stood tied up side by side, and quite motionless, as if stupefied. Only
two had lain down. The rest stood motionless, with tails dropped and
heads dropped, as if drugged or gone insensible. These cattle on the
ship fascinated the q-b. She insisted on going down to them, and
examining them minutely. But there they were--stiff almost as Noah's Ark
cows. What she could not understand was that they neither cried nor
struggled. Motionless--terribly motionless. In her idea cattle are wild
and indomitable creatures. She will not realise the horrid strength of
passivity and inertia which is almost the preponderant force in
domesticated creatures, men and beast alike. There are fowls too in
various coops--flappy and agitated these.
* * * * *
At last, at about half past seven the train from the island arrived, and
the people surged out in a mass. We stood hanging over the end of the
upper deck, looking down. On they poured, in a thick mass, up the
gangway, with all conceivable sorts of luggage: bundles, embroidered
carry-alls, bags, saddle-bags--the q-b lamenting she had not bought
one--a sudden surging mass of people and goods. There are soldiers
too--but these are lined upon the bit of a quay, to wait.
Our interest is to see whether there will be any more first-class
passengers. Coming up the wide board which serves as gangway each
individual hands a ticket to the man at the top, and is shooed away to
his own region--usually second class. There are three sorts of
tickets--green first-class, white second, and pink third. The
second-class passengers go aft, the third class go forward, along the
passage past our cabins, into the steerage. And so we watch and watch
the excited people come on board and divide. Nearly all are
second-class--and a great many are women. We have seen a few first-class
men. But as yet no women. And every hat with ospreys gives the q-b a
qualm.
For a long time we are safe. The women flood to the second-class. One
who is third, begs and beseeches to go with her friends in the second. I
am glad to say without success. And then, alas, an elderly man with a
daughter, first-class. They are very respectable and pleasant looking.
But the q-b wails: "I'm sure she will be sick."
* * * * *
Towards the end come three convicts, chained together. They wear the
brownish striped homespun, and do not look evil. They seem to be
laughing together, not at all in distress. The two young soldiers who
guard them, and who have guns, look nervous. So the convicts go forward
to the steerage, past our cabins.
* * * * *
At last the soldiers are straightened up, and turned on board. There
almost at once they start making a tent: drawing a huge tarpaulin over a
cross rope in the mid-deck below us, between the first and second class
regions. The great tarpaulin is pulled down well on either side and
fastened down, and it makes a big dark tent. The soldiers creep in and
place their bundles.
And now it is the soldiers who fascinate the q-b. She hangs over the bar
above, and peers in. The soldiers arrange themselves in two rows. They
will sleep with their heads on their bundles on either side of the tent,
the two rows of feet coming together inwards. But first they must eat,
for it is eight o'clock and more.
Out come their suppers: a whole roast fowl, hunks of kid, legs of lamb,
huge breads. The fowl is dismembered with a jack-knife in a twinkling,
and shared. Everything among the soldiers is shared. There they sit in
their pent-house with its open ends, crowded together and happy, chewing
with all their might and clapping one another on the shoulder lovingly,
and taking swigs at the wine bottles. We envy them their good food.
* * * * *
At last all are on board--the omnibus has driven up from town and gone
back. A last young lout dashes up in a carriage and scuffles aboard. The
crew begins to run about. The quay-porters have trotted on board with
the last bales and packages--all is stowed safely. The steamer hoots and
hoots. Two men and a girl kiss their friends all round and get off the
ship. The night re-echoes the steamer's hoots. The sheds have gone all
dark. Far off the town twinkles very sparsely. All is night-deserted.
And so the gangway is hauled up, and the rope hawsers quickly wound in.
We are drifting away from the quay side. The few watchers wave their
white handkerchiefs, standing diminutive and forlorn on the dark little
quay, in the heart of the dark, deserted harbour. One woman cries and
waves and weeps. A man makes exaggerated flag-wagging signals with his
white handky, and feels important. We drift--and the engines begin to
beat. We are moving in the land-locked harbour.
* * * * *
Everybody watches. The commander and the crew shout orders. And so, very
slowly, and without any fuss at all, like a man wheeling a barrow out of
a yard gate, we throb very slowly out of the harbour, past one point,
then past another, away from the encircling hills, away from the great
lump of Tavolara which is to southward, away from the outreaching land
to the north, and over the edge of the open sea.
