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Title: Little Mexican & Other Stories

Author: Aldous Huxley

Release date: March 14, 2021 [eBook #64814]

Language: English

Credits: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE MEXICAN & OTHER STORIES ***




  LITTLE MEXICAN
  AND OTHER
  STORIES




BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  ANTIC HAY: A NOVEL
  CROME YELLOW: A NOVEL
  MORTAL COILS: SHORT STORIES
  LIMBO: SHORT STORIES
  LEDA: AND OTHER POEMS
  ON THE MARGIN: NOTES & ESSAYS




  LITTLE
  MEXICAN

  & OTHER STORIES

  BY ALDOUS HUXLEY

  LONDON
  CHATTO & WINDUS
  1924




  _PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN_
  _ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_




CONTENTS


  UNCLE SPENCER      _page_ 1

  LITTLE MEXICAN          155

  HUBERT AND MINNIE       213

  FARD                    236

  THE PORTRAIT            247

  YOUNG ARCHIMEDES        271




UNCLE SPENCER


Some people I know can look back over the long series of their childish
holidays and see in their memory always a different landscape--chalk
downs or Swiss mountains; a blue and sunny sea or the grey,
ever-troubled fringe of the ocean; heathery moors under the cloud with
far away a patch of sunlight on the hills, golden as happiness and,
like happiness, remote, precarious, impermanent, or the untroubled
waters of Como, the cypresses and the Easter roses.

I envy them the variety of their impressions. For it is good to have
seen something of the world with childish eyes, disinterestedly
and uncritically, observing not what is useful or beautiful and
interesting, but only such things as, to a being less than four
feet high and having no knowledge of life or art, seem immediately
significant. It is the beggars, it is the green umbrellas under
which the cabmen sit when it rains, not Brunelleschi’s dome, not the
extortions of the hotel-keeper, not the tombs of the Medici that
impress the childish traveller. Such impressions, it is true, are of
no particular value to us when we are grown up. (The famous wisdom of
babes, with those childish intimations of immortality and all the rest,
never really amounted to very much; and the man who studies the souls
of children in the hope of finding out something about the souls of
men is about as likely to discover something important as the man who
thinks he can explain Beethoven by referring him to the savage origins
of music or religion by referring it to the sexual instincts.) None the
less, it is good to have had such childish impressions, if only for
the sake of comparing (so that we may draw the philosophic moral) what
we saw of a place when we were six or seven with what we see again at
thirty.

My holidays had no variety. From the time when I first went to my
preparatory school to the time when my parents came back for good
from India--I was sixteen or seventeen then, I suppose--they were all
passed with my Uncle Spencer. For years the only places on the earth’s
surface of which I had any knowledge were Eastbourne, where I was at
school; Dover (and that reduced itself to the harbour and station),
where I embarked; Ostend, where Uncle Spencer met me; Brussels, where
we changed trains; and finally Longres in Limburg, where my Uncle
Spencer owned the sugar factory, which his mother, my grandmother, had
inherited in her turn from her Belgian father, and had his home.

Hanging over the rail of the steamer as it moved slowly, stern
foremost, through the narrow gullet of Ostend harbour, I used to
strain my eyes, trying to pick out from among the crowd at the quay’s
edge the small, familiar figure. And always there he was, waving his
coloured silk handkerchief, shouting inaudible greetings and advice,
getting in the way of the porters and ticket-collectors, fidgeting with
a hardly controllable impatience behind the barrier, until at last,
squeezed and almost suffocated amongst the grown men and women--whom
the process of disembarkation transformed as though by some malevolent
Circean magic into brute beasts, reasonless and snarling--I struggled
to shore, clutching in one hand my little bag and with the other
holding to my head, if it was summer, a speckled straw, gaudy with the
school colours; if winter, a preposterous bowler, whose eclipsing
melon crammed over my ears made me look like a child in a comic paper
pretending to be grown up.

“Well, here you are, here you are,” my Uncle Spencer would say,
snatching my bag from me. “Eleven minutes late.” And we would dash for
the custom-house as though our lives depended on getting there before
the other trans-beasted passengers.

My Uncle Spencer was a man of about forty when first I came from my
preparatory school to stay with him. Thin he was, rather short, very
quick, agile, and impulsive in his movements, with small feet and
small, delicate hands. His face was narrow, clear-cut, steep, and
aquiline; his eyes dark and extraordinarily bright, deeply set under
overhanging brows; his hair was black, and he wore it rather long,
brushed back from his forehead. At the sides of his head it had already
begun to go grey, and above his ears, as it were, two grey wings were
folded against his head, so that, to look at him, one was reminded of
Mercury in his winged cap.

“Hurry up!” he called. And I scampered after him. “Hurry up!” But of
course there was no use whatever in our hurrying; for even when we
had had my little hand-bag examined, there was always the registered
trunk to wait for; and that, for my Uncle Spencer, was agony. For
though our places in the Brussels express were reserved, though he
knew that the train would not in any circumstances start without us,
this intellectual certainty was not enough to appease his passionate
impatience, to allay his instinctive fears.

“Terribly slow,” he kept repeating. “Terribly slow.” And for the
hundredth time he looked at his watch. “Dites-moi,” he would say, yet
once more, to the sentry at the door of the customs-house, “le grand
bagage...?” until in the end the fellow, exasperated by these questions
which it was not his business to answer, would say something rude;
upon which my Uncle Spencer, outraged, would call him _mal élevé_ and
a _grossier personnage_--to the fury of the sentry but correspondingly
great relief of his own feelings; for after such an outburst he could
wait in patience for a good five minutes, so far forgetting his anxiety
about the trunk that he actually began talking to me about other
subjects, asking how I had got on this term at school, what was my
batting average, whether I liked Latin, and whether Old Thunderguts,
which was the name we gave to the headmaster on account of his noble
baritone, was still as ill-tempered as ever.

But at the end of the five minutes, unless the trunk had previously
appeared, my Uncle Spencer began looking at his watch again.

“Scandalously slow,” he said. And addressing himself to another
official, “Dites-moi, monsieur, le grand bagage...?”

But when at last we were safely in the train and there was nothing
to prevent him from deploying all the graces and amiabilities of his
character, my Uncle Spencer, all charm and kindness now, devoted
himself wholeheartedly to me.

“Look!” he said; and from the pocket of his overcoat he pulled out a
large and dampish parcel of whose existence my nose had long before
made me aware. “Guess what’s in here.”

“Prawns,” I said, without an instant’s hesitation.

And prawns it was, a whole kilo of them. And there we sat in opposite
corners of our first-class carriage, with the little folding table
opened out between us and the pink prawns on the table, eating with
infinite relish and throwing the rosy carapaces, the tails, and the
sucked heads out of the window. And the Flemish plain moved past us;
the long double files of poplars, planted along the banks of the
canals, along the fringes of the high roads, moving as we moved,
marched parallel with our course or presented, as we crossed them at
right angles, for one significant flashing moment the entrance to
Hobbema’s avenue. And now the belfries of Bruges beckoned from far off
across the plain; a dozen more shrimps and we were roaring through
its station, all gloom and ogives in honour of Memling and the Gothic
past. By the time we had eaten another hectogram of prawns, the modern
quarter of Ghent was reminding us that art was only five years old and
had been invented in Vienna. At Alost the factory chimneys smoked;
and before we knew where we were, we were almost on the outskirts of
Brussels, with two or three hundred grammes of sea-fruit still intact
on the table before us.

“Hurry up!” cried my Uncle Spencer, threatened by another access of
anxiety. “We must finish them before we get to Brussels.”

And during the last five miles we ate furiously, shell and all; there
was hardly time even to spit out the heads and tails.

“Nothing like prawns,” my Uncle Spencer never failed to say, as the
express drew slowly into the station at Brussels, and the last tails
and whiskers with the fishy paper were thrown out of the window.
“Nothing like prawns when the brain is tired. It’s the phosphorus, you
know. After all your end-of-term examinations you need them.” And then
he patted me affectionately on the shoulder.

How often since then have I repeated in all earnestness my Uncle
Spencer’s words. “It’s the phosphorus,” I assure my fagged friends, as
I insist that they shall make their lunch off shellfish. The words come
gushing spontaneously out of me; the opinion that prawns and oysters
are good for brain-fag is very nearly one of my fundamental and, so to
say, instinctive beliefs. But sometimes, as I say the words, suddenly
I think of my Uncle Spencer. I see him once more sitting opposite me
in a corner of the Brussels express, his eyes flashing, his thin face
expressively moving as he talks, while his quick, nervous fingers pick
impatiently at the pink carapaces or with a disdainful gesture drop
a whiskered head into the Flemish landscape outside the open window.
And remembering my Uncle Spencer, I find myself somehow believing
less firmly than I did in what I have been saying. And I wonder with
a certain sense of disquietude how many other relics of my Uncle
Spencer’s spirit I still carry, all unconsciously, about with me.

How many of our beliefs--more serious even than the belief that prawns
revive the tired brain--come to us haphazardly from sources far less
trustworthy than my Uncle Spencer! The most intelligent men will be
found holding opinions about certain things, inculcated in them during
their childhood by nurses or stable-boys. And up to the very end of our
adolescence, and even after, there are for all of us certain admired
beings, whose words sink irresistibly into our minds, generating there
beliefs which reason does not presume to question, and which though
they may be quite out of harmony with all our other opinions persist
along with them without our ever becoming aware of the contradictions
between the two sets of ideas. Thus an emancipated young man, whose
father happens to have been a distinguished Indian civilian, is an
ardent apostle of liberty and self-determination; but insists that the
Indians are and for ever will be completely incapable of governing
themselves. And an art critic, extremely sound on Vlaminck and Marie
Laurencin, will praise as masterly and in the grand manner--and praise
sincerely, for he genuinely finds them so--the works of an artist whose
dim pretentious paintings of the Tuscan landscape used to delight,
because they reminded her of her youth, an old lady, now dead, but whom
as a very young man he greatly loved and admired.

My Uncle Spencer was for me, in my boyhood, one of these admired
beings, whose opinions possess a more than earthly value for the
admiring listener. For years my most passionately cherished beliefs
were his. Those opinions which I formed myself, I held more
diffidently, with less ardour; for they, after all, were only the
fruits of my own judgment and observation, superficial rational
growths; whereas the opinions I had taken from my Uncle Spencer--such
as this belief in the curative properties of prawns--had nothing to do
with my reason, but had been suggested directly into the sub-rational
depths, where they seemed to attach themselves, like barnacles, to the
very keel and bottom of my mind. Most of them, I hope, I have since
contrived to scrape off; and a long, laborious, painful process it has
been. But there are still, I dare say, a goodly number of them left, so
deeply ingrained and grown in, that it is impossible for me to be aware
of them. And I shall go down to my grave making certain judgments,
holding certain opinions, regarding certain things and actions in a
certain way--and the way, the opinions, the judgments will not be mine,
but my Uncle Spencer’s; and the obscure chambers of my mind will to the
end be haunted by his bright, erratic, restless ghost.

There are some people whose habits of thought a boy or a young man
might, with the greatest possible advantage to himself, make his
own. But my Uncle Spencer was not one of them. His active mind darted
hither and thither too wildly and erratically for it to be a safe
guide for an inexperienced understanding. It was all too promptly
logical to draw conclusions from false premises, too easily and
enthusiastically accepted as true. Living as he did in solitude--in a
mental solitude; for though he was no recluse and took his share in
all social pleasures, the society of Longres could not offer much in
the way of high intellectual companionship--he was able to give free
play to the native eccentricity of his mind. Having nobody to check or
direct him, he would rush headlong down intellectual roads that led
nowhere or into morasses of nonsense. When, much later, I used to amuse
myself by listening on Sunday afternoons to the speakers at Marble
Arch, I used often to be reminded of my Uncle Spencer. For they, like
Uncle Spencer, lived in solitude, apart from the main contemporary
world of ideas, unaware, or so dimly aware that it hardly counted, of
the very existence of organised and systematic science, not knowing
even where to look for the accumulated stores of human knowledge. I
have talked in the Park to Bible students who boasted that during the
day they cobbled or sold cheese, while at night they sat up learning
Hebrew and studying the critics of the Holy Book. And I have been
ashamed of my own idleness, ashamed of the poor use I have made of my
opportunities. These humble scholars heroically pursuing enlightenment
are touching and noble figures--but how often, alas, pathetically
ludicrous too! For the critics my Bible students used to read and
meditate upon were always at least three-quarters of a century out of
date--exploded Tübingen scholars or literal inspirationalists; their
authorities were always books written before the invention of modern
historical research; their philology was the picturesque _lucus a non
lucendo_, bloody from by-our-Lady type; their geology had irrefutable
proofs of the existence of Atlantis; their physiology, if they happened
to be atheists, was obsoletely mechanistic, if Christians, merely
providential. All their dogged industry, all their years of heroic
striving, had been completely wasted--wasted, at any rate, so far as
the increase of human knowledge was concerned, but not for themselves,
since the labour, the disinterested ambition, had brought them
happiness.

My Uncle Spencer was spiritually a cousin of these Hyde Park orators
and higher critics. He had all their passion for enlightenment and
profound ideas, but not content with concentrating, like them, on a
single subject such as the Bible, he allowed himself to be attracted
by everything under the sun. The whole field of history, of science
(or rather what my Uncle Spencer thought was science), of philosophy,
religion, and art was his province. He had their industry too--an
industry, in his case, rather erratic, fitful, and inconstant; for
he would start passionately studying one subject, to turn after a
little while to another whose aspect seemed to him at the moment more
attractive. And like them he displayed--though to a less pronounced
degree, since his education had been rather better than theirs (not
much better, however, for he had never attended any seat of learning
but one of our oldest and most hopeless public schools)--he displayed
a vast unawareness of contemporary thought and an uncritical faith in
authorities which to a more systematically educated man would have
seemed quite obviously out of date; coupled with a profound ignorance
of even the methods by which one could acquire a more accurate or at
any rate a more “modern” and fashionable knowledge of the universe.

My Uncle Spencer had views and information on almost every subject one
cared to mention; but the information was almost invariably faulty
and the judgments he based upon it fantastic. What things he used to
tell me as we sat facing one another in the corners of our first-class
carriage, with the prawns piled up in a little coralline mountain on
the folding table between us! Fragments of his eager talk come back to
me.

“There are cypresses in Lombardy that were planted by Julius Cæsar....”

“The human race is descended from African pygmies. Adam was black and
only four feet high....”

“_Similia similibus curantur._ Have you gone far enough with your
Latin to know what that means?” (My Uncle Spencer was an enthusiastic
homœopathist, and the words of Hahnemann were to him as a mystic
formula, a kind of _Om mani padme hum_, the repetition of which gave
him an immense spiritual satisfaction.)

And once, I remember, as we were passing through the fabulous new
station of Ghent--that station which fifteen or sixteen years later I
was to see all smashed and gutted by the departing invaders--he began,
apropos of a squad of soldiers standing on the platform, to tell me
how a German professor had proved, mathematically, using the theories
of ballistics and probabilities, that war was now impossible, modern
quick-firing rifles and machine-guns being so efficient that it was,
as my Uncle Spencer put it, “sci-en-tif-ic-ally impossible” for any
body of men to remain alive within a mile of a sufficient number of
mitrailleuses, moving backwards and forwards through the arc of a
circle and firing continuously all the time. I passed my boyhood in the
serene certainty that war was now a thing of the past.

Sometimes he would talk to me earnestly across the prawns of the
cosmogonies of Boehme or Swedenborg. But all this was so exceedingly
obscure that I never took it in at all. In spite of my Uncle Spencer’s
ascendancy over my mind I was never infected by his mystical
enthusiasms. These mental dissipations had been my Uncle Spencer’s wild
oats. Reacting from the rather stuffily orthodox respectability of his
upbringing, he ran into, not vice, not atheism, but Swedenborg. He had
preserved--a legacy from his prosperous nineteenth-century youth--an
easy optimism, a great belief in progress and the superiority of modern
over ancient times, together with a convenient ignorance of the things
about which it would have been disquieting to think too much. This
agreeable notion of the world I sucked in easily and copiously with my
little crustaceans; my views about the universe and the destinies of
man were as rosy in those days as the prawns themselves.

It was not till seven or eight o’clock in the evening that we finally
got to our destination. My Uncle Spencer’s carriage--victoria or
brougham, according to the season and the state of the weather--would
be waiting for us at the station door. In we climbed and away we
rolled on our rubbered wheels in a silence that seemed almost magical,
so deafeningly did common carts and the mere station cabs go rattling
over the cobbles of the long and dismal Rue de la Gare. Even in the
winter, when there was nothing to be seen of it but an occasional green
gas-lamp, with a little universe of pavement, brick wall and shuttered
window dependent upon it and created by it out of the surrounding
darkness, the Rue de la Gare was signally depressing, if only because
it was so straight and long. But in summer, when the dismal brick
houses by which it was flanked revealed themselves in the evening
light, when the dust and the waste-paper came puffing along it in
gusts of warm, stale-smelling wind, then the street seemed doubly long
and disagreeable. But, on the other hand, the contrast between its
sordidness and the cool, spacious Grand’ Place into which, after what
seemed a carefully studied preparatory twisting and turning among the
narrow streets of the old town, it finally debouched, was all the more
striking and refreshing. Like a ship floating out from between the jaws
of a canyon into a wide and sunlit lake, our carriage emerged upon
the Grand’ Place. And the moment was solemn, breathlessly anticipated
and theatrical, as though we were gliding in along the suspended
calling of the oboes and bassoons, and the violins trembling with
amorous anxiety all around us, rolling silently and with not a hitch
in the stage carpentry on to some vast and limelit stage where, as
soon as we had taken up our position well forward and in the centre,
something tremendous, one imagined, would suddenly begin to happen--a
huge orchestral tutti from contrabass trombone to piccolo, from bell
instrument to triangle, and then the tenor and soprano in such a duet
as had never in all the history of opera been heard before.

But when it came to the point, our entrance was never quite so dramatic
as all that. One found, when one actually got there, that one had
mistaken one’s opera; it wasn’t _Parsifal_ or _Rigoletto_; it was
_Pelléas_ or perhaps the _Village Romeo and Juliet_. For there was
nothing grandiosely Wagnerian, nothing Italian and showy about the
Grand’ Place at Longres. The last light was rosy on its towers, the
shadows of the promenaders stretched half across the place, and in
the vast square the evening had room to be cool and quiet. The Gothic
Church had a sharp steeple and the seminary by its side a tower, and
the little seventeenth-century Hôtel de Ville, with its slender belfry,
standing in the middle of that open space as though not afraid to
let itself be seen from every side, was a miracle of gay and sober
architecture; and the houses that looked out upon it had faces simple
indeed, burgess and ingenuous, but not without a certain nobility, not
without a kind of unassuming provincial elegance. In, then, we glided,
and the suspended oboeings of our entrance, instead of leading up to
some grand and gaudy burst of harmony, fruitily protracted themselves
in this evening beauty, exulted quietly in the rosy light, meditated
among the lengthening shadows; and the violins, ceasing to tremble with
anticipation, swelled and mounted, like light and leaping towers, into
the serene sky.

And if the clock happened to strike at the moment that we entered, how
charmingly the notes of the mechanical carillon harmonised with this
imaginary music! At the hours, the bells in the high tower of the Hôtel
de Ville played a minuet and trio, tinkly and formal like the first
composition of an infant Boccherini, which lasted till fully three
minutes past. At the half-hours it was a patriotic air of the same
length. But at the quarters the bells no more than began a tune. Three
or four bars and the music broke off, leaving the listener wondering
what was to have followed, and attributing to this fragmentary stump
of an air some rich outflowering in the pregnant and musical silence,
some subtle development which should have made the whole otherwise
enchanting than the completed pieces that followed and preceded,
and whose charm, indeed, consisted precisely in their old-fashioned
mediocrity, in the ancient, cracked, and quavering sweetness of the
bells that played them, and the defects in the mechanism, which
imparted to the rhythm that peculiar and unforeseeable irregularity
which the child at the piano, tongue between teeth, eyes anxiously
glancing from printed notes to fingers and back again, laboriously
introduces into the flawless evenness of “The Merry Peasant.”

This regular and repeated carillonage was and indeed still is--for the
invaders spared the bells--an essential part of Longres, a feature
like the silhouette of its three towers seen from far away between the
poplars across the wide, flat land, characteristic and recognisable.

It is with a little laugh of amused delight that the stranger to
Longres first hears the jigging airs and the clashes of thin, sweet
harmony floating down upon him from the sky, note succeeding unmuted
note, so that the vibrations mingle in the air, surrounding the clear
outlines of the melody with a faint quivering halo of discord. After
an hour or two the minuet and trio, the patriotic air, become all
too familiar, while with every repetition the broken fragments at
the quarters grow more and more enigmatic, pregnant, dubious, and
irritating. The pink light fades from the three towers, the Gothic
intricacies of the church sink into a flat black silhouette against the
night sky; but still from high up in the topless darkness floats down,
floats up and out over the house-tops, across the flat fields, the
minuet and trio. The patriotic air continues still, even after sunset,
to commemorate the great events of 1830; and still the fragments
between, like pencillings in the notebook of a genius, suggest to
the mind in the scribble of twenty notes a splendid theme and the
possibility of fifteen hundred variations. At midnight the bells are
still playing; at half-past one the stranger starts yet again out
of his sleep; re-evoked at a quarter to four his speculations about
the possible conclusions of the unfinished symphony keep him awake
long enough to hear the minuet and trio at the hour and to wonder
how any one in Longres manages to sleep at all. But in a day or two
he answers the question himself by sleeping unbrokenly through the
hints from Beethoven’s notebook, and the more deliberate evocations
of Boccherini’s childhood and the revolution of 1830. The disease
creates its own antidote, and the habit of hearing the carillon induces
gradually a state of special mental deafness in which the inhabitants
of Longres permanently live.

Even as a small boy, to whom insomnia was a thing unknown, I found
the bells, for the first night or two after my arrival in Longres,
decidedly trying. My Uncle Spencer’s house looked on to the Grand’
Place itself, and my window on the third floor was within fifty yards
of the belfry of the Hôtel de Ville and the source of the aerial music.
Three-year-old Boccherini might have been in the room with me whenever
the wind came from the south, banging his minuet in my ears. But after
the second night he might bang and jangle as much as he liked; there
was no bell in Longres could wake me.

What did wake me, however--every Saturday morning at about half-past
four or five--was the pigs coming into market. One had to have spent
a month of Saturdays in Longres before one could acquire the special
mental deafness that could ignore the rumbling of cart-wheels over the
cobbles and the squealing and grunting of two or three thousand pigs.
And when one looked out what a sight it was! All the Grand’ Place was
divided up by rails into a multitude of pens and pounds, and every
pound was seething with pink naked pigs that looked from above like so
much Bergsonian _élan vital_ in a state of incessant agitation. Men
came and went between the enclosures, talking, bargaining, critically
poking potential bacon or ham with the point of a stick. And when the
bargain was struck, the owner would step into the pen, hunt down the
victim, and, catching it up by one leather ear and its thin bootlace of
a tail, carry it off amid grunts that ended in the piercing, long-drawn
harmonics of a squeal to a netted cart or perhaps to some other pen
a little farther down the line. Brought up in England to regard the
infliction of discomfort upon an animal as being, if anything, rather
more reprehensible than cruelty to my fellow-humans, I remember being
horrified by this spectacle. So, too, apparently was the German army
of occupation. For between 1914 and 1918 no pig in the Longres market
might be lifted by tail or ear, the penalty for disobedience being a
fine of twenty marks for the first offence, a hundred for the second,
and after that a term of forced labour on the lines of communication.
Of all the oppressive measures of the invader there was hardly one
which more profoundly irritated the Limburgian peasantry. Nero was
unpopular with the people of Rome, not because of his crimes and vices,
not because he was a tyrant and a murderer, but for having built in the
middle of the city a palace so large that it blocked the entrance to
several of the main roads. If the Romans hated him, it was because his
golden house compelled them to make a circuit of a quarter of a mile
every time they wanted to go shopping. The little customary liberties,
the right to do in small things what we have always done, are more
highly valued than the greater, more abstract, and less immediate
freedoms. And, similarly, most people will rather run the risk of
catching typhus than take a few irksome sanitary precautions to which
they are not accustomed. In this particular case, moreover, there was
the further question: How _is_ one to carry a pig except by its tail
and ears? One must either throw the creature on its back and lift it
up by its four cloven feet--a process hardly feasible, since a pig’s
centre of gravity is so near the ground that it is all but impossible
to topple him over. Or else--and this is what the people of Longres
found themselves disgustedly compelled to do--one must throw one’s
arms round the animal and carry it clasped to one’s bosom as though
it were a baby, at the risk of being bitten in the ear and with the
certainty of stinking like a hog for the rest of the day.

The first Saturday after the departure of the German troops was a bad
morning for the pigs. To carry a pig by the tail was an outward and
visible symbol of recovered liberty; and the squeals of the porkers
mingled with the cheers of the population and the trills and clashing
harmonies of the bells awakened by the carilloneur from their four
years’ silence.

By ten o’clock the market was over. The railings of the pens had been
cleared away, and but for the traces on the cobbles--and those too the
municipal scavengers were beginning to sweep up--I could have believed
that the scene upon which I had looked from my window in the bright
early light had been a scene in some agitated morning dream.

But more dream-like and fantastical was the aspect of the Grand’ Place
when, every year during the latter part of August, Longres indulged in
its traditional kermesse. For then the whole huge square was covered
with booths, with merry-go-rounds turning and twinkling in the sun,
with swings and switchbacks, with temporary pinnacles rivalling in
height with the permanent and secular towers of the town, and from
whose summits one slid, whooping uncontrollably with horrified delight,
down a polished spiral track to the ground below. There was bunting
everywhere, there were sleek balloons and flags, there were gaudily
painted signs. Against the grey walls of the church, against the
whitewashed house-fronts, against the dark brickwork of the seminary
and the soft yellow stucco of the gabled Hôtel de Ville, a sea of many
colours beat tumultuously. And an immense and featureless noise that
was a mingling of the music of four or five steam organs, of the voices
of thousands of people, of the blowing of trumpets and whistles, the
clashing of cymbals, the beating of drums, of shouting, of the howling
of children, of enormous rustic laughter, filled the space between
the houses from brim to brim--a noise so continuous and so amorphous
that hearkening from my high window it was almost, after a time, as
though there were no noise at all, but a new kind of silence, in which
the tinkling of the infant Boccherini’s minuet, the patriotic air, and
the fragmentary symphonies had become for some obscure reason utterly
inaudible.

And after sunset the white flares of acetylene and the red flares of
coal-gas scooped out of the heart of the night a little private day, in
which the fun went on more noisily than ever. And the gaslight striking
up on to the towers mingled half-way up their shafts with the moonlight
from above, so that to me at my window the belfries seemed to belong
half to the earth, half to the pale silence overhead. But gradually, as
the night wore on, earth abandoned its claims; the noise diminished;
one after another the flares were put out, till at last the moon was
left in absolute possession, with only a few dim greenish gas-lamps
here and there, making no attempt to dispute her authority. The towers
were hers down to the roots, the booths and the hooded roundabouts, the
Russian mountains, the swings--all wore the moon’s livery of silver and
black; and audible once more the bells seemed in her honour to sound a
sweeter, clearer, more melancholy note.

But it was not only from my window that I viewed the kermesse. From the
moment that the roundabouts began to turn, which was as soon as the
eleven o’clock Mass on the last Sunday but one in August was over, to
the moment when they finally came to rest, which was at about ten or
eleven on the night of the following Sunday, I moved almost unceasingly
among the delights of the fair. And what a fair it was! I have never
seen its like in England. Such splendour, such mechanical perfection in
the swings, switchbacks, merry-go-rounds, towers, and the like! Such
astonishing richness and variety in the side-shows! And withal such
marvellous cheapness.

When one was tired of sliding and swinging, of being whirled and
jogged, one could go and see for a penny the man who pulled out
handfuls of his skin, to pin it up with safety-pins into ornamental
folds and pleats. Or one could see the woman with no arms who opened a
bottle of champagne with her toes and drank your health, lifting her
glass to her lips with the same members. And then in another booth,
over whose entry there waved--a concrete symbol of good faith--a pair
of enormous female pantaloons, sat the Fat Woman--so fat that she could
(and would, you were told, for four sous extra), in the words of the
Flemish notice at the door, which I prefer to leave in their original
dialectical obscurity, “heur gezicht bet heur tiekes wassen.”

Next to the Fat Woman’s hutch was a much larger tent in which the
celebrated Monsieur Figaro, with his wife and seven children, gave
seven or eight times daily a dramatic version of the Passion of Our
Saviour, at which even the priesthood was authorised to assist. The
Figaro family was celebrated from one end of the country to another,
and had been for I do not know how many years--forty or fifty at least.
For there were several generations of Figaros; and if seven charming
and entirely genuine children did indeed still tread the boards, it
was not that the seven original sons and daughters of old M. Figaro
had remained by some miracle perpetually young; but that marrying and
becoming middle-aged they had produced little Figaros of their own,
who in their turn gave rise to more, so that the aged and original M.
Figaro could count among the seven members of his suppositious family
more than one of his great-grandchildren. So celebrated was M. Figaro
that there was even a song about him, of which unfortunately I can
remember only two lines:

  “Et le voilà, et le voilà, Fi-ga-ro,
  Le plus comique de la Belgique, Fi-ga-ro!”

But on what grounds and in what remote epoch of history he had been
called “Le plus comique de la Belgique,” I was never able to discover.
For the only part I ever saw the venerable old gentleman play was that
of Caiaphas in the _Passion of Our Saviour_, which was one of the
most moving, or at any rate one of the most harrowingly realistic,
performances I ever remember to have seen; so much so, that the voices
of the actors were often drowned by sobs and sometimes by the piercing
screams of a child who thought that they were really and genuinely
driving nails into the graceful young Figaro of the third generation,
who played the part of the Saviour.

Not a day of my first kermesses passed without my going at least
once, and sometimes two or three times, to see the Figaros at their
performance; partly, no doubt, because, between the ages of nine and
thirteen, I was an extremely devout broad churchman, and partly because
the rôle of the Magdalene was played by a little girl of twelve or
thereabouts, with whom I fell in love, wildly, extravagantly, as one
only can love when one is a child. I would have given fortunes and
years of my life to have had the courage to go round to the back after
the performance and talk to her. But I did not dare; and to give an
intellectual justification for my cowardice, I assured myself that it
would have been unseemly on my part to intrude upon a privacy which I
invested with all the sacredness of the Magdalene’s public life, an
act of sacrilege like going into church with one’s hat on. Moreover, I
comforted myself, I should have profited little by meeting my inamorata
face to face, since in all likelihood she spoke nothing but Flemish,
and besides my own language I only spoke at that time a little French,
with enough Latin to know what my Uncle Spencer meant when he said,
“_Similia similibus curantur_.” My passion for the Magdalene lasted
through three kermesses, but waned, or rather suddenly came to an end,
when, rushing to the first of the Figaros’ performances at the fourth,
I saw that the little Magdalene, who was now getting on for sixteen,
had become, like so many young girls in their middle teens, plump and
moony almost to the point of grossness. And my love after falling to
zero in the theatre was turned to positive disgust when I saw her, a
couple of mornings later before the performance began, walking about
the Grand’ Place in a dark blue blouse with a sailor collar, a little
blue skirt down to her knees, and a pair of bright yellow boots lacing
high up on her full-blown calves, which they compressed so tightly
that the exuberant flesh overflowed on to the leather. The next year
one of old M. Figaro’s great-grandchildren, who could hardly have been
more than seven or eight, took her place on the stage. My Magdalene
had left it--to get married, no doubt. All the Figaros married early:
it was important that there should be no failure in the supply of
juvenile apostles and holy women. But by that time I had ceased to take
the slightest interest either in her, her family, or their sacred
performance; for it was about the time of my fifth kermesse, if I
remember rightly, that my period of atheism began--an atheism, however,
still combined with all my Uncle Spencer’s cheerful optimism about the
universe.

My Uncle Spencer, though it would have annoyed him to hear any one say
so, enjoyed the kermesse almost as much as I did. In all the year,
August was his best month; it contained within its thirty-one days less
cause for anxiety, impatience, or irritation than any other month; so
that my Uncle Spencer, left in peace by the malignant world, was free
to be as high-spirited, as gay and kind-hearted as he possibly could
be. And it was astonishing what a stock of these virtues he possessed.
If he could have lived on one of those happy islands where nature
provides bananas and cocoanuts enough for all and to spare, where
the sun shines every day and a little tattooing is all the raiment
one needs, where love is easy, commerce unknown, and neither sin nor
progress ever heard of--if he could have lived on one of these carefree
islands, how entirely happy and how uniformly a saint my Uncle Spencer
would have been! But cares and worldly preoccupations too often
overlaid his gaiety, stopped up the vents of his kindness; and his
quick, nervous, and impulsive temperament--in the Augusts of his life
a bubbling source of high spirits--boiled up in a wild impatience, in
bilious fountains of irritation, whenever he found himself confronted
by the passive malignity of matter, the stupidity or duplicity of man.

He was at his worst during the Christmas holidays; for the season of
universal goodwill happened unfortunately to coincide with the season
of sugar-making. With the first frosts the beetroots were taken out
of the ground, and every day for three or four months three hundred
thousand kilograms of roots went floating down the labyrinth of little
canals that led to the washing-machines and the formidable slicers of
my Uncle Spencer’s factory. From every vent of the huge building issued
a sickening smell of boiled beetroot, mingled with the more penetrating
stink of the waste products of the manufacture--the vegetable fibre
drained of its juice, which was converted on the upper floors of
the building into cattle food and in the backyard into manure. The
activity during those few months of the beetroot season was feverish,
was delirious. A wild orgy of work, day and night, three shifts in
the twenty-four hours. And then the factory was shut up, and for the
rest of the year it stood there, alone, in the open fields beyond the
fringes of the town, desolate as a ruined abbey, lifeless and dumb.

During the beetroot season my Uncle Spencer was almost out of his mind.
Rimmed with livid circles of fatigue, his eyes glittered like the eyes
of a madman; his thin face was no more than pale skin stretched over
the starting bones. The slightest contrariety set him cursing and
stamping with impatience; it was a torture for him to sit still. One
Christmas holidays, I remember, something went wrong with the machinery
at the factory, and for nearly five hours the slicers, the churning
washers were still. My Uncle Spencer was almost a lost man when he got
back to the Grand’ Place for dinner that evening. It was as though a
demon had possessed him, and had only been cast out as the result of a
horrible labour. If the breakdown had lasted another hour, I really
believe he would have gone mad.

No, Christmas at Uncle Spencer’s was never very cheerful. But by the
Easter holidays he was beginning to recover. The frenzied making of
sugar had given place to the calmer selling of it. My Uncle Spencer’s
good nature began to have a chance of reasserting itself. By August,
at the end of a long, calm summer, he was perfect; and the kermesse
found him at his most exquisitely mellow. But with September a certain
premonitory anxiety began to show itself; the machinery had to be
overhauled, the state of the labour market examined, and when, about
the twentieth of the month, I left again for school, it was a frowning,
melancholy, and taciturn Uncle Spencer who travelled with me from
Longres to Brussels, from Brussels to Ostend, and who, preoccupied with
other thoughts, waved absent-mindedly from the quay, while the steamer
slowly slid out through the false calm of the harbour mouth towards a
menacing and equinoctial Channel.

But at the kermesse, as I have said, my Uncle Spencer was at his
richest and ripest. Enjoying it all as much as I did myself, he would
spend long evenings with me, loitering among the attractions of the
Grand’ Place. He was sad, I think, that the dignity of his position
as one of the leading citizens of Longres did not permit him to mount
with me on the roundabouts, the swings, and the mountain railways. But
a visit to the side-shows was not inconsistent with his gravity; we
visited them all. While professing to find the exhibition of freaks
and monsters a piece of deplorable bad taste, my Uncle Spencer never
failed to take me to look at all of them. It was a cardinal point in
his theory of education that the young should be brought as early
as possible into contact with what he called the Realities of Life.
And as nothing, it was obvious, could be more of a Reality than the
armless woman or the man who pinned up his skin with safety-pins, it
was important that I should make an early acquaintance with them, in
spite of the undoubtedly defective taste of the exhibition. It was
in obedience to the same educational principle that my Uncle Spencer
took me, one Easter holidays, to see the Lunatic Asylum. But the
impression made upon me by the huge prison-like building and its
queer occupants--one of whom, I remember, gambolled playfully around
me wherever I went, patting my cheeks or affectionately pinching my
legs--was so strong and disagreeable, that for several nights I could
not sleep; or if I did, I was oppressed by hideous nightmares that
woke me, screaming and sweating in the dark. My Uncle Spencer had to
renounce his intention of taking me to see the anatomy room in the
hospital.

Scattered among the monsters, the rifle-ranges, and the games of
skill were little booths where one could buy drink and victuals.
There was one vendor, for instance, who always did a roaring trade
by selling, for two sous, as many raw mussels as any one could eat
without coughing. Torn between his belief in the medicinal qualities
of shellfish and his fear of typhoid fever, my Uncle Spencer hesitated
whether he ought to allow me to spend my penny. In the end he gave his
leave. (“It’s the phosphorus, you know.”) I put down my copper, took
my mussel, bit, swallowed, and violently coughed. The fish were briny
as though they had come out of the Dead Sea. The old vendor did an
excellent business. Still, I have seen him sometimes looking anxious;
for not all his customers were as susceptible as I. There were hardy
young peasants who could put down half a pound of this Dead Sea fruit
without turning a hair. In the end, however, the brine did its work on
even the toughest gullet.

More satisfactory as food were the apple fritters, which were
manufactured by thousands in a large temporary wooden structure that
stood under the shade of the Hôtel de Ville. The Quality, like Uncle
Spencer and myself, ate their fritters in the partial privacy of a
number of little cubicles arranged like loose-boxes along one side of
the building. My Uncle Spencer walked resolutely to our appointed box
without looking to the left hand or to the right; and I was bidden to
follow his example and not to show the least curiosity respecting the
occupants of the other loose-boxes, whose entrances we might pass on
the way to our own. There was a danger, my Uncle Spencer explained to
me, that some of the families eating apple fritters in the loose-boxes
might be Blacks--Blacks, I mean, politically, not ethnically--while
we were Liberals or even, positively, Freemasons. Therefore--but as
a mere stranger to Longres I was never, I confess, quite able to
understand the force of this conclusion--therefore, though we might
talk to male Blacks in a café, have business relations and even be on
terms of friendship with them, it was impossible for us to be known
by the female Blacks, even under a booth and over the ferial apple
fritters; so that we must not look into the loose-boxes for fear that
we might see there a dear old friend who would be in the embarrassing
situation of not being able to introduce us to his wife and daughters.
I accepted, without understanding, this law; and it seemed to be a
perfectly good law until the day came when I found that it forbade me
to make the acquaintance of even a single one of the eleven ravishing
daughters of M. Moulle. It seemed to me then a stupid law.

In front of the booths where they sold sweets my Uncle Spencer never
cared to linger. It was not that he was stingy; on the contrary, he was
extremely generous. Nor that he thought it bad for me to eat sweets;
he had a professional belief in the virtues of sugar. The fact was that
the display in the booths embarrassed him. For already at the kermesse
one began to see a sprinkling of those little objects in chocolate
which, between the Feast of St. Nicholas and the New Year, fill the
windows of every confectioner’s shop in Belgium. My Uncle Spencer had
passed a third of a lifetime at Longres, but even after all these
years he was still quite unable to excuse or understand the innocent
coprophily of its inhabitants. The spectacle, in a sweet-shop window,
of a little _pot de chambre_ made of chocolate brought the blush of
embarrassment to his cheeks. And when at the kermesse I asked him to
buy me some barley-sugar or a few _bêtises de Cambrai_, he pretended
not to have heard what I asked, but walked hastily on; for his quick
eyes had seen, on one of the higher shelves of the confectioner’s
booth, a long line of little brown pots, on whose equivocal aspect it
would have been an agony to him if, standing there and waiting for
the barley-sugar to be weighed out, I had naively commented. Not
that I ever should have commented upon them; for I was as thoroughly
English as my Uncle Spencer himself--more thoroughly, indeed, as being
a generation further away from the Flemish mother, the admixture of
whose blood, however, had availed nothing against my uncle’s English
upbringing. Me, too, the little brown pots astonished and appalled by
their lack of reticence. If my companion had been another schoolboy of
my own age, I should have pointed at the nameless things and sniggered.
But since I was with my Uncle Spencer, I preserved with regard to
them an eloquent and pregnant silence; I pretended not to have seen
them, but so guiltily that my ignoring of them was in itself a comment
that filled my poor Uncle Spencer with embarrassment. If we could
have talked about them, if only we could have openly deplored them
and denounced their makers, it would have been better. But obviously,
somehow, we could not.

In the course of years, however, I learned, being young and still
malleable, to be less astonished and appalled by the little chocolate
pots and the other manifestations of the immemorial Flemish
coprophily. In the end I took them almost for granted, like the natives
themselves, till finally, when St. Nicholas had filled the shops with
these scatological symbols, I could crunch a pot or two between meals
as joyously and with as little self-consciousness as any Belgian child.
But I had to eat my chocolate, when it was moulded in this particular
form, out of my Uncle Spencer’s sight. He, poor man, would have been
horrified if he had seen me on these occasions.

On these occasions, then, I generally took refuge in the housekeeper’s
room--and in any case, at this Christmas season, when the sugar was
being made, it was better to sit in the cheerful company of Mlle Leeauw
than with my gloomy, irritable, demon-ridden Uncle Spencer. Mlle
Leeauw was almost from the first one of my firmest and most trusted
friends. She was a woman of, I suppose, about thirty-five when I first
knew her, rather worn already by a life of active labour, but still
preserving a measure of that blonde, decided, and regular beauty which
had been hers in girlhood. She was the daughter of a small farmer near
Longres, and had received the usual village education, supplemented,
however, in recent years by what she had picked up from my Uncle
Spencer, who occupied himself every now and then, in his erratic and
enthusiastic way, with the improvement of her mind, lent her books from
his library, and delivered lectures to her on the subjects that were
at the moment nearest to his heart. Mlle Leeauw, unlike most women
of her antecedents, felt an insatiable curiosity with regard to all
that mysterious and fantastic knowledge which the rich and leisured
keep shut up in their libraries; and not only in their books, as she
had seen herself (for as a girl had she not served as nursery-maid in
the house of that celebrated collector, the Comte de Zuitigny?) not
only in their books, but in their pictures too--some of which, Mlle
Leeauw assured me, a child could have painted, so badly drawn they
were, so unlike life (and yet the count had given heaven only knew how
much for them), in their Chinese pots, in the patterns of the very
carpets on the floor. Whatever my Uncle Spencer gave her she read
with eagerness, she listened attentively to what he said; and there
emerged, speck-like in the boundless blank ocean of her ignorance, a
few little islands of strange knowledge. One, for example, was called
homœopathy; another the Construction-of-Domes (a subject on which
my Uncle Spencer was prepared to talk with a copious and perverse
erudition for hours at a time; his thesis being that any mason who knew
how to turn the vaulted roof of an oven could have built the cupolas of
St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s, and Santa Maria del Fiore, and that therefore
the praises lavished on Michelangelo, Wren, and Brunelleschi were
entirely undeserved). A third was called Anti-Vivisection. A fourth
Swedenborg....

The result of my Uncle Spencer’s teaching was to convince Mlle Leeauw
that the knowledge of the rich was something even more fantastic than
she had supposed--something unreal and utterly remote from life as it
is actually lived, artificial and arbitrary, like the social activities
of these same rich, who pass their time in one another’s houses, eating
at one another’s expense, and being bored.

This conviction of the complete futility of knowledge did not make her
any the less eager to learn what my Uncle Spencer, whom she regarded
as a mine and walking compendium of all human learning, could offer
her. And she enchanted him by her respectful attentiveness, by the
quickness of her understanding--for she was a woman of very great
natural intelligence--and her eagerness for every fresh enlightenment.
She did not confide to him her real opinion of knowledge, which was
that it was a kind of curious irrelevant joke on the margin of life,
worth learning for precisely the same reasons as it is worth learning
to handle the fork at table--because it is one of the secrets of the
rich. Admiring my Uncle Spencer sincerely, she yet took nothing that
he taught her seriously, and though, when with him, she believed in
millionth-of-a-grain doses and high spiritual potencies, she continued,
when she felt out of sorts or I had overeaten, to resort to the old
tablespoonful of castor-oil; though with him she was a convinced
Swedenborgian, in church she was entirely orthodox; though in his
presence she thought vivisection monstrous, she would tell me with
gusto of those happy childish days on the farm, when her father cut the
pig’s throat, her mother held the beast by the hind-legs, her sister
danced on the body to make the blood flow, and she held the pail under
the spouting artery.

If to my Uncle Spencer his housekeeper appeared as he liked to see
her, and not as at ordinary times she really was, it was not that she
practised with him a conscious insincerity. Hers was one of those
quick, sensitive natures that adapt themselves almost automatically to
the social atmosphere in which at the moment they happen to be. Thus
with well-bred people she had beautiful manners; but the peasants from
whose stock she had sprung found her as full of a hearty Flemish gusto,
as grossly and innocently coarse as themselves. The core of her being
remained solidly peasant; but the upper and conscious part of her mind
was, so to speak, only loosely fastened to the foundation, so that it
could turn freely this way and that, without strain or difficulty,
according to changing circumstances. My Uncle Spencer valued her, not
only as a competent, intelligent woman, which she always was in every
company, but also because she was, considering her class and origins,
so remarkably well-mannered and refined, which, except with him and his
likes, she was not.

With me, however, Mlle Leeauw was thoroughly natural and Flemish. With
her quick and, I might say, instinctive understanding of character, she
saw that my abashed reaction to coprology, being of so much more recent
date than that of my Uncle Spencer, was much less strong, less deeply
rooted. At the same time, she perceived that I had no great natural
taste for grossness, no leaning to what I may call Flemishism; so that
in my presence she could be her natural Flemish self and thus correct
an absurd acquired delicacy without running the risk of encouraging
to any undue or distressing degree a congenital bias in the opposite
direction. And I noticed that whenever Matthieu (or Tcheunke, as they
called him), her cousin’s boy, came into town and paid a call on her,
Mlle Leeauw became almost as careful and refined as she was with my
Uncle Spencer. Not that Tcheunke shared my uncle’s susceptibilities.
On the contrary, he took such an immoderate delight in everything that
was excrementitious that she judged it best not in any way to indulge
him in his taste, just as she judged it best not to indulge my national
prejudice in favour of an excessive reticence about these and similar
matters. She was right, I believe, in both cases.

Mlle Leeauw had an elder sister, Louise--Louiseke, in the language of
Longres, where they put the symbol of the diminutive after almost every
name. Louiseke, like her sister, had never married; and considering
the ugliness of the woman--for she resembled Mlle Leeauw as a very
mischievous caricature resembles its original, that is to say, very
closely and at the same time hardly at all, the unlikeness being
emphasised in this case by the fact that nature had, for the shaping
of certain features, drawn on other ancestral sources, and worse ones,
than those from which her sister’s face had been made up--considering
her ugliness, I repeat, it was not surprising. Though considering her
dowry, perhaps it was. Louiseke was by no means rich; but she had the
five hundred francs a year, or thereabouts, which her sister also had,
after their father died and the farm was sold, together with another
two hundred inherited from an old aunt of her mother’s. This was a
sufficient income to allow her to live without working in a leisure
principally occupied by the performance of religious exercises.

On the outskirts of Longres there stands a small béguinage, long since
abandoned by its Béguines, who are now all over Belgium a diminishing
and nearly extinct community, and inhabited by a colony of ordinary
poor folk. The little old gabled houses are built round the sides of a
large grassy square, in the centre of which stands an abandoned church.
Louiseke inhabited one of these houses, partly because the rent was
very low, but also because she liked the religious associations of the
place. There, in her peaked high house, looking out across the monastic
quadrangle to the church, she could almost believe herself a genuine
Béguine. Every morning she went out to hear early Mass, and on Sundays
and days of festival she was assiduous in church almost to the point of
supererogation.

At my Uncle Spencer’s we saw a great deal of her; on her way to church,
on her way home again, she never failed to drop in for a word with her
sister Antonieke. Sometimes, I remember, she brought with her--hurrying
on these occasions across the Grand’ Place with the quick, anxious
tread, the frightened, suspicious glances to left and right, of a
traveller crossing a brigand-haunted moor--a large bag of green baize,
full of strange treasures: the silver crown and sceptre of Our Lady,
the gilded diadem of the Child, St. Joseph’s halo, the jewelled silver
book of I forget which Doctor of the Church, St. Dominick’s lilies,
and a mass of silver hearts with gilded flames coming out of them.
Louiseke, whose zeal was noted and approved of by M. le Curé, had the
rare privilege of being allowed to polish the jewellery belonging to
the images in the church. A few days before each of the important
feasts the painted plaster saints were stripped of their finery and
the spoil handed over to Louiseke, who, not daring to walk with her
precious burden under her arm as far as her own house in the béguinage,
slipped across the Grand’ Place to my Uncle Spencer’s. There, on the
table in Antonieke’s room, the green baize bag was opened, and the
treasures, horribly dirty and tarnished after their weeks or months of
neglect, were spread out in the light. A kind of paste was then made
out of French chalk mixed with gin, which the two sisters applied to
the crowns and hearts with nail-brushes, or if the work was fine and
intricate, with an old toothbrush. The silver was then wiped dry with a
cloth and polished with a piece of leather.

A feeling of manly pride forbade me to partake in what I felt to be a
womanish labour; but I liked to stand by with my hands in my pockets,
watching the sisters at work among these regal and sacred symbols, and
trying to understand, so far as my limited knowledge of Flemish and my
almost equally limited knowledge of life would admit, the gossip which
Louiseke poured out incessantly in a tone of monotonous and unvarying
censoriousness.

I myself always found Louiseke a little forbidding. She lacked the
charm and the quality, which I can only call mellowness, of her sister;
to me she seemed harsh, sour-tempered, and rather malevolent. But it
is very possible that I judged her unfairly; for, I confess, I could
never quite get over her ugliness. It was a sharp, hooky, witch-like
type of ugliness, which at that time I found particularly repulsive.

How difficult it is, even with the best will in the world, even for a
grown and reasonable man, to judge his fellow-beings without reference
to their external appearance! Beauty is a letter of recommendation
which it is almost impossible to ignore; and we attribute too often
the ugliness of the face to the character. Or, to be more precise,
we make no attempt to get beyond the opaque mask of the face to the
realities behind it, but run away from the ugly at sight without
even trying to find out what they are really like. That feeling of
instinctive dislike which ugliness inspires in a grown man, but which
he has reason and strength enough of will to suppress, or at least
conceal, is uncontrollable in a child. At three or four years old a
child will run screaming from the room at the aspect of a certain
visitor whose face strikes him as disagreeable. Why? Because the ugly
visitor is “naughty,” is a “bad man.” And up to a much later age,
though we have succeeded in preventing ourselves from screaming when
the ugly visitor makes his appearance, we do our best--at first, at any
rate, or until his actions have strikingly proved that his face belies
his character--to keep out of his way. So that if I always disliked
Louiseke, it may be that she was not to blame, and that my own peculiar
horror of ugliness made me attribute to her unpleasant characteristics
which she did not in reality possess. She seemed to me, then, harsh
and sour-tempered; perhaps she wasn’t; but, in any case, I thought so.
And that accounts for the fact that I never got to know her, never
tried to know her, as I knew her sister. Even after the extraordinary
event which, a year or two after my first visit to Longres, was to
alter completely the whole aspect of her life, I still made no effort
to understand Louiseke’s character. How much I regret my remissness
now! But, after all, one cannot blame a small boy for failing to have
the same standards as a man. To-day, in retrospect, I find Louiseke’s
character and actions in the highest degree curious and worthy of
study. But twenty years ago, when I knew her, her ugliness at first
appalled me, and always, even after I had got over my disgust,
surrounded her, for me, with a kind of unbreathable atmosphere, through
which I could never summon the active interest to penetrate. Moreover,
the event which now strikes me as so extraordinary, seemed to me then
almost normal and of no particular interest. And since she died before
my opinion about it had had time to change, I can only give a child’s
impression of her character and a bald recital of the facts so far as I
knew them.

It was, then, at my second or third kermesse that a side-show, novel
not only for me (to whom indeed everything--fat women, fire-swallowers,
elastic men, and down to the merest dwarfs and giants--was a novelty),
but even to the oldest inhabitants of Longres, who might have been
expected to have seen, in their time, almost everything that the world
had ever parturated of marvels, rarities, monsters, and abortions,
made its appearance on the Grand’ Place. This was a troupe of devil
dancers, self-styled Tibetan for the sake of the name’s high-sounding
and mysterious ring; but actually made up of two expatriated Hindus and
a couple of swarthy meridional Frenchmen, who might pass at a pinch as
the Aryan compatriots of these dark Dravidians. Not that it mattered
much what the nationality or colour of the dancers might be; for on the
stage they wore enormous masks--huge false heads, grinning, horned,
and diabolic, which, it was claimed in the announcement, were those in
which the ritual dances were performed before the Dalai Lama in the
principal convent of Lhassa. Comparing my memories of them with such
knowledge of oriental art as I now possess, I imagine that they came in
reality from the shop of some theatrical property maker in Marseilles,
from which place the devil dancers had originally started. But they
were none the less startling and bloodcurdling for that; just as the
dances themselves were none the less salaciously symbolical, none
the less typically and conventionally “oriental” for having been in
great measure invented by the Frenchmen, who provided all the plot and
dramatic substance of the ballets, while the astonished and admiring
Indians contributed only a few recollections of Siva worship and the
cult of the beneficent _linga_. This co-operation between East and West
was what ensured the performance its success; the western substance
satisfied by its perfect familiarity, while the eastern detail gave
to the old situations a specious air of novelty and almost a new
significance.

Charmed by the prospect of seeing what he supposed would be a few
characteristic specimens of the religious rites of the mysterious East,
and ambitious to improve my education by initiating me into the secrets
of this Reality, my Uncle Spencer took me to see the dancers. But the
dramatic pantomime of the Frenchmen represented a brand of Reality that
my uncle did not at all approve of. He got up abruptly in the middle
of the first dance, saying that he thought the circus would be more
amusing; which, for me, it certainly was. For I was not of an age to
appreciate either the plastic beauty or the peculiar moral significance
of the devil dancers’ performance.

“Hinduism,” said my Uncle Spencer, as we threaded our way between the
booths and the whirling machines, “has sadly degenerated from its
original Brahmanistic purity.” And he began to expound to me, raising
his voice to make itself heard through the noise of the steam organs,
the principles of Brahmanism. My Uncle Spencer had a great weakness for
oriental religions.

“Well,” asked Mlle Leeauw, when we got back for dinner, “and how did
you enjoy the dancers?”

I told her that my Uncle Spencer had thought that I should find the
circus more amusing. Antonieke nodded with a significant air of
understanding. “Poor man,” she said, and she went on to wonder how
Louiseke, who was going to see the dancers that evening, would enjoy
the show.

I never knew precisely what happened; for a mystery and, as it were, a
zone of silence surrounded the event, and my curiosity about everything
to do with Louiseke was too feeble to carry me through it. All I know
is that, two or three days later, near the end of the kermesse, young
Albert Snyders, the lawyer’s son, came up to me in the street and
asked, with the gleeful expression of one who says something which he
is sure his interlocutor will find disagreeable: “Well, and what do
you think of your Louiseke and her carryings on with the black man?”

I answered truthfully that I had heard nothing about any such thing,
and that in any case Louiseke wasn’t our Louiseke, and that I didn’t
care in the least what she did or what might happen to her.

“Not heard about it?” said young Snyders incredulously. “But the black
man goes to her house every evening, and she gives him gin, and they
sing together, and people see their shadows dancing on the curtains.
Everybody’s talking about it.”

I am afraid that I disappointed young Snyders. He had hoped to get a
rise out of me, and he miserably failed. His errors were two: first,
to have supposed that I regarded Louiseke as our Louiseke, merely
because her sister happened to be my Uncle Spencer’s housekeeper;
and, secondly, to have attributed to me a knowledge of the world
sufficient to allow me to realise the scandalousness of Louiseke’s
conduct. Whereas I disliked Louiseke, took no interest in her actions,
and could, moreover, see nothing out of the ordinary in what she was
supposed to have done.

Confronted by my unshakable calm, young Snyders retired, rather
crestfallen. But he revenged himself before he went by telling me that
I must be very stupid and, what I found more insulting, a great baby
not to understand.

Antonieke, to whom I repeated young Snyders’s words, merely said that
the boy ought to be whipped, specifying with a wealth of precise detail
and a gusto that were entirely Flemish how, with what instrument, and
where the punishment ought to be applied. I thought no more about
the incident. But I noticed after the kermesse was over and the
Grand’ Place had become once more the silent and empty Grand’ Place
of ordinary days, I noticed loitering aimlessly about the streets a
stout, coffee-coloured man, whom the children of Longres, like those
three rude boys in _Struwwelpeter_, pursued at a distance, contorting
themselves with mirth. That year I went back to England earlier than
usual; for I had been invited to spend the last three weeks of my
holidays with a school friend (alas, at Hastings, so that my knowledge
of the earth’s surface was not materially widened by the visit). When
I returned to Longres for the Christmas holidays I found that Louiseke
was no longer mere Louiseke, but the bride of a coffee-coloured
husband. Madame Alphonse they called her; for nobody could bother with
the devil dancer’s real name: it had an Al- in it somewhere--that was
all that was known. Monsieur and Madame Alphonse. But the news when I
heard it did not particularly impress me.

And even if I had been curious to know more, dense silence continued
to envelop the episode. Antonieke never spoke to me of it; and lacking
all interest in this kind of Reality, disapproving of it even, my
Uncle Spencer seemed to take it silently for granted. That the subject
was copiously discussed by the gossips of Longres I do not doubt; and
remembering Louiseke’s own censorious anecdotage, I can imagine how.
But in my hearing it was never discussed; expressly, I imagine--for
I lived under the protection of Antonieke, and people were afraid of
Antonieke. So it came about that the story remained for me no more
remarkable than that story recorded by Edward Lear of the

            “... old Man of Jamaica
  Who casually married a Quaker;
    But she cried out, ‘Alack,
    I have married a black!’
  Which distressed that old Man of Jamaica.”

And perhaps, after all, that is the best way of regarding such
incidents--unquestioningly, without inquisitiveness. For we are all
much too curious about the affairs of our neighbours. Particularly
about the affairs of an erotic nature. What an itch we have to know
whether Mr. Smith makes love to his secretary, whether his wife
consoles herself, whether a certain Cabinet Minister is really the
satyr he is rumoured to be. And meanwhile the most incredible miracles
are happening all round us: stones, when we lift them and let them
go, fall to the ground; the sun shines; bees visit the flowers;
seeds grow into plants, a cell in nine months multiplies its weight
a few thousands of thousands of time, and is a child; and men think,
creating the world they live in. These things leave us almost perfectly
indifferent.

But concerning the ways in which different individuals satisfy the
cravings of one particular instinct we have, in spite of the frightful
monotony of the situation, in spite of the one well-known, inevitable
consummation, an endless and ever-fresh curiosity. Some day, perhaps,
we may become a little tired of books whose theme is always this
particular instinct. Some day, it may be, the successful novelist will
write about man’s relation to God, to nature, to his own thoughts and
the obscure reality on which they work, not about man’s relation with
woman. Meanwhile, however....

By what stages the old maid passed from her devoutness and her
censorious condemnation of love to her passion for the Dravidian, I can
only guess. Most likely there were no stages at all, but the conversion
was sudden and fulgurating, like that upon the road to Damascus--and
like that, secretly and unconsciously prepared for, long before the
event. It was the sheer wildness, no doubt, the triumphant bestiality
and paganism of the dances that bowled her over, that irresistibly
broke down the repressive barriers behind which, all too human,
Louiseke’s nature had so long chafed. As to Alphonse himself, there
could be no question about his motives. Devil dancing, he had found,
was an exhausting, precarious, and not very profitable profession. He
was growing stout, his heart was not so strong as it had been, he was
beginning to feel himself middle-aged. Louiseke and her little income
came as a providence. What did her face matter? He did not hesitate.

Monsieur and Madame Alphonse took a little shop in the Rue Neuve.
Before he left India and turned devil dancer, Alphonse had been a
cobbler in Madras--and as such was capable of contaminating a Brahman
at a distance of twenty-four feet; now, having become an eater of beef
and an outcast, he was morally infectious at no less than sixty-four
feet. But in Longres, luckily, there were no Brahmans.

He was a large, fat, snub-faced, and shiny man, constantly smiling,
with a smile that reminded me of a distended accordion. Many a pair
of boots I took to him to be soled--for Antonieke, though she was
horrified at having what she called a negro for her brother-in-law,
though she had quarrelled with her sister about her insane and
monstrous folly, and would hardly be reconciled to her, Antonieke
insisted that all our custom should go to the new cobbler. That, as she
explained, “owed itself.” The duty of members of one family to forward
one another’s affairs overrode, in her estimation, the mere personal
quarrels that might arise between them.

My Uncle Spencer was a frequent caller at the cobbler’s shop,
where he would sit for hours, while M. Alphonse tapped away at his
last, listening to mythological anecdotes out of the “Ramayana” or
“Mahabharata,” and discussing the Brahmanistic philosophy, of which,
of course, he knew far more than a poor Sudra like Alphonse. My Uncle
Spencer would come back from these visits in the best of humours.

“A most interesting man, your brother-in-law,” he would say to
Antonieke. “We had a long talk about Siva this afternoon. Most
interesting!”

But Antonieke only shrugged her shoulders. “_Mais c’est un nègre_,” she
muttered. And my Uncle Spencer might assure her as much as he liked
that Dravidians were not negroes and that Alphonse very likely had
good Aryan blood in his veins. It was useless. Antonieke would not be
persuaded, would not even listen. It was all very well for the rich to
believe things like that, but a negro, after all, was a negro; and that
was all about it.

M. Alphonse was a man of many accomplishments; for besides all the
rest, he was an expert palmist and told fortunes from the hand with a
gravity, a magisterial certainty, that were almost enough in themselves
to make what he said come true. This magian and typically oriental
accomplishment was learnt on the road between Marseilles and Longres
from a charlatan in the travelling company of amusement makers with
whom he had come. But he did the trick in the grand prophetic style,
so that people credited his cheiromancy with all the magical authority
of the mysterious East. But M. Alphonse could not be persuaded to
prophesy for every comer. It was noticed that he selected his subjects
almost exclusively from among his female customers, as though he were
only interested in the fates of women. I could hint as much as I liked
that I should like to have my fortune told, I could ask him outright
to look at my hand; but in vain. On these occasions he was always too
busy to look, or was not feeling in the prophetic mood. But if a young
woman should now come into the shop, time immediately created itself,
the prophetic mood came back. And without waiting for her to ask him,
he would seize her hand, pore over it, pat and prod the palm with his
thick brown fingers, every now and then turning up towards his subject
those dark eyes, made the darker and more expressive by the brilliance
of the bluish whites in which they were set, and expanding his
accordion smile. And he would prophesy love--a great deal of it--love
with superb dark men, and rows of children; benevolent dark strangers
and blond villains; unexpected fortunes, long life--all, in fact, that
the heart could desire. And all the time he squeezed and patted the
hand--white between his dark Dravidian paws--from which he read these
secrets; he rolled his eyes within their shiny blue enamel setting, and
across all the breadth of his fat cheeks the accordion of his smile
opened and shut.

My pride and my young sense of justice were horribly offended on these
occasions. The inconsistency of a man who had no time to tell my
fortune, but an infinite leisure for others, seemed to me abstractly
reprehensible and personally insulting. I professed, even at that age,
not to believe in palmistry; that is to say, I found the fortunes
which M. Alphonse prophesied for others absurd. But my interest in
my own personality and my own fate was so enormous that it seemed
to me, somehow, that everything said about me must have a certain
significance. And if M. Alphonse had taken my hand, looked at it, and
said, “You are generous; your head is as large as your heart; you will
have a severe illness at thirty-eight, but your life after that will
be healthy into extreme old age; you will make a large fortune early
in your career, but you must beware of fair-haired strangers with blue
eyes,” I should have made an exception and decided for the nonce that
there must be something in it. But, alas, M. Alphonse never did take
my hand; he never told me anything. I felt most cruelly offended, and
I felt astonished too. For it seemed to me a most extraordinary thing
that a subject which was so obviously fascinating and so important as
my character and future should not interest M. Alphonse as much as it
did me. That he should prefer to dabble in the dull fates and silly
insignificant characters of a lot of stupid young women seemed to me
incredible and outrageous.

There was another who, it seemed, shared my opinion. That was Louiseke.
If ever she came into the shop from the little back sitting-room--and
she was perpetually popping out through the dark doorway like a cuckoo
on the stroke of noon from its clock--and found her husband telling
the fortune of a female customer, her witch-like face would take on an
expression more than ordinarily malevolent.

“Alphonse!” she would say significantly.

And Alphonse dropped his subject’s hand, looked round towards the door,
and, rolling his enamelled eyes, creasing his fat cheeks in a charming
smile, flashing his ivory teeth, would say something amiable.

But Louiseke did not cease to frown.

“If you must tell somebody’s fortune,” she said, when the customer had
left the shop, “why don’t you tell the little gentleman’s?” pointing to
me. “I’m sure he would be only too delighted.”

But instead of being grateful to Louiseke, instead of saying, “Oh,
of course I’d like it,” and holding out my hand, I always perversely
shook my head. “No, no,” I said. “I don’t want to worry M. Alphonse.”
But I longed for Alphonse to insist on telling me about my exquisite
and marvellous self. In my pride, I did not like to owe my happiness
to Louiseke, I did not want to feel that I was taking advantage of her
irritation and Alphonse’s desire to mollify her. And besides pride, I
was actuated by that strange nameless perversity, which so often makes
us insist on doing what we do not want to do--such as making love to a
woman we do not like and whose intimacy, we know, will bring us nothing
but vexation--or makes us stubbornly decline to do what we have been
passionately desiring, merely because the opportunity of doing what
we wanted has not presented itself in exactly the way we anticipated,
or because the person who offered to fulfil our desires has not been
sufficiently insistent with his offers. Alphonse, on these occasions,
having no curiosity about my future and taking no pleasure in kneading
my small and dirty hand, always took my refusals quite literally and
finally, and began to work again with a redoubled ardour. And I would
leave the shop, vexed with myself for having let slip the opportunity
when it was within my grasp; furious with Louiseke for having presented
it in such a way that the seizing of it would be humiliating, and with
Alphonse for his obtuseness in failing to observe how much I desired
that he should look at my hand, and his gross discourtesy for not
insisting even in the teeth of my refusal.

Years passed; my holidays and the seasons succeeded one another with
regularity. Summer and the green poplars and my Uncle Spencer’s
amiability gave place to the cold season of sugar-making, to
scatological symbols in chocolate, to early darkness and the moral
gloom of my Uncle Spencer’s annual neurasthenia. And half-way between
the two extremes came the Easter holidays, pale green and hopefully
burgeoning, tepid with temperate warmth and a moderate amiability.
There were terms, too, as well as holidays. Eastbourne knew me no more;
my knowledge of the globe expanded; I became a public schoolboy.

At fifteen, I remember, I entered upon a period of priggishness which
made me solemn beyond my years. There are many boys who do not know
how young they are till they have come of age, and a young man is
often much less on his dignity than a growing schoolboy, who is afraid
of being despised for his callowness. It was during this period that
I wrote from Longres a letter to one of my school friends, which he
fortunately preserved, so that we were able to re-read it, years later,
and to laugh and marvel at those grave, academic old gentlemen we
were in our youth. He had written me a letter describing his sister’s
marriage, to which I replied in these terms:

  “How rapidly, my dear Henry, the saffron robe and Hymen’s torches
  give place to the nænia, the funeral urn, and the cypress! While your
  days have been passed among the jocundities of a marriage feast, mine
  have been darkened by the circumambient horrors of death. Such,
  indeed, is life.”

And I underlined the philosophic reflection.

The horrors of death made more show in my sonorous antitheses than they
did in my life. For though the event made a certain impression upon
me--for it was the first thing of the kind that had happened within my
own personal orbit--I cannot pretend that I was very seriously moved
when Louiseke died, too old to have attempted the experiment, in giving
birth to a half-Flemish, half-Dravidian daughter, who died with her. My
Uncle Spencer, anxious to introduce me to the Realities of Life, took
me to see the corpse. Death had a little tempered Louiseke’s ugliness.
In the presence of that absolute repose I suddenly felt ashamed of
having always disliked Louiseke so much. I wanted to be able to explain
to her that, if only I had known she was going to die, I would have
been nicer to her, I would have tried to like her more. And all at once
I found myself crying.

Downstairs in the back parlour M. Alphonse was crying too, noisily,
lamentably, as was his duty. Three days later, when his duty had been
sufficiently done and the conventions satisfied, he became all at once
exceedingly philosophic about his loss. Louiseke’s little income was
now his; and adding to it what he made by his cobbling, he could live
in almost princely style. A week or two after the funeral the kermesse
began. His old companions, who had danced several times backwards and
forwards across the face of Europe since they were last in Longres,
re-appeared unexpectedly on the Grand’ Place. Alphonse treated himself
to the pleasure of playing the generous host, and every evening when
their show was over the devils unhorned themselves, and over the
glasses in the little back parlour behind Alphonse’s shop they talked
convivially of old times, and congratulated their companion, a little
enviously, on his prodigious good fortune.

In the years immediately preceding the war I was not often in Longres.
My parents had come back from India; my holidays were passed with them.
And when holidays transformed themselves into university vacations and
I was old enough to look after myself, I spent most of my leisure in
travelling in France, Italy, or Germany, and it was only rarely and
fleetingly--on the way to Milan, on my way back from Cologne, or after
a fortnight among the Dutch picture galleries--that I now revisited
the house on the Grand’ Place, where I had passed so many, and on the
whole such happy, days. I liked my Uncle Spencer still, but he had
ceased to be an admired being, and his opinions, instead of rooting
themselves and proliferating within my mind, as once they did, seemed
mostly, in the light of my own knowledge and experience, too fantastic
even to be worth refuting. I listened to him now with all the young
man’s intolerance of the opinions of the old (and my Uncle Spencer,
though only fifty, seemed to me utterly fossilised and antediluvian),
acquiescing in all that he said with a smile in which a more suspicious
and less single-hearted man would have seen the amused contempt. My
Uncle Spencer was leaning during these years more and more towards
the occult sciences. He talked less of the construction of domes and
more of Hahnemann’s mystic high potentials, more of Swedenborg, more
of Brahmanistic philosophy, in which he had by this time thoroughly
indoctrinated M. Alphonse; and he was enthusiastic now about a new
topic--the calculating horses of Elberfeld, which, at that time, were
making a great noise in the world by their startling ability to extract
cube roots in their heads. Strong in the materialistic philosophy, the
careless and unreflecting scepticism which were, in those days, the
orthodoxy of every young man who thought himself intelligent, I found
my Uncle Spencer’s mystical and religious preoccupations marvellously
ludicrous. I should think them less ridiculous now, when it is the
easy creed of my boyhood that has come to look rather queer. Now it is
possible--it is, indeed, almost necessary--for a man of science to be
also a mystic. But there were excuses then for supposing that one could
only combine mysticism with the faulty knowledge and the fantastic
mental eccentricity of an Uncle Spencer. One lives and learns.

With Mlle Leeauw, on these later visits, I felt, I must confess,
not entirely at my ease. Antonieke saw me as essentially the same
little boy who had come so regularly all those years, holiday after
holiday, to Longres. Her talk with me was always of the joyous events
of the past--of which she had that extraordinarily accurate and
detailed memory which men and women, whose minds are not exercised by
intellectual preoccupations and who do not read much, always astonish
their more studious fellows by possessing. Plunged as I then was in all
the newly discovered delights of history, philosophy, and art, I was
too busy to take more than a very feeble interest in my childish past.
Had there been skating on the canals in 1905? Had I been bitten by a
horse-fly, the summer before, so poisonously that my cheek swelled up
like a balloon and I had to go to bed? Possibly, possibly; now that
I was reminded of these things I did, dimly, remember. But of what
earthly interest were facts such as these when I had Plato, the novels
of Dostoievsky, the frescoes of Michelangelo to think of? How entirely
irrelevant they were to, shall we say, David Hume! How insipid compared
with the sayings of Zarathustra, the Coriolan overture, the poetry of
Arthur Rimbaud! But for poor Antonieke they were all her life. I felt
all the time that I was not being as sympathetic with her as I ought to
have been. But was it my fault? Could I rebecome what I had been, or
make her suddenly different from what she was?

At the beginning of August 1914 I was staying at Longres on my way
to the Ardennes, where I meant to settle down quietly for a month or
so with two or three friends, to do a little solid reading before
going south to Italy in September. Strong in the faith of the
German professor who had proved, by the theories of ballistics and
probabilities, that war was now out of the question, my Uncle Spencer
paid no attention to the premonitory rumbles. It was just another
little Agadir crisis and would lead to nothing. I too--absorbed, I
remember, in the reading of William James’s _Varieties of Religious
Experience_--paid no attention; I did not even look at the papers.
At that time, still, my Uncle Spencer’s convictions about the
impossibility of war were also mine; I had had no experience to make me
believe them unfounded, and, besides, they fitted in very well with my
hopes, my aspirations, my political creed--for at that time I was an
ardent syndicalist and internationalist.

And then, suddenly, it was all on top of us.

My Uncle Spencer, however, remained perfectly optimistic. After a
week of fighting, he prophesied, the German professor would be proved
right and they would have to stop. My own feeling, I remember, was
one of a rather childish exhilaration; my excitement was much more
powerful than my shock of horror. I felt rather as I had felt on the
eve of the kermesse when, looking from my window, I gazed down at the
mountebanks setting up their booths and engines in the square below.
Something was really going to happen. That childish sense of excitement
is, I suppose, the prevailing emotion at the beginning of a war. An
intoxicating Bank Holiday air seems to blow through the streets. War is
always popular, at the beginning.

I did not return immediately to England, but lingered for a few days
at Longres, in the vague hope that I might “see something,” or that
perhaps my Uncle Spencer might really--as I still believed--be right,
and that, perhaps, the whole thing would be over in a few days. My
hope that I should “see something” was fulfilled. But the something
was not one of those brilliant and romantic spectacles I had imagined.
It consisted of a few little troops of refugees from the villages
round Liége--unshaven men, and haggard women with long tear-marks
on their dusty cheeks, and little boys and girls tottering along as
though in their sleep, dumb and stupid with fatigue. My Uncle Spencer
took a family of them into his house. “In a few days,” he said,
“when everything’s over, they’ll be able to go home again.” And when
indignantly Antonieke repeated to him their stories of burnings and
shootings, he wouldn’t believe them.

“After all,” he said, “this is the twentieth century. These things
don’t happen nowadays. These poor people are too tired and frightened
to know exactly what they are saying.”

In the second week of August I went back to England. My Uncle Spencer
was quite indignant when I suggested that he should come back with
me. To begin with, he said, it would all be over so very soon. In the
second place, this was the twentieth century--which was what the
Cretans said, no doubt, when in 1500 B.C., after two thousand years of
peace, prosperity, and progressive civilisation, they were threatened
by the wild men from the north. In the third place, he must stay at
Longres to look after his interests. I did not press him any further;
it would have been useless.

“Good-bye, dear boy,” he said, and there was an unaccustomed note of
emotion in his voice, “good-bye.”

The train slowly moved away. Looking out of the window, I could see him
standing on the platform, waving his hat. His hair was white all over
now, but his face was as young, his eyes as darkly bright, his small
spare body as straight and agile as when I had known him first.

“Good-bye, good-bye.”

I was not to see him again for nearly five years.

Louvain was burnt on the 19th of August. The Germans entered Brussels
on the 20th. Longres, though farther east than Louvain, was not
occupied till two or three days later--for the town lay off the direct
route to Brussels and the interior. One of the first acts of the
German commandant was to put my Uncle Spencer and M. Alphonse under
arrest. It was not that they had done anything; it was merely to their
existence that he objected. The fact that they were British subjects
was in itself extremely incriminating.

“Aber wir sind,” my Uncle Spencer protested in his rather rudimentary
German, “im zwanzigsten jahrhunderd. Und der--or is it das?--krieg wird
nicht lang....” he stammered, searched hopelessly for the word, “well,
in any case,” he concluded, relapsing into his own language and happy
to be able to express his astonished protest with fluency, “it won’t
last a week.”

“So we hope,” the commandant replied in excellent English, smiling.
“But meanwhile I regret....”

My Uncle Spencer and his fellow-Briton were locked up for the time
being in the lunatic asylum. A few days later they were sent under
escort to Brussels. Alphonse, my Uncle Spencer told me afterwards,
bore his misfortune with exemplary and oriental patience. Mute,
uncomplaining, obedient, he stayed where his captors put him, like a
large brown bundle left by the traveller on the platform, while he goes
to the buffet for a drink and a sandwich. And more docile than a mere
bundle, mutely, obediently, he followed wherever he was led.

“I wish I could have imitated him,” said my Uncle Spencer. “But I
couldn’t. My blood fairly boiled.”

And from what I remembered of him in the sugar-making season I could
imagine the depth, the fury of my Uncle Spencer’s impatience and
irritation.

“But this is the twentieth century,” he kept repeating to the guards.
“And I have nothing to do with your beastly war. And where the devil
are you taking us? And how much longer are we to wait in this damned
station without our lunch?” He spoke as a rich man, accustomed to being
able to buy every convenience and consideration. The soldiers, who had
the patience of poor men and were well used to being ordered hither
and thither, to waiting indefinitely in the place where they were told
to wait, could not understand this wild irritation against what they
regarded as the natural order of things. My Uncle Spencer first amused
them; then, as his impatience grew greater instead of less, he began to
annoy them.

In the end, one of his guards lost patience too, and gave him a great
kick in the breech to make him hold his tongue. My Uncle Spencer
turned round and rushed at the man; but another soldier tripped him
up with his rifle, and he tumbled heavily to the ground. Slowly he
picked himself up; the soldiers were roaring with laughter. Alphonse,
like a brown package, stood where they had put him, motionless,
expressionless, his eyes shut.

In the top floor of the Ministry of the Interior the German authorities
had established a sort of temporary internment camp. All suspicious
persons--dubious foreigners, recalcitrant natives, any one suspected
by the invaders of possessing a dangerous influence over his
neighbours--were sent to Brussels and shut up in the Ministry of the
Interior, to remain there until the authorities should have time to
go into their case. It was into this makeshift prison that my Uncle
Spencer and his Dravidian compatriot were ushered, one sweltering
afternoon towards the end of August. In an ordinary year, my Uncle
Spencer reflected, the kermesse at Longres would now be in full swing.
The fat woman would be washing her face with her bosom, the Figaros
would be re-enacting amid sobs the Passion of Our Saviour, the armless
lady would be drinking healths with her toes, the vendor of raw mussels
would be listening anxiously for the first hoarse sound that might
be taken for a cough. Where were they all this year, all these good
people? And where was he himself? Incredulously he looked about him.

In the attics of the Ministry of the Interior the company was strange
and mixed. There were Belgian noblemen whom the invaders considered it
unsafe to leave in their châteaux among their peasantry. There were a
Russian countess and an anarchist, incarcerated on account of their
nationality. There was an opera singer, who might be an international
spy. There was a little golden-haired male impersonator, who had been
appearing at a music-hall in Liége, and whose offence, like that of my
Uncle Spencer and the Dravidian, was to have been a British subject.
There were a number of miscellaneous Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, caught
on the wrong side of the border. There was an organ-grinder, who had
gone on playing the “Brabançonne” when told to stop, and a whole
collection of other Belgians, of all classes and both sexes, from every
part of the country, who had committed some crime or other, or perhaps
had contrived merely to look suspicious, and who were now waiting to
have their fate decided, as soon as the authorities should have time to
pay attention to them.

Into this haphazardly assembled society my Uncle Spencer and the
Dravidian were now casually dropped. The door closed behind them;
they were left, like new arrivals in hell, to make the best of their
situation.

The top floor of the Ministry of the Interior was divided up into one
very large and a number of small rooms, the latter lined, for the most
part, with pigeon-holes and filing cabinets in which were stored the
paper products of years of bureaucratic activity.

In the smaller chambers the prisoners had placed the straw mattresses
allotted to them by their gaolers; the men slept in the rooms at one
end of the corridor, the women in those at the other end. The big room,
which must once have housed the staff of the Ministry’s registry, still
contained a number of desks, tables, and chairs; it served now as the
prisoners’ drawing-room, dining-room, and recreation ground. There was
no bathroom, and only one washing-basin and one _chalet de nécessité_,
as my Uncle Spencer, with a characteristic euphemism, always called it.
Life in the attics of the Ministry of the Interior was not particularly
agreeable.

My Uncle Spencer noticed that those of the prisoners who were not
sunk in gloom and a sickening anxiety for the future, preserved an
almost too boisterous cheerfulness. You had, it seemed, either to take
this sort of thing as a prodigious joke, or brood over it as the most
horrible of nightmares. There seemed to be no alternative. In time, no
doubt, the two extremes would level down to the same calm resignation.
But confinement had still been too short for that; the situation
was still too new, dream-like, and phantasmagorical, and fate too
uncertain.

The cheerful ones abounded in japes, loud laughter, and practical
jokes. They had created in the prison a kind of private-school
atmosphere. Those whose confinement was oldest (and some had been in
the Ministry for nearly a week now, almost from the day of the German
entry into Brussels) assumed the inalienable right of seniors to
make the new arrivals feel raw and uncomfortable. Each freshman was
subjected to a searching cross-examination, like that which awaits the
new boy at his first school. Sometimes, if the latest victim seemed
particularly ingenuous, they would play a little practical joke on him.

The leader of the cheerful party was a middle-aged Belgian
journalist--a powerful, stout man, with carroty red moustaches and a
high crimson complexion, a huge roaring voice and a boundless gift for
laughter and genial Rabelaisian conversation. At the appearance of the
meek Dravidian he had fairly whooped with delight. So great, indeed,
was his interest in Alphonse that my Uncle Spencer escaped with the
most perfunctory examination and the minimum of playful “ragging.”
It was perhaps for the best; my Uncle Spencer was in no mood to be
trifled with, even by a fellow-sufferer.

Round poor Alphonse the journalist immediately improvised a farce.
Sitting like a judge at one of the desks in the large room, he had
the Dravidian brought before him, giving him to understand that
he was the German commissary who had to deal with his case. Under
cross-examination the Dravidian was made to tell his whole history.
Born, Madras; profession, cobbler--a clerk took down all his answers
as he delivered them. When he spoke of devil dancing, the judge made
him give a specimen of his performance there and then in front of the
desk. The question of his marriage with Louiseke was gone into in the
most intimate detail. Convinced that his liberty and probably his
life depended on his sincerity, Alphonse answered every question as
truthfully as he possibly could.

In the end, the journalist, clearing his throat, gravely summed up and
gave judgment. Innocent. The prisoner would forthwith be released. On
a large sheet of official paper he wrote _laissez passer_, signed it
Von der Golz, and, opening a drawer of the desk, selected from among
the numerous official seals it contained that with which, in happier
times, certain agricultural diplomas were stamped. On the thick red wax
appeared the figure of a prize shorthorn cow with, round it, the words:
“Pour l’amélioration de la race bovine.”

“Here,” roared the journalist, handing him the sealed paper. “You may
go.”

Poor Alphonse took his _laissez passer_ and, bowing at intervals almost
to the ground, retreated backwards out of the room. Joyously he picked
up his hat and his little bundle, ran to the door, knocked and called.
The sentry outside opened to see what was the matter. Alphonse produced
his passport.

“Aber wass ist das?” asked the sentry.

Alphonse pointed to the seal: for the amelioration of the bovine race;
to the signature: Von der Golz. The sentry, thinking that it was he,
not the Dravidian, who was the victim of the joke, became annoyed. He
pushed Alphonse roughly back through the door; and when, protesting,
propitiatively murmuring and smiling, the poor man advanced again to
explain to the sentry his mistake, the soldier picked up his rifle
and with the butt gave him a prod in the belly, which sent him back,
doubled up and coughing, along the corridor. The door slammed to.
Vainly, when he had recovered, Alphonse hammered and shouted. It did
not open again. My Uncle Spencer found him standing there--knocking,
listening, knocking again. The tears were streaming down his cheeks;
it was a long time before my Uncle Spencer could make him understand
that the whole affair had been nothing but a joke. At last, however,
Alphonse permitted himself to be led off to his mattress. In silence
he lay down and closed his eyes. In his right hand he still held the
passport--firmly, preciously between his thick brown fingers. He would
not throw it away; not yet. Perhaps if he went to sleep this incident
at the door would prove, when he woke up, to have been a dream. The
paper would have ceased to be a joke, and when, to-morrow, he showed
it again, who knew? the sentry would present arms and he would walk
downstairs; and all the soldiers in the courtyard would salute and he
would walk out into the sunny streets, waving the signature, pointing
to the thick red seal.

Quite still he lay there. His arm was crossed over his body. From
between the fingers of his hand hung the paper. Bold, as only the
signature of a conquering general could be, Von der Golz sprawled
across the sheet. And in the bottom right-hand corner, stamped in
the red wax, the image of the sacred cow was like a symbol of true
salvation from across the separating ocean and the centuries. _Pour
l’amélioration de la race bovine._ But might it not be more reasonable,
in the circumstances, to begin with the human race?

My Uncle Spencer left him to go and expostulate with the journalist on
the barbarity of his joke. He found the man sitting on the floor--for
there were not enough chairs to go round--teaching the golden-haired
male impersonator how to swear in French.

“And this,” he was saying, in his loud, jolly voice, “this is what
you must say to Von der Golz if ever you see him.” And he let off a
string of abusive words, which the little male impersonator carefully
repeated, distorted by her drawling English intonation, in her clear,
shrill voice: “Sarl esspayss de coshaw.” The journalist roared with
delighted laughter and slapped his thighs. “What comes after that?” she
asked.

“Excuse me,” said my Uncle Spencer, breaking in on the lesson. He was
blushing slightly. He never liked hearing this sort of language--and
in the mouth of a young woman (a compatriot too, it seemed) it sounded
doubly distressing. “Excuse me.” And he begged the journalist not to
play any more jokes on Alphonse. “He takes it too much to heart,” he
explained.

At his description of the Dravidian’s despair, the little male
impersonator was touched almost to tears. And the journalist, who, like
all the rest of us, had a heart of gold whenever he was reminded of
its existence--and, like all the rest of us, he needed pretty frequent
reminders; for his own pleasures and interests prevented him very often
from remembering it--the journalist was extremely sorry at what he had
done, declared that he had no idea that Alphonse would take the little
farce so seriously, and promised for the future to leave him in peace.

The days passed; the nightmare became habitual, followed a routine.
Three times a day the meagre supply of unappetising food arrived and
was consumed. Twice a day an officer with a little squad of soldiers
behind him made a tour of inspection. In the morning one waited for
one’s turn to wash; but the afternoons were immense gulfs of hot time,
which the prisoners tried to fill with games, with talk, with the
reading of ancient dossiers from the files, with solitary brooding
or with pacing up and down the corridor--twenty steps each way, up
and down, up and down, till one had covered in one’s imagination the
distance between one loved and familiar place and another. Up and down,
up and down. My Uncle Spencer sometimes walked along the poplar-lined
high road between Longres and Waret; sometimes from Charing Cross along
the Strand, under the railway bridge and up the hill to St. Paul’s,
and from St. Paul’s to the Bank, and from the Bank tortuously to the
Tower of London, the river, and the ships. Sometimes he walked with his
brother from Chamonix to the Montanvert; from Grenoble over the pass to
the Grande Chartreuse. Sometimes, less strenuously, he walked with his
long-dead mother through the glades of Windsor Forest, where the grass
is so green in early summer that it seems as though each blade were an
emerald illumined from within; and here and there among the oak trees
the dark-leaved rhododendrons light their innumerable rosy lamps.

In the evening the cheerful ones, with the journalist at their head,
organised entertainments for the amusement of the company. The
journalist himself recited poems of his own composition about the
Kaiser. One of the Frenchmen did some amateur conjuring with packs of
cards, handkerchiefs, and coins. The opera singer bawled out at the top
of his prodigious tenor, “La donna è mobile,” “O sole mio,” and when
something more serious was called for, César Franck’s “Dieu s’avance à
travers la lande”; which last, however, he sang in so richly operatic a
style that my Uncle Spencer, who was very fond of this particular song,
could hardly recognise it. But the most popular turn was always that of
“the celebrated diva, Emmy Wendle,” as the journalist called her, when
he introduced her to the company. The enthusiasm was tremendous when
Emmy Wendle appeared--dressed in an Eton jacket, broad starched collar,
striped trousers, and a top hat, and carrying in her hand a little
cane--did two or three rattling clog dances and sang a song with the
chorus:

  “We are the nuts that get the girls
        Ev-ery time;
  We get the ones with the curly curls,
  We get the peaches, we get the pearls--
        Ev-ery time.”

And when, at the end of the turn, she took off her top hat, and,
standing rigidly at attention, like a soldier, her childish snubby
little face very grave, her blue eyes fixed on visions not of this
world, sang in her tuneless street-urchin’s voice an astonishingly
English version of the “Brabançonne,” then there was something more
than enthusiasm. For men would suddenly feel the tears coming into
their eyes, and women wept outright; and when it was over, everybody
violently stamped and clapped and waved handkerchiefs, and laughed,
and shouted imprecations against the Germans, and said, “Vive la
Belgique!” and ran to Emmy Wendle, and took her hand, or slapped her
on the back as though she had really been a boy, or kissed her--but
as though she were not a girl, and dressed in rather tight striped
trousers at that--kissed her as though she were a symbol of the
country, a visible and charming personification of their own patriotism
and misfortunes.

When the evening’s entertainment was over, the company began to
disperse. Stretched on their hard mattresses along the floor, the
prisoners uneasily slept or lay awake through the sultry nights,
listening to the steps of the sentries in the court below and hearing
every now and then through the unnatural silence of the invaded town,
the heavy beat, beat, beat of a regiment marching along the deserted
street, the rumble and sharp, hoofy clatter of a battery on the move
towards some distant front.

The days passed. My Uncle Spencer soon grew accustomed to the strange
little hell into which he had been dropped. He knew it by heart. A
huge, square room, low-ceilinged and stifling under the hot leads. Men
in their shirt-sleeves standing, or sitting, some on chairs, some on
the corner of a desk or a table, some on the floor. Some leaned their
elbows on the window-sill and looked out, satisfying their eyes with
the sight of the trees in the park across the street, breathing a purer
air--for the air in the room was stale, twice-breathed, and smelt of
sweat, tobacco, and cabbage soup.

From the first the prisoners had divided themselves, automatically
almost, into little separate groups. Equal in their misery, they
still retained their social distinctions. The organ-grinder and the
artisans and peasants always sat together in one corner on the floor,
playing games with a greasy pack of cards, smoking and, in spite of
expostulations, in spite of sincere efforts to restrain themselves,
spitting on the floor all round them.

“Mine!” the organ-grinder would say triumphantly, and plank down his
ace of hearts. “Mine!” And profusely, to emphasise his satisfaction,
he spat. “Ah, pardon!” Remembering too late, he looked apologetically
round the room. “Excuse me.” And he would get up, rub the gob of
spittle into the floor with his boot, and going to the window would
lean out and spit again--not that he felt any need to, having spat only
a moment before, but for the sake of showing that he had good manners
and could spit out of the window and not on the floor when he thought
of it.

Another separate group was that of the aristocracy. There was the
little old count with a face like a teapot--such shiny round cheeks,
such a thin, irrelevant nose; and the young count with the monocle--the
one so exquisitely affable with every one and yet so remote and aloof
under all his politeness; the other so arrogant in manner, but, one
could see, so wistfully wishing that his social position would permit
him to mingle with his spiritual equals. The old count politely laughed
whenever the journalist or some other member of the cheerful party made
a joke; the young count scowled, till the only smooth surface left
in his corrugated face was the monocle. But he longed to be allowed
to join in the horse-play and the jokes. With the two counts were
associated two or three rich and important citizens, among them during
the first days my Uncle Spencer. But other interests were to make him
abandon their company almost completely after a while.

On the fringes of their circle hovered occasionally the Russian
countess. This lady spent most of the day in her sleeping apartment,
lying on her mattress and smoking cigarettes. She had decided views
about the respect that was due to her rank, and expected the wash-house
to be immediately evacuated whenever she expressed a desire to use it.
On being told that she must wait her turn, she flew into a rage. When
she was bored with being alone, she would come into the living-room to
find somebody to talk to. On one occasion she took my Uncle Spencer
aside and told him at great length and with a wealth of intimate detail
about the ninth and greatest love-affair of her life. In future,
whenever my Uncle Spencer caught sight of her turning her large, dark,
rather protruding eyes round the room, he took care to be absorbed in
conversation with somebody else.

Her compatriot, the anarchist, was a Jewish-looking man with a black
beard and a nose like the figure six. He associated himself with none
of the little groups, was delighted by the war, which he gleefully
prophesied would destroy so-called civilisation, and made a point of
being as disagreeable as he could to every one--particularly to the
countess, whom he was able to insult confidentially in Russian. It
was in obedience to the same democratic principles that he possessed
himself of the only arm-chair in the prison--it must have been the
throne of at least a _sous chef de division_--refusing to part with it
even for a lady or an invalid. He sat in it immovably all day, put it
between his mattress and the wall at night, and took it with him even
into the wash-house and the _chalet de nécessité_.

The cheerful party grouped itself, planet fashion, round the radiant
jollity of the journalist. His favourite amusement was hunting
through the files for curious dossiers which he could read out, with
appropriate comments and improvised emendations to the assembled group.
But the most relished of all his jokes was played ritually every
morning when he went through the papers of nobility of the whole Belgic
aristocracy (discovered, neatly stowed away, in a cupboard in the
corridor), selecting from among the noble names a few high-sounding
titles which he would carry with him to the chalet of necessity. His
disciples included a number of burgesses, French and Belgian; a rather
odious and spotty young English bank clerk caught on his foreign
holiday; the Russian countess in certain moods; the male impersonator,
on and off; and the opera singer.

With this last my Uncle Spencer, who was a great lover of music and
even a moderately accomplished pianist, made frequent attempts to talk
about his favourite art. But the opera singer, he found, was only
interested in music in so far as it affected the tenor voice. He had
consequently never heard of Bach or Beethoven. On Leoncavallo, however,
on Puccini, Saint-Saëns, and Gounod he was extremely knowledgeable.
He was an imposing personage, with a large, handsome face and the
gracious, condescending smile of a great man who does not object
to talking even with you. With ladies, as he often gave it to be
understood, he had a great success. But his fear of doing anything that
might injure his voice was almost as powerful as his lasciviousness
and his vanity; he passed his life, like a monk of the Thebaid, in a
state of perpetual conflict. Outwardly and professedly a member of the
cheerful party, the opera singer was secretly extremely concerned about
his future. In private he discussed with my Uncle Spencer the horrors
of the situation.

More obviously melancholy was the little grey-haired professor of
Latin who spent most of the day walking up and down the corridor like
a wolf in a cage, brooding and pining. Poor Alphonse, squatting with
his back to the wall near the door, was another sad and solitary
figure. Sometimes he looked thoughtfully about him, watching his
fellow-prisoners at their various occupations with the air of an
inhabitant of eternity watching the incomprehensible antics of those
who live in time. Sometimes he would spend whole hours with closed eyes
in a state of meditation. When some one spoke to him, he came back to
the present as though from an immense distance.

But, for my Uncle Spencer, how remote, gradually, they all became! They
receded, they seemed to lose light; and with their fading the figure
of Emmy Wendle came closer, grew larger and brighter. From the first
moment he set eyes on her, sitting there on the floor, taking her
lesson in vituperation from the journalist, my Uncle Spencer had taken
particular notice of her. Making his way towards the pair of them, he
had been agreeably struck by the childishness and innocence of her
appearance--by the little snub nose, the blue eyes, the yellow hair,
so stubbornly curly that she had to wear it cut short like a boy’s,
for there was no oiling down or tying back a long mane of it; even
in her private feminine life there was a hint--and it only made her
seem the more childish--of male impersonation. And then, coming within
earshot, it had been “sarl esspayss de coshaw” and a string besides
of less endearing locutions proceeding from these lips. Startling,
shocking. But a moment later, when he was telling them how hardly poor
Alphonse had taken the joke, she said the most charming things and with
such real feeling in her cockney voice, such a genuine expression of
sympathy and commiseration on her face, that my Uncle Spencer wondered
whether he had heard aright, or if that “sarl coshaw” and all the
rest could really have been pronounced by so delicate and sensitive a
creature.

The state of agitation in which my Uncle Spencer had lived ever since
his arrest, the astonishing and horrible novelty of his situation,
had doubtless in some measure predisposed him to falling in love.
For it frequently happens that one emotion--providing that it is not
so powerful as to make us unconscious of anything but itself--will
stimulate us to feel another. Thus danger, if it is not acute enough
to cause panic, tends to attach us to those with whom we risk it, the
feelings of compassion, sympathy, and even love being stimulated and
quickened by apprehension. Grief, in the same way, often brings with
it a need of affection and even, though we do not like to admit it to
ourselves, even obscurely a kind of desire; so that a passion of sorrow
will convert itself by scarcely perceptible degrees, or sometimes
suddenly, into a passion of love. My Uncle Spencer’s habitual attitude
towards women was one of extreme reserve. Once, as a young man, he
had been in love and engaged to be married; but the object of his
affections had jilted him for somebody else. Since then, partly from a
fear of renewing his disappointment, partly out of a kind of romantic
fidelity to the unfaithful one, he had avoided women, or at least
taken pains not to fall in love any more, living always in a state of
perfect celibacy, which would have done credit to the most virtuous
of priests. But the agitations of the last few days had disturbed all
his habits of life and thought. Apprehension of danger, an indignation
that was a very different thing from the recurrent irritability of
the sugar-making season, profound bewilderment, and a sense of mental
disorientation had left him without his customary defences and in a
state of more than ordinary susceptibility; so that when he saw, in
the midst of his waking nightmare, that charming childish head, when
he heard those gentle words of sympathy for the poor Dravidian, he was
strangely moved; and he found himself aware of Emmy Wendle as he had
not been aware of any woman since the first unfaithful one of his youth
had left him.

Everything conspired to make my Uncle Spencer take an interest in
Emmy Wendle--everything, not merely his own emotional state, but the
place, the time, the outward circumstances. He might have gone to see
her at the music-hall every night for a year; and though he might have
enjoyed her turn--and as a matter of fact he would not, for he would
have thought it essentially rather vulgar--though he might have found
her pretty and charming, it would never have occurred to him to try to
make her acquaintance or introduce himself into her history. But here,
in this detestable makeshift prison, she took on a new significance,
she became the personification of all that was gracious, sweet,
sympathetic, of all that was not war. And at the end of her performance
(still, it was true, in poorish taste, but more permissible, seeing
that it was given for the comfort of the afflicted) how profoundly
impressive was her singing of the “Brabançonne”! She had become great
with the greatness of the moment, with the grandeur of the emotions to
which she was giving utterance in that harsh guttersnipe’s voice of
hers--singing of exultations, agonies, and man’s unconquerable mind. We
attribute to the symbol something of the sacredness of the thing or
idea symbolised. Two bits of wood set cross-wise are not two ordinary
bits of wood, and a divinity has hedged the weakest and worst of kings.
Similarly, at any crisis in our lives, the most trivial object, or a
person in himself insignificant, may become, for some reason, charged
with all the greatness of the moment.

Even the “sarl coshaw” incident had helped to raise my Uncle Spencer’s
interest in Emmy Wendle. For if she was gentle, innocent, and young,
if she personified in her small, bright self all the unhappiness
and all the courage of a country, of the whole afflicted world,
she was also fallible, feminine, and weak; she was subject to bad
influences, she might be led astray. And the recollection of those
gross phrases, candidly, innocently, and openly uttered (as the most
prudish can always utter them when they happen to be in an unfamiliar
language, round whose words custom has not crystallised that wealth of
associations which give to the native locutions their peculiar and,
from age to age, varying significance), filled my Uncle Spencer with
alarm and with a missionary zeal to rescue so potentially beautiful and
even grand a nature from corruption.

For her part, Emmy Wendle was charmed, at any rate during the first
days of their acquaintance, with my Uncle Spencer. He was English, to
begin with, and spoke her language; he was also--which the equally
English and intelligible bank clerk was not--a gentleman. More
important for Emmy, in her present mood, he did not attempt to flirt
with her. Emmy wanted no admirers, at the moment. In the present
circumstances she felt that it would have been wrong, uncomely, and
rather disreputable to think of flirtation. She sang the “Brabançonne”
with too much religious ardour for that; the moment was too solemn,
too extraordinary. True, the solemnity of the moment and the ardour of
her patriotic feelings might, if a suitable young man had happened to
find himself with her in the attics of the Ministry of the Interior,
have caused her to fall in love with a fervour having almost the
religious quality of her other feelings. But no suitable young man,
unfortunately, presented himself. The bank clerk had spots on his
face and was not a gentleman, the journalist was middle-aged and too
stout. Both tried to flirt with her. But their advances had, for Emmy,
all the impropriety of a flirtation in a sacred place. With my Uncle
Spencer, however, she felt entirely safe. It was not merely that he had
white hair; Emmy had lived long enough to know that that symbol was no
guarantee of decorous behaviour--on the contrary; but because he was,
obviously, such a gentleman, because of the signs of unworldliness and
mild idealism stamped all over his face.

At first, indeed, it was only to escape from the tiresome and
indecorous attentions of the bank clerk and the journalist that she
addressed herself to Uncle Spencer. But she soon came to like his
company for its own sake; she began to take an interest in what he
said, she listened seriously to my Uncle Spencer’s invariably serious
conversation--for he never talked except on profitable and intellectual
themes, having no fund of ordinary small talk.

During the first days Emmy treated him with the respectful courtesy
which, she felt, was due to a man of his age, position, and character.
But later, when he began to follow her with his abject adoration,
she became more familiar. Inevitably; for one cannot expect to be
treated as old and important by some one at whom one looks with the
appealing eyes of a dog. She called him Uncle Spenny and ordered him
about, made him carry and fetch as though he were a trained animal.
My Uncle Spencer was only too delighted, of course, to obey her. He
was charmed by the familiarities she took with him. The period of her
pretty teasing familiarity (intermediate between her respectfulness and
her later cruelty) was the happiest, so far as my Uncle Spencer was
concerned, in their brief connection. He loved and felt himself, if not
loved in return, at least playfully tolerated.

Another man would have permitted himself to take liberties in return,
to be sportive, gallant, and importunate. But my Uncle Spencer remained
gravely and tenderly himself. His only reprisal for “Uncle Spenny”
and the rest was to call her by her Christian name instead of “Miss
Wendle,” as he had always solemnly done before. Yes, Emmy felt herself
safe with Uncle Spenny; almost too safe, perhaps.

My Uncle Spencer’s conversations were always, as I have said, of a very
serious cast. They were even more serious at this time than usual; for
the catastrophe, and now his passion, had brought on in his mind a very
severe fit of thinking. There was so much that, in the light of the
happenings of the last few weeks, needed reconsidering. From the German
professor’s theory to the problem of good and evil; from the idea of
progress (for, after all, was not this the twentieth century?) to the
austere theory and the strange new fact of love; from internationalism
to God--everything had to be considered afresh. And he considered them
out loud with Emmy Wendle. Goodness, for example, was that no more
than a relative thing, an affair of social conventions, gauged by
merely local and accidental standards? Or was there something absolute,
ultimate, and fundamental about the moral idea? And God--could God
be absolutely good? And was there such a vast difference between the
twentieth and other centuries? Could fact ever rhyme with ideal? All
these disturbing questions had to be asked and answered to his own
satisfaction once again.

It was characteristic of my Uncle Spencer that he answered them
all--even after taking into consideration everything that had
happened--on the hopeful side, just as he had done before the
catastrophe; and what was more, with a deeper conviction. Before, he
had accepted the cheerful idealistic view a little too easily. He had
inherited it from the century in which he was born, had sucked it in
from the respectable and ever-prospering elders among whom he had been
brought up. Circumstances were now making that facile cheerfulness
seem rather stupid. But it was precisely because he had to reconsider
the objections to optimism, the arguments against hopefulness, not
theoretically in the void, but practically and in the midst of personal
and universal calamity (the latter very bearable if one is comfortably
placed oneself, but real, but disturbing, if one is also suffering a
little), that he now became convinced, more hardly but more profoundly,
of the truth of what he had believed before, but lightly and, as he
now saw, almost accidentally. Events were shortly to disturb this
new-found conviction.

Emmy listened to him with rapture. The circumstances, the time, the
place, inclined her to the serious and reflective mood. My Uncle
Spencer’s discourses were just what she needed at this particular
moment. Naturally superstitious, she lived at all times under the
protection of a small gold lucky pig and a coral cross which had once
belonged to her mother. And when luck was bad, she went to church and
consulted crystal gazers. That time she broke her leg and had to cancel
that wonderful engagement to tour in Australia, she knew it was because
she had been neglecting God in all the prosperous months before; she
prayed and she promised amendment. When she got better, God sent her
an offer from Cohen’s Provincial Alhambras Ltd., in token that her
repentance was accepted and she was forgiven. And now, though she had
seemed to belong to the cheerful party in the attics of the Ministry
of the Interior, her thoughts had secretly been very grave. At night,
lying awake on her mattress, she wondered in the darkness what was the
reason of all this--the war, her bad luck in getting caught by the
Germans. Yes, what could the reason be? Why was God angry with her once
again?

But of course she knew why. It was all that dreadful, dreadful business
last June when she was working at Wimbledon. That young man who had
waited for her at the stage door; and would she do him the honour of
having supper with him? And she had said yes, though it was all against
her rules. Yes: because he had such a beautiful voice, so refined,
almost like a very high-class West End actor’s voice. “I came to see
the marionettes,” he told her. “Marionettes never seem to get farther
than the suburbs, do they? But I stayed for you.”

They drove in a taxi all the way from Wimbledon to Piccadilly. “Some
day,” she said, pointing to the Pavilion, “you’ll see my name there,
in big electric letters: EMMY WENDLE.” A hundred pounds a week and the
real West End. What a dream!

He had such beautiful manners and he looked so handsome when you saw
him in the light. They had champagne for supper.

In the darkness, Emmy blushed with retrospective shame. She buried
her face in the pillow as though she were trying to hide from some
searching glance. No wonder God was angry. In an agony she kissed
the coral cross. She pulled at the blue ribbon, at the end of which,
between her two small breasts, hung the golden pig; she held the mascot
in her hand, tightly, as though hoping to extract from it something of
that power for happiness stored mysteriously within it, as the power to
attract iron filings is stored within the magnet.

A few feet away the Russian countess heavily breathed. At the
stertorous sound Emmy shuddered, remembering the wickedness
that slumbered so near her. For if she herself had ceased to
be, technically, a good girl, she was--now that her luck had
turned--ashamed of it; she knew, from God’s anger, that she had done
wrong. But the countess, if sleep had not overtaken her, would have
gone on boasting all night about her lovers. To middle-class Emmy the
countess’s frankness, her freedom from the ordinary prejudices, her
aristocratic contempt for public opinion, and her assumption--the
assumption of almost all idle women and of such idle men as have
nothing better to do or think about--that the only end of life is to
make love, complicatedly, at leisure and with a great many people,
seemed profoundly shocking. It didn’t so much matter that she wasn’t a
good girl--or rather a good ripe widow. What seemed to Emmy so dreadful
was that she should talk about it as though not being good were
natural, to be taken for granted, and even positively meritorious. No
wonder God was angry.

To Emmy my Uncle Spencer--or shall I call him now her Uncle
Spenny?--came as a comforter and sustainer in her remorseful misery.
His wandering speculations were not, it was true, always particularly
relevant to her own trouble; nor did she always understand what he was
talking about. But there was a certain quality in all his discourses,
whatever the subject, which she found uplifting and sustaining. Thus
my Uncle Spencer quoting Swedenborg to prove that, in spite of all
present appearances to the contrary, things were probably all right,
was the greatest of comforts. There was something about him like a very
high-class clergyman--a West End clergyman, so to say. When he talked
she felt better and in some sort safer.

He inspired in her so much confidence that one day, while the
journalist was playing some noisy joke that kept all the rest of the
company occupied, she took him aside into the embrasure of one of the
windows and told him all, or nearly all, about the episode on account
of which God was now so angry. My Uncle Spencer assured her that God
didn’t see things in quite the way she imagined; and that if He had
decided that there must be a European War, it was not, in all human
probability, to provide an excuse for getting Emmy Wendle--however
guilty--locked up in the attics of the Ministry of the Interior at
Brussels. As for the sin itself, my Uncle Spencer tried to make her
believe that it was not quite so grave as she thought. He did not
know that she only thought it grave because she was in prison and,
naturally, depressed.

“No, no,” he said comfortingly, “you mustn’t take it to heart like
that.”

But the knowledge that this exquisite and innocent young creature
had once--and if once, why not twice, why not (my Uncle Spencer left
to his own midnight thoughts feverishly speculated), why not fifty
times?--fallen from virtue distressed him. He had imagined her, it was
true, surrounded by bad influences, like the journalist; but between
being taught to say “sarl coshaw” and an actual lapse from virtue,
there was a considerable difference. It had never occurred to my Uncle
Spencer that Emmy could have got beyond the “coshaw” stage. And now he
had it from her own lips that she had.

Celibate like a priest, my Uncle Spencer had not enjoyed the priest’s
vicarious experience in the confessional. He had not read those
astonishing handbooks of practical psychology, fruit of the accumulated
wisdom of centuries, from which the seminarist learns to understand
his penitents, to classify and gauge their sins, and, incidentally--so
crude, bald, and uncompromising are the descriptions of human vice
that they contain--to loathe the temptations which, when rosily and
delicately painted, can seem so damnably alluring. His ignorance of
human beings was enormous. In his refinement he had preferred not to
know; and circumstances, so far, had wonderfully conspired to spare him
knowledge.

Years afterwards, I remember, when we met again, he asked me after
a silence, and speaking with an effort, as though overcoming a
repugnance, what I really thought about women and all “that sort of
thing.” It was a subject about which at that time I happened to feel
with the bitterness and mirthful cynicism of one who has been only too
amply successful in love with the many in whom he took no interest, and
lamentably and persistently unsuccessful with the one being, in whose
case success would have been in the least worth while.

“You really think, then,” said my Uncle Spencer, when I paused for
breath, “that a lot of that sort of thing actually does go on?”

I really did.

He sighed and shut his eyes, as though to conceal their expression from
me. He was thinking of Emmy Wendle. How passionately he had hoped that
I should prove her, necessarily and _a priori_, virtuous!

There are certain sensitive and idealistic people in whom the discovery
that the world is what it is brings on a sudden and violent reaction
towards cynicism. From soaring in spheres of ideal purity they rush
down into the mud, rub their noses in it, eat it, bathe and wallow.
They lacerate their own highest feelings and delight in the pain.
They take pleasure in defiling the things which before they thought
beautiful and noble; they pore with a disgusted attention over the foul
entrails of the things whose smooth and lovely skin was what they had
once worshipped.

