The Englishman is brought up to live his life independently of woman.
He considers his masculine solitariness a sign of strength. To be seen
in the streets with his wife or sisters is to acknowledge that they are
necessary. He feels awkward at being observed publicly in their
company. He shows them no gallantries. He walks a little way apart. His
conversation with them lacks spontaneity. He is not enjoying himself.
He is wanting to be kind and natural, but he dreads lest he should be
thought effeminate. His national conception of manliness demands that he
should be complete in himself. How he ever so forgets his shyness as to
make a woman his wife is one of the unsolved mysteries. Some primeval
instinct, deeper than his national training of reserve, goads him to it.
On recovering from his madness, he is among the first to marvel.
When Christian had climbed to the top of the hill his sack of sins fell
from his back. When an Englishman lands in France, he drops his bundle
of moral scruples in the harbor as he passes down the gang-plank.
For morality is a matter of temperament, and for the time being his
temperament shall be French. Just as a soul newly departed, may look
back with pitying resentment on the chill chaotic body that once
confined it, so he looks back across the English Channel at the
uncharming rectitude of his former self. Being an Englishman has bored
him.
I shall never forget the first wild rapture with which I viewed the tall
white cliffs of Dieppe. It was about three in the afternoon. The sky was
intensely blue, dotted here and there with fleecy islands of cloud. The
sun smote down so hotly on the deck that one’s feet felt swollen. Far
away the gleaming quaintness of the French fishing-town grew up and
stole nearer. It seemed to me that as the wind swept towards us from the
land, I caught the merry frou-frou of ten thousand skirts. Fields and
woodlands which topped the cliffs, hid laughing eyes and emotional white
arms eagerly extended. The staccato chatter of happiness lay before me.
I had escaped from the Eveless Paradise of my own countrymen. I had
slipped out by the back-door of the world. I was free to act as I liked.
I was unobserved. Discretion had lost its most obvious purpose. It
excited me to pretend to myself that I was almost willing to be tempted.
That night I sat by the quays at Rouen, observing the groups of men and
women, always together, passing up and down. I saw how they drew frankly
near to one another. I listened to their scraps of quiet conversation.
The lazy laughter, now the hoarse brass of men’s voices, now the silver
clearness of a woman’s, rose and fell. Below me barges from Paris
creaked against the piles, and the golden Seine swept beneath the
bridges, singing like a gay grisette. As night sank down I was stung to
loneliness, thinking of the absence of Vi and Fiesole.
I arrived in Paris on the evening of the following day. Hastily
depositing my baggage at my hotel in the Rue St. Honoré, I set out to
stroll the boulevards. Until three in the morning I wandered from café
to café. I searched the faces of passers-by for signs of the gracious
abandon to happiness of which I had so often heard. My mind teemed with
vivid images of pleasure such as crowd the pages of novels concerning
Paris. Flitting moth-like up and down garish tunnels of light I saw a
painted death. It simpered at me from under shadows of austere churches.
It flirted with me, ogling me with slanted eyes, as I passed beneath the
glare of lamps. I crossed the Pont St. Michel going southward, and found
it in the guise of girls masquerading in male attire. I went across
the bridges again and found it in the Rue de Rivoli, hunting with jaded
feverish expression for men. Wherever I went I encountered the same
fixed mercenary smile, saw the same lavish display of ankles beneath
foamy skirts, and heard the same weary tip-tapping of feet which carried
bodies which should be sold to whoever would purchase.
Where was the joy and adventure of which I had heard? The purpose of
happiness should be life, not death. Several times that night women
turned aside and seated themselves at a table beside me. They roused my
pity; pity was quickly changed to disgust by their hot-foot avarice. All
around me was a painted death.
Overhead the breeze ruffled the tree-tops. I looked up through the
leaves. Stars were going out. I caught between roofs of tired houses a
glimpse of the Eternal looking down. Surely the God who kept the wind
going and replenished the sky with clouds, meant man to be happy in
some better fashion. I went back to my hotel and, gathering together my
baggage, fled.
At Florence the problem of right and wrong presented itself to me in
another aspect. Restraint seemed attended with sadness; license with
ugliness and regret. From above dim shrines disfigured Christs bespoke
the anguish of crucified passions. On the other hand, Filippino’s
tattered _Magdalene_ symbolized the hideous rewards of abandonment. Both
restraint and unrestraint brought sorrow, and I wanted to be supremely
glad. Life should be an affair of singing. I was fascinated by the
thought of woman. With one woman I was in love; in another I was
interested. Both of them I must forget. I would not love Fiesole because
I could not marry Vi. Yet within me was this capacity for passion,
smoldering, leaping, expanding, fighting for an outlet. Surely in a
rightly governed world it should find some fine expression! Through the
by-ways of every city that I entered the lean hound of vice hunted after
nightfall, and behind him stalked the painted death. The cleanness of
the country called me. Like a captive stag, I longed to feel the cool
touch of leaves against my shoulders.
In the Accademia at Florence I discovered my own dilemma portrayed. It
stated my problem, but it offered no solution. However, it gave me a
sense of comradeship to find that Botticelli, so many years ago, had
peered down over the same precipice. In _The Kingdom of Venus_ one sees
a flowered wood; from leafy trees hangs golden fruit; between their
trunks drifts in the flaming light that never was on sea or land. Here a
band of maidens have met with a solitary youth to celebrate the renewal
of spring. In the center of the landscape, a little back from the group,
stands a sad-faced Venus, who might equally well be a madonna listening
for the dreadful beat of Gabriel’s wings who shall summon her to be
mother of a saviour to the world. To her left stand three wanton spirits
of earth and air, innocently carnal, eternal in their loveliness. To
her right three maidens dance with lifted hands. One of them gazes with
melancholy desire towards the youth. He looks away from her unwillingly.
In their eyes broods the gloomy foreknowledge of wrong-doing. They would
fain be Grecians, but they have bowed to the Vatican. The shadows, the
flowers, the rustling leaves are still pagan; but in the young girl’s
eyes hangs the memory of the tortured Christ. She is wanton in her
scarcely veiled nakedness, but she dares not forget; and while she
remembers, she cannot be happy. The lips with which she will woo her
lover have worshiped the wound-prints of the pierced hand.
The Renaissance made even its sadness exquisite by using it as the
vehicle for poetry; but we, having lost our sense of magic, explain
our melancholy in mediaeval terms. Magic was still in the world; I was
determined to find it.
I was continually drawn back to the picture. I would sit before it for
hours. It explained nothing. If offered no suggestions. It simply told
me what I already knew about myself. But in watching it I found rest.
Rebellion against social facts which turn love into lust left me. I came
to see that a love which is unlawful is only lovely in its unfulfilment.
The young girl in the woodland, did she rouse the frenzy in her lover,
would lose the purity which was irrecoverable; by evening she would weep
among the broken flowers. Perhaps, did I win her, it might be so with
Vi.
I tried to find satisfaction by losing myself in memories of the past.
The past is always kindlier than the present because, as Carlyle once
said, the fear has gone out of it. The heavy actuality of the sorrows of
Romeos makes them pleasurable romance only to latter-day observers. In
their own day they were scandals. So I wandered through sun-scorched
Italian towns, red and white and saffron, and I hung above ancient
bridges, looking down on rushing mountain torrents, and I dreamt myself
back to the glory of the loves that had once been self-consuming beneath
that forgetful hard blue sky.
When I came to Ferrara my mind was stormy with thoughts of Lucrezia
Borgia--Lucrezia of the amber hair. It was here that she came in her
pageantry of shame to seek her third husband in the unwilling Alphonso.
Ferrara had not changed since that day. She had seen it as I saw it. I
entered the town at sunset. The golden light smote against the red-brick
walls of the Castello. I imagined that I saw her sweet wronged face,
half-saint, half-siren, gazing out from the narrow barred windows across
the green-scummed moat.
I hired rooms in the primitive _Pellegrino e Gaiana_. They looked out on
the dusty tree-shadowed Piazza Torquato Tasso, where tables with white
cloths were spread, on which stood tall bottles of rough country wine.
I promised myself that from there, as I sat, I could just discern the
Castello. I had my dinner beneath the trees. On the further side of the
square was a wine tavern. Men and girls were singing there. Sometimes
the door would push open, letting out a rush of light. I tried to think
that they were the men-at-arms of long ago. A cool breeze stirred the
dust at my feet. The moon was rising. I got up and sauntered through
gaunt paved streets, past empty palaces, past Ariosto’s house and out
toward the country, where vines hung heavy with grapes, festooning the
olive-trees. Italy lay languorous and scented in the night, like a fair
deep-bosomed courtesan. The sensuous delight of the present mingled with
my thoughts of the past. I had been hardly surprised had Lucrezia stolen
out from the dusk towards me, with the breeze whipping about her the
golden snakes of her hair.
Slowly I turned back to the town. At the Castello I halted, peering
across the moat at the sullen darkness of the walls on the other side.
As I stood smoking my cigar, I saw an English girl coming towards me
across the Piazza Savonarola. Her nationality was unmistakable; she
walked with a healthy air of self-reliance which you do not find in
Latin women. I was surprised to see her. July is not the month for
tourists. So far, save for a few Americans, I had had Italy to myself.
And I was surprised for another reason--she was unaccompanied.
As she drew nearer, I turned my back so that she should not be offended
by my staring. I heard her step coming closer. It halted at my side.
I looked round, supposing she had lost her direction and was about to
question me.
“You--you here!” I exclaimed and remained staring.
“I didn’t think you’d expect me,” she laughed shyly.
“Of course I didn’t. How should I? What brought you?”
“I was on my way to Venice; but remembering you were here, I stayed over
for the night. You don’t mind?”
“Mind! I should say not. Where are you staying?”
“At the _Albergo Europa_. I was just on my way over to the _Pellegrino
e Gaiana_ to inquire if you were there. I’ve asked at all the other
hotels.”
While we had been speaking I had been watching her closely. What was it
that was changed in her? Was it the voluptuousness of the Italian night
that made her more splendidly feminine? She had lost her laughing tone
of laziness. Her beauty was strong wine and fire. Something had become
earnest in her. Then I asked myself why had she come--was she really on
her way to Venice?
“I’m jolly glad you came,” I said impetuously; “I’ve been missing you
ever since I left.”
“And I you.”
She took my arm, giving it a friendly hug, just as Ruthita did when she
was glad. We walked over to the Piazza Torquato Tasso. Seating ourselves
at a table beneath the trees, we called for wine. The light from the
trattoria fell softly on her face. The air was dreamy with fragrance of
limes. At tables nearby other men and women were sitting. Across the way
in the tavern my men-at-arms were still singing and carousing.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, leaning across towards me.