* * * * *
And now to try for a cabin to ourselves. I approach the steward. Yes, he
says, he has it in mind. But there are eighty second-class passengers,
in an accommodation space for forty. The transit-controller is now
considering it. Most probably he will transfer some second-class women
to the vacant first-class cabins. If he does not do so, then the steward
will accommodate us.
I know what this means--this equivocation. We decide not to bother any
more. So we make a tour of the ship--to look at the soldiers, who have
finished eating, sitting yarning to one another, while some are already
stretched out in the shadow, for sleep. Then to look at the cattle,
which stand rooted to the deck--which is now all messy. To look at the
unhappy fowls in their coops. And a peep at the third-class--rather
horrifying.
And so to bed. Already the other three berths in my cabin are occupied,
the lights are switched off. As I enter I hear one young man tenderly
enquiring of the berth below: "Dost thou feel ill?" "Er--not much--not
much!" says the other faintly.
Yet the sea is like glass, so smooth.
I am quickly rolled in my lower berth, where I feel the trembling of the
machine-impelled ship, and hear the creaking of the berth above me as
its occupant rolls over: I listen to the sighs of the others, the wash
of dark water. And so, uneasily, rather hot and very airless, uneasy
with the machine-throbbing and the sighing of my companions, and with a
cock that crows shrilly from one of the coops, imagining the ship's
lights to be dawn, the night goes by. One sleeps--but a bad sleep. If
only there were cold air, not this lower-berth, inside cabin
airlessness.
VIII.
BACK.
The sea being steady as a level road, nobody succeeded in being
violently sick. My young men rose at dawn--I was not long in following.
It was a gray morning on deck, a gray sea, a gray sky, and a gray,
spider-cloth, unimportant coast of Italy not far away. The q-b joined
me: and quite delighted with her fellow-passenger: such a nice girl, she
said! who, when she let down her ordinary-looking brown hair, it reached
rippling right to her feet! Voila! You never know your luck.
The cock that had crowed all night crowed again, hoarsely, with a sore
throat. The miserable cattle looked more wearily miserable, but still
were motionless, as sponges that grow at the bottom of the sea. The
convicts were out for air: grinning. Someone told us they were
war-deserters. Considering the light in which these people look on war,
desertion seemed to me the only heroism. But the q-b, brought up in a
military air, gazed upon them as upon men miraculously alive within the
shadow of death. According to her code they had been shot when
re-captured. The soldiers had unslung the tarpaulin, their home for the
night had melted with the darkness, they were mere fragments of gray
transit smoking cigarettes and staring overboard.
We drew near to Civita Vecchia: the old, mediaeval looking port, with
its castle, and a round fortress-barracks at the entrance. Soldiers
aboard shouted and waved to soldiers on the ramparts. We backed
insignificantly into the rather scrubby, insignificant harbour. And in
five minutes we were out, and walking along the wide, desolate boulevard
to the station. The cab-men looked hard at us: but no doubt owing to the
knapsack, took us for poor Germans.
* * * * *
Coffee and milk--and then, only about three-quarters of an hour late,
the train from the north. It is the night express from Turin. There was
plenty of room--so in we got, followed by half a dozen Sardinians. We
found a large, heavy Torinese in the carriage, his eyes dead with
fatigue. It seemed quite a new world on the mainland: and at once one
breathed again the curious suspense that is in the air. Once more I read
the Corriere della Sera from end to end. Once more we knew ourselves in
the real active world, where the air seems like a lively wine
dissolving the pearl of the old order. I hope, dear reader, you like the
metaphor. Yet I cannot forbear repeating how strongly one is sensible of
the solvent property of the atmosphere, suddenly arriving on the
mainland again. And in an hour one changes one's psyche. The human being
is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul, and he has
got dozens. I felt my sound Sardinian soul melting off me, I felt myself
evaporating into the real Italian uncertainty and momentaneity. So I
perused the Corriere whilst the metamorphosis took place. I like Italian
newspapers because they say what they mean, and not merely what is most
convenient to say. We call it naivete--I call it manliness. Italian
newspapers read as if they were written by men, and not by calculating
eunuchs.
* * * * *
The train ran very heavily along the Maremma. It began to rain. Then we
stopped at a station where we should not stop--somewhere in the Maremma
country, the invisible sea not far off, the low country cultivated and
yet forlorn. Oh how the Turin man sighed, and wearily shifted his feet
as the train stood meaningless. There it sat--in the rain. Oh express!
At last on again, till we were winding through the curious long troughs
of the Roman Campagna. There the shepherds minded the sheep: the
slender-footed merino sheep. In Sardinia the merinos were very white and
glistening, so that one thought of the Scriptural "white as wool." And
the black sheep among the flock were very black. But these Campagna were
no longer white, but dingy. And though the wildness of the Campagna is a
real wildness still, it is a historic wildness, familiar in its way as a
fireside is familiar.
So we approach the hopeless sprawling of modern Rome--over the yellow
Tiber, past the famous pyramid tomb, skirting the walls of the city,
till at last we plunge in, into the well-known station, out of all the
chaos.
We are late. It is a quarter to twelve. And I have to go out and change
money, and I hope to find my two friends.--The q-b and I dash down the
platform--no friends at the barrier. The station moderately empty. We
bolt across to the departure platforms. The Naples train stands ready.
In we pitch our bags, ask a naval man not to let anyone steal them, then
I fly out into town while the q-b buys food and wine at the buffet.
It no longer rains, and Rome feels as ever--rather holiday-like and not
inclined to care about anything. I get a hundred and three lira for each
pound note: pocket my money at two minutes past twelve, and bolt back,
out of the Piazza delle Terme. Aha, there are the two missing ones, just
descending vaguely from a carriage, the one gazing inquiringly through
his monocle across the tram-lines, the other very tall and alert and
elegant, looking as if he expected us to appear out of the air for his
convenience.
Which is exactly what happens. We fly into each other's arms. "Oh there
you _are_! Where's the q-b? Why are you here? We've been to the arrival
platform--no _sign_ of you. Of course I only got your wire half an hour
ago. We _flew_ here. Well, how nice to see you.--Oh, let the man
wait.--What, going on at once to Naples? But must you? Oh, but how
flighty you are! Birds of passage _veramente_! Then let us find the q-b,
quick!--And they won't let us on the platform. No, they're not issuing
platform tickets today.--Oh, merely the guests returning from that
Savoy-Bavarian wedding in the north, a few royal Duchesses about. Oh
well, we must try and wangle him."
At the barrier a woman trying in vain to be let on to the station. But
what a Roman matron can't do, an elegant young Englishman can. So our
two heroes wangle their way in, and fall into the arms of the q-b by the
Naples train. Well, now, tell us all about it! So we rush into a
four-branched candlestick of conversation. In my ear murmurs he of the
monocle about the Sahara--he is back from the Sahara a week ago: the
winter sun in the Sahara! He with the smears of paint on his elegant
trousers is giving the q-b a sketchy outline of his now _grande
passion_. Click goes the exchange, and him of the monocle is detailing
to the q-b his trip to Japan, on which he will start in six weeks' time,
while him of the paint-smears is expatiating on the thrills of the
etching needle, and concocting a plan for a month in Sardinia in May,
with me doing the scribbles and he the pictures. What sort of pictures?
Out flies the name of Goya.--And well now, a general rush into oneness,
and won't they come down to Sicily to us for the almond blossom: in
about ten days' time. Yes they will--wire when the almond blossom is
just stepping on the stage and making its grand bow, and they will come
next day. Somebody has smitten the wheel of a coach two ringing smacks
with a hammer. This is a sign to get in. The q-b is terrified the train
will slip through her fingers. "I'm frightened, I must get in."--"Very
well then! You're sure you have everything you want? Everything? A
fiasco of vino? Oh _two_! All the better! Well then--ten days' time. All
right--quite sure--how nice to have seen you, if only a
_glimpse_.--Yes, yes, poor q-b! Yes, you're quite safe. Good-bye!
Good-bye!"
The door is shut--we are seated--the train moves out of the station. And
quickly on this route Rome disappears. We are out on the wintry
Campagna, where crops are going. Away on the left we see the Tivoli
hills, and think of the summer that is gone, the heat, the fountains of
the Villa D'Este. The train rolls heavily over the Campagna, towards the
Alban Mounts, homewards.