Swift, surely, was one of these--the greatest of them. His type our
islands still produce; and more copiously, perhaps, during the last
two or three generations than ever before. For the nineteenth century
specialised in that romantic, optimistic idealism which postulates that
man is on the whole good and inevitably becoming better. The idealism
of the men of the Middle Ages was more sensible; for it insisted,
to begin with, that man was mostly and essentially bad, a sinner by
instinct and heredity. Their ideals, their religion, were divine and
unnatural antidotes to original sin. They saw the worst first and
could be astonished by no horror--only by the occasional miracle of
sweetness and light. But their descendants of the romantic, optimistic,
humanitarian century, in which my Uncle Spencer was born and brought
up, vented their idealism otherwise. They began by seeing the best;
they insisted that men were naturally good, spiritual, and lovely. A
sensitive youth brought up in this genial creed has only to come upon a
characteristic specimen of original sin to be astonished, shocked, and
disillusioned into despair. Circumstances and temperament had permitted
my Uncle Spencer to retain his romantic optimism very much longer than
most men.

The tardy recognition of the existence of original sin disturbed my
Uncle Spencer’s mind. But the effects of it were not immediate. At
the moment, while he was in Emmy’s pretty and intoxicating presence,
and while she was still kind, he could not believe that she too had
her share of original sin. And even when he forced himself to do so,
her childish ingenuous face was in itself a complete excuse. It was
later--and especially when he was separated from her--that the poison
began slowly to work, embittering his whole spirit. At present Emmy’s
confession only served to increase his passion for her. For, to begin
with, it made her seem more than ever in need of protection. And next,
by painfully satisfying a little of his curiosity about her life, it
quickened his desire to know all, to introduce himself completely into
her history. And at the same time it provoked a retrospective jealousy,
together with an intense present suspiciousness and an agonised
anticipation of future dangers. His passion became like a painful
disease. He pursued her with an incessant and abject devotion.

Relieved, partly by my Uncle Spencer’s spiritual ministrations, partly
by the medicating power of time, from her first access of remorse,
depression, and self-reproach, Emmy began to recover her normal high
spirits. My Uncle Spencer became less necessary to her as a comforter.
His incomprehensible speculations began to bore her. Conversely, the
jokes of the cheerful ones seemed more funny, while the gallantries of
the journalist and the bank clerk appeared less repulsive, because--now
that her mood had changed--they struck her as less incongruous and
indecorous. She was no longer, spiritually speaking, in church. In
church, my Uncle Spencer’s undemonstrative and unimportunate devotion
had seemed beautifully in place. But now that she was emerging again
out of the dim religious into the brightly secular mood, she found it
rather ridiculous and, since she did not return the adoration, tiresome.

“If you could just see yourself now, Uncle Spenny,” she said to him,
“the way you look.”

And she drew down the corners of her mouth, then opened her eyes in a
fishy, reverential stare. Then the grimace in which my Uncle Spencer
was supposed to see his adoration truly mirrored, disintegrated in
laughter; the eyes screwed themselves up, a little horizontal wrinkle
appeared near the tip of the snub nose, the mouth opened, waves of
mirth seemed to ripple out from it across the face, and a shrill peal
of laughter mocked him into an attempted smile.

“Do I really look like that?” he asked.

“You really do,” Emmy nodded. “Not a very cheerful thing to have
staring at one day and night, is it?”

Sometimes--and this to my Uncle Spencer was inexpressibly painful--she
would even bring in some third person to share the sport at his
expense; she would associate the bank clerk, the opera singer, or the
journalist in her mocking laughter. The teasing which, in the first
days, had been so light and affectionate, became cruel.

Emmy would have been distressed, no doubt, if she had known how much
she hurt him. But he did not complain. All she knew was that my Uncle
Spencer was ridiculous. The temptation to say something smart and
disagreeable about him was irresistible.

To my Uncle Spencer’s company she now preferred that of the journalist,
the bank clerk, and the opera singer. With the bank clerk she talked
about West End actors and actresses, music-hall artists, and cinema
stars. True, he was not much of a gentleman; but on this absorbing
subject he was extremely knowledgeable. The singer revealed to her the
gorgeous and almost unknown universe of the operatic stage--a world
of art so awe-inspiringly high that it was above even the West End.
The journalist told her spicy stories of the Brussels stage. My Uncle
Spencer would sit at the fringes of the group, listening in silence and
across a gulf of separation, while Emmy and the bank clerk agreed that
Clarice Mayne was sweet, George Robey a scream, and Florence Smithson a
really high-class artist. When asked for his opinion, my Uncle Spencer
always had to admit that he had never seen the artist in question.
Emmy and the bank clerk would set up a howl of derision; and the opera
singer, with biting sarcasm, would ask my Uncle Spencer how a man who
professed to be fond of music could have gone through life without
even making an attempt to hear Caruso. My Uncle Spencer was too sadly
depressed to try to explain.

The days passed. Sometimes a prisoner would be sent for and examined
by the German authorities. The little old nobleman like a teapot was
released a week after my Uncle Spencer’s arrival; and a few days later
the haughty and monocled one disappeared. Most of the peasants next
vanished. Then the Russian anarchist was sent for, lengthily examined
and sent back again, to find that his arm-chair was being occupied by
the journalist.

In the fourth week of my Uncle Spencer’s imprisonment Alphonse
fell ill. The poor man had never recovered from the effects of the
practical joke that had been played upon him on the day of his arrival.
Melancholy, oppressed by fears, the more awful for being vague and
without a definite object (for he could never grasp why and by whom he
had been imprisoned; and as to his ultimate fate--no one could persuade
him that it was to be anything but the most frightful and lingering
of deaths), he sat brooding by himself in a corner. His free pardon,
signed Von der Golz and sealed with the image of the Sacred Cow, he
still preserved; for though he was now intellectually certain that the
paper was valueless, he still hoped faintly in the depths of his being
that it might turn out, one day, to be a talisman; and, in any case,
the image of the Cow was very comforting. Every now and then he would
take the paper out of his pocket, tenderly unfold it and gaze with
large sad eyes at the sacred effigy: _Pour l’amélioration de la race
bovine_--and tears would well up from under his eyelids, would hang
suspended among the lashes and roll at last down his brown cheeks.

They were not so round now, those cheeks, as they had been. The skin
sagged, the bright convex high-lights had lost their brilliance.
Miserably he pined. My Uncle Spencer did his best to cheer him.
Alphonse was grateful, but would take no comfort. He had lost all
interest even in women; and when, learning from my Uncle Spencer that
the Indian was something of a prophet, Emmy asked him to read her hand,
he looked at her listlessly as though she had been a mere male and not
a male impersonator, and shook his head.

One morning he complained that he was feeling too ill to get up. His
head was hot, he coughed, breathed shortly and with difficulty, felt a
pain in his right lung. My Uncle Spencer tried to think what Hahnemann
would have prescribed in the circumstances, and came to the conclusion
that the thousandth of a grain of aconite was the appropriate remedy.
Unhappily, there was not so much as a millionth of a grain of aconite
to be found in all the prison. Inquiry produced only a bottle of
aspirin tablets and, from the Russian countess, a packet of cocaine
snuff. It was thought best to give the Dravidian a dose of each and
wait for the doctor.

At his midday visit the inspecting officer was informed of Alphonse’s
state, and promised to have the doctor sent at once. But it was not,
in point of fact, till the next morning that the doctor came. My Uncle
Spencer, meanwhile, constituted himself the Dravidian’s nurse. The
fact that Alphonse was the widower of his housekeeper’s sister, and
had lived in his city of adoption, made my Uncle Spencer feel somehow
responsible for the poor Indian. Moreover, he was glad to have some
definite occupation which would allow him to forget, if only partially
and for an occasional moment, his unhappy passion.

From the first, Alphonse was certain that he was going to die. To my
Uncle Spencer he foretold his impending extinction, not merely with
equanimity, but almost with satisfaction. For by dying, he felt, he
would be spiting and cheating his enemies, who desired so fiendishly to
put an end to him at their own time and in their own horrible fashion.
It was in vain that my Uncle Spencer assured him that he would not die,
that there was nothing serious the matter with him. Alphonse stuck to
his assertion.

“In eight days,” he said, “I shall be dead.”

And shutting his eyes, he was silent.

The doctor, when he came next day, diagnosed acute lobar pneumonia.
Through the oppression of his fever, Alphonse smiled at my Uncle
Spencer with a look almost of triumph. That night he was delirious and
began to rave in a language my Uncle Spencer could not understand.

My Uncle Spencer listened in the darkness to the Dravidian’s
incomprehensible chattering; and all at once, with a shudder, with
a sense of terror he felt--in the presence of this man of another
race, speaking in an unknown tongue words uttered out of obscure
depths for no man’s hearing and which even his own soul did not
hear or understand--he felt unutterably alone. He was imprisoned
within himself. He was an island surrounded on every side by wide
and bottomless solitudes. And while the Indian chattered away, now
softly, persuasively, cajolingly, now with bursts of anger, now loudly
laughing, he thought of all the millions and millions of men and women
in the world--all alone, all solitary and confined. He thought of
friends, incomprehensible to one another and opaque after a lifetime
of companionship; he thought of lovers remote in one another’s arms.
And the hopelessness of his passion revealed itself to him--the
hopelessness of every passion, since every passion aims at attaining
to what, in the nature of things, is unattainable: the fusion and
interpenetration of two lives, two separate histories, two solitary and
for ever sundered individualities.

The Indian roared with laughter.

But the unattainableness of a thing was never a reason for ceasing to
desire it. On the contrary, it tends to increase and even to create
desire. Thus our love for those we know, and our longing to be with
them, are often increased by their death. And the impossibility of ever
communicating with him again will actually create out of indifference
an affection, a respect and esteem for some one whose company in
life seemed rather tedious than desirable. So, for the lover, the
realisation that what he desires is unattainable, and that every
possession will reveal yet vaster tracts of what is unpossessed and
unpossessable, is not a deterrent, is not an antidote to his passion;
but serves rather to exacerbate his desire, sharpening it to a kind of
desperation, and at the same time making the object of his desire seem
more than ever precious.

The Indian chattered on, a ghost among the ghosts of his imagination,
remote as though he were speaking from another world. And Emmy--was
she not as far away, as unattainable? And being remote, she was the
more desirable; being mysterious, she was the more lovely. A more
brutal and experienced man than my Uncle Spencer would have devoted
all his energies to seducing the young woman, knowing that after a
time the satisfaction of his physical desire would probably make him
cease to take any interest in her soul or her history. But physical
possession was the last thing my Uncle Spencer thought of, and his love
had taken the form of an immense desire for the impossible union, not
of bodies, but of minds and lives. True, what he had so far learned
about her mind and history was not particularly encouraging. But for
my Uncle Spencer her silliness, love of pleasure, and frivolity were
strange and mysterious qualities--for he had known few women in his
life and none, before, like Emmy Wendle--rather lovely still in their
unfamiliarity, and if recognised as at all bad, excused as being the
symptoms of a charming childishness and an unfortunate upbringing. Her
solicitude, that first day, about poor Alphonse convinced him that she
was fundamentally good-hearted; and if she had proved herself cruel
since then towards himself, that was more by mistake and because of
surrounding bad influences than from natural malignity. And, then,
there was the way in which she sang the “Brabançonne.” It was noble,
it was moving. To be able to sing like that one must have a fine and
beautiful character. In thinking like this, my Uncle Spencer was
forgetting that no characteristic is incompatible with any other, that
any deadly sin may be found in company with any cardinal virtue, even
the apparently contradictory virtue. But unfortunately that is the
kind of wisdom which one invariably forgets precisely at the moment
when it might be of use to one. One learns it almost in the cradle; at
any rate, I remember at my preparatory school reading, in Professor
Oman’s _Shorter History of England_, of “the heroic though profligate
Duke of Ormond,” and of a great English king who was none the less, “a
stuttering, lolling pedant with a tongue too big for his mouth.” But
though one knows well enough in theory that a duke can be licentious
as well as brave, that majestic wisdom may be combined with pedantry
and defective speech, yet in practice one continues to believe that
an attractive woman is kind because she is charming, and virtuous
because she rejects your first advances; without reflecting that the
grace of her manner may thinly conceal an unyielding ruthlessness and
selfishness, while the coyness in face of insistence may be a mere
device for still more completely ensnaring the victim. It is only in
the presence of unsympathetic persons that we remember that the most
odious actions are compatible with the most genuinely noble sentiments,
and that a man or woman who does one thing, while professing another,
is not necessarily a conscious liar or hypocrite. If only we could
steadfastly bear this knowledge in mind when we are with persons whom
we find sympathetic!

Desiring Emmy as passionately as he did, my Uncle Spencer would not
have had much difficulty in persuading himself--even in spite of her
recent cruelty towards him--that the spirit with which he longed to
unite his own was on the whole a beautiful and interesting spirit;
would indeed have had no difficulty at all, had it not been for that
unfortunate confession of hers. This, though it flattered him as
a token of her confidence in his discretion and wisdom, had sadly
disturbed him and was continuing to disturb him more and more. For out
of all her history--the history in which it was his longing to make
himself entirely at home as though he had actually lived through it
with her--this episode was almost the only chapter he knew. Like a
thin ray of light her confession had picked it out for him, from the
surrounding obscurity. And what an episode! The more my Uncle Spencer
reflected on it, the more he found it distressing.

The brutal practical man my Uncle Spencer was not would have taken
this incident from the past as being of good augury for his own future
prospects. But since he did not desire, consciously at any rate, the
sort of success it augured, the knowledge of this incident brought him
an unadulterated distress. For however much my Uncle Spencer might
insist in his own mind on the guiltiness of external circumstance and
of the other party, he could not entirely exonerate Emmy. Nor could
he pretend that she had not in some sort, if only physically, taken
part in her own lapse. And perhaps she had participated willingly. And
even if she had not, the thought that she had been defiled, however
reluctantly, by the obscene contact was unspeakably painful to him.
And while the Indian raved, and through the long, dark silences
during which there was no sound but the unnaturally quick and shallow
breathing, and sometimes a moan, and sometimes a dry cough, my Uncle
Spencer painfully thought and thought; and his mind oscillated between
a conviction of her purity and the fear that perhaps she was utterly
corrupt. He saw in his imagination, now her childish face and the rapt
expression upon it while she sang the “Brabançonne,” now the sweet,
solicitous look while she commiserated on poor Alphonse’s unhappiness,
and then, a moment later, endless embracements, kisses brutal and
innumerable. And always he loved her.

Next day the Dravidian’s fever was still high. The doctor, when he
came, announced that red hepatisation of both lungs was already setting
in. It was a grave case which ought to be at the hospital; but he had
no authority to have the man sent there. He ordered tepid spongings to
reduce the fever.

In the face of the very defective sanitary arrangements of the prison,
my Uncle Spencer did his best. He had a crowd of willing assistants;
everybody was anxious to do something helpful. Nobody was more anxious
than Emmy Wendle. The forced inaction of prison life, even when it was
relieved by the jokes of the cheerful ones, by theatrical discussions
and the facetious gallantry of the bank clerk and the journalist, was
disagreeable to her. And the prospect of being able to do something,
and particularly (since it was war-time, after all) of doing something
useful and charitable, was welcomed by her with a real satisfaction.
She sat by the Dravidian’s mattress, talked to him, gave him what
he asked for, did the disagreeable jobs that have to be done in the
sick-room, ordered my Uncle Spencer and the others about, and seemed
completely happy.

For his part, my Uncle Spencer was delighted by what he regarded as a
reversion to her true self. There could be no doubt about it now: Emmy
was good, was kind, a ministering angel, and therefore (in spite of the
professor’s heroic though profligate duke), therefore pure, therefore
interesting, therefore worthy of all the love he could give her. He
forgot the confession, or at least he ceased to attach importance to
it; he was no longer haunted by the odious images which too much
brooding over it evoked in his mind. What convinced him, perhaps,
better than everything of her essential goodness, was the fact that
she was once more kind to him. Her young energy, fully occupied in
practical work (which was not, however, sufficiently trying to overtax
the strength or set the nerves on edge), did not have to vent itself
in laughter and mockery, as it had done when she recovered from the
mood of melancholy which had depressed it during the first days of her
imprisonment. They were fellow-workers now.

The Dravidian, meanwhile, grew worse and worse, weaker and weaker every
day. The doctor was positively irritated.

“The man has no business to be so ill as he is,” he grumbled. “He’s not
old, he isn’t an alcoholic or a syphilitic, his constitution is sound
enough. He’s just letting himself die. At this rate he’ll never get
past the crisis.”

At this piece of news Emmy became grave. She had never seen death at
close quarters--a defect in her education which my Uncle Spencer, if
he had had the bringing up of her, would have remedied. For death was
one of those Realities of Life with which, he thought, every one ought
to make the earliest possible acquaintance. Love, on the other hand,
was not one of the desirable Realities. It never occurred to him to ask
himself the reason for this invidious distinction. Indeed, there was no
reason; it just was so.

“Tell me, Uncle Spenny,” she whispered, when the doctor had gone, “what
_does_ really happen to people when they die?”

Charmed by this sign of Emmy’s renewed interest in serious themes, my
Uncle Spencer explained to her what Alphonse at any rate thought would
happen to him.

At midday, over the repeated cabbage soup and the horrible boiled meat,
the bank clerk, with characteristically tasteless facetiousness, asked,
“How’s our one little nigger boy?”

Emmy looked at him with disgust and anger. “I think you’re perfectly
horrible,” she said. And, lowering her voice reverently, she went on,
“The doctor says he’s going to die.”

The bank clerk was unabashed. “Oh, he’s going to kick the bucket, is
he? Poor old blacky!”

Emmy made no answer; there was a general silence. It was as though
somebody had started to make an unseemly noise in a church.

Afterwards, in the privacy of the little room, where, among the filing
cabinets and the dusty papers, the Dravidian lay contentedly dying,
Emmy turned to my Uncle Spencer and said, “You know, Uncle Spenny, I
think you’re a wonderfully decent sort. I do, really.”

My Uncle Spencer was too much overcome to say anything but “Emmy,
Emmy,” two or three times. He took her hand and, very gently, kissed it.

That afternoon they went on talking about all the things that might
conceivably happen after one were dead. Emmy told my Uncle Spencer all
that she had thought when she got the telegram--two years ago it was,
and she was working in a hall at Glasgow, one of her first engagements,
too--saying that her father had suddenly died. He drank too much, her
father did; and he wasn’t kind to mother when he wasn’t himself. But
she had been very fond of him, all the same; and when that telegram
came she wondered and wondered....

My Uncle Spencer listened attentively, happy in having this new glimpse
of her past; he forgot the other incident, which the beam of her
confession had illumined for him.

Late that evening, after having lain for a long time quite still, as
though he were asleep, Alphonse suddenly stirred, opened his large
black eyes, and began to talk, at first in the incomprehensible
language which came from him in delirium, then, when he realised that
his listeners did not understand him, more slowly and in his strange
pidgin-French.

“I have seen everything just now,” he said--“everything.”

“But what?” they asked.

“All that is going to happen. I have seen that this war will last a
long time--a long time. More than fifty months.” And he prophesied
enormous calamities.

My Uncle Spencer, who knew for certain that the war couldn’t possibly
last more than three months, was incredulous. But Emmy, who had no
preconceived ideas on war and a strong faith in oracles, stopped him
impatiently when he wanted to bring the Dravidian to silence.

“Tell me,” she said, “what’s going to happen to us.” She had very
little interest in the fate of civilisation.

“I am going to die,” Alphonse began.

My Uncle Spencer made certain deprecating little noises. “No, no,” he
protested.

The Indian paid no attention to him. “I am going to die,” he repeated.
“And you,” he said to my Uncle Spencer, “you will be let go and then
again be put into prison. But not here. Somewhere else. A long way
off. For a long time--a very long time. You will be very unhappy.” He
shook his head. “I cannot help it; even though you have been so good
to me. That is what I see. But the man who deceived me”--he meant the
journalist--“he will very soon be set free and he will live in freedom,
all the time. In such freedom as there will be here. And he who sits
in the chair will at last go back to his own country. And he who sings
will go free like the man who deceived me. And the small grey man will
be sent to another prison in another country. And the fat woman with
a red mouth will be sent to another country; but she will not be in
prison. I think she will be married there--again.” The portraits were
recognisably those of the Russian countess and the professor of Latin.
“And the man with carbuncles on his face” (this was the bank clerk, no
doubt) “will be sent to another prison in another country; and there he
will die. And the woman in black who is so sad....”

But Emmy could bear to wait no longer. “What about me?” she asked.
“Tell me what you see about me.”

The Dravidian closed his eyes and was silent for a moment. “You will be
set free,” he said. “Soon. And some day,” he went on, “you will be the
wife of this good man.” He indicated my Uncle Spencer. “But not yet;
not for a long time; till all this strife is at an end. You will have
children ... good fortune....” His words grew fainter; once more he
closed his eyes. He sighed as though utterly exhausted. “Beware of fair
strangers,” he murmured, reverting to the old familiar formula. He said
no more.

Emmy and my Uncle Spencer were left looking at one another in silence.

“What do you think, Uncle Spenny?” she whispered at last. “Is it true?”

Two hours later the Indian was dead.

My Uncle Spencer slept that night, or rather did not sleep, in the
living-room. The corpse lay alone among the archives. The words of the
Indian continued to echo and re-echo in his mind: “Some day you will
be the wife of this kind man.” Perhaps, he thought, on the verge of
death, the spirit already begins to try its wings in the new world.
Perhaps already it has begun to know the fringes, as it were, of
secrets that are to be revealed to it. To my Uncle Spencer there was
nothing repugnant in the idea. There was room in his universe for what
are commonly and perhaps wrongly known as miracles. Perhaps the words
were a promise, a statement of future fact. Lying on his back, his eyes
fixed on the dark blue starry sky beyond the open window, he meditated
on that problem of fixed fate and free will, with which the devils in
Milton’s hell wasted their infernal leisure. And like a refrain the
words repeated themselves: “Some day you will be the wife of this good
man.” The stars moved slowly across the opening of the window. He did
not sleep.

In the morning an order came for the release of the journalist and the
opera singer. Joyfully they said good-bye to their fellow-prisoners;
the door closed behind them. Emmy turned to my Uncle Spencer with a
look almost of terror in her eyes; the Indian’s prophesies were already
beginning to come true. But they said nothing to one another. Two days
later the bank clerk left for an internment camp in Germany.

And then, one morning, my Uncle Spencer himself was sent for. The
order came quite suddenly; they left him no time to take leave. He was
examined by the competent authority, found harmless, and permitted to
return to Longres, where, however, he was to live under supervision.
They did not even allow him to go back to the prison and say good-bye;
a soldier brought his effects from the Ministry; he was put on to the
train, with orders to report to the commandant at Longres as soon as he
arrived.

Antonieke received her master with tears of joy. But my Uncle Spencer
took no pleasure in his recovered freedom. Emmy Wendle was still a
prisoner. True, she would soon be set free; but then, he now realised
to his horror, she did not know his address. He had been released at
such startlingly short notice that he had had no time to arrange with
her about the possibilities of future meetings; he had not even seen
her on the morning of his liberation.

Two days after his return to Longres, he asked permission from the
commandant, to whom he had to report himself every day, whether he
might go to Brussels. He was asked why; my Uncle Spencer answered
truthfully that it was to visit a friend in the prison from which he
himself had just been released. Permission was at once refused.

My Uncle Spencer went to Brussels all the same. The sentry at the door
of the prison arrested him as a suspicious person. He was sent back
to Longres; the commandant talked to him menacingly. The next week,
my Uncle Spencer tried again. It was sheer insanity, he knew; but
doing something idiotic was preferable to doing nothing. He was again
arrested.

This time they condemned him to internment in a camp in Germany. The
Indian’s prophecies were being fulfilled with a remarkable accuracy.
And the war did last for more than fifty months. And the carbuncular
bank clerk, whom he found again in the internment camp, did, in fact,
die....

What made him confide in me--me, whom he had known as a child and
almost fathered--I do not know. Or perhaps I do know. Perhaps it was
because he felt that I should be more competent to advise him on this
sort of subject than his brother--my father--or old Mr. Bullinger, the
Dante scholar, or any other of his friends. He would have felt ashamed,
perhaps, to talk to them about this sort of thing. And he would have
felt, too, that perhaps it wouldn’t be much good talking to them, and
that I, in spite of my youth, or even because of it, might actually be
more experienced in these matters than they. Neither my father nor Mr.
Bullinger, I imagine, knew very much about male impersonators.

At any rate, whatever the cause, it was to me that he talked about
the whole affair, that spring of 1919, when he was staying with us in
Sussex, recuperating after those dreary months of confinement. We used
to go for long walks together, across the open downs, or between the
grey pillars of the beechwoods; and painfully overcoming reluctance
after reluctance, proceeding from confidence to more intimate
confidence, my Uncle Spencer told me the whole story.

The story involved interminable discussions by the way. For we had
to decide, first of all, whether there was any possible scientific
explanation of prophecy; whether there was such a thing as an absolute
future waiting to be lived through. And at much greater length, even,
we had to argue about women--whether they were really “like that”
(and into what depths of cynicism my poor Uncle Spencer had learned,
during the long, embittered meditations of his prison days and nights,
to plunge and wallow!), or whether they were like the angels he had
desired them to be.

But more important than to speculate on Emmy’s possible character
was to discover where she now was. More urgent than to wonder if
prophecy could conceivably be reliable, was to take steps to fulfil
this particular prophecy. For weeks my Uncle Spencer and I played at
detectives.

I have often fancied that we must have looked, when we made our
inquiries together, uncommonly like the traditional pair in the
stories--my Uncle Spencer, the bright-eyed, cadaverous, sharp-featured
genius, the Holmes of the combination; and I, moon-faced and chubby,
a very youthful Watson. But, as a matter of fact, it was I, if I may
say so without fatuity, who was the real Holmes of the two. My Uncle
Spencer was too innocent of the world to know how to set about looking
for a vanished mistress; just as he was too innocent of science to
know how or where to find out what there was to be discovered on any
abstracter subject.

It was I who took him to the British Museum and made him look up all
the back numbers of the theatrical papers to see when Emmy had last
advertised her desire to be engaged. It was I, the apparent Watson,
who thought of the theatrical agencies and the stage doors of all the
suburban music-halls. Sleuth-like in aspect, innocent at heart, my
Uncle Spencer followed, marvelling at my familiarity with the ways of
the strange world.

But I must temper my boasting by the confession that we were always
entirely unsuccessful. No agency had heard of Emmy Wendle since
1914. Her card had appeared in no paper. The porters of music-halls
remembered her, but only as something antediluvian. “Emmy Wendle?
Oh yes, Emmy Wendle....” And scratching their heads, they strove
by a mental effort to pass from the mere name to the person, like
palæontologists reconstructing the whole diplodocus from the single
fossil bone.

Two or three times we were even given addresses. But the landladies of
the lodging-houses where she had stayed did not even remember her; and
the old aunt at Ealing, from whom we joyfully hoped so much, had washed
her hands of Emmy two or three months before the war began. And the
conviction she then had that Emmy was a bad girl was only intensified
and confirmed by our impertinent inquiries. No, she knew nothing
about Emmy Wendle, now, and didn’t want to know. And she’d trouble us
to leave respectable people like herself in peace. And, defeated, we
climbed back into our taxi, while the inhabitants of the squalid little
street peered out at us and our vehicle, as though we had been visitors
from another planet, and the metropolitan hackney carriage a fairy
chariot.

“Perhaps she’s dead,” said my Uncle Spencer softly, after a long
silence.

“Perhaps,” I said brutally, “she’s found a husband and retired into
private life.”

My Uncle Spencer shut his eyes, sighed, and drew his hand across his
forehead. What dreadful images filled his mind? He would almost have
preferred that she should be dead.

“And yet the Indian,” he murmured, “he was always right....”

And perhaps he may still be right in this. Who knows?




LITTLE MEXICAN


The shopkeeper called it, affectionately, a little Mexican; and
little, for a Mexican, it may have been. But in this Europe of ours,
where space is limited and the scale smaller, the little Mexican was
portentous, a giant among hats. It hung there, in the centre of the
hatter’s window, a huge black aureole, fit for a king among devils.
But no devil walked that morning through the streets of Ravenna; only
the mildest of literary tourists. Those were the days when very large
hats seemed in my eyes very desirable, and it was on my head, all
unworthy, that the aureole of darkness was destined to descend. On my
head; for at the first sight of the hat, I had run into the shop, tried
it on, found the size correct, and bought it, without bargaining, at a
foreigner’s price. I left the shop with the little Mexican on my head,
and my shadow on the pavements of Ravenna was like the shadow of an
umbrella pine.

The little Mexican is very old now, and moth-eaten and green. But I
still preserve it. Occasionally, for old associations’ sake, I even
wear it. Dear Mexican! it represents for me a whole epoch of my life.
It stands for emancipation and the first year at the university.
It symbolises the discovery of how many new things, new ideas, new
sensations!--of French literature, of alcohol, of modern painting,
of Nietzsche, of love, of metaphysics, of Mallarmé, of syndicalism,
and of goodness knows what else. But, above all, I prize it because
it reminds me of my first discovery of Italy. It re-evokes for me, my
little Mexican, all the thrills and astonishments and virgin raptures
of that first Italian tour in the early autumn of 1912. Urbino, Rimini,
Ravenna, Ferrara, Modena, Mantua, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Venice--my
first impressions of all these fabulous names lie, like a hatful of
jewels, in the crown of the little Mexican. Shall I ever have the heart
to throw it away?

And then, of course, there is Tirabassi. Without the little Mexican
I should never have made Tirabassi’s acquaintance. He would never
have taken me, in my small unemphatic English hat, for a painter. And
I should never, in consequence, have seen the frescoes, never have
talked with the old Count, never heard of the Colombella. Never....
When I think of that, the little Mexican seems to me more than ever
precious.

It was, of course, very typical of Tirabassi to suppose, from the size
of my hat, that I must be a painter. He had a neat military mind that
refused to accept the vague disorder of the world. He was for ever
labelling and pigeon-holing and limiting his universe; and when the
classified objects broke out of their pigeon-holes and tore the labels
from off their necks, Tirabassi was puzzled and annoyed. In any case,
it was obvious to him from the first moment he saw me in the restaurant
at Padua, that I must be a painter. All painters wear large black
hats. I was wearing the little Mexican. Ergo, I was a painter. It was
syllogistic, unescapable.

He sent the waiter to ask me whether I would do him the honour of
taking coffee with him at his table. For the first moment, I must
confess, I was a little alarmed. This dashing young lieutenant of
cavalry--what on earth could he want with me? The most absurd fancies
filled my mind: I had committed, all unconsciously, some frightful
solecism; I had trodden on the toes of the lieutenant’s honour, and he
was about to challenge me to a duel. The choice of weapons, I rapidly
reflected, would be mine. But what--oh, what on earth should I choose?
Swords? I had never learnt to fence. Pistols? I had once fired six
shots at a bottle, and missed it with every shot. Would there be time
to write one or two letters, make some sort of a testament about my
personal belongings? From this anguish of mind the waiter, returning a
moment later with my fried octopus, delivered me. The Lieutenant Count,
he explained in a whisper of confidence, had a villa on the Brenta,
not far from Strà. A villa--he spread out his hands in a generous
gesture--full of paintings. Full, full, full. And he was anxious that
I should see them, because he felt sure that I was interested in
paintings. Oh, of course--I smiled rather foolishly, for the waiter
seemed to expect some sort of confirmatory interpolation from me--I
_was_ interested in paintings; very much. In that case, said the
waiter, the Count would be delighted to take me to see them. He left
me, still puzzled, but vastly relieved. At any rate, I was not being
called upon to make the very embarrassing choice between swords and
pistols.

Surreptitiously, whenever he was not looking in my direction, I
examined the Lieutenant Count. His appearance was not typically Italian
(but then what is a typical Italian?). He was not, that is to say,
blue-jowled, beady-eyed, swarthy, and aquiline. On the contrary, he had
pale ginger hair, grey eyes, a snub nose, and a freckled complexion. I
knew plenty of young Englishmen who might have been Count Tirabassi’s
less vivacious brothers.

He received me, when the time came, with the most exquisite courtesy,
apologising for the unceremonious way in which he had made my
acquaintance. “But as I felt sure,” he said, “that you were interested
in art, I thought you would forgive me for the sake of what I have to
show you.” I couldn’t help wondering why the Count felt so certain
about my interest in art. It was only later, when we left the
restaurant together, that I understood; for, as I put on my hat to go,
he pointed with a smile at the little Mexican. “One can see,” he said,
“that you are a real artist.” I was left at a loss, not knowing what to
answer.

After we had exchanged the preliminary courtesies, the Lieutenant
plunged at once, entirely for my benefit I could see, into a
conversation about art. “Nowadays,” he said, “we Italians don’t take
enough interest in art. In a modern country, you see....” He shrugged
his shoulders, leaving the sentence unfinished. “But I don’t think
that’s right. I adore art. Simply adore it. When I see foreigners
going round with their guide-books, standing for half an hour in front
of one picture, looking first at the book, then at the picture”--and
here he gave the most brilliantly finished imitation of an Anglican
clergyman conscientiously “doing” the Mantegna chapel: first a glance
at the imaginary guide-book held open in his two hands, then, with
the movement of a chicken that drinks, a lifting of the face towards
an imaginary fresco, a long stare between puckered eyelids, a falling
open of the mouth, and finally a turning back of the eyes towards the
inspired pages of Baedeker--“when I see them, I feel ashamed for us
Italians.” The Count spoke very earnestly, feeling, no doubt, that his
talent for mimicry had carried him a little too far. “And if they stand
for half an hour looking at the thing, I go and stand there for an
hour. That’s the way to understand great art. The only way.” He leaned
back in his chair and sipped his coffee. “Unfortunately,” he added,
after a moment, “one hasn’t got much time.”

I agreed with him. “When one can only get to Italy for a month at a
stretch, like myself....”

“Ah, but if only I could travel about the world like you!” The Count
sighed. “But here I am, cooped up in this wretched town. And when I
think of the enormous capital that’s hanging there on the walls of my
house....” He checked himself, shaking his head. Then, changing his
tone, he began to tell me about his house on the Brenta. It sounded
altogether too good to be true. Carpioni, yes--I could believe in
frescoes by Carpioni; almost any one might have those. But a hall by
Veronese, but rooms by Tiepolo, all in the same house--that sounded
incredible. I could not help believing that the Count’s enthusiasm for
art had carried him away. But, in any case, to-morrow I should be able
to judge for myself; the Count had invited me to lunch with him.

We left the restaurant. Still embarrassed by the Count’s references
to my little Mexican, I walked by his side in silence up the arcaded
street.

“I am going to introduce you to my father,” said the Count. “He, too,
adores the arts.”

More than ever I felt myself a swindler. I had wriggled into the
Count’s confidence on false pretences; my hat was a lie. I felt that
I ought to do something to clear up the misunderstanding. But the
Count was so busy complaining to me about his father that I had no
opportunity to put in my little explanation. I didn’t listen very
attentively, I confess, to what he was saying. In the course of a year
at Oxford, I had heard so many young men complain of their fathers. Not
enough money, too much interference--the story was a stale one. And
at that time, moreover, I was taking a very high philosophical line
about this sort of thing. I was pretending that people didn’t interest
me--only books, only ideas. What a fool one can make of oneself at that
age!

“_Eccoci_,” said the Count. We halted in front of the Café Pedrochi.
“He always comes here for his coffee.”

And where else, indeed, should he come for his coffee? Who, in Padua,
would go anywhere else?

We found him sitting out on the terrace at the farther end of the
building. I had never, I thought, seen a jollier-looking old gentleman.
The old Count had a red weather-beaten face, with white moustaches
bristling gallantly upwards and a white imperial in the grand
Risorgimento manner of Victor Emmanuel the Second. Under the white
tufty eyebrows, and set in the midst of a webwork of fine wrinkles,
the eyes were brown and bright like a robin’s. His long nose looked,
somehow, more practically useful than the ordinary human nose, as
though made for fine judicial sniffing, for delicate burrowing and
probing. Thick set and strong, he sat there solidly in his chair, his
knees apart, his hands clasped over the knob of his cane, carrying
his paunch with dignity, nobly I had almost said, before him. He was
dressed all in white linen--for the weather was still very hot--and his
wide grey hat was tilted rakishly forward over his left eye. It gave
one a real satisfaction to look at him; he was so complete, so perfect
in his kind.

The young Count introduced me. “This is an English gentleman.
Signor....” He turned to me for the name.

“Oosselay,” I said, having learnt by experience that that was as near
as any Italian could be expected to get to it.

“Signor Oosselay,” the young Count continued, “is an artist.”

“Well, not exactly an artist,” I was beginning; but he would not let me
make an end.

“He is also very much interested in ancient art,” he continued.
“To-morrow I am taking him to Dolo to see the frescoes. I know he will
like them.”

We sat down at the old Count’s table; critically he looked at me and
nodded. “_Benissimo_,” he said, and then added, “Let’s hope you’ll be
able to do something to help us sell the things.”

This was startling. I looked in some perplexity towards the young
Count. He was frowning angrily at his father. The old gentleman had
evidently said the wrong thing; he had spoken, I guessed, too soon. At
any rate, he took his son’s hint and glided off serenely on another
tack.

“The fervid phantasy of Tiepolo,” he began rotundly, “the cool,
unimpassioned splendour of Veronese--at Dolo you will see them
contrasted.” I listened attentively, while the old gentleman thundered
on in what was evidently a set speech. When it was over, the young
Count got up; he had to be back at the barracks by half-past two. I
too made as though to go; but the old man laid his hand on my arm.
“Stay with me,” he said. “I enjoy your conversation infinitely.” And
as he himself had hardly ceased speaking for one moment since first I
set eyes on him, I could well believe it. With the gesture of a lady
lifting her skirts out of the mud (and those were the days when skirts
still had to be lifted) the young Count picked up his trailing sabre
and swaggered off, very military, very brilliant and glittering, like
a soldier on the stage, into the sunlight, out of sight.

The old man’s bird-bright eyes followed him as he went. “A good
boy, Fabio,” he said, turning back to me at last, “a good son.” He
spoke affectionately; but there was a hint, I thought, in his smile,
in the tone of his voice, a hint of amusement, of irony. It was as
though he were adding, by implication, “But good boys, after all,
are fools to be so good.” I found myself, in spite of my affectation
of detachment, extremely curious about this old gentleman. And he,
for his part, was not the man to allow any one in his company to
remain for long in splendid isolation. He insisted on my taking an
interest in his affairs. He told me all about them--or at any rate all
about some of them--pouring out his confidences with an astonishing
absence of reserve. Next to the intimate and trusted friend, the
perfect stranger is the best of all possible confidants. There is
no commercial traveller, of moderately sympathetic appearance, who
has not, in the course of his days in the train, his evenings in the
parlours of commercial hotels, been made the repository of a thousand
intimate secrets--even in England. And in Italy--goodness knows
what commercial travellers get told in Italy. Even I, a foreigner,
speaking the language badly, and not very skilful anyhow in conducting
a conversation with strangers, have heard queer things in the
second-class carriages of Italian trains.... Here, too, on Pedrochi’s
terrace I was to hear queer things. A door was to be left ajar, and
through the crack I was to have a peep at unfamiliar lives.

“What I should do without him,” the old gentleman continued, “I really
don’t know. The way he manages the estate is simply wonderful.” And
he went rambling off into long digressions about the stupidity of
peasants, the incompetence and dishonesty of bailiffs, the badness
of the weather, the spread of phylloxera, the high price of manure.
The upshot of it all was that, since Fabio had taken over the estate,
everything had gone well; even the weather had improved. “It’s such a
relief,” the Count concluded, “to feel that I have some one in charge
on whom I can rely, some one I can trust, absolutely. It leaves me
free to devote my mind to more important things.”

I could not help wondering what the important things were; but it would
have been impertinent, I felt, to ask. Instead, I put a more practical
question. “But what will happen,” I asked, “when your son’s military
duties take him away from Padua?”

The old Count gave me a wink and laid his forefinger, very
deliberately, to the side of his long nose. The gesture was rich with
significance. “They never will,” he said. “It’s all arranged. A little
_combinazione_, you know. I have a friend in the Ministry. His military
duties will always keep him in Padua.” He winked again and smiled.

I could not help laughing, and the old Count joined in with a joyous
ha-ha that was the expression of a profound satisfaction, that was, as
it were, a burst of self-applause. He was evidently proud of his little
_combinazione_. But he was prouder still of the other combination,
about which he now confidentially leaned across the table to tell me.
It was decidedly the subtler of the two.

“And it’s not merely his military duties,” he said, wagging at me the
thick, yellow-nailed forefinger which he had laid against his nose,
“it’s not merely his military duties that’ll keep the boy in Padua.
It’s his domestic duties. He’s married. I married him.” He leaned back
in his chair, and surveyed me, smiling. The little wrinkles round his
eyes seemed to be alive. “That boy, I said to myself, must settle down.
He must have a nest, or else he’ll fly away. He must have roots, or
else he’ll run. And his poor old father will be left in the lurch.
He’s young, I thought, but he must marry. He _must_ marry. At once.”
And the old gentleman made great play with his forefinger. It was
a long story. His old friend, the Avvocato Monaldeschi, had twelve
children--three boys and nine girls. (And here there were digressions
about the Avvocato and the size of good Catholic families.) The
eldest girl was just the right age for Fabio. No money, of course;
but a good girl and pretty, and very well brought up and religious.
Religious--that was very important, for it was essential that Fabio
should have a large family--to keep him more effectually rooted, the
old Count explained--and with these modern young women brought up
outside the Church one could never be certain of children. Yes, her
religion was most important; he had looked into that very carefully
before selecting her. Well, the next thing, of course, was that Fabio
should be induced to select her. It had been a matter of bringing
the horse to water _and_ making him drink. Oh, a most difficult and
delicate business! For Fabio prided himself on his independence; and he
was obstinate, like a mule. Nobody should interfere with his affairs,
nobody should make him do what he didn’t want to. And he was so touchy,
he was so pig-headed that often he wouldn’t do what he really wanted,
merely because somebody else had suggested that he ought to do it. So
I could imagine--the old Count spread out his hands before me--just
how difficult and delicate a business it had been. Only a consummate
diplomat could have succeeded. He did it by throwing them together
a great deal and talking, meanwhile, about the rashness of early
marriages, the uselessness of poor wives, the undesirability of wives
not of noble birth. It worked like a charm; within four months, Fabio
was engaged; two months later he was married, and ten months after that
he had a son and heir. And now he was fixed, rooted. The old gentleman
chuckled, and I could fancy that I was listening to the chuckling
of some old white-haired tyrant of the quattrocento, congratulating
himself on the success of some peculiarly ingenious stroke of policy--a
rich city induced to surrender itself by fraud, a dangerous rival lured
by fair words into a cage and trapped. Poor Fabio, I thought; and also,
what a waste of talent!

Yes, the old Count went on, now he would never go. He was not like his
younger brother, Lucio. Lucio was a rogue, _furbo_, sly; he had no
conscience. But Fabio had ideas about duty, and lived up to them. Once
he had engaged himself, he would stick to his engagements, obstinately,
with all the mulishness of his character. Well, now he lived on the
estate, in the big painted house at Dolo. Three days a week he came
into Padua for his military duties, and the rest of his time he devoted
to the estate. It brought in, now, more than it had ever done before.
But goodness knew, the old man complained, that was little enough.
Bread and oil, and wine and milk, and chickens and beef--there was
plenty of those and to spare. Fabio could have a family of fifty and
they would never starve. But ready money--there wasn’t much of that.
“In England,” the Count concluded, “you are rich. But we Italians....”
He shook his head.

I spent the next quarter of an hour trying to persuade him that we were
not all millionaires. But in vain. My statistics, based on somewhat
imperfect memories of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, carried no conviction.
In the end I gave it up.

The next morning Fabio appeared at the door of my hotel in a large,
very old and very noisy Fiat. It was the family machine-of-all-work,
bruised, scratched, and dirtied by years of service. Fabio drove it
with a brilliant and easy recklessness. We rushed through the town,
swerving from one side of the narrow street to the other, with a
disregard for the rules of the road which, in a pedantic country like
England, would have meant at the least a five-pound fine and an
endorsed licence. But here the Carabiniers, walking gravely in couples
under the arcades, let us pass without comment. Right or left--after
all, what did it matter?

“Why do you keep the silencer out?” I shouted through the frightful
clamour of the engine.

Fabio slightly shrugged his shoulders. “_È piu allegro così_,” he
answered.

I said no more. From a member of this hardy race which likes noise,
which enjoys discomfort, a nerve-ridden Englishman could hardly hope to
get much sympathy.

We were soon out of the town. Trailing behind us a seething white
wake of dust and with the engine rattling off its explosions like a
battery of machine-guns, we raced along the Fusina road. On either hand
extended the cultivated plain. The road was bordered by ditches, and
on the banks beyond, instead of hedges, stood rows of little pollards,
with grape-laden vines festooned from tree to tree. White with the
dust, tendrils, fruit, and leaves hung there like so much goldsmith’s
work sculptured in frosted metal, hung like the swags of fruit and
foliage looped round the flanks of a great silver bowl. We hurried
on. Soon, on our right hand, we had the Brenta, sunk deep between the
banks of its canal. And now we were at Strà. Through gateways rich
with fantastic stucco, down tunnels of undeciduous shade, we looked
in a series of momentary glimpses into the heart of the park. And now
for an instant the statues on the roof of the villa beckoned against
the sky and were passed. On we went. To right and left, on either bank
of the river, I got every now and then a glimpse of some enchanting
mansion, gay and brilliant even in decay. Little baroque garden houses
peeped at me over walls; and through great gates, at the end of powdery
cypress avenues, half humorously, it seemed, the magniloquent and
frivolous façades soared up in defiance of all the rules. I should have
liked to do the journey slowly, to stop here and there, to look, to
savour at leisure; but Fabio disdained to travel at anything less than
fifty kilometres to the hour, and I had to be content with momentary
and precarious glimpses. It was in these villas, I reflected, as
we bumped along at the head of our desolation of white dust, that
Casanova used to come and spend the summer; seducing the chamber-maids,
taking advantage of terrified marchionesses in _calèches_ during
thunderstorms, bamboozling soft-witted old senators of Venice with
his fortune-telling and black magic. Gorgeous and happy scoundrel! In
spite of my professed detachment, I envied him. And, indeed, what was
that famous detachment but a disguised expression of the envy which
the successes and audacities of a Casanova must necessarily arouse in
every timid and diffident mind? If I lived in splendid isolation, it
was because I lacked the audacity to make war--even to make entangling
alliances. I was absorbed in these pleasing self-condemnatory thoughts,
when the car slowed down and came to a standstill in front of a huge
imposing gate. Fabio hooted impatiently on his horn; there was a scurry
of footsteps, the sound of bolts being drawn, and the gate swung
open. At the end of a short drive, very large and grave, very chaste
and austere, stood the house. It was considerably older than most of
the other villas I had seen in glimpses on our way. There was no
frivolousness in its façade, no irregular grandiloquence. A great block
of stuccoed brick; a central portico approached by steps and topped
with a massive pediment; a row of rigid statues on the balustrade above
the cornice. It was correctly, coldly even, Palladian. Fabio brought
the car to a halt in front of the porch. We got out. At the top of the
steps stood a young woman with a red-headed child in her arms. It was
the Countess with the son and heir.

The Countess impressed me very agreeably. She was slim and tall--two
or three inches taller than her husband; with dark hair, drawn back
from the forehead and twisted into a knot on the nape of her neck;
dark eyes, vague, lustrous, and melancholy, like the eyes of a gentle
animal; a skin brown and transparent like darkened amber. Her manner
was gentle and unemphatic. She rarely gesticulated; I never heard her
raise her voice. She spoke, indeed, very little. The old Count had told
me that his daughter-in-law was religious, and from her appearance
I could easily believe it. She looked at you with the calm, remote
regard of one whose life mostly goes on behind the eyes.

Fabio kissed his wife and then, bending his face towards the child, he
made a frightful grimace and roared like a lion. It was all done in
affection; but the poor little creature shrank away, terrified. Fabio
laughed and pinched its ear.

“Don’t tease him,” said the Countess gently. “You’ll make him cry.”

Fabio turned to me. “That’s what comes of leaving a boy to be looked
after by women. He cries at everything. Let’s come in,” he added.
“At present we only use two or three rooms on the ground floor, and
the kitchen in the basement. All the rest is deserted. I don’t know
how these old fellows managed to keep up their palaces. I can’t.” He
shrugged his shoulders. Through a door on the right of the portico
we passed into the house. “This is our drawing-room and dining-room
combined.”

It was a fine big room, nobly proportioned--a double cube, I
guessed--with doorways of sculptured marble and a magnificent fireplace
flanked by a pair of nymphs on whose bowed shoulders rested a sloping
overmantel carved with coats of arms and festoons of foliage.
Round the walls ran a frieze, painted in grisaille; in a graceful
litter of cornucopias and panoplies, goddesses sumptuously reclined,
cherubs wriggled and flew. The furniture was strangely mixed. Round
a sixteenth-century dining-table that was a piece of Palladian
architecture in wood, were ranged eight chairs in the Viennese
secession style of 1905. A large chalet-shaped cuckoo clock from
Bern hung on the wall between two cabinets of walnut, pilastered and
pedimented to look like little temples, and with heroic statuettes in
yellow boxwood, standing in niches between the pillars. And then the
pictures on the walls, the cretonnes with which the arm-chairs were
covered! Tactfully, however, I admired everything, new as well as old.

“And now,” said the Count, “for the frescoes.”

I followed him through one of the marble-framed doorways and found
myself at once in the great central hall of the villa. The Count turned
round to me. “There!” he said, smiling triumphantly with the air of one
who has really succeeded in producing a rabbit out of an empty hat.
And, indeed, the spectacle was sufficiently astonishing.

The walls of the enormous room were completely covered with frescoes
which it did not need much critical judgment or knowledge to perceive
were genuine Veroneses. The authorship was obvious, palpable. Who else
could have painted those harmoniously undulating groups of figures set
in their splendid architectural frame? Who else but Veronese could
have combined such splendour with such coolness, so much extravagant
opulence with such exquisite suavity?

“_È grandioso!_” I said to the Count.

And indeed it was. Grandiose; there was no other word. A rich triumphal
arcade ran all round the room, four or five arches appearing on
each wall. Through the arches one looked into a garden; and there,
against a background of cypresses and statues and far-away blue
mountains, companies of Venetian ladies and gentlemen gravely disported
themselves. Under one arch they were making music; through another,
one saw them sitting round a table, drinking one another’s health in
glasses of red wine, while a little blackamoor in a livery of green
and yellow carried round the silver jug. In the next panel they were
watching a fight between a monkey and a cat. On the opposite wall a
poet was reading his verses to the assembled company, and next to him
Veronese himself--the self-portrait was recognisable--stood at his
easel, painting the picture of an opulent blonde in rose-coloured
satin. At the feet of the artist lay his dog; two parrots and a monkey
were sitting on the marble balustrade in the middle distance.

I gazed with delight. “What a marvellous thing to possess!” I
exclaimed, fairly carried away by my enthusiasm. “I envy you.”

The Count made a little grimace and laughed. “Shall we come and look at
the Tiepolos?” he asked.

We passed through a couple of cheerful rooms by Carpioni--satyrs
chasing nymphs through a romantic forest and, on the fringes of a
seascape, a very eccentric rape of mermaids by centaurs--to step
across a threshold into that brilliant universe, at once delicate and
violently extravagant, wild and subtly orderly, which Tiepolo, in the
last days of Italian painting, so masterfully and magically created.
It was the story of Eros and Psyche, and the tale ran through three
large rooms, spreading itself even on to the ceilings, where, in a
pale sky dappled with white and golden clouds, the appropriate deities
balanced themselves, diving or ascending through the empyrean with that
air of being perfectly at home in their element which seems to belong,
in nature, only to fishes and perhaps a few winged insects and birds.

Fabio had boasted to me that, in front of a picture, he could outstare
any foreigner. But I was such a mortally long time admiring these
dazzling phantasies that in the end he quite lost patience.

“I wanted to show you the farm before lunch,” he said, looking at his
watch. “There’s only just time.” I followed him reluctantly.

We looked at the cows, the horses, the prize bull, the turkeys. We
looked at the tall, thin haystacks, shaped like giant cigars set on
end. We looked at the sacks of wheat in the barn. For lack of any
better comment I told the Count that they reminded me of the sacks of
wheat in English barns; he seemed delighted.

The farm buildings were set round an immense courtyard. We had explored
three sides of this piazza; now we came to the fourth, which was
occupied by a long, low building pierced with round archways and, I was
surprised to see, completely empty.

“What’s this?” I asked, as we entered.

“It _is_ nothing,” the Count replied. “But it might, some day, become
... _chi sa_?” He stood there for a moment in silence, frowning
pensively, with the expression of Napoleon on St. Helena--dreaming of
the future, regretting past opportunities for ever lost. His freckled
face, ordinarily a lamp for brightness, became incongruously sombre.
Then all at once he burst out--damning life, cursing fate, wishing to
God he could get away and do something instead of wasting himself here.
I listened, making every now and then a vague noise of sympathy. What
could I do about it? And then, to my dismay, I found that I could do
something about it, that I was expected to do something. I was being
asked to help the Count to sell his frescoes. As an artist, it was
obvious, I must be acquainted with rich patrons, museums, millionaires.
I had seen the frescoes; I could honestly recommend them. And now there
was this perfected process for transferring frescoes on to canvas. The
walls could easily be peeled of their painting, the canvases rolled up
and taken to Venice. And from there it would be the easiest thing in
the world to smuggle them on board a ship and get away with them. As
for prices--if he could get a million and a half of lire, so much the
better; but he’d take a million, he’d even take three-quarters. And
he’d give me ten per cent, commission....

And afterwards, when he’d sold his frescoes, what would he do? To
begin with--the Count smiled at me triumphantly--he’d turn this
empty building in which we were now standing into an up-to-date
cheese-factory. He could start the business handsomely on half a
million, and then, using cheap female labour from the country round,
he could be almost sure of making big profits at once. In a couple of
years, he calculated, he’d be netting eighty or a hundred thousand a
year from his cheeses. And then, ah then, he’d be independent, he’d
be able to get away, he’d see the world. He’d go to Brazil and the
Argentine. An enterprising man with capital could always do well out
there. He’d go to New York, to London, to Berlin, to Paris. There was
nothing he could not do.

But meanwhile the frescoes were still on the walls--beautiful, no doubt
(for, the Count reminded me, he adored art), but futile; a huge capital
frozen into the plaster, eating its head off, utterly useless. Whereas,
with his cheese-factory....

Slowly we walked back towards the house.

I was in Venice again in the September of the following year, 1913.
There were, I imagine, that autumn, more German honeymoon-couples, more
parties of rucksacked Wander-Birds than there had ever been in Venice
before. There were too many, in any case, for me; I packed my bag and
took the train for Padua.

I had not originally intended to see young Tirabassi again. I didn’t
know, indeed, how pleased he would be to see me. For the frescoes,
so far as I knew, at any rate, were still safely on the walls, the
cheese-factory still remote in the future, in the imagination. I had
written to him more than once, telling him that I was doing my best,
but that at the moment, etcetera, etcetera. Not that I had ever held
out much hope. I had made it clear from the first that my acquaintance
among millionaires was limited, that I knew no directors of American
museums, that I had nothing to do with any of the international picture
dealers. But the Count’s faith in me had remained, none the less,
unshaken. It was the little Mexican, I believe, that inspired so much
confidence. But now, after my letters, after all this lapse of time
and nothing done, he might feel that I had let him down, deceived him
somehow. That was why I took no steps to seek him out. But chance
overruled my decision. On the third day of my stay in Padua, I ran into
him in the street. Or rather he ran into me.

It was nearly six o’clock, and I had strolled down to the Piazza del
Santo. At that hour, when the slanting light is full of colour and the
shadows are long and profound, the great church, with its cupolas and
turrets and campaniles, takes on an aspect more than ever fantastic
and oriental. I had walked round the church, and now I was standing at
the foot of Donatello’s statue, looking up at the grim bronze man, the
ponderously stepping beast, when I suddenly became aware that some one
was standing very close behind me. I took a step to one side and turned
round. It was Fabio. Wearing his famous expression of the sightseeing
parson, he was gazing up at the statue, his mouth open in a vacant and
fish-like gape. I burst out laughing.

“Did I look like that?” I asked.

“Precisely.” He laughed too. “I’ve been watching you for the last ten
minutes, mooning round the church. You English! Really....” He shook
his head.

Together we strolled up the Via del Santo, talking as we went.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do anything about the frescoes,” I said.
“But really....” I entered into explanations.

“Some day, perhaps.” Fabio was still optimistic.

“And how’s the Countess?”

“Oh, she’s very well,” said Fabio, “considering. You know she had
another son three or four months after you came to see us.”

“No?”

“She’s expecting another now.” Fabio spoke rather gloomily, I thought.
More than ever I admired the old Count’s sagacity. But I was sorry, for
his son’s sake, that he had not a wider field in which to exercise his
talents.

“And your father?” I asked. “Shall we find him sitting at Pedrochi’s,
as usual?”

Fabio laughed. “We shall not,” he said significantly. “He’s flown.”

“Flown?”

“Gone, vanished, disappeared.”

“But where?”

“Who knows?” said Fabio. “My father is like the swallows; he comes and
he goes. Every year.... But the migration isn’t regular. Sometimes he
goes away in the spring; sometimes it’s the autumn, sometimes it’s the
summer.... One fine morning his man goes into his room to call him
as usual, and he isn’t there. Vanished. He might be dead. Oh, but he
isn’t.” Fabio laughed. “Two or three months later, in he walks again,
as though he were just coming back from a stroll in the Botanical
Gardens. ‘Good evening. Good evening.’” Fabio imitated the old Count’s
voice and manner, snuffing the air like a war-horse, twisting the ends
of an imaginary white moustache. “‘How’s your mother? How are the
girls? How have the grapes done this year?’ Snuff, snuff. ‘How’s Lucio?
And who the devil has left all this rubbish lying about in my study?’”
Fabio burst into an indignant roar that made the loiterers in the Via
Roma turn, astonished, in our direction.

“And where does he go?” I asked.

“Nobody knows. My mother used to ask, once. But she soon gave it up. It
was no good. ‘Where have you been, Ascanio?’ ‘My dear, I’m afraid the
olive crop is going to be very poor this year.’ Snuff, snuff. And when
she pressed him, he would fly into a temper and slam the doors.... What
do you say to an aperitif?” Pedrochi’s open doors invited. We entered,
chose a retired table, and sat down.

“But what do you suppose the old gentleman does when he’s away?”

“Ah!” And making the richly significant gesture I had so much admired
in his father, the young Count laid his finger against his nose and
slowly, solemnly winked his left eye.

“You mean...?”

Fabio nodded. “There’s a little widow here in Padua.” With his extended
finger the young Count described in the air an undulating line. “Nice
and plump. Black eyes. I’ve noticed that she generally seems to be
out of town just at the time the old man does his migrations. But it
may, of course, be a mere coincidence.” The waiter brought us our
vermouth. Pensively the young Count sipped. The gaiety went out of
his open, lamp-like face. “And meanwhile,” he went on slowly and in
an altered voice, “I stay here, looking after the estate, so that the
old man can go running round the world with his little pigeon--_la sua
colombella_.” (The expression struck me as particularly choice.) “Oh,
it’s funny, no doubt,” the young Count went on. “But it isn’t right.
If I wasn’t married, I’d go clean away and try my luck somewhere else.
I’d leave him to look after everything himself. But with a wife and two
children--three children soon--how can I take the risk? At any rate,
there’s plenty to eat as long as I stay here. My only hope,” he added,
after a little pause, “is in the frescoes.”

Which implied, I reflected, that his only hope was in me; I felt sorry
for him.

In the spring of 1914 I sent two rich Americans to look at Fabio’s
villa. Neither of them made any offer to buy the frescoes; it would
have astonished me if they had. But Fabio was greatly encouraged by
their arrival. “I feel,” he wrote to me, “that a beginning has now been
made. These Americans will go back to their country and tell their
friends. Soon there will be a procession of millionaires coming to see
the frescoes. Meanwhile, life is the same as ever. Rather worse, if
anything. Our little daughter, whom we have christened Emilia, was born
last month. My wife had a very bad time and is still far from well,
which is very troublesome.” (It seemed a curious adjective to use, in
the circumstances. But coming from Fabio, I understood it; he was one
of those exceedingly healthy people to whom any sort of illness is
mysterious, unaccountable, and above all extraordinarily tiresome and
irritating.) “The day before yesterday my father disappeared again. I
have not yet had time to find out if the Colombella has also vanished.
My brother, Lucio, has succeeded in getting a motor-bicycle out of him,
which is more than I ever managed to do. But then I was never one for
creeping diplomatically round and round a thing, as he can do.... I
have been going very carefully into the cheese-factory business lately,
and I am not sure that it might not be more profitable to set up a
silk-weaving establishment instead. When you next come, I will go into
details with you.”

But it was a very long time before I saw Padua and the Count again....
The War put an end to my yearly visits to Italy, and for various
reasons, even when it was over, I could not go south again as soon as
I should have liked. Not till the autumn of 1921 did I embark again on
the Venice express.

It was in an Italy not altogether familiar that I now found myself--an
Italy full of violence and bloodshed. The Fascists and the Communists
were still busily fighting. Roaring at the head of their dust-storms,
the motor-lorries, loaded with cargoes of singing boys, careered
across the country in search of adventure and lurking Bolshevism.
One stood respectfully in the gutter while they passed; and through
the flying dust, through the noise of the engine, a snatch of that
singing would be blown back: “_Giovinezza, giovinezza, primavera di
bellezza...._” (Youth, youth, springtime of beauty). Where but in
Italy would they have put such words to a political song? And then the
proclamations, the manifestos, the denunciations, the appeals! Every
hoarding and blank wall was plastered with them. Between the station
and Pedrochi’s I walked through a whole library of these things.
“Citizens!” they would begin. “A heroic wind is to-day reviving the
almost asphyxiated soul of our unhappy Italy, overcome by the poisonous
fumes of Bolshevism and wallowing in ignoble abasement at the feet of
the Nations.” And they finished, for the most part, with references to
Dante. I read them all with infinite pleasure.

I reached Pedrochi’s at last. On the terrace, sitting in the very
corner where I had seen him first, years before, was the old Count.
He stared at me blankly when I saluted him, not recognising me at
all. I began to explain who I was; after a moment he cut me short,
almost impatiently, protesting that he remembered now, perfectly well.
I doubted very much whether he really did; but he was too proud to
confess that he had forgotten. Meanwhile, he invited me to sit at his
table.

At a first glance, from a distance, I fancied that the old Count had
not aged a day since last I saw him. But I was wrong. From the street,
I had only seen the rakish tilt of his hat, the bristling of his white
moustache and imperial, the parted knees, the noble protrusion of the
paunch. But now that I could look at him closely and at leisure, I saw
that he was in fact a very different man. Under the tilted hat his face
was unhealthily purple; the flesh sagged into pouches. In the whites
of his eyes, discoloured and as though tarnished with age, the little
broken veins showed red. And, lustreless, the eyes themselves seemed
to look without interest at what they saw. His shoulders were bent as
though under a weight, and when he lifted his cup to his lips his hand
trembled so much that a drop of coffee splashed on to the table. He
was an old man now, old and tired.

“How’s Fabio?” I asked; since 1916 I had had no news of him.

“Oh, Fabio’s well,” the old Count answered, “Fabio’s very well. He has
six children now, you know.” And the old gentleman nodded and smiled
at me without a trace of malice. He seemed quite to have forgotten
the reasons for which he had been at so much pains to select a good
Catholic for a daughter-in-law. “Six,” he repeated. “And then, you
know, he did very well in the war. We Tirabassi have always been
warriors.” Full of pride, he went on to tell me of Fabio’s exploits and
sufferings. Twice wounded, special promotion on the field of battle,
splendid decorations. He was a major now.

“And do his military duties still keep him in Padua?”

The old gentleman nodded, and suddenly there appeared on his face
something like the old smile. “A little _combinazione_ of mine,” he
said, and chuckled.

“And the estate?” I asked.

Oh, that was doing all right, everything considered. It had got rather
out of hand during the war, while Fabio was at the front. And then,
afterwards, there had been a lot of trouble with the peasants; but
Fabio and his Fascists were putting all that to rights. “With Fabio on
the spot,” said the old gentleman, “I have no anxieties.” And then he
began to tell me, all over again, about Fabio’s exploits in the war.

The next day I took the tram to Strà, and after an hour agreeably spent
in the villa and the park, I walked on at my leisure towards Dolo. It
took me a long time to get there, for on this occasion I was able to
stop and look for as long as I liked at all the charming things on
the way. Casanova seemed, now, a good deal less enviable, I noticed,
looking inwards on myself, than he had when last I passed this way. I
was nine years older.

The gates were open; I walked in. There stood the house, as grave and
ponderous as ever, but shabbier than when I saw it last. The shutters
needed painting, and here and there the stucco was peeling off in
scabs. I approached. From within the house came a cheerful noise of
children’s laughter and shouting. The family, I supposed, was playing
hide-and-seek, or trains, or perhaps some topical game of Fascists
and Communists. As I climbed the steps of the porch, I could hear the
sound of small feet racing over the tiled floors; in the empty rooms
footsteps and shouting strangely echoed. And then suddenly, from the
sitting-room on the right, came the sound of Fabio’s voice, furiously
shouting, “Oh, for God’s sake,” it yelled, “keep those wretched
children quiet.” And then, petulantly, it complained, “How do you
expect me to do accounts with this sort of thing going on?” There was
at once a profound and as it were unnatural silence; then the sound of
small feet tiptoeing away, some whispering, a little nervous laugh. I
rang the bell.

It was the Countess who opened the door. She stood for a moment
hesitatingly, wondering who I was; then remembered, smiled, held out
her hand. She had grown, I noticed, very thin, and with the wasting of
her face, her eyes seemed to have become larger. Their expression was
as gentle and serene as ever; she seemed to be looking at me from a
distance.

“Fabio will be delighted to see you,” she said, and she took
me through the door on the right of the porch straight into the
sitting-room. Fabio was sitting at the Palladian table in front of a
heap of papers, biting the end of his pencil.

Even in his grey-green service uniform the young Count looked
wonderfully brilliant, like a soldier on the stage. His face was still
boyishly freckled, but the skin was deeply lined; he looked very much
older than when I had seen him last--older than he really was. The
open cheerfulness, the shining, lamp-like brightness were gone. On
his snubby-featured face he wore a ludicrously incongruous expression
of chronic melancholy. He brightened, it is true, for a moment when I
appeared; I think he was genuinely glad to see me.

“_Caspita!_” he kept repeating. “_Caspita!_” (It was his favourite
expression of astonishment, an odd, old-fashioned word.) “Who would
have thought it? After all this time!”

“And all the eternity of the war as well,” I said.

But when the first ebullition of surprise and pleasure subsided, the
look of melancholy came back.

“It gives me the spleen,” he said, “to see you again; still travelling
about; free to go where you like. If you knew what life was like
here....”

“Well, in any case,” I said, feeling that I ought, for the Countess’s
sake, to make some sort of protest, “in any case the war’s over, and
you have escaped a real revolution. That’s something.”

“Oh, you’re as bad as Laura,” said the Count impatiently. He looked
towards his wife, as though hoping that she would say something. But
the Countess went on with her sewing without even looking up. The
Count took my arm. “Come along,” he said, and his tone was almost
one of anger. “Let’s take a turn outside.” His wife’s religious
resignation, her patience, her serenity angered him, I could see, like
a reprimand--tacit, indeed, and unintentionally given, but none the
less galling.

Along the weed-grown paths of what had once, in the ancient days of
splendour, been the garden, slowly we walked towards the farm. A few
ragged box-trees grew along the fringes of the paths; once there had
been neat hedges. Poised over a dry basin a Triton blew his waterless
conch. At the end of the vista a pair of rapes--Pluto and Proserpine,
Apollo and Daphne--writhed desperately against the sky.

“I saw your father yesterday,” I said. “He looks aged.”

“And so he ought,” said Fabio murderously. “He’s sixty-nine.”

I felt uncomfortably that the subject had become too serious for
light conversation. I had wanted to ask after the Colombella; in the
circumstances, I decided that it would be wiser to say nothing about
her. I repressed my curiosity. We were walking now under the lea of the
farm buildings.

“The cows look very healthy,” I said politely, looking through an
open doorway. In the twilight within, six grey rumps plastered with
dry dung presented themselves in file; six long leather tails swished
impatiently from side to side. Fabio made no comment; he only grunted.

“In any case,” he went on slowly, after another silence, “he can’t live
much longer. I shall sell my share and clear off to South America,
family or no family.” It was a threat against his own destiny, a
threat of which he must have known the vanity. He was deceiving himself
to keep up his spirits.

“But I say,” I exclaimed, taking another and better opportunity to
change the conversation, “I see you have started a factory here after
all.” We had walked round to the farther side of the square. Through
the windows of the long low building which, at my last visit, had stood
untenanted, I saw the complicated shapes of machines, rows of them
in a double line down the whole length of the building. “Looms? Then
you decided against cheese? And the frescoes?” I turned questioningly
towards the Count. I had a horrible fear that, when we got back to the
house, I should find the great hall peeled of its Veroneses and a blank
of plaster where once had been the history of Eros and Psyche.

“Oh, the frescoes are still there, what’s left of them.” And in spite
of Fabio’s long face, I was delighted at the news. “I persuaded my
father to sell some of his house property in Padua, and we started this
weaving business here two years ago. Just in time,” Fabio added, “for
the Communist revolution.”

Poor Fabio, he had no luck. The peasants had seized his factory and had
tried to possess themselves of his land. For three weeks he had lived
at the villa in a state of siege, defending the place, with twenty
Fascists to help him, against all the peasants of the countryside. The
danger was over now; but the machines were broken, and in any case it
was out of the question to start them again; feeling was still too
high. And what, for Fabio, made it worse was the fact that his brother
Lucio, who had also got a little capital out of the old man, had gone
off to Bulgaria and invested it in a bootlace factory. It was the only
bootlace factory in the country, and Lucio was making money hand over
fist. Free as air he was, well off, with a lovely Turkish girl for a
mistress. For Fabio, the Turkish girl was evidently the last straw.
“_Una Turca, una vera Turca_,” he repeated, shaking his head. The
female infidel symbolised in his eyes all that was exotic, irregular,
undomestic; all that was not the family; all that was remote from Padua
and the estate.

“And they were such beautiful machines,” said Fabio, pausing for a
moment to look in at the last of the long line of windows. “Whether
to sell them, whether to wait till all this has blown over and have
them put right and try to start again--I don’t know.” He shrugged his
shoulders hopelessly. “Or just let things slide till the old man dies.”
We turned the corner of the square and began to walk back towards the
house. “Sometimes,” he added, after a silence, “I don’t believe he ever
will die.”

The children were playing in the great hall of the Veroneses. The
majestic double doors which gave on to the portico were ajar; through
the opening we watched them for a moment without being seen. The
family was formed up in order of battle. A red-headed boy of ten or
eleven led the van, a brown boy followed. Then came three little
girls, diminishing regularly in size like graded pearls; and finally
a little toddling creature in blue linen crawlers. All six of them
carried shouldered bamboos, and they were singing in ragged unison to
a kind of trumpet call of three notes: “_All’ armi i Fascisti; a morte
i Comunisti; a basso i Socialisti_”--over and over again. And as they
sang they marched, round and round, earnestly, indefatigably. The huge
empty room echoed like a swimming-bath. Remote under their triumphal
arches, in their serene world of fantastic beauty, the silken ladies
and gentlemen played their music, drank their wine; the poet declaimed,
the painter poised his brush before the canvas; the monkeys clambered
among the Roman ruins, the parrots dozed on the balustrades. “_All’
armi i Fascisti, a morte i Comunisti...._” I should have liked to stand
there in silence, merely to see how long the children would continue
their patriotic march. But Fabio had none of my scientific curiosity;
or if he ever had, it had certainly been exhausted long before the last
of his children was born. After indulging me for a moment with the
spectacle, he pushed open the door and walked in. The children looked
round and were immediately silent. What with his bad temper and his
theory of education by teasing, they seemed to be thoroughly frightened
of their father.

“Go on,” he said, “go on.” But they wouldn’t; they obviously couldn’t,
in his terrifying presence. Unobtrusively they slipped away.

Fabio led me round the painted room. “Look here,” he said, “and look
here.” In one of the walls of the great hall there were half a dozen
bullet holes. A chip had been taken off one of the painted cornices;
one lady was horribly wounded in the face; there were two or three
holes in the landscape, and a monkey’s tail was severed. “That’s our
friends, the peasants,” Fabio explained.

In the Carpioni rooms all was still well; the satyrs still pursued
their nymphs, and in the room of the centaurs and the mermaids, the men
who were half horses still galloped as tumultuously as ever into the
sea, to ravish the women who were half fish. But the tale of Eros and
Psyche had suffered dreadfully. The exquisite panel in which Tiepolo
had painted Psyche holding up the lamp to look at her mysterious lover
was no more than a faint, mildewy smudge. And where once the indignant
young god had flown upwards to rejoin his Olympian relatives (who
still, fortunately, swam about intact among the clouds on the ceiling)
there was nothing but the palest ghost of an ascending Cupid, while
Psyche weeping on the earth below was now quite invisible.

“That’s our friends the French,” said Fabio. “They were quartered here
in 1918, and they didn’t trouble to shut the windows when it rained.”

Poor Fabio! Everything was against him. I had no consolation to offer.
That autumn I sent him an art critic and three more Americans. But
nothing came of their visits. The fact was that he had too much to
offer. A picture--that might easily have been disposed of. But what
could one do with a whole houseful of paintings like this?

The months passed. About Easter time of the next year I had another
letter from Fabio. The olive crop had been poor. The Countess was
expecting another baby and was far from well. The two eldest children
were down with measles, and the last but one had what the Italians call
an “asinine cough.” He expected all the children to catch both diseases
in due course. He was very doubtful now if it would ever be worth while
to restart his looms; the position of the silk trade was not so sound
as it had been at the end of 1919. If only he had stuck to cheese,
as he first intended! Lucio had just made fifty thousand lire by a
lucky stroke of speculation. But the female infidel had run off with a
Rumanian. The old Count was ageing rapidly; when Fabio saw him last,
he had told the same anecdote three times in the space of ten minutes.
With these two pieces of good news--they were for him, I imagine, the
only bright spots in the surrounding gloom--Fabio closed his letter.
I was left wondering why he troubled to write to me at all. It may be
that he got a certain lacerating satisfaction by thus enumerating his
troubles.

That August there was a musical festival in Salzburg. I had never
been in Austria; the occasion seemed to me a good one. I went, and
I enjoyed myself prodigiously. Salzburg at the moment is all in
the movement. There are baroque churches in abundance; there are
Italianate fountains; there are gardens and palaces that mimic in their
extravagantly ponderous Teutonic way the gardens and palaces of Rome.
And, choicest treasure of all, there is a tunnel, forty feet high,
bored through a precipitous crag--a tunnel such as only a Prince Bishop
of the seventeenth century could have dreamed of, having at either
end an arch of triumph, with pilasters, broken pediments, statues,
scutcheons, all carved out of the living rock--a masterpiece among
tunnels, and in a town where everything, without being really good, is
exquisitely “amusing,” the most amusing feature of all. Ah, decidedly,
Salzburg is in the movement.

One afternoon I took the funicular up to the castle. There is a
beer-terrace under the walls of the fortress from which you get a view
that is starred in Baedeker. Below you on one side lies the town,
spread out in the curving valley, with a river running through it,
like a small and German version of Florence. From the other side of
the terrace you look out over a panorama that makes no pretence to
Italianism; it is as sweetly and romantically German as an air out of
Weber’s _Freischütz_. There are mountains on the horizon, spiky and
blue like mountains in a picture book; and in the foreground, extending
to the very foot of the extremely improbable crag on which the castle
and the beer-garden are perched, stretches a flat green plain--miles
upon miles of juicy meadows dotted with minusculous cows, with here and
there a neat toy farm, or, more rarely, a cluster of dolls’ houses,
with a spire going up glittering from the midst of them.

I was sitting with my blond beer in front of this delicious and
slightly comical landscape, thinking comfortably of nothing in
particular, when I heard behind me a rapturous voice exclaiming,
“Bello, bello!” I looked round curiously--for it seemed to me somehow
rather surprising to hear Italian spoken here--and saw one of those
fine sumptuous women they admire so much in the South. She was a _bella
grassa_, plump to the verge of overripeness and perilously near middle
age; but still in her way exceedingly handsome. Her face had the
proportions of an iceberg--one-fifth above water, four-fifths below.
Ample and florid from the eyes downwards, it was almost foreheadless;
the hair began immediately above the brows. The eyes themselves were
dark, large, and, for my taste, at least, somewhat excessively tender
in expression. I took her in in a moment and was about to look away
again when her companion, who had been looking at the view on the other
side, turned round. It was the old Count.

I was far more embarrassed, I believe, than he. I felt myself blushing,
as our eyes met, as though it were I who had been travelling about the
world with a Colombella and he who had caught me in the act. I did
not know what to do--whether to smile and speak to him, or to turn
away as though I had not recognised him, or to nod from a distance and
then, discreetly, to disappear. But the old Count put an end to my
irresolution by calling out my name in astonishment, by running up to
me and seizing my hand. What a delight to see an old friend! Here of
all places! In this God-forsaken country--though it was cheap enough,
didn’t I find? He would introduce me to a charming compatriot of his
own, an Italian lady he had met yesterday in the train from Vienna.

I was made known to the Colombella, and we all sat down at my table.
Speaking resolutely in Italian, the Count ordered two more beers.
We talked. Or rather the Count talked; for the conversation was a
monologue. He told us anecdotes of the Italy of fifty years ago; he
gave us imitations of the queer characters he had known; he even, at
one moment, imitated the braying of an ass--I forget in what context;
but the braying remains vividly in my memory. Snuffing the air between
every sentence, he gave us his views on women. The Colombella screamed
indignant protests, dissolved herself in laughter. The old Count
twisted his moustaches, twinkling at her through the network of his
wrinkles. Every now and then he turned in my direction and gave me a
little wink.

I listened in astonishment. Was this the man who had told the same
anecdote three times in ten minutes? I looked at the old Count. He
was leaning towards the Colombella whispering something in her ear
which made her laugh so much that she had to wipe the tears from her
eyes. Turning away from her, he caught my eye; smiling, he shrugged
his shoulders as though to say, “These women! What imbeciles, but how
delicious, how indispensable!” Was this the tired old man I had seen a
year ago sitting on Pedrochi’s terrace? It seemed incredible.

“Well, good-bye, _a rivederci_.” They had to get down into the town
again. The funicular was waiting.

“I’m delighted to have seen you,” said the old Count, shaking me
affectionately by the hand.

“And so am I,” I protested. “Particularly delighted to see you so well.”

“Yes, I’m wonderfully well now,” he said, blowing out his chest.

“And young,” I went on. “Younger than I am! How have you done it?”

“Aha!” The old Count cocked his head on one side mysteriously.

More in joke than in earnest, “I believe you’ve been seeing Steinach in
Vienna,” I said. “Having a rejuvenating operation.”

For all reply, the old Count raised the forefinger of his right hand,
laying it first to his lips, then along the side of his nose, and as he
did so he winked. Then clenching his fist, and with his thumb sticking
rigidly up, he made a complicated gesture which would, I am sure, for
an Italian, have been full of a profound and vital significance. To me,
however, unfamiliar with the language of signs, the exact meaning was
not entirely clear. But the Count offered no verbal explanation. Still
without uttering a word, he raised his hat; then laying his finger once
more to his lips, he turned and ran with an astonishing agility down
the steep path towards the little carriage of the funicular, in which
the Colombella had already taken her seat.




HUBERT AND MINNIE


For Hubert Lapell this first love-affair was extremely important.
“Important” was the word he had used himself when he was writing about
it in his diary. It was an event in his life, a real event for a
change. It marked, he felt, a genuine turning-point in his spiritual
development.

“Voltaire,” he wrote in his diary--and he wrote it a second time in
one of his letters to Minnie--“Voltaire said that one died twice: once
with the death of the whole body and once before, with the death of
one’s capacity to love. And in the same way one is born twice, the
second time being on the occasion when one first falls in love. One is
born, then, into a new world--a world of intenser feelings, heightened
values, more penetrating insights.” And so on.

In point of actual fact Hubert found this new world a little
disappointing. The intenser feelings proved to be rather mild; not by
any means up to literary standards.

                 “I tell thee I am mad
  In Cressid’s love. Thou answer’st: she is fair;
  Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart
  Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice....”

No, it certainly wasn’t quite that. In his diary, in his letters to
Minnie, he painted, it is true, a series of brilliant and romantic
landscapes of the new world. But they were composite imaginary
landscapes in the manner of Salvator Rosa--richer, wilder, more
picturesquely clear-obscure than the real thing. Hubert would seize
with avidity on the least velleity of an unhappiness, a physical
desire, a spiritual yearning, to work it up in his letters and journals
into something substantially romantic. There were times, generally
very late at night, when he succeeded in persuading himself that he
was indeed the wildest, unhappiest, most passionate of lovers. But in
the daytime he went about his business nourishing something like a
grievance against love. The thing was a bit of a fraud; yes, really, he
decided, rather a fraud. All the same, he supposed it was important.

For Minnie, however, love was no fraud at all. Almost from the first
moment she had adored him. A common friend had brought him to one of
her Wednesday evenings. “This is Mr. Lapell; but he’s too young to be
called anything but Hubert.” That was how he had been introduced. And,
laughing, she had taken his hand and called him Hubert at once. He too
had laughed, rather nervously. “My name’s Minnie,” she said. But he had
been too shy to call her anything at all that evening. His brown hair
was tufty and untidy, like a little boy’s, and he had shy grey eyes
that never looked at you for more than a glimpse at a time, but turned
away almost at once, as though they were afraid. Quickly he glanced at
you, eagerly--then away again; and his musical voice, with its sudden
emphases, its quick modulations from high to low, seemed always to
address itself to a ghost floating low down and a little to one side
of the person to whom he was talking. Above the brows was a forehead
beautifully domed, with a pensive wrinkle running up from between the
eyes. In repose his full-lipped mouth pouted a little, as though he
were expressing some chronic discontent with the world. And, of course,
thought Minnie, the world wasn’t beautiful enough for his idealism.

“But after all,” he had said earnestly that first evening, “one has the
world of thought to live in. That, at any rate, is simple and clear and
beautiful. One can always live apart from the brutal scramble.”

And from the depths of the arm-chair in which, fragile, tired, and in
these rather “artistic” surroundings almost incongruously elegant, she
was sitting, Helen Glamber laughed her clear little laugh. “I think,
on the contrary,” she said (Minnie remembered every incident of that
first evening), “I think one ought to rush about and know thousands
of people, and eat and drink enormously, and make love incessantly,
and shout and laugh and knock people over the head.” And having vented
these Rabelaisian sentiments, Mrs. Glamber dropped back with a sigh
of fatigue, covering her eyes with a thin white hand; for she had a
splitting headache, and the light hurt her.

“Really!” Minnie protested, laughing. She would have felt rather
shocked if any one else had said that; but Helen Glamber was allowed to
say anything.

Hubert reaffirmed his quietism. Elegant, weary, infinitely fragile,
Mrs. Glamber lay back in her arm-chair, listening. Or perhaps, under
her covering hand, she was trying to go to sleep.

She had adored him at first sight. Now that she looked back she
could see that it had been at first sight. Adored him protectively,
maternally--for he was only twenty and very young, in spite of the
wrinkle between his brows, and the long words, and the undergraduate’s
newly discovered knowledge; only twenty, and she was nearly
twenty-nine. And she had fallen in love with his beauty, too. Ah,
passionately.

