They crossed the quay to a dark little alley that skirted the flank of
his palace, and Martin could scarcely realise how it was that his mood
had so completely changed.
“Be warned in time!” he said: “It is not too late to repent. I don’t
want to lure you away under false pretences. I’m just a common tripper
and I have a Baedeker in my pocket.”
“I knew it!” she rejoined: “That is why I am throwing my reputation to
the winds. And I hope you notice, in the meantime, that we are entering
the Way of Wisdom. See?” she pointed to the name of the street--_Via
della Sapienza_--cut in a high stone. “But I always wanted to know what
trippers did. Do tell me!” She put down her parasol as they entered
the cool of the shadow. Martin was glad, for it enabled him to see her
better.
“Must I be butchered to make a Pisan holiday?” he asked. “Know
then that I, who now tread the Way of Wisdom, started out on a
poetical pilgrimage. I have been walking--figuratively, and a trifle
anachronously--in the footsteps of Shelley. Rome knows me; also
Venice, Ravenna, and the Euganean Hills. I have been to Spezia. I
have pensively treadled bicycles up and down behind every villa at
San Terenzo, wondering which was the one. I have sailed boats on the
Seno di Lerici. I have gone swimming at Viareggio. I have haunted the
harbour of Leghorn. And early this morning I wheeled up here. I am
now prepared to make a brief but comprehensive survey of the city and
environs--particularly of the _pineta_ at Bocca d’Arno. There I shall
compose a sonnet, sitting with my back against a sea-viewing pine, and
then I shall go home. The anatomy of tripping is laid bare before you!”
The lady laughed.
“I wish I could boast as good a reason for being here! It is the
dentist that brings me.” Martin noticed that she did not say from
where. “But I am afraid I have thrown away my reputation for nothing.
You have not yet explained the hordes that pour through this country
with their red books in their hands, as regular as the birds in their
seasons. Why do they do it, do you suppose? They make no poetical
pilgrimages. Have they no lives of their own to live?”
“You are rather hard on us!” laughed Martin. They turned out of their
alley, a mere crack between the houses with a strip of blue hung high
above, into a cross street that led to a small square. “It is very
simple. No American woman is quite happy until she has a motor car and
has been to Europe. And then there is Culture, with a large C, which
is making terrific inroads among us. And there is--‘_Kennst Du das
Land_’--You know? Not many of us are so lucky as to stay, like you in
the different colonies.” He looked at her to see how his guess would
catch.
“I remember I had ideas about them once,” she said, in a tone that made
Martin wonder. “But I know them too well now.”
“What about them?”
“They have most of the characteristics of Botany Bay at its flourishing
period. There are a few workers and loafers; but most of us are
hiders, sitting more or less modestly under smaller or larger clouds!
Don’t ask me which I am!” she laughed, as Martin looked at her. “I
used to think that disreputable people would be more interesting than
reputable ones,” she went on, “because they had at least the courage
of their convictions. But I have discovered to my sorrow that they can
be just as dull as anybody. Of course there are glittering exceptions.
But I have even met people of the most unquestionable virtue who were
really worth knowing! I have come to the sad conclusion that existing
classifications do not classify.”
Martin laughed with her as they went up the wider street into which
their crossway had led them. But the interest which her very first word
had aroused grew stronger in him than amusement. This dainty white
person whom he had never seen before to-day--who was she? Where had she
been, what had she done, yesterday, all the other days that went before
their chance meeting by the Arno? There was something in the lightness
of her words, in the simplicity with which she had accompanied him,
that was not of common days.
The street opened out in front of them into a space of sun that widened
as they advanced, disclosing the famous _piazza_ with its group of
white buildings under the city wall.
“Isn’t it nice?” she asked. “They always remind me of a little convoy
of ships becalmed--these lonely white things with their broad shadows
in the sunlight. But don’t look at that tower. I detest it for having
tried in such a stupid way to be different from all the towers in the
world. Nothing is nice about it but the view from the top. Which it is
too hot to get at now. Let’s go over to the Campo Santo and look at the
shadows of the tracery on the pavement. It is always cool and quaint
there.”
She raised her parasol and led obliquely across the great square,
between the cathedral and the baptistery, to a canopied door in a low
wall. Martin stared curiously about him as they went. The burnt grass
between the hot flagstones gave a strange impression of the solitude of
the place, of its evident separation from the life of the city, which
contrasted singularly with the splendours setting it apart among the
shrines of the world. They rang at the canopied door and were admitted.
It was like stepping into another century--so calm, so cool, so of
itself was that burial place of another age. Of a different quality was
the very sunshine which gilded the green of the quadrangle and retraced
on the pavement of the cloister the outlines of the marble lace-work
between the pillars. Martin was without words as they slowly made
the round of the ambulatory, following and smiling together over the
delightful frescoes. It all seemed to him a piece of the magic of this
woman who had so unexpectedly released him from the intolerable mood of
the morning.
Suddenly, among the sarcophagi, fragments of sculpture, and
commemorative marbles which strew that painted cloister, a tablet
caught his eye. It was in old French, with a flavour of Italian, and
together they picked out the quaint lettering: