of Rome, beckoned
like the promised land. I am aware that a Latin poet tells us that a
change of climate obtained by a sea-voyage does not alter a man's mind,
but I felt convinced he was mistaken.
Throughout that delightful journey my expectations mounted. First came
the windy quay at Southampton, the stealing out into the night with
shuttered portholes, and in the early morning the arrival at Havre.
Then for a moment I almost thought that some ghastly practical joke
had been played on us passengers, and that we had put back again into
a British port, so Anglicized and khakied did the town appear. But no
such unseemly jest had been played, and that night I slept in Paris,
and woke to find a chilly fog over that lucent city, which again sent
qualms of apprehension through me, for fear that by some cantrip trick
this might be London again, and my fancied journey but a dream. But
the dream every hour proved itself real, for again I was in the train
that started from the Gare de Lyon, and not from my bedroom or the top
of the Eiffel Tower, as would have been the wont of dreams, and in
due time there was Aix-les-Bains with its white poplars and silvery
lake, and the long pull upwards to Modane, and the great hill-side
through which the tunnel went, with wreaths of snow still large on
its northern slopes, and when we came out of the darkness again, we
had passed into the "land of lands." The mountain valleys were still
grey with winter, but it was Italy; and presently, as we sped clanking
downwards, the chestnut trees were in leaf, and the petroleum tins
stood on the rails of wooden balconies with carnations already in bud,
and on the train was a _risotto_ for lunch and a dry and abominable
piece of veal, which, insignificant in themselves, were like some
signal that indicated Italy. The dry veal and the _risotto_ and the
budding chestnut trees and the unwearied beneficence of the sun were
all signals of the Beloved: tokens of the presence that, after so
long, I was beginning to realize again. And then the great hopeless
station of Turin happened, where nobody can ever find the place he
wants, and trains steal out from the platform where he has left them,
and hide themselves again, guarded by imperious officials in cocked
hats at subtly-concealed side tracks, escaping the notice, like prudent
burglars, of intending travellers. There were shrill altercations
and immediate reconcilements, and polite salutings, and finally the
knowledge that all was well, and I found my hat and my coat precisely
where I had left them, as in some conjuring trick, in the identical
compartment (though it and the train had moved elsewhere), and again we
slid southwards. There were olive-trees now, green in a calm air, and
grey when the wind struck them, and little ruined castles stuck on the
tops of inaccessible hills, and houses painted pink, and stone-walled
vineyards, and dust that came in through the windows, but it was the
beloved Italian dust. Then came the sea again on the right-hand side
of the train (only here was the magic of the Mediterranean), and the
stifle of innumerable tunnels, punctuated with glimpses of Portofino,
swimming in its hump-backed way out into the tideless sea, and the
huddle of roofs at Rapallo, and the bridge at Zoagli, and the empty
sands at Sestri, and the blue-jackets crowding the platform at Spezzia.
All this was real; a dream, though the reality was as ecstatic as a
dream, could not have produced those memories in their exact order and
their accurate sequence, and when, next morning, I awoke somewhere
near Rome, I thought that the years of war-time were the nightmare,
and this golden morning which shone on fragments of ancient aqueducts
and knuckled fig-trees was but the resumption of what had been before
the unquiet night possessed and held me. Here again, as three years
ago, was the serene wash of sun and southern air, untroubled and real
and permanent. I could open my mouth and draw in my breath. Dimly
I remembered the fogs of the north, and almost as dimly the fact
that Italy was at war too, striving to put her foot on that damnable
centipede that had emerged from Central Europe to bite and to sting and
to claw all that resented its wrigglings and prevented its poisoning of
the world.