“I was thinking that I now begin to understand you.”
“In what way?” She jerked the question out. It was as though she had
flung up her arms to ward off a blow. Her voice panted.
“You’ve always puzzled me,” I said. “You are a mixture of ice and fire.
The ice is English and the fire is Italian. You’re different to-night.”
“How?”
“You’re mediaeval. The fire has melted the ice.”
She took my hand gratefully and drew me nearer. “Do you like me better?”
“Much better. I keep thinking how like you are to Simonetta in The
_Kingdom of Venus_. I spent hours sitting before it at the Accademia in
Florence. I couldn’t tell what was the attraction. Now I know. It was
you I was looking at; you as you are now--not as you were.”
“Dante,” she said, “you can see what is beautiful in a painting or
a poem, but you can’t see beauty in things themselves. You’re afraid
to--you’re afraid of being disillusioned. You see life as reflected in a
mirror.”
“It’s safer,” I smiled.
She took me up sharply. There was pain in what she said. “Ah, yes,
safer! You’re always counting the cost and looking ahead for sorrow.
You’re a pagan, but fear makes you an ascetic. You have the feeling
that joy is something stolen, and you grow timid lest you’re going to be
bad.”
“That’s true.”
“Can’t you believe,” she whispered, “that anything that makes two people
happy must be right and best?”
“I wish I could.”
“And that anything that makes them sad must be wicked?”
“Fiesole,” I said, “have you been sad?”
She would not answer, but drew herself back into the shadow so I could
not see her expression. We sat silent, fingering our glasses, giving
ourselves over to the languor of the summer’s night. Through the
rapturous stillness we heard the breeze from the mountains rustling
across the Emilian plain like a woman in silk attire. At a neighboring
table a man and a girl, thinking themselves unobserved, swayed slowly
towards one another and kissed, as though constrained by some power
stronger than themselves. Through the golden windows of the tavern
across the way, one could see the silhouettes of men and women trail
stealthily across the white-washed walls. The spirit of Lucrezia and her
lover-poets seemed to haunt Ferrara that night.
“You’re going to Venice,” I said abruptly. “So am I. Perhaps we shall
meet there.”
“Perhaps.”
“We might travel there together.”
“I should be glad.”
We rose from the table. It was late. The piazza was growing empty.
The apple-green shutters before the windows of the houses were closed.
Behind some of them were lights which threw gold bars on the pavement.
The streets were silent.
“How did you know that I would be here?” I asked.
“You forget--you left me your addresses.”
“So I did. But you didn’t write. Why didn’t you write?”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.”
What she meant by that I could only guess. Perhaps she hardly knew
herself. My blood was rushing wildly through my veins. I was breathing
the atmosphere of passion. I did not look ahead; I was absorbed in the
present. I had been hungry for Vi--well, now I had Fiesole. I had been
thirsty for the love of a woman. Fiesole was giving me her comradeship.
I was intoxicated with life’s beauty.
The saffron moon looked down, pillowed on a bank of silver cloud. As
we passed the Castello, a fish leapt in the moat, and fell back with a
splash. I halted, leaning against the parapet.
“And it was here we met.”
She pressed against me. I could feel the wild beating of her heart;
it tapped against my side, calling to my heart for entrance. Her voice
shook with emotion; it whispered above the surge of conflicting thoughts
like the solemn tolling of a sunken bell. “Since then everything has
become golden, somehow.”
I dared not trust myself to respond to her tenderness. I was shaken and
awed by her intensity. With her lips just a little way from mine, so
that my cheeks were fanned by her breath, her face looked into mine,
the chin tilted and the long white throat stretched back. I gazed on her
motionless, with my arms strained down against my side.
“Fiesole,” I whispered, “how many girls and boys have stood here and
said that!”
Her eagerness died out. She slipped her arm into mine. “But we are
alive. I was thinking of nobody but our two selves to-night.”
We plunged into the cool deep shadows of the colonnade. We turned into
the Corso della Giovecca. Down the long dim street all the houses stood
in darkness, save for a faint patch of light which carpeted the pavement
in front of her hotel.
“Your maid will be wondering what has happened.”
She looked at me curiously. “She won’t. I didn’t bring her.”
“Good-night until to-morrow.”
“Good-night.”
She looked back once from the doorway and smiled. She entered. The sleepy
porter came out and swung to the gates.
I was amazed at her bewitching indiscretion. For myself it did not
matter. But what of her, if we should be seen together? A man can afford
such accidents; but a woman---- I tried to deceive myself. Our meeting
was, as she had said, haphazard. We were both alone in Italy. Our routes
lay in the same direction. What more natural than that we should travel
together? But I knew that this was not the case. I determined to open
her eyes to the risks she was taking.
Next morning when I woke, I wondered vaguely what was the cause of this
strange elation. Then memory came back. I jumped out of bed and flung
the shutters wide. Out in the piazza some earlier risers were already
seated at the tables. A man was watering the pavement, singing gaily to
himself. Beneath the trees a parrot and a cockatoo screeched, hurling
insults at one another from their perches. A soldier showed his teeth
and laughed, talking to a broad-hipped peasant girl. At the top of the
piazza a slim white figure waited.
I made haste with my dressing. I was extremely happy. I tried to analyze
the situation, but lost patience with myself.