* * * * *
So we fall on our food, and devour the excellent little beef-steaks and
rolls and boiled eggs, apples and oranges and dates, and drink the good
red wine, and wildly discuss plans and the latest news, and are
altogether thrilled about things. So thrilled that we are well away
among the romantic mountains of the south-centre before we realise that
there are other passengers besides ourselves in the carriage. Half the
journey is over. Why, there is the monastery on its high hill! In a wild
moment I suggest we shall get down and spend a night up there at
Montecassino, and see the other friend, the monk who knows so much about
the world, being out of it. But the q-b shudders, thinking of the awful
winter coldness of that massive stone monastery, which has no spark of
heating apparatus. And therefore the plan subsides, and at Cassino
station I only get down to procure coffee and sweet cakes. They always
have good things to eat at Cassino station: in summer, big fresh ices
and fruits and iced water, in winter toothsome sweet cakes which make an
awfully good finish to a meal.
* * * * *
I count Cassino half way to Naples. After Cassino the excitement of
being in the north begins quite to evaporate. The southern heaviness
descends upon us. Also the sky begins to darken: and the rain falls. I
think of the night before us, on the sea again. And I am vaguely
troubled lest we may not get a berth. However, we may spend the night in
Naples: or even sit on in this train, which goes forward, all through
the long long night, to the Straits of Messina. We must decide as we
near Naples.
Half dozing, one becomes aware of the people about one. We are
travelling second class. Opposite is a little, hold-your-own
school-mistressy young person in pince-nez. Next her a hollow-cheeked
white soldier with ribbons on his breast. Then a fat man in a corner.
Then a naval officer of low rank. The naval officer is coming from
Fiume, and is dead with sleep and perhaps mortification. D'Annunzio has
just given up. Two compartments away we hear soldiers singing, martial
still though bruised with fatigue, the D'Annunzio-bragging songs of
Fiume. They are soldiers of the D'Annunzio legion. And one of them, I
hear the sick soldier saying, is very hot and republican still. Private
soldiers are not allowed, with their reduced tickets, to travel on the
express trains. But these legionaries are not penniless: they have paid
the excess and come along. For the moment they are sent to their homes.
And with heads dropping with fatigue, we hear them still defiantly
singing down the carriage for D'Annunzio.
A regular officer went along--a captain of the Italian, not the Fiume
army. He heard the chants and entered the carriage. The legionaries were
quiet, but they lounged and ignored the entry of the officer. "On your
feet!" he yelled, Italian fashion. The vehemence did it. Reluctantly as
may be, they stood up in the compartment. "Salute!" And though it was
bitter, up went their hands in the salute, whilst he stood and watched
them. And then, very superb, he sauntered away again. They sat down
glowering. Of course they were beaten. Didn't they know it. The men in
our carriage smiled curiously: in slow and futile mockery of both
parties.
The rain was falling outside, the windows were steamed quite dense, so
that we were shut in from the world. Throughout the length of the
train, which was not very full, could be felt the exhausted weariness
and the dispirited dejection of the poor D'Annunzio legionaries. In the
afternoon silence of the mist-enclosed, half-empty train the snatches of
song broke out again, and faded in sheer dispirited fatigue. We ran on
blindly and heavily. But one young fellow was not to be abashed. He was
well-built, and his thick black hair was brushed up, like a great fluffy
crest upon his head. He came slowly and unabated down the corridor, and
on every big, mist-opaque pane he scrawled with his finger W D'ANNUNZIO
GABRIELE--W D'ANNUNZIO GABRIELE.
The sick soldier laughed thinly, saying to the schoolmistress: "Oh yes,
they are fine chaps. But it was folly. D'Annunzio is a world poet--a
world wonder--but Fiume was a mistake you know. And these chaps have got
to learn a lesson. They got beyond themselves. Oh, they aren't short of
money. D'Annunzio had wagon-loads of money there in Fiume, and he wasn't
altogether mean with it." The schoolmistress, who was one of the sharp
ones, gave a little disquisition to show _why_ it was a mistake, and
wherein she knew better than the world's poet and wonder.
It always makes me sick to hear people chewing over newspaper pulp.
The sick soldier was not a legionary. He had been wounded through the
lung. But it was healed, he said. He lifted the flap of his breast
pocket, and there hung a little silver medal. It was his wound-medal. He
wore it concealed: and over the place of the wound. He and the
schoolmistress looked at one another significantly.
Then they talked pensions: and soon were on the old topic. The
schoolmistress had her figures pat, as a schoolmistress should. Why, the
ticket-collector, the man who punches one's tickets on the train, now
had twelve thousand Lira a year: twelve thousand Lira. Monstrous! Whilst
a fully-qualified _professore_, a schoolmaster who had been through all
his training and had all his degrees, was given five thousand. Five
thousand for a fully qualified _professore_, and twelve thousand for a
ticket puncher. The soldier agreed, and quoted other figures. But the
railway was the outstanding grievance. Every boy who left school now,
said the schoolmistress, wanted to go on the railway. Oh but--said the
soldier--the train-men--!