* * * * *
I found that after four days in Rome I was free (except for a wallet
of papers which required attention), to go wherever I pleased for the
inside of a week, and you may judge where next the train took me. That
morning I had sent to Francis news of my escape from Rome (how desirous
"an escape from Rome" would have sounded a month ago), and the same
evening, across the flames of the sunset, I saw the peaks and capes of
the island, shaped like a harp lying on its back, grow from dimmest
outline of dream-shape into distinctness again. There on the left was
the lower horn of it, plunged into the sea; then came the inward curve,
sloping downwards to the grey cluster of the town, where the fingers of
the player would be, and it swelled upwards again into the larger horn
which formed the top of it. Never for more than a moment, I think, did
my eyes leave some part of that exquisite shape. How often in the lower
horn of it had Francis and I sat perched on that little platform by
the gilded statue of Our Lady, looking landwards across the blue plain
of sea towards the streamer of smoke from the truncated volcano, or to
the coastland northwards, where the port was whitely strung like a line
of pearls along the shore of the bay. Just below the other horn is the
divinest bathing-place that the world holds; on a rock a hundred yards
from the shore there is a little cave, curtained by seaweed, and in it
is a tin box where shall be found two cigarettes and matches to match.
Those were to have been lit and smoked within two months of their
concealment there, and that date has now long been buried beneath the
three years' landslide of war. The matches will certainly be a mildewed
fricassée of wood pulp and phosphorus, the cigarettes an almost more
ignoble glue of paper and tobacco; but to-morrow morning I swear that
Francis and I will swim there, and unearth the remains of the serene
days before the war, and recapture the _feel_ that there was in the
world before the Prussian centipede went forth on his doomed errand.
Francis, I know, will hate swimming so early in the year as this, for
he is a midsummer bather; but surely one who has been through the
horrors of Gallipoli and earned the V.C. in France will not absolutely
refuse to go through this ordeal by water for the sake of the recovery
of the peace-cache. If it is possible to feel certain of anything, it
is that to-morrow morning, whatever the weather, two futile Englishmen,
as happy as they are silly, will swim out to the rock below the higher
horn of the harp, and verify the existence of a tin box.
The shores grew clearer, and at last through a thin low-lying haze of
sunset we passed into the clear shadow of the island, and the houses
and pier of the Marina on which Teresa stood to welcome the return of
her _promesso,_ who was stricken to death as he was clasped in her
outstretched arms, defined themselves with the engraved sharpness of
evening in the south. As we entered this zone of liquid twilight, I
could see the fishing boats drawn up on the beach, the open arch of
the funicular station, the crowd on the quay awaiting the mild daily
excitement of the boat from the mainland, and at the sight of all those
things, unchanged and peaceful, I had for the moment more strongly
than ever the sense that there had been no war and there was no war,
and that I should presently step back into the days that preceded
those nightmare years. In a moment now I shall be able to distinguish
a tall white-flannelled figure, who will wave his hat as he catches
sight of me in the bow of the first disembarking boat that comes from
the steamer, and he will move forward to the steps, and he will say
"Hullo!" and I shall say "Hullo!" as I step ashore to find that to-day
is linked on without break to the summer of 1914 when I was here last.
I may have been to Naples for a night, or did I only leave by the
morning boat to-day? I really do not know....
And then I saw that Francis was not among the little group of islanders
on the quay. Probably he had not got the telegram I sent from Rome
to-day, for the postmaster of Alatri is no friend to telegrams, and, as
I have often thought, keeps one in his desk for a day or two, in order
to teach you not to be in such a hurry. And when he thinks you have
learned your lesson, he has it delivered, two or three days afterwards,
among your letters. But in spite of this perfectly adequate method of
accounting for the undoubted fact that Francis had not come to meet
the boat, I felt an inward resurgence of the uneasiness with which I
had received his request that I should come out in March if possible,
and not wait till April. I had accounted for that at the time by a
reasonable explanation, and I could account, also reasonably, for his
absence. But I could now, as the funicular railway drew us up like
a bucket from the well, into the higher sunlit slopes of the island,
account for both by one and the same explanation. He was ill when last
he wrote....
