Italy gave all her best to welcome them. It was a late year, a golden
autumn, with skies of such blue as Marjorie had never seen before. They
stayed at first in a pretty little Italian hotel with a garden on the
lake, and later they walked over Salvator to Morcote and by boat to
Ponte Tresa, and thence they had the most wonderful and beautiful tramp
in the world to Luino, over the hills by Castelrotto. To the left of
them all day was a broad valley with low-lying villages swimming in a
luminous mist, to the right were purple mountains. They passed through
paved streets with houses the colour of flesh and ivory, with balconies
hung with corn and gourds, with tall church campaniles rising high, and
great archways giving upon the blue lowlands; they tramped along avenues
of sweet chestnut and between stretches of exuberant vineyard, in which
men and women were gathering grapes--purple grapes, a hatful for a
soldo, that rasped the tongue. Everything was strange and wonderful to
Marjorie's eyes; now it would be a wayside shrine and now a yoke of
soft-going, dewlapped oxen, now a chapel hung about with _ex votos_, and
now some unfamiliar cultivation--or a gipsy-eyed child--or a scorpion
that scuttled in the dust. The very names of the villages were like
jewels to her, Varasca, Croglio, Ronca, Sesia, Monteggio. They walked,
or sat by the wayside and talked, or rested at the friendly table of
some kindly albergo. A woman as beautiful as Ceres, with a white neck
all open, made them an omelette, and then fetched her baby from its
cradle to nurse it while she talked to them as they made their meal. And
afterwards she filled their pockets with roasted chestnuts, and sent
them with melodious good wishes upon their way. And always high over all
against the translucent blue hung the white shape of Monte Rosa, that
warmed in colour as the evening came.
Marjorie's head was swimming with happiness and beauty, and with every
fresh delight she recurred again to the crowning marvel of this
clean-limbed man beside her, who smiled and carried all her luggage in a
huge rucksack that did not seem to exist for him, and watched her and
caressed her--and was hers, _hers!_
At Baveno there were letters. They sat at a little table outside a cafe
and read them, suddenly mindful of England again. Incipient forgiveness
showed through Mrs. Pope's reproaches, and there was also a simple,
tender love-letter (there is no other word for it) from old Mrs.
Trafford to her son.
From Baveno they set off up Monte Mottarone--whence one may see the Alps
from Visto to Ortler Spitz--trusting to find the inn still open, and if
it was closed to get down to Orta somehow before night. Or at the worst
sleep upon the mountain side.
(Monte Mottarone! Just for a moment taste the sweet Italian name upon
your lips.) These were the days before the funicular from Stresa, when
one trudged up a rude path through the chestnuts and walnuts.
As they ascended the long windings through the woods, they met an old
poet and his wife, coming down from sunset and sunrise. There was a word
or two about the inn, and they went upon their way. The old man turned
ever and again to look at them.
"Adorable young people," he said. "Adorable happy young people....
"Did you notice, dear, how she held that dainty little chin of hers?...
"Pride is such a good thing, my dear, clear, straight pride like
theirs--and they were both so proud!...
"Isn't it good, dear, to think that once you and I may have looked like
that to some passer-by. I wish I could bless them--sweet, swift young
things! I wish, dear, it was possible for old men to bless young people
without seeming to set up for saints...."
BOOK THE SECOND
MARJORIE MARRIED