[Footnote 2: In a later book, his biography of Oscar Wilde, Frank
Harris tells us more about himself than he does about Wilde. C.V.V.]
_Chapter X_
My story rolls on. As I gaze back through the years, gathering the
threads of this history together, trying to weave them into form, I am
amazed to recall how very few times, comparatively speaking, Peter and
I met. Yet, I suppose, I was his best friend during these years, at any
rate his most sympathetic friend. If there were no other proof, his
will would offer excellent evidence in this respect. But we saw each
other seldom, for a few hours, a few days, at best for a few weeks,
followed by a period of vacuum. I had my own interests and, doubtless,
he had his. It was characteristic that he never wrote letters to
me, with the exception of the one or two brief notes I have already
inserted in the text. His personality, however, was so vivid, the
impression he made on me was so deep, that he always seemed to be with
me, even when the ocean separated us. As I write these lines, I could
fancy that he stands beside me, a sombrely joyous spectre. I could
believe that he bends over my shoulder or, at any rate, that presently
I will hear a knock at the door and he will enter, as he entered Martha
Baker's studio on that afternoon in May so long ago.
The magic Florentine days marched to a close. I say marched, but the
musical form was more exactly that of a gavotte, a pavane, or a stately
Polish dance, imagined by Frederic Chopin. It was too perfect to last,
this life which appeared to assume the shape of conscious art. One
afternoon, Peter and I motored to the old Villa Bombicci, the design
of which legend has attributed to the hand of Michael Angelo. Now it
had become a farmhouse, and pigs and chickens, a cock and a few hens,
stray dogs and cats, wandered about in the carious cortile. We had come
to bathe in the swimming-pool, a marble rectangle, guarded by a single
column of what had once been the peristyle. A single column, a cornered
wall, and a cluster of ivy: that was the picture. We could bathe nude,
for the wall concealed the pool from the farmhouse.
Peter was the first to undress and, as he stood on the parapet of the
pool by the broken column, his body glowing rose-ivory in the soft
light of the setting sun, his head a mass of short black curls, he
seemed a part of the scene, a strange visitor from the old faun-like
epoch, and I could imagine a faint playing of pipes beyond the wall,
and a row of Tanagra nymphs fleeing, terrified, in basso-rilievo.
Sometime, somewhere, in the interval since the days when we had pursued
the exterior decorators on the Bowery and at Coney Island, he had
discovered an artist, for now his chest was tattooed with a fantastic
bird of rose and blue, a bird of paradise, a sirgang, or, perhaps, a
phœnix or a Zhar-Ptitsa, the beak pointing towards his throat, the
feathers of the tail showering towards that portion of the body which
is the centre of umbilicular contemplation among the Buddhists. He
straightened his lithe body, lifted his arms, and dived into the pool,
where he swam about like a dolphin. It was Peter's nature, as I must
have made evident by now, to take the keenest joy in everything he
did. Almost immediately, I followed and we puffed and blew, spattering
the crystal drops about in the air, so that it seemed as if showers of
stones fell sharply, stinging our faces, as we lay on our backs in the
warm water. Eventually, clambering up to the parapet, we sat silent for
many moments and I remember that a fleecy cloud passed over the face of
the sinking sun. It was very still, save for the soft lowing of cattle
in the distant mountains, the cackling of the hens in the courtyard,
and the sweet tolling of faraway bells.
Peter broke the silence.