* * * * *
The naval officer, who collapsed into the most uncanny positions, blind
with sleep, got down at Capua to get into a little train that would
carry him back to his own station, where our train had not stopped. At
Caserta the sick soldier got out. Down the great avenue of trees the
rain was falling. A young man entered. Remained also the schoolmistress
and the stout man. Knowing we had been listening, the schoolmistress
spoke to us about the soldier. Then--she had said she was catching the
night boat for Palermo--I asked her if she thought the ship would be
very full. Oh yes, very full, she said. Why, hers was one of the last
cabin numbers, and she had got her ticket early that morning. The fat
man now joined in. He too was crossing to Palermo. The ship was sure to
be quite full by now. Were we depending on booking berths at the port of
Naples? We were. Whereupon he and the schoolmistress shook their heads
and said it was more than doubtful--nay, it was as good as impossible.
For the boat was the renowned _Citta di Trieste_, that floating palace,
and such was the fame of her gorgeousness that everybody wanted to
travel by her.
"First and second class alike?" I asked.
"Oh yes, also first class," replied the school-marm rather spitefully.
So I knew she had a white ticket--second.
I cursed the _Citta di Trieste_ and her gorgeousness, and looked down my
nose. We had now two alternatives: to spend the night in Naples, or to
sit on all through the night and next morning, and arrive home, with
heaven's aid, in the early afternoon. Though these long-distance trains
think nothing of six hours late. But we were tired already. What we
should be like after another twenty-four hours' sitting, heaven knows.
And yet to struggle for a bed in a Naples hotel this night, in the rain,
all the hotels being at present crammed with foreigners, that was no
rosy prospect. Oh dear!
However, I was not going to take their discouragement so easily. One has
been had that way before. They love to make the case look desperate.
Were we English? asked the schoolmistress. We were. Ah, a fine thing to
be English in Italy now. _Why?_--rather tart from me. Because of the
_cambio_, the exchange. You English, with your money exchange, you come
here and buy everything for nothing, you take the best of everything,
and with your money you pay nothing for it. Whereas we poor Italians we
pay heavily for everything at an exaggerated price, and we can have
nothing. Ah, it is all very nice to be English in Italy now. You can
travel, you go to the hotels, you can see everything and buy everything,
and it costs you nothing. What is the exchange today? She whipped it
out. A hundred and four, twenty.
This she told me to my nose. And the fat man murmured bitterly _gia!
gia!_--ay! ay! Her impertinence and the fat man's quiet bitterness
stirred my bile. Has not this song been sung at me once too often, by
these people?
You are mistaken, said I to the schoolmistress. We don't by any means
live in Italy for nothing. Even with the exchange at a hundred and
three, we don't live for nothing. We pay, and pay through the nose, for
whatever we have in Italy: and you Italians see that we pay. What! You
put all the tariff you do on foreigners, and then say we live here for
nothing. I tell you I could live in England just as well, on the same
money--perhaps better. Compare the cost of things in England with the
cost here in Italy, and even considering the exchange, Italy costs
nearly as much as England. Some things are cheaper here--the railway
comes a little cheaper, and is infinitely more miserable. Travelling is
usually a misery. But other things, clothes of all sorts, and a good
deal of food is even more expensive here than in England, exchange
considered.
Oh yes, she said, England had had to bring her prices down this last
fortnight. In her own interests indeed.
"This last fortnight! This last six months," said I. "Whereas prices
rise every single day here."
Here a word from the quiet young man who had got in at Caserta.
"Yes," he said, "yes. I say, every nation pays in its own money, no
matter what the exchange. And it works out about equal."
But I felt angry. Am I always to have the exchange flung in my teeth, as
if I were a personal thief? But the woman persisted.
"Ah," she said, "we Italians, we are so nice, we are so good. Noi, siamo
cosi buoni. We are so good-natured. But others, they are not buoni, they
are not good-natured to us." And she nodded her head. And truly, I did
not feel at all good-natured towards her: which she knew. And as for the
Italian good-nature, it forms a sound and unshakeable basis nowadays for
their extortion and self-justification and spite.
* * * * *