Picking up my hat and running down the stairs, I came across her
standing outside the Cathedral, in the full glare of the sun. Before I
had spoken she turned, darting like a pigeon, instinctively aware of my
approach. “I’ve beaten you by nearly two hours,” she called gaily.
We passed into the fruit-market. I bought a basket of ripe figs; sitting
down on a bench we ate them together. All round us was stir and bustle.
Farmers in their broad straw-hats were unyoking oxen while women spread
the wares.
“Fiesole, there’s just one thing I want to say to you, after which I’ll
never mention it.”
“I know what it is. I’ve thought it all out.”
“Are you sure you have? Of course no one may ever know. But if by some
chance they should find out, are you sure that you think it’s worth
while?”
“Reckoning the cost again!” she laughed, helping herself to another fig.
“I’ll pay gladly. It’s you I’m considering,” I said seriously.
She rested her hand on mine. It was cool, and long, and delicate. I was
startled at the thrill it gave me. “Dante,” she whispered, “have you
ever wanted anything so badly that your whole body ached to get it? When
you were very thirsty, say, and you heard a stream, singing ‘Find me.
Find me’ out of sight in the hills among the heather? Then you climbed
up and up, and the sun beat down, and your throat was dry, and the
stream sang louder, and at last you found it. I’m like that. I don’t
mind what the bank is like. I lie down full-length and let the water
sing against my mouth. I’ve been thirsty for something, Dante, all my
life. Yes, I’ve counted the price. If you don’t mind having me, Dannie,
I’ll stay with you for the present.”
She rubbed her cheek against my shoulder ever so slightly. I bent
towards her. When you’ve wounded a woman, there’s only one way of making
recompense. She saw my intent. She drew back laughing, dragging my hand
with her. The quick red blood mounted to her forehead. The gold in her
green eyes sparkled with gladness. “Not now,” she cried. Then recovering
herself, “But you’re a dear to want me like that.”
That morning we visited the Corpus Domini where Lucrezia Borgia lies
buried. We were admitted to a little chapel where all was lonely and
silent. Presently a door opened and two nuns dressed in black entered.
Their faces were covered from sight by long black veils. All that was
human we were permitted to see of them was their eyes, which looked
out from two black holes like stars in a dreary night. They had been
beautiful perhaps, but because Christ was crucified they had crucified
themselves. And these women, who had never tasted life, whose flesh
had never throbbed with the sweet torture which was their right, whose
bodies were the unremembered sepulchres of little children whose lips
had never pressed the breast--these women were the guardians of her who
had been the Magdalene of the Renaissance, whose feet had climbed
the Calvary of passion, but not the Calvary of sacrifice. Sunlight,
amber-colored as Lucrezia’s hair, slipped across the slab which marked
her grave. Down there in the unbroken dusk, did her tresses mock decay?
From a hidden cloister the chanting of children’s voices broke the
quiet. Its very suddenness took me by the throat. It was the future
calling out of the sad and moldering content of stupidly misspent
lives. Fiesole edged her hand into mine. I smiled into her eyes; then I
looked at the nuns again. Who would remember them when three centuries
had gone by? Lucrezia, if she had been wanton, had at least given joy;
so the world forgave her now that she was buried. We tiptoed out into
the tawny street, where water tinkled down the gutters. We had found a
new sanction for desire.
It was towards evening that we sighted Venice, floating between sea and
sky in a tepid light. Where we parted from the mainland, thin trees ran
down to the water’s edge, shivering and gleaming, like naked boys. As
the train thundered across the trestled bridge which spans the lagoon,
Fiesole and I crowded against the window, tingling with excitement. The
salt wind smote upon our faces and loosened a strand of her red-brown
hair. Laughing, I fastened it into place. She snatched up my hand
and kissed the fingers separately. We were children, so thrilled with
happiness that we could speak only by signs and exclamations. A gondola
drifted by, rowed by a poppe in a scarlet sash. Though we both saw it,
we cried to one another that it was a gondola, and waved. Then the gold
sun fell splashing through the clouds; Venice was stained to orange, and
the lagoon to the purple of wine.
Not until the train had halted in the station did it occur to me that we
had made no plans.
Hotel porters were already fighting to get possession of our baggage.
“Where are you going to stay?” I asked.
“Wherever you like,” she said. “A good place is the _Hotel D’Angleterre_
on the Riva degli Schiavoni.”
So she took it for granted that we should put up at the same hotel! We
went aboard the steamer and traveled down the Grand Canal in prosaic
fashion, with the nodding black swans of gondolas all about us.
The _Hotel D’Angleterre_ stands facing the Canale di San Marco, looking
across to San Maria della Salute. The angle is that from which so many
of Canaletto’s Venetian masterpieces were painted.
The proprietor came out to greet us suave and smiling. “A room for
Monsieur and Madame?”
“Two rooms,” I said shortly.
When we went upstairs to look at them, we found that they were next door
to one another. Fiesole made no objection.
They were both front rooms and faced the Canal. One could hardly find
fault with them on the ground that they were too near together.
By the time dinner was over the silver dusk was falling. A hundred
yards out two barche, a little distance separated, drifted with swinging
lanterns. The tinkling of guitars sounded and the impassioned singing of
a girl. Above embattled roofs of palaces to the westward fiery panthers
of the sunset crouched. The beauty of it all was stinging--it seemed
the misty fabric of a dream which must instantly shatter and fade into a
pale and torturing remembrance.
We stepped into a gondola.
She spoke a few hasty words in Italian, then we stole out from the quay
across the velvet blackness.
“Where are we going?” I asked her.
“Round the old canals of the Rialto.”
Soon every sound, even the faint sounds of Venice, grew fainter and
vanished. Only the dip of the oar was heard, the water lapping, and the
weird plaintive cry of the poppe as we approached a corner, “A-òel,” and
“Sia stali” or “Sia premi” as we turned. We crept along old waterways
where the oozy walls ground against the gondola on either side. Far, far
up the narrow ribbon of ink-blue sky and the twinkling of stars looked
down. Fiesole cuddled against me, like a contented tired child. I kept
thinking of what she had said, “Have you ever wanted anything so badly
that your whole body ached to get it?” I wondered if she had got that
something now.
When we returned to the hotel it was past midnight. The sharp tang of
morning was in the air. Lights which had blazed across the lagoon,
now smoldered like torches burnt to the socket. Venice floated, a fair
Ophelia with eyes drowned and hair disordered; one saw her mistily as
through water.
Our gondola creaked against the landing, banged by the little waves.
A poppe in a nearby barca groaned in his sleep and stirred. We were
cramped with our long sitting. I gave Fiesole my arm; she shrank against
me. At the door of her room I paused.
“We’ve had one brilliant day to remember. You’re happy now?”
“Very happy, dear Dante.”
I entered my room and sat down in the dark on the side of the bed.
I did not love her. I blundered my way over all the old arguments. I
told myself that, since I could not marry Vi, I could not do better than
marry Fiesole. But at the thought my soul rebelled--it was treachery. I
tried to expel Vi’s image from my mind, but it refused to be expelled. I
lived over again all the intoxicating pleasure of the day, but it was Vi
who was my companion. I only drugged myself with Fiesole. She appealed
to my imagination; her loveliness went like a strong wine to my head.
In the next room all sounds of stirring had ceased. I looked up;
greyhound clouds, long and lean, coursed in pursuit of stars across the
moon. I tiptoed to the window. As I leant out, I heard a faint sighing.
I caught the glint of copper-gold hair poured across the sill of the
neighboring window. Fearing she might see me, I drew back. Why was it,
I asked myself, that Fiesole was not my woman? What was the reason for
this fantastic loyalty to Vi, who could never be mine? Was it instinct
that held me back from Fiesole or mere cold-heartedness?
For the next three days we wandered Venice, doing the usual round of
churches and palaces. I was feverishly careful to live my life with
Fiesole in public. I feared for her sake to be left alone with her.
There was protection in spectators. She understood and accepted the
situation, though we had not discussed it together. She played the part
of a daring boy, carrying herself with merry independence. At times I
almost forgot she was a girl. She disarmed my watchfulness, and seemed
bent on showing me that it was unnecessary.
On the morning of the fourth day, we returned to déjeuner parched
and footsore from exploring the stifling alleys which lie back of the
Rialto. The air was heavy and sultry. The water seemed to boil in the
canals. Every stone flung back the steady glare. Blue lagoons, polished
as reflectors, mirrored the blue of the cloudless sky.
From where we sat at table, we could see crowded steamers draw in at the
pier and crawl like flies across the bay to Lido.
Fiesole made a queer little face at me. “Stupid old sober-sides!”
“What’s the matter?”
She flung herself back in her chair, regarding me with a languid,
arch expression. “I’m tired of fudging in and out of old palaces and
churches. I came here to enjoy myself. If I promise to be a good girl,
will you take me to Lido to bathe? We’ll have one dear little afternoon
all to ourselves.”
A warm breeze caught us on the steamer. What ripe lips Fiesole had, and
what inscrutable eyes! Since that first night of our arrival, she had
prevented me from treating her with any of the privileges of her sex.
She had walked when and where she liked. She had insisted on paying her
share of everything down to the last centesimi. Now she changed her mood
and slipped her arm through mine. We had both grown tired of pretending
she was a man. “You needn’t be afraid to be nice to me,” she said.
There were lovers all about us: girls from the glass-factories in
white dresses, bareheaded, with tasseled black shawls; sailors from the
Arsenal with keen bronzed faces and silky mustaches. Venice was taking
a day off and giving us a lesson in happiness. The self-consciousness
of the Anglo-Saxon, which makes the expression of pleasure bad taste
and distressing, was absent. Each was occupied with him or herself,
sublimely unconscious of spectators.
“Haven’t I been nice?”
She patted my hand, entirely the woman now. “You’ve been trying to be
correct. Why can’t you be your own dear self?”
Taking the tram across the island, we came to the Stabilimento dei
Bagni. We walked through the arcade and down on to the terrace. The sea
rolled in flashing, green and silver, in a long slow swell. Leaning over
the side, we watched the bathers. Men, with costumes unfastened at the
shoulders, sifted golden sand through their fingers on to their
naked chests. Women lay beside them, buried in the sand, laughing and
chatting.
I noticed a blond young giant standing at the water’s edge. His face
kindled. I followed the direction in which he was looking. A dark-eyed
girl had come out of her cabin. She wore a single-piece, tight-fitting
suit of stockingette, which displayed her figure in all its splendid
curves. Her face was roguish and vivid as that of Carmen. On her head
she wore a scarlet turban. Her costume was sky blue.
The men who had been lying on their backs, turned over and regarded her
with lazy admiration of her physical loveliness. Seemingly unaware of
the interest she aroused, she came tripping daintily to the water’s
edge, her white limbs flashing. The man held out his hand. With little
birdlike exclamations she ran to him; then drew back and shivered as
the first wave rippled about her feet. He encouraged her with tender,
quickly spoken words. Her timidity was all a pretty pretense and they
both knew it; but it gave them a chance to be charming to one another.
He seized her hand again; she hung back from him laughing. Then they
waded out together, hand-in-hand, splashing up diamonds as they
went. They seemed to see no one but each other; they eyed one another
innocently, unabashed. When they came to the deeper water, she clasped
her arms about his neck; he swam out toward the horizon with her riding
on his back. He was like a young sea-god capturing a land-maiden.
A stab of envy shot through me. I felt indignant with my inherited
puritanism. It would not permit me simply to enjoy myself. I must be
forever analyzing motives, and lifting the lid off the future to search
for consequences.
I looked at Fiesole. Her eyes were starry. They seemed to mock me and
plead with me saying, “Oh, Dannie, why can’t we be like that?”
I glanced down at the beach. The bathers were rising up and shaking off
the sand. I noticed that only the women who had no beauty hid themselves
behind bathing-skirts. The Italian standard of modesty!--you only need
be modest when you have something to be ashamed of. I accepted the
standard.
Fiesole broke the silence, clapping her hands, crying “Wasn’t she
perfect!” Then she took hold of my face in childish excitement and
turned my head. “Oh, look there!”
An English girl had come out. Her bathing-suit was drab-colored and
baggy. Sagging about her knees hung an ugly skirt. In her clothes she
might have been pretty; but now she was awkward and embarrassed. Her
manner called attention to the fact that she was more sparsely clad than
usual. She wore tight round her forehead a wretched waterproof cap.
“There’s Miss England,” laughed Fiesole.
“When we bathe, you be Miss Italy,” I laughed back.
And she was.
When I look back to that sunny July afternoon with the blue and silver
Adriatic singing against the lips of the land, the warm wind blowing
toward the shore from Egypt’s way, the daring flashing of slim white
bodies tossed high by glistening waves, and the undercurrent merriment
of laughter and secret love-making, I know that I had ventured as far as
is safe into the garden which knows no barriers. It is as I saw her then
that I like to remember Fiesole. I can see her coming down the golden
sands, with a tress of her gold-red hair, that had escaped, lying
shining between her breasts. I recall her astonishing girlishness, which
she had hidden from me so long. Like a wild thing of the woods, she came
to me at last, timid in her daring, halting to glance back at the green
covert, advancing again with glad shy gestures. Whatever had gone before
was gallant make-belief. Without a word spoken, as her eyes met mine she
told me all at the water’s edge.
That afternoon I learnt the absurd delirium that may overtake a man who
is owned in public by a pretty woman. She was the prettiest woman in
Italy that day from her small pink feet to her golden crown. And she
knew it. She treated me as though I was hers and, forgetting everything,
I was glad of it. I can still thrill with the boyish pride I felt when
I fastened her dress, with all the beach watching. Whatever she asked
me to do was a delightful form of flattery. It pleased me to know that
others were suffering the same pangs of envy that I had felt. They were
saying to themselves, “How charming she is! What a lucky fellow! That’s
what youth can do for you. I wonder whether they’re married.”
Tucking her arm under mine with a delicious sense of proprietorship, we
set out with the crowd through the tropic growth of flowers to the pier
from where the steamer started. A little way ahead I saw the blond giant
with his gay little sweetheart. He was all care of her. She fluttered
about him like a blue butterfly about a tall sunflower. She looked
up into his face, making impertinent grimaces. He nodded his head and
laughed down.
Was it only the spirit of imitation that caused us to copy them? They
gave us a glimpse into the tender lovers’ world, which we both were sick
with longing to enter. If Fiesole was playing a part she played it well.
Her cheeks flushed and her eyes were brilliant. She made me feel the
same bewilderment of gladness I had felt all those years ago, as a boy
at the Red House. How much it would have meant to me then if she had
treated me as she did now!
We crossed the bay towards the hour of sunset. Venice swooned in a
golden haze. Clouds struck sparks from the burning disk, like hammers
falling on a glowing anvil. The lagoon stared at the sky without a
quiver. We traveled a pathway of molten fire.
“We must live this day out,” I said as we landed. “Let’s go to the
Bauer-Grunwald to-night.”
We hurried upstairs and changed into evening-dress. I tapped at her
door, asking, “Are you ready?”
“All except some hooks and eyes. Come in,” she replied.
She was seated before the looking-glass, with her arms curved upward,
tucking a bow of black ribbon in her hair. It was her reflection that
looked into my face and smiled.
“You do me proud, Fiesole,” I said, remembering one of Vi’s phrases.
She looked as simple as a sixteen year old girl. Her dress was of pale
green satin, cut high in the waist in Empire fashion, hanging without
fullness to just above her ankles. The sleeves left off at the elbows.
Her wonderful russet hair was gathered into a loose knot and lay coiled
along her neck. She was the Fiesole of my school-days. Had she intended
to remind me?
I sat down on the edge of the bed while she finished her dressing,
following with my eyes the feminine nick-nacks which were strewn about.
But always my eyes came back to her, with the mellow glory from the
window transfiguring her face and neck. There was a nipping sweetness in
being so near to a woman whom I could not hope to possess. I knew that
without marrying her I could not keep her. Platonic friendships are only
safe between men and women whose youth is withered. I was wise enough
to know that. We were chance-met travelers in Lovers’ Land--truants who
would soon be dragged back. I kept saying to myself, “Intimacy such as
we have can go but a short way further; any hour all this may end.”
Then I tried to imagine how this evening would seem to me years hence.
The poignancy of life’s changefulness made me wistful. One day we should
both be old. We should be free from tempestuous desires. The generous
fires of youth would have burnt out. We should know the worth then of
the pleasures we now withheld from one another. We should meet,
having grown commonsense or satiated, and would wonder wherein lay the
mastering attraction we had felt--from what source we had stolen our
romance. We should be weary then, walking where our feet now ran. Why
could we not last out this moment forever?
She rose, shaking down her skirt and courting my admiration.
“You may get to work on the hooks and eyes, old boy.”
Her voice was jerky with excitement. My fingers were awkward with
trembling. As I leant over her, she patted my cheek, flashing a caress
with her eyes. “Do you know, you’re handsome, Dante?”
I wanted to crush her in my arms, but my habitual restraint prevented. I
should destroy the virginal quality in her--something which could never
be put back. My mind conjured the scene. I saw her folded against me,
her eyes brimming up to mine in tender amazement. But my arms went on
with their business, as though some strong power held them down.
“It’s done. Come, bambino, it’s getting late.”
She followed me down the stairs. My senses were reeling with the
maddening fragrance of her presence. We walked through the Piazzetta and
Piazza di San Marco, through the narrow streets and across the bridges
till we arrived at the garden beside the canal. Arbors were illumined
with faery-lamps. It seemed a scene staged for a theatre rather than
a living actuality. Gondolas stole past the garden through the dusk.
Mysterious people alighted. Guitars tinkled. In tall mediaeval houses
rising opposite, lamps flashed and women looked down. As specters in
a dream, people leant above the bridge, gazed into the water, and
vanished. Venice walked with slippered feet and finger to lips that
night.
The silence shivered; a clear peal of laughter rippled on the air. We
turned. The girl with the young sea-god was entering the garden. They
seated themselves at a table near us--so near that we could watch their
expressions and overhear much that was said. It seemed they were fated
to goad us on and make us ambitious of attaining their happiness.
Fiesole stretched out her hands. I smiled and took them, holding them
palms up. “They’re like petals of pink roses,” I said.
Her face was laughing. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
“I’ve always thought that, and you know it--ever since you wouldn’t kiss
me in Sneard’s garden.”
“It was you who wouldn’t ask to be kissed,” she pouted. “What you could
have, you didn’t value. It’s the same now.”
Her hands quivered; her lips became piteous. All the wild commotion
of her heart seemed to travel through them to myself. My throat became
suddenly parched.
“You know how it is, Fiesole. It isn’t that I haven’t affection for you;
but to do that kind of thing, if I don’t intend to make you more to me,
wouldn’t be fair.”
“But if I want it? What if I were to tell you, Dante, that you’re the
only man I’ve ever cared for? What if I were to tell you that you’ve
always been first in my heart, ever since we first met?”
I looked away from her to the street of water. I had nothing with which
to answer. She tried to drag her hands from me, but still I held them.
“Dante,” she whispered, “look at me.” Her voice grew fainter. “I’m not
speaking of marriage. Two people can be kind to one another without
that.”
“And have I been unkind?”
She turned from my question. “You can never marry her,” she said. “You
know that.”
A long silence elapsed, which was broken by voices of the girl and
her lover at the neighboring table. Fiesole spoke again. “They’re not
married. They never will be married. And yet they can share with one
another one little corner of their lives.”
“For me it’s all or nothing,” I said. “If it wasn’t all, I should be
forever thinking of the end. That’s how I’m made--it’s my training. If I
did anything to you, Fiesole, that wounded you ever so little, I should
hate myself. Wherever you were, I should be thinking of you--wanting
to leave everything to come to you. I can’t forget. My conscience would
give me no rest.”
She drew her hands free. “And yet you’re wounding me now.”
She was always different from other women, doing the unexpected. Instead
of sitting melancholy through dinner, she broke into a burst of high
spirits. She told me about her father, who had marched with Garibaldi.
She rallied me on the awkward little boy I had been when first we
met--all arms, and legs, and shyness. She talked of love in a bantering
fashion, as insanity of the will. One minute she was the cynical woman
of the world--the next the innocent young school-girl. She puzzled
and played with me. Then she fell back into the vein of tenderness,
recalling the good times we had had, stampeding through the Cotswolds in
springtime with the mad wind blowing.
It was nearing midnight when we rose. Going down the little garden, we
halted on the steps by the canal. A dozen shadowy figures leapt up
with hoarse cries. We beckoned to a poppe; the gondola stole up and we
entered.
“Don’t go back yet,” Fiesole pleaded.
We crept through ancient waterways, all solitary and silent; past
churches blanched in the moonlight, and empty piazzas; under bridges
from which some solitary figure leant to observe us. Now a swiftly
moving barca would overtake us; as it fled by we had a glimpse through
the curtains of a man and a woman sitting close together. Now the door
of a tavern would suddenly open, flinging across the water a bar of
garish light; cloaked figures would emerge and the door would close as
suddenly as it had opened. Overhead in balconies we sometimes detected
the stir of life where we had thought there was emptiness, and would
catch the rustle of a woman’s dress or see the red flare of a cigarette.