Hubert, perceiving it later, was surprised and exceedingly flattered.
This had never happened to him before. He enjoyed being worshipped,
and since Minnie had fallen so violently in love with him, it seemed
the most natural thing in the world for him to be in love with Minnie.
True, if she had not started by adoring him, it would never have
occurred to Hubert to fall in love with her. At their first meeting
he had found her certainly very nice, but not particularly exciting.
Afterwards, the manifest expression of her adoration had made him find
her more interesting, and in the end he had fallen in love himself. But
perhaps it was not to be wondered at if he found the process a little
disappointing.

But still, he reflected on those secret occasions when he had to admit
to himself that something was wrong with this passion, love without
possession could never, surely, in the nature of things, be quite the
genuine article. In his diary he recorded aptly those two quatrains of
John Donne:

  “So must pure lovers’ souls descend
    To affections and to faculties,
  Which sense may reach and apprehend,
    Else a great prince in prison lies.

  To our bodies turn we then, that so
    Weak men on love revealed may look;
  Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
    But yet the body is his book.”

At their next meeting he recited them to Minnie. The conversation which
followed, compounded as it was of philosophy and personal confidences,
was exquisite. It really, Hubert felt, came up to literary standards.

The next morning Minnie rang up her friend Helen Glamber and asked if
she might come to tea that afternoon. She had several things to talk to
her about. Mrs. Glamber sighed as she hung up the receiver. “Minnie’s
coming to tea,” she called, turning towards the open door.

From across the passage her husband’s voice came back to her. “Good
Lord!” it said in a tone of far-away horror, of absent-minded
resignation; for John Glamber was deep in his work and there was only a
little of him left, so to speak, above the surface to react to the bad
news.

Helen Glamber sighed again, and propping herself more comfortably
against her pillows she reached for her book. She knew that far-away
voice and what it meant. It meant that he wouldn’t answer if she
went on with the conversation; only say “h’m” or “m’yes.” And if
she persisted after that, it meant that he’d say, plaintively,
heart-breakingly, “Darling, you _must_ let me get on with my work.” And
at that moment she would so much have liked to talk a little. Instead,
she went on reading at the point where she had broken off to answer
Minnie’s telephone call.

“By this time the flames had enveloped the gynecæum. Nineteen times
did the heroic Patriarch of Alexandria venture into the blazing
fabric, from which he succeeded in rescuing all but two of its lovely
occupants, twenty-seven in number, all of whom he caused to be
transported at once to his own private apartments....”

It was one of those instructive books John liked her to read. History,
mystery, lesson, and law. But at the moment she didn’t feel much like
history. She felt like talking. And that was out of the question;
absolutely out of it.

She put down her book and began to file her nails and think of poor
Minnie. Yes, poor Minnie. Why was it that one couldn’t help saying
Good Lord! heartfeltly, when one heard she was coming to tea? And why
did one never have the heart to refuse to let her come to tea? She was
pathetic, but pathetic in such a boring way. There are some people you
like being kind to, people you want to help and befriend. People that
look at you with the eyes of sick monkeys. Your heart breaks when you
see them. But poor Minnie had none of the charms of a sick monkey. She
was just a great big healthy young woman of twenty-eight who ought to
have been married and the mother of children, and who wasn’t. She would
have made such a good wife, such an admirably solicitous and careful
mother. But it just happened that none of the men she knew had ever
wanted to marry her. And why should they want to? When she came into a
room, the light seemed to grow perceptibly dimmer, the electric tension
slackened off. She brought no life with her; she absorbed what there
was, she was like so much blotting-paper. No wonder nobody wanted to
marry her. And yet, of course, it was the only thing. Particularly as
she was always falling in love herself. The only thing.

“John!” Mrs. Glamber suddenly called. “Is it really true about ferrets?”

“Ferrets?” the voice from across the passage repeated with a remote
irritation. “Is what true about ferrets?”

“That the females die if they’re not mated.”

“How on earth should I know?”

“But you generally know everything.”

“But, my darling, really....” The voice was plaintive, full of reproach.

Mrs. Glamber clapped her hand over her mouth and only took it off again
to blow a kiss. “All right,” she said very quickly. “All right. Really.
I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Really.” She blew another kiss towards
the door.

“But ferrets....” repeated the voice.

“Sh--sh, sh--sh.”

“Why ferrets?”

“Darling,” said Mrs. Glamber almost sternly, “you really must go on
with your work.”

Minnie came to tea. She put the case--hypothetically at first, as
though it were the case of a third person; then, gaining courage,
she put it personally. It was her own case. Out of the depths of her
untroubled, pagan innocence, Helen Glamber brutally advised her. “If
you want to go to bed with the young man,” she said, “go to bed with
him. The thing has no importance in itself. At least not much. It’s
only important because it makes possible more secret confidences,
because it strengthens affection, makes the man in a way dependent on
you. And then, of course, it’s the natural thing. I’m all for nature
except when it comes to painting one’s face. They say that ferrets....”
But Minnie noticed that she never finished the sentence. Appalled and
fascinated, shocked and yet convinced, she listened.

“My darling,” said Mrs. Glamber that evening when her husband came
home--for he hadn’t been able to face Minnie; he had gone to the Club
for tea--“who was it that invented religion, and sin, and all that? And
why?”

John laughed. “It was invented by Adam,” he said, “for various little
transcendental reasons which you would probably find it difficult to
appreciate. But also for the very practical purpose of keeping Eve in
order.”

“Well, if you call complicating people’s lives keeping them in order,
then I dare say you’re right.” Mrs. Glamber shook her head. “I find it
all too obscure. At sixteen, yes. But one really ought to have grown
out of that sort of thing by twenty. And at thirty--the woman’s nearly
thirty, you know--well, really....”

In the end, Minnie wrote to Hubert telling him that she had made
up her mind. Hubert was staying in Hertfordshire with his friend
Watchett. It was a big house, the food was good, one was very
comfortable; and old Mr. Watchett, moreover, had a very sound library.
In the impenetrable shade of the Wellingtonias Hubert and Ted Watchett
played croquet and discussed the best methods of cultivating the Me.
You could do a good deal, they decided, with art--books, you know,
and pictures and music. “Listen to Stravinsky’s _Sacre_,” said Ted
Watchett, “and you’re for ever excused from going to Tibet or the
Gold Coast or any of those awful places. And then there’s Dostoievsky
instead of murder, and D. H. Lawrence as a substitute for sex.”

“All the same,” said Hubert, “one must have a _certain_ amount of
actual non-imaginative experience.” He spoke earnestly, abstractedly;
but Minnie’s letter was in his pocket. “_Gnosce teipsum._ You can’t
really know yourself without coming into collision with events, can
you?”

Next day, Ted’s cousin, Phœbe, arrived. She had red hair and a milky
skin, and was more or less on the musical comedy stage. “One foot on
and one foot off,” she explained. “The splits.” And there and then she
did them, the splits, on the drawing-room carpet. “It’s quite easy,”
she said, laughing, and jumped up again with an easy grace that fairly
took one’s breath away. Ted didn’t like her. “Tiresome girl,” he said.
“So silly, too. Consciously silly, silly on purpose, which makes it
worse.” And, it was true, she did like boasting about the amount of
champagne she could put away without getting buffy, and the number of
times she had exceeded the generous allowance and been “blind to the
world.” She liked talking about her admirers in terms which might make
you suppose that they were all her accepted lovers. But then she had
the justification of her vitality and her shining red hair.

“Vitality,” Hubert wrote in his diary (he contemplated a distant date,
after, or preferably before, his death, when these confessions and
aphorisms would be published), “vitality can make claims on the world
almost as imperiously as can beauty. Sometimes beauty and vitality meet
in one person.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was Hubert who arranged that they should stay at the mill. One of
his friends had once been there with a reading party, and found the
place comfortable, secluded, and admirably quiet. Quiet, that is to
say, with the special quietness peculiar to mills. For the silence
there was not the silence of night on a mountain; it was a silence made
of continuous thunder. At nine o’clock every morning the mill-wheel
began to turn, and its roaring never stopped all day. For the first
moments the noise was terrifying, was almost unbearable. Then, after a
little, one grew accustomed to it. The thunder became, by reason of its
very unintermittence, a perfect silence, wonderfully rich and profound.

At the back of the mill was a little garden hemmed in on three sides by
the house, the outhouses, and a high brick wall, and open on the fourth
towards the water. Looking over the parapet, Minnie watched it sliding
past. It was like a brown snake with arrowy markings on its back; and
it crawled, it glided, it slid along for ever. She sat there, waiting:
her train, from London, had brought her here soon after lunch;
Hubert, coming across country from the Watchetts, would hardly arrive
before six. The water flowed beneath her eyes like time, like destiny,
smoothly towards some new and violent event.

The immense noise that in this garden was silence enveloped her.
Inured, her mind moved in it as though in its native element. From
beyond the parapet came the coolness and the weedy smell of water.
But if she turned back towards the garden, she breathed at once the
hot perfume of sunlight beating on flowers and ripening fruit. In the
afternoon sunlight all the world was ripe. The old red house lay there,
ripe, like a dropped plum; the walls were riper than the fruits of the
nectarine trees so tenderly and neatly crucified on their warm bricks.
And that richer silence of unremitting thunder seemed, as it were, the
powdery bloom on a day that had come to exquisite maturity and was
hanging, round as a peach and juicy with life and happiness, waiting in
the sunshine for the bite of eager teeth.

At the heart of this fruit-ripe world Minnie waited. The water flowed
towards the wheel; smoothly, smoothly--then it fell, it broke itself
to pieces on the turning wheel. And time was sliding onwards, quietly
towards an event that would shatter all the smoothness of her life.

“If you really want to go to bed with the young man, go to bed with
him.” She could hear Helen’s clear, shrill voice saying impossible,
brutal things. If any one else had said them, she would have run out
of the room. But in Helen’s mouth they seemed, somehow, so simple,
so innocuous, and so true. And yet all that other people had said
or implied--at home, at school, among the people she was used to
meeting--seemed equally true.

But then, of course, there was love. Hubert had written a Shakespearean
sonnet which began:

  “Love hallows all whereon ’tis truly placed,
    Turns dross to gold with one touch of his dart,
  Makes matter mind, extremest passion chaste,
    And builds a temple in the lustful heart.”

She thought that very beautiful. And very true. It seemed to throw a
bridge between Helen and the other people. Love, true love, made all
the difference. It justified. Love--how much, how much she loved!

Time passed and the light grew richer as the sun declined out of
the height of the sky. The day grew more and more deliciously ripe,
swelling with unheard-of sweetness. Over its sun-flushed cheeks the
thundery silence of the mill-wheel spread the softest, peachiest of
blooms. Minnie sat on the parapet, waiting. Sometimes she looked
down at the sliding water, sometimes she turned her eyes towards the
garden. Time flowed, but she was now no more afraid of that shattering
event that thundered there, in the future. The ripe sweetness of
the afternoon seemed to enter into her spirit, filling it to the
brim. There was no more room for doubts, or fearful anticipations,
or regrets. She was happy. Tenderly, with a tenderness she could not
have expressed in words, only with the gentlest of light kisses, with
fingers caressingly drawn through the ruffled hair, she thought of
Hubert, her Hubert.

Hubert, Hubert.... And suddenly, startlingly, he was standing there at
her side.

“Oh,” she said, and for a moment she stared at him with round brown
eyes, in which there was nothing but astonishment. Then the expression
changed. “Hubert,” she said softly.

Hubert took her hand and dropped it again; looked at her for an
instant, then turned away. Leaning on the parapet, he stared down into
the sliding water; his face was unsmiling. For a long time both were
silent. Minnie remained where she was, sitting quite still, her eyes
fixed on the young man’s averted face. She was happy, happy, happy. The
long day ripened and ripened, perfection after perfection.

“Minnie,” said the young man suddenly, and with a loud abruptness, as
though he had been a long time deciding himself to speak and had at
last succeeded in bringing out the prepared and pent-up words, “I feel
I’ve behaved very badly towards you. I never ought to have asked you to
come here. It was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“But I came because I wanted to,” Minnie exclaimed.

Hubert glanced at her, then turned away his eyes and went on addressing
a ghost that floated, it seemed, just above the face of the sliding
water. “It was too much to ask. I shouldn’t have done it. For a man
it’s different. But for a woman....”

“But, I tell you, I wanted to.”

“It’s too much.”

“It’s nothing,” said Minnie, “because I love you.” And leaning forward,
she ran her fingers through his hair. Ah, tenderness that no words
could express! “You silly boy,” she whispered. “Did you think I didn’t
love you enough for that?”

Hubert did not look up. The water slid and slid away before his eyes;
Minnie’s fingers played in his hair, ran caressingly over the nape of
his neck. He felt suddenly a positive hatred for this woman. Idiot! Why
couldn’t she take a hint? He didn’t want her. And why on earth had he
ever imagined that he did? All the way in the train he had been asking
himself that question. Why? Why? And the question had asked itself
still more urgently just now as, standing at the garden door, he had
looked out between the apple tree and watched her, unobserved, through
a long minute--watched her sitting there on the parapet, turning her
vague brown eyes now at the water, now towards the garden, and smiling
to herself with an expression that had seemed to him so dim and vacuous
that he could almost have fancied her an imbecile.

And with Phœbe yesterday he had stood on the crest of the bare chalk
down. Like a sea at their feet stretched the plain, and above the dim
horizon towered heroic clouds. Fingers of the wind lifted the red
locks of her hair. She stood as though poised, ready to leap off into
the boisterous air. “How I should like to fly!” she said. “There’s
something particularly attractive about airmen, I always think.” And
she had gone running down the hill.

But Minnie, with her dull hair, her apple-red cheeks, and big, slow
body, was like a peasant girl. How had he ever persuaded himself that
he wanted her? And what made it much worse, of course, was that she
adored him, embarrassingly, tiresomely, like a too affectionate spaniel
that insists on tumbling about at your feet and licking your hand just
when you want to sit quietly and concentrate on serious things.

Hubert moved away, out of reach of her caressing hand. He lifted
towards her for a moment a pair of eyes that had become, as it were,
opaque with a cold anger; then dropped them again.

“The sacrifice is too great,” he said in a voice that sounded to him
like somebody else’s voice. He found it very difficult to say this sort
of thing convincingly. “I can’t ask it of you,” the actor pursued. “I
won’t.”

“But it isn’t a sacrifice,” Minnie protested. “It’s a joy, it’s
happiness. Oh, can’t you understand?”

Hubert did not answer. Motionless, his elbows on the parapet, he
stared down into the water. Minnie looked at him, perplexed only, at
first; but all at once she was seized with a nameless agonising doubt
that grew and grew within her, as the silence prolonged itself, like
some dreadful cancer of the spirit, until it had eaten away all her
happiness, until there was nothing left in her mind but doubt and
apprehension.

“What is it?” she said at last. “Why are you so strange? What is it,
Hubert? What is it?”

Leaning anxiously forward, she laid her two hands on either side of his
averted face and turned it towards her. Blank and opaque with anger
were the eyes. “What is it?” she repeated. “Hubert, what is it?”

Hubert disengaged himself. “It’s no good,” he said in a smothered
voice. “No good at all. It was a mistake. I’m sorry. I think I’d better
go away. The trap’s still at the door.”

And without waiting for her to say anything, without explaining himself
any further, he turned and walked quickly away, almost ran, towards the
house. Well, thank goodness, he said to himself, he was out of that. He
hadn’t done it very well, or handsomely, or courageously; but, at any
rate, he was out of it. Poor Minnie! He felt sorry for her; but after
all, what could he do about it? Poor Minnie! Still, it rather flattered
his vanity to think that she would be mourning over him. And in any
case, he reassured his conscience, she couldn’t really mind very much.
But on the other hand, his vanity reminded him, she did adore him. Oh,
she absolutely worshipped....

The door closed behind him. Minnie was alone again in the garden.
Ripe, ripe it lay there in the late sunshine. Half of it was in
shadow now; but the rest of it, in the coloured evening light, seemed
to have come to the final and absolute perfection of maturity. Bloomy
with thundery silence, the choicest fruit of all time hung there,
deliciously sweet, sweet to the core; hung flushed and beautiful on the
brink of darkness.

Minnie sat there quite still, wondering what had happened. Had he
gone, had he really gone? The door closed behind him with a bang, and
almost as though the sound were a signal prearranged, a man walked
out from the mill on to the dam and closed the sluice. And all at
once the wheel was still. Apocalyptically there was silence; the
silence of soundlessness took the place of that other silence that was
uninterrupted sound. Gulfs opened endlessly out around her; she was
alone. Across the void of soundlessness a belated bee trailed its thin
buzzing; the sparrows chirped, and from across the water came the sound
of voices and far-away laughter. And as though woken from a sleep,
Minnie looked up and listened, fearfully, turning her head from side to
side.




FARD


They had been quarrelling now for nearly three-quarters of an hour.
Muted and inarticulate, the voices floated down the corridor, from
the other end of the flat. Stooping over her sewing, Sophie wondered,
without much curiosity, what it was all about this time. It was
Madame’s voice that she heard most often. Shrill with anger and
indignant with tears, it burst out in gusts, in gushes. Monsieur was
more self-controlled, and his deeper voice was too softly pitched to
penetrate easily the closed doors and to carry along the passage. To
Sophie, in her cold little room, the quarrel sounded, most of the
time, like a series of monologues by Madame, interrupted by strange
and ominous silences. But every now and then Monsieur seemed to lose
his temper outright, and then there was no silence between the gusts,
but a harsh, deep, angry shout. Madame kept up her loud shrillness
continuously and without flagging; her voice had, even in anger, a
curious, level monotony. But Monsieur spoke now loudly, now softly,
with emphases and modulations and sudden outbursts, so that his
contributions to the squabble, when they were audible, sounded like
a series of separate explosions. Bow, wow, wow-wow-wow, wow--a dog
barking rather slowly.

After a time Sophie paid no more heed to the noise of quarrelling. She
was mending one of Madame’s camisoles, and the work required all her
attention. She felt very tired; her body ached all over. It had been a
hard day; so had yesterday, so had the day before. Every day was a hard
day, and she wasn’t so young as she had been. Two years more and she’d
be fifty. Every day had been a hard day ever since she could remember.
She thought of the sacks of potatoes she used to carry when she was a
little girl in the country. Slowly, slowly she was walking along the
dusty road with the sack over her shoulder. Ten steps more; she could
manage that. Only it never was the end; one always had to begin again.

She looked up from her sewing, moved her head from side to side,
blinked. She had begun to see lights and spots of colour dancing before
her eyes; it often happened to her now. A sort of yellowish bright
worm was wriggling up towards the right-hand corner of her field of
vision; and though it was always moving upwards, upwards, it was always
there in the same place. And there were stars of red and green that
snapped and brightened and faded all round the worm. They moved between
her and her sewing; they were there when she shut her eyes. After a
moment she went on with her work; Madame wanted her camisole most
particularly to-morrow morning. But it was difficult to see round the
worm.

There was suddenly a great increase of noise from the other end of the
corridor. A door had opened; words articulated themselves.

“... bien tort, mon ami, si tu crois que je suis ton esclave. Je ferai
ce que je voudrai.”

“Moi aussi.” Monsieur uttered a harsh, dangerous laugh. There was the
sound of heavy footsteps in the passage, a rattling in the umbrella
stand; then the front door banged.

Sophie looked down again at her work. Oh, the worm, the coloured stars,
the aching fatigue in all her limbs! If one could only spend a whole
day in bed--in a huge bed, feathery, warm and soft, all the day long....

The ringing of the bell startled her. It always made her jump, that
furious wasp-like buzzer. She got up, put her work down on the table,
smoothed her apron, set straight her cap, and stepped out into the
corridor. Once more the bell buzzed furiously. Madame was impatient.

“At last, Sophie. I thought you were never coming.”

Sophie said nothing; there was nothing to say. Madame was standing in
front of the open wardrobe. A bundle of dresses hung over her arm, and
there were more of them lying in a heap on the bed.

“Une beauté à la Rubens,” her husband used to call her when he was in
an amorous mood. He liked these massive, splendid, great women. None of
your flexible drain-pipes for him. “Hélène Fourmont” was his pet name
for her.

“Some day,” Madame used to tell her friends, “some day I really must
go to the Louvre and see my portrait. By Rubens, you know. It’s
extraordinary that one should have lived all one’s life in Paris and
never have seen the Louvre. Don’t you think so?”

She was superb to-night. Her cheeks were flushed; her blue eyes shone
with an unusual brilliance between their long lashes; her short,
red-brown hair had broken wildly loose.

“To-morrow, Sophie,” she said dramatically, “we start for Rome.
To-morrow morning.” She unhooked another dress from the wardrobe as she
spoke, and threw it on to the bed. With the movement her dressing-gown
flew open, and there was a vision of ornate underclothing and white
exuberant flesh. “We must pack at once.”

“For how long, Madame?”

“A fortnight, three months--how should I know?”

“It makes a difference, Madame.”

“The important thing is to get away. I shall not return to this house,
after what has been said to me to-night, till I am humbly asked to.”

“We had better take the large trunk, then, Madame; I will go and fetch
it.”

The air in the box-room was sickly with the smell of dust and leather.
The big trunk was jammed in a far corner. She had to bend and strain at
it in order to pull it out. The worm and the coloured stars flickered
before her eyes; she felt dizzy when she straightened herself up. “I’ll
help you to pack, Sophie,” said Madame, when the servant returned,
dragging the heavy trunk after her. What a death’s-head the old woman
looked nowadays! She hated having old, ugly people near her. But Sophie
was so efficient; it would be madness to get rid of her.

“Madame need not trouble.” There would be no end to it, Sophie knew, if
Madame started opening drawers and throwing things about. “Madame had
much better go to bed. It’s late.”

No, no. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. She was to such a degree
enervated. These men.... What an embeastment! One was not their slave.
One would not be treated in this way.

Sophie was packing. A whole day in bed, in a huge, soft bed, like
Madame’s. One would doze, one would wake up for a moment, one would
doze again.

“His latest game,” Madame was saying indignantly, “is to tell me
he hasn’t got any money. I’m not to buy any clothes, he says. Too
grotesque. I can’t go about naked, can I?” She threw out her hands.
“And as for saying he can’t afford, that’s simply nonsense. He can,
perfectly well. Only he’s mean, mean, horribly mean. And if he’d only
do a little honest work, for a change, instead of writing silly verses
and publishing them at his own expense, he’d have plenty and to spare.”
She walked up and down the room. “Besides,” she went on, “there’s his
old father. What’s he for, I should like to know? ‘You must be proud
of having a poet for a husband,’ he says.” She made her voice quaver
like an old man’s. “It’s all I can do not to laugh in his face. ‘And
what beautiful verses Hégésippe writes about you! What passion, what
fire!’” Thinking of the old man, she grimaced, wobbled her head, shook
her finger, doddered on her legs. “And when one reflects that poor
Hégésippe is bald, and dyes the few hairs he has left.” She laughed.
“As for the passion he talks so much about in his beastly verses,” she
laughed--“that’s all pure invention. But, my good Sophie, what are you
thinking of? Why are you packing that hideous old green dress?”

Sophie pulled out the dress without saying anything. Why did the woman
choose this night to look so terribly ill? She had a yellow face and
blue teeth. Madame shuddered; it was too horrible. She ought to send
her to bed. But, after all, the work had to be done. What could one do
about it? She felt more than ever aggrieved.

“Life is terrible.” Sighing, she sat down heavily on the edge of the
bed. The buoyant springs rocked her gently once or twice before they
settled to rest. “To be married to a man like this. I shall soon be
getting old and fat. And never once unfaithful. But look how he treats
me.” She got up again and began to wander aimlessly about the room.
“I won’t stand it, though,” she burst out. She had halted in front of
the long mirror, and was admiring her own splendid tragic figure. No
one would believe, to look at her, that she was over thirty. Behind
the beautiful tragedian she could see in the glass a thin, miserable,
old creature, with a yellow face and blue teeth, crouching over the
trunk. Really, it was too disagreeable. Sophie looked like one of
those beggar women one sees on a cold morning, standing in the gutter.
Does one hurry past, trying not to look at them? Or does one stop,
open one’s purse, and give them one’s copper and nickel--even as much
as a two-franc note, if one has no change? But whatever one did, one
always felt uncomfortable, one always felt apologetic for one’s furs.
That was what came of walking. If one had a car--but that was another
of Hégésippe’s meannesses--one wouldn’t, rolling along behind closed
windows, have to be conscious of them at all. She turned away from the
glass.

“I won’t stand it,” she said, trying not to think of the beggar women,
of blue teeth in a yellow face; “I won’t stand it.” She dropped into a
chair.

But think of a lover with a yellow face and blue, uneven teeth! She
closed her eyes, shuddered at the thought. It would be enough to make
one sick. She felt impelled to take another look: Sophie’s eyes were
the colour of greenish lead, quite without life. What was one to do
about it? The woman’s face was a reproach, an accusation. And besides,
the sight of it was making her feel positively ill. She had never been
so profoundly enervated.

Sophie rose slowly and with difficulty from her knees; an expression
of pain crossed her face. Slowly she walked to the chest of drawers,
slowly counted out six pairs of silk stockings. She turned back towards
the trunk. The woman was a walking corpse!

“Life is terrible,” Madame repeated with conviction, “terrible,
terrible, terrible.”

She ought to send the woman to bed. But she would never be able to
get her packing done by herself. And it was so important to get off
to-morrow morning. She had told Hégésippe she would go, and he had
simply laughed; he hadn’t believed it. She must give him a lesson
this time. In Rome she would see Luigino. Such a charming boy, and a
marquis, too. Perhaps.... But she could think of nothing but Sophie’s
face; the leaden eyes, the bluish teeth, the yellow, wrinkled skin.

“Sophie,” she said suddenly; it was with difficulty that she prevented
herself screaming, “look on my dressing-table. You’ll see a box of
rouge, the Dorin number twenty-four. Put a little on your cheeks. And
there’s a stick of lip salve in the right-hand drawer.”

She kept her eyes resolutely shut while Sophie got up--with what a
horrible creaking of the joints!--walked over to the dressing-table,
and stood there, rustling faintly, through what seemed an eternity.
What a life, my God, what a life! Slow footsteps trailed back again.
She opened her eyes. Oh, that was far better, far better.

“Thank you, Sophie. You look much less tired now.” She got up briskly.
“And now we must hurry.” Full of energy, she ran to the wardrobe.
“Goodness me,” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands, “you’ve forgotten
to put in my blue evening dress. How could you be so stupid, Sophie?”




THE PORTRAIT


“Pictures,” said Mr. Bigger; “you want to see some pictures? Well,
we have a very interesting mixed exhibition of modern stuff in our
galleries at the moment. French and English, you know.”

The customer held up his hand, shook his head. “No, no. Nothing modern
for me,” he declared, in his pleasant northern English. “I want real
pictures, old pictures. Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds and that sort
of thing.”

“Perfectly.” Mr. Bigger nodded. “Old Masters. Oh, of course we deal in
the old as well as the modern.”

“The fact is,” said the other, “that I’ve just bought a rather large
house--a Manor House,” he added, in impressive tones.

Mr. Bigger smiled; there was an ingenuousness about this simple-minded
fellow which was most engaging. He wondered how the man had made his
money. “A Manor House.” The way he had said it was really charming.
Here was a man who had worked his way up from serfdom to the
lordship of a manor, from the broad base of the feudal pyramid to the
narrow summit. His own history and all the history of classes had
been implicit in that awed proud emphasis on the “Manor.” But the
stranger was running on; Mr. Bigger could not allow his thoughts to
wander farther. “In a house of this style,” he was saying, “and with
a position like mine to keep up, one must have a few pictures. Old
Masters, you know; Rembrandts and What’s-his-names.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Bigger, “an Old Master is a symbol of social
superiority.”

“That’s just it,” cried the other, beaming; “you’ve said just what I
wanted to say.”

Mr. Bigger bowed and smiled. It was delightful to find some one who
took one’s little ironies as sober seriousness.

“Of course, we should only need Old Masters downstairs, in the
reception-room. It would be too much of a good thing to have them in
the bedrooms too.”

“Altogether too much of a good thing,” Mr. Bigger assented.

“As a matter of fact,” the Lord of the Manor went on, “my daughter--she
does a bit of sketching. And very pretty it is. I’m having some of her
things framed to hang in the bedrooms. It’s useful having an artist in
the family