I found a porter in the Piazza, who shouldered my luggage, and I went
on ahead, striving to convince myself, with quite decent success, that
I was being afraid "even where no fear was," and yielded myself up,
though I walked briskly in order to put an end to my ominous surmises,
to the enchantment of the hour, and of the sense that I really had
arrived again. The little huddled town, with the Piazza from the doors
and arches of which any moment the chorus of light-opera might issue
with short skirts and "catchy" chorus, was quite unchanged, save that
at this hour of sunset it used always to be guttural with Teutonic
tourists, and a place to be avoided by the genuine islander. Unchanged,
too, was the narrow street, where two could scarcely walk abreast,
that led out to the hill-side on which the villa was perched; there
was the narrow slit of blue overhead, and the vegetable shop and the
tobacconist's and the _trattoria_ with the smell of spilt wine issuing
from it and the lean cat blinking at the doorway. The same children
apparently ran up against one's legs, the tailor was putting up his
shutters, and two Americans, as always, were buying picture-postcards
at the stationer's. The path dipped downwards, ran level between olive
groves and villas, made a right turn and a left turn, and there above
me was the flight of steps that led steeply up by the whitewashed
wall of the garden, and above the wall, still catching the last rays
of the sun, was the stone-pine, and behind it, greyish-white and
green-shuttered, the house, where in a minute now Francis would welcome
me. My bedroom shutters I saw were open, and blankets were being aired
on the window-sill, and this looked as if I was expected.
I opened the garden gate, pulling at the string that lifted the latch
inside, and a great wave of the scent of wallflower and freesias poured
over me, warm from their day-long sunning underneath the southern wall,
and intoxicatingly sweet. And even as I inhaled the first breath of it,
a woman came out of the dining-room door that opens on to the terrace.
She was dressed in the uniform of a hospital nurse.
"We were expecting you," she said, speaking with that precise utterance
of foreigners. "I hope you have had a good journey."
The scent of the freesias suddenly sickened me.
"What is the matter?" I asked. "What has happened?"
"He wants to tell you himself," she said.
"He? And is it serious?"
She looked at me with that calm, untroubled sympathy that is the reward
of those who give up their lives to mitigate suffering.
"Yes," she said. "It is very serious. Will you go up and see him now?"
"Surely. Where is he?"
"In his bedroom. The third door along the passage. Ah, I forgot; of
course you know."
He was lying much propped up in bed, opposite the open window, and as
he turned towards the door at my entry, I thought that this must be
some wicked, inexplicable joke, so radiant and young and normal was his
face.
"Ah, that's splendid!" he said. "It was ripping getting your telegram
this morning."
"Francis, what's the matter?" I asked. "Why are you in bed? Why is
there a nurse here?"
He had not let go of my hand, and now he clasped it more closely.
"I'll tell you the end first," he said; "quickly; just in one word. I'm
dying. I can't live more than a few weeks."
There was a moment's silence, not prolonged, but at the end of it I
felt that I had known this for years.
"Will you hear all about it from the beginning?" he asked. "Or would it
bore you?"
He was so perfectly normal that there was really nothing left but to
be normal too, or it may be that a great shock stuns your emotional
faculties for a while. But I do not think it was that with me now.
It was Francis's intense serenity and happiness that infected and
enveloped me.
"I can't tell whether it would bore me or not," I said, "until I hear
it."
"Then make yourself comfortable for about half an hour," he said. "But
stop me when you like."
* * * * *
"It was very soon after I came out to Italy," he said, "that I kept
getting attacks of the most infernal pain. Then they ceased to be
attacks; at least, they attacked all the time. It was about then, when
it was worst, that I wrote you a pig of a letter. Wasn't it?"
"It was rather."
"Yes. I was pretty bad in other ways as well, which I'll tell you of
afterwards. At present this is just physical. I had an awful dread all
the time in my mind what this might be, though I kept saying it was
indigestion. Then I went down to Rome and saw Schiavetti, the doctor.
And I can't describe to you--though it may sound odd--what a relief it
was to know for certain that my fears were correct. The worst I had
feared was true, but anyhow, the fear, the apprehension were gone. When
you are up against a thing, you may dislike it very much, but you don't
fear the possibility of it any longer. It's there; and nothing, even
the worst, is as bad as suspense. I've got cancer."
He looked radiantly at me.
"That was one relief," he said, "and on the top of it came another.
It was quite impossible to operate. I needn't be afraid of being cut
about. All the surgery that I have had or will have is the morphia
needle, which, when you are in bad pain, is neither more nor less than
heaven. But I haven't wanted the morphia needle for the last fortnight,
and they think I shan't want it again. After a few horrible weeks the
pain grew much less, and then ceased altogether. I doze and sleep most
of the time now, and when I wake it is to an ecstasy. I don't want
to die, it isn't that, and I don't want to live. But that complete
absence of desire isn't apathy at all. It's just the divinest content
you can imagine. It's true that I wanted to see you, and here you are."
An idea suddenly struck me.
"Then there's something happened to you," said I, "which is not
physical."
"Ah! I wondered if you would think of that. Guess once more."
It was no question of guessing; I knew.
"You have passed through the dark night of the soul."
He laughed.
"Yes; that's it. And that explains a thing you must have been asking
yourself, why I didn't write to tell you when I knew what was the
matter with me. I couldn't. For among other things, which I will tell
you of, I had the absolute conviction that you wouldn't come, and
wouldn't want to be bothered. That's a decent specimen of the pleasures
of the dark night."
He turned a little in bed.
"But I wouldn't have been spared the dark night for all the treasures
of heaven," he said. "Out of His infinite Love Christ Jesus let me
know something of what He felt when He said, 'My God, my God, why
hast Thou forsaken me?' I remember once we talked about it, and it is
summed up in the sense of utter darkness and utter loneliness. My mind
reasoned it all out, and came to the absolute conclusion that there
was nothing: there was neither love anywhere nor God anywhere, nor
honour, nor decency. Had I been physically capable of it, there was
no pleasure, carnal and devilish, that I would not have plucked at.
At least, I think I should, but perhaps that would not have seemed
worth while. I didn't, anyhow, because I was in continual pain. But
all that I believed, all the amazing happiness that I had enjoyed from
such knowledge of God as I had attained to, was completely taken from
me. I could remember it dimly, as in some nonsensical dream. My mind,
I thought, must have been drugged into some hysterical sentimental
mood; but now, clearly and lucidly it saw how fantastic its imagination
had been. I went deeper and deeper into the horror of great darkness,
and I suppose that it was just that (namely, that my spirit knew that
existence without God _was_ horror) which was my means of rescue. I
still clung blindly and without hope to something that my whole mind
denied. It was precisely in the same way that I telegraphed to you to
come in March if you could. My mind knew for certain that you didn't
care, but I did that.
"It was just about then that I had forty-eight hours of the worst pain
I had ever known. The morphia had no effect, and I lay here in a sweat
of agony. But in the middle of it the dark night lifted off my soul
and it was morning. I can't give you any idea of that, for it happened
from outside me, just as dawn comes over the hills. And even while my
physical anguish was at its worst, I lay here in a content as deep as
that which I have now, with you sitting by me, and that delicious sense
of physical lassitude which comes when you are resting after a hard day.
"Next day the pain began to get better, and two days afterwards it was
gone. It has never come back since. I am glad of that, for it is quite
beastly. But what matters more is that the dark night is gone. And that
can't come back, because I know that the dawn that came to me after it
was the dawn of the everlasting day."
He paused a moment.
"And that's all," he said.
* * * * *
He grew drowsy after this, and presently his nurse, a nun from a
convent in the mainland, settled him for the night. Seraphina came
from the kitchen after I had dined, and wept a little, and told me how
Francis, "_il santo signorino,_" saw her every day, and took no less
interest than before in her affairs and the little everyday things.
Pasqualino was at the war, and the new boy who waited at dinner was
a fat-head, as no doubt I had noticed, and Caterina (if so be I
remembered about Caterina and Pasqualino and the baby) was in good
service, and the baby throve amazingly. Provisions were dear; you
had to take a foolish card with you when you wanted sugar, but the
vegetables were coming on well, and we should not do so badly. The
Signorino liked to hear all the news, and, if God willed, he would have
no more pain; but she wished he would eat more, and then perhaps he
would get his strength back, and cheat the undertaker after all. There
was a cousin of hers who had done just that; he was dying, they all
said, and then, _Dio!_ all of a sudden he got better from the moment
Seraphina had cooked him a great beefsteak for his dinner.