We had the haunted sensation one has in a wood in May-time: though he
discerns but little with the eye, he is conscious that behind green
leaves an anonymous, teeming world is mating and providing for its
momentous cares.
Fiesole pressed against me; the darkness seemed to fling out hands,
thrusting us together. She slipped off her hood and pushed back her
cloak, displaying her arms and throat and hair. The seduction of her
beauty enthralled and held me spellbound. The air pulsated with illicit
influences. The dreaming city, vague and labyrinthine, was the outward
symbol of my state of mind. I had lost my standards; my will-power
was too inert to rouse itself for their recovery. I was entranced by
a sensuous inner vision of loveliness which exhausted my faculties of
resistance. I apprehended some fresh allurement of femininity through
each portal of sense. Fiesole’s touch made my flesh burn; her eyes stung
me to pity; her voice caressed me. Her body relaxed till it rested the
length of mine. Her head lay against my shoulder; her arms were warm
about my neck. I tried to think--to think of honor and duty; but I could
only think of her.
“You know what you said about Simonetta,” she whispered; “how you
thought I was like her and you spent hours before _The Kingdom of
Venus_. You were wrong, all wrong, Dante, in your thoughts about her.
The young man in the picture was Giuliano dei Medici and Simonetta
was dear to him for many years. So the flowers weren’t broken, Dannie.
Instead of broken flowers, they made poetry for Botticelli to paint.”
How could I tell her that there was a difference between love and
passion?--that my feeling for her could be only passion, because my
love was with Vi? She loved me--that made all her actions pure. Morality
would sound like the rasping voice of a tired schoolmaster, scolding a
classroom of healthy boys. It was even unsafe for me to pity her; when
I drew my coat about her, she kissed my hand. I clasped her closely,
gazing straight ahead, not daring to look down. Every quiver of her
languorous body communicated itself.
“Fiesole, if I don’t marry her, I will marry you some day. I promise.”
“But I want you now--now--now.” Her whisper was sharp-edged with
longing; it beat me down and ran out among the shadows like a darting
blade.
We floated under the Bridge of Sighs and drew up at the landing. She
leant heavily on my arm. We walked along the quay in silence. Few people
were about. I saw mistily; my eyes were burning as if they had gazed
too long into a glowing furnace. She drooped against me like a crushed
flower.
“You’re breaking my heart, Fiesole. I’d give you anything, but the thing
that would hurt you. Let me have time to consider.”
I was saying to myself, “Perhaps it would be right to marry her.” But
the memory of her whisper clamored insistently in my ears and prevented
me from thinking, “_I want you now--now--now._” With her voice she made
no reply.
We entered the hotel and stole past the office; the porter was sleeping
with his head bowed across his arms. On the dimly lit stairs she dragged
on my arm, so that I halted. Suddenly she freed herself and broke from
me, running on ahead.
Standing still, almost hiding from her, I listened for her door to open
and shut. Nothing stirred. I crept along the naked passage and found her
leaning against the wall outside our rooms. Her head was thrown back
in weariness, not in defiance; her arms were spread out helplessly; her
hands, with palms inward, wandered blindly over the wall’s surface. She
was panting like a hunted fawn. Her knees shook under her. Her attitude
was horribly that of one who had been crucified.
Made reckless by remorse, I bent over her and kissed her. Because I did
not put my arms about her, she made no response.
Something happened, wholly inexplicable, as though we had been joined by
a third presence. Not a stair creaked. Everyone was in bed. The air
was flooded with the slow, sweet smell of violets. I became aware of a
palpitating sense of moral danger.
I drew back from Fiesole. Her physical fascination faded from me; yet I
had never felt more tender towards her.
“I’m sorry, dear,” I said.
She met my gaze with a frozen, focusless expression of despair. Her
hands ceased their wandering.
I entered my room and, closing the door, stood pressed against the
panel, listening. After what seemed an interminable silence, her door
opened and shut. I looked out into the passage; it was empty.
*****
I spent a sleepless night and rose with my mind made up; since she
wanted it I would marry her.
Going downstairs, I found she had not breakfasted. As a rule she was an
earlier riser than myself; usually I found her waiting for me. I went
for a stroll on the Piazzetta to give her time. On my return she had not
appeared. I was beginning to grow nervous; then it occurred to me that
she was postponing the first awkwardness of meeting me by breakfasting
in bed.
Taking my place at our table in the window, I told the waiter to carry
Fiesole’s rolls and coffee up to her bedroom. He looked a trifle blank,
and hurried away without explanation. He returned, followed by the
proprietor, who informed me with much secret amusement that the signora
had called for her bill at seven o’clock that morning and had departed,
taking her baggage. I inquired if she had left any message for me; the
proprietor stifled a laugh and shook his head. I immediately looked up
trains, to discover which one she had intended catching. There was one
which had left Venice at eight for Milan. At the station I found that a
lady resembling Fiesole had taken a ticket for the through-journey. By
this time it was ten; the next train did not leave till two o’clock. I
sent a telegram to catch her at Brescia, to be delivered to her in
the carriage. No reply had been returned by the time I left Venice. I
reached Milan in the evening and pursued my inquiries till midnight, but
could get no trace of her. Either I had been mistaken in her direction,
or she had alighted at one of the intermediate stations.