To those who have loved the lovely and the jolly things of this
beautiful world, the day of little things is never over, and next
morning, at Francis's request, I went down to the bathing-beach with
orders not to mind if the water was chilly, but swim out to the rock
of the cache and bring the tin box home. From his window he could not
see the garden itself, but only the pine-tree, but would it not be
possible to fix a looking-glass on the slant in the window-sill, so
that from his bed he could see as well as smell the freesias and the
narcissus and the wall-flowers? The success of this made him want to
see more, and now that the weather was warm, there surely could not be
any harm in transplanting him, bed and all, on to the paved platform
at the end of the pergola, and letting him spend the rest of his days
and nights in the garden. With a few sheets of canvas, to be let down
at night, and could we not engineer a room for him there? He often used
to sleep out there before. The question was referred to the nurse and
met with her approval and that of the doctor; so that afternoon we made
everything ready, and by tea-time had carried him out on his mattress
with the aid of Seraphina and the fat-head, to his great contentment.
This out-of-door bedroom was screened from the north by the house,
and between the pillars of the pergola to east and south and west the
nimble fingers of Seraphina had rigged up curtains of canvas that could
be drawn or withdrawn according to the weather, while overhead was the
matting underneath which we dined in the summer. The electric light was
handy to his bed, and on the table by it was a bell with which he could
summon the nurse, who slept in the bedroom overlooking the pergola. His
bedside books stood there also: "Alice in Wonderland," a New Testament,
"Emma," and a few more. The stone-pine whispered to the left of his
bed, and the wind that stirred there blew in the wonderful fragrance of
the spring-flowering garden.
Francis had been very drowsy all day, but for an hour that evening
we talked exactly as we might have talked nearly three years ago,
before the flame of war had scorched Europe. There were plans we had
been making then for certain improvements in the house, and those we
discussed anew. We spoke of the odd story concerning the footstep that
walked in the studio, and wondered if the _strega_ would be heard
again; the tin box, which I had obediently fetched from its cache,
was opened; Seraphina came out with commissariat suggestions for next
day, and the news that Pasqualino had got a week's leave and would be
here several days before Easter to see the _bambino_ on which he had
never yet set eyes. Soon the stars began to appear in the darkening
night-blue of the sky, and the breeze from the garden bore in no longer
the scent of open flowers, but the veiled fragrance of their closing,
and the smell of the damp earth, irrigated by the heavy dew, came with
it....
We talked of pleasant and humorous little memories of the past, and
plans for the future, just as if we were spending one of the serene
summer evenings the last time we were here together, three years ago,
and it seemed perfectly natural to do so. Among those plans for the
future there came up the question of my movements, and we settled that
I should go back to Rome the day after to-morrow, and return here if
possible for Easter.
"For that," said Francis cheerfully, "will be about the end of my
tether. The end of it, I mean, in the sense that I shan't be tethered
any more. Oh, and there's one thing I forgot. Be sure you go to some
medium about the packet I sealed up on the last time I was in England.
Don't you remember? We both sealed up a packet?"
"Oh, don't!" said I. "I hate the thought of it."
"But you mustn't shirk," he said. "If it had been you, not me, I
shouldn't have shirked. You've got to go to some medium, and see if he
can tell you what's in my packet. And the interesting thing is that
I can't remember for the life of me what I put there, and certainly
nobody else knows. So if any medium can tell you what's inside it, it
will really be extremely curious. Mind you tell me--oh, I forgot."
"Would you mind not being quite so horrible?" I said.
"I'm not horrible. If anybody is being horrible it's you in not feeling
that I shall be living, not only as much as before, but much more. I
say, do get hold of that."
"Yes, I'll try. But the flesh is weak."
He was silent a moment.
"It's through weakness that His strength is made perfect," he said.
"And here's my nurse coming to settle me. What a jolly talk we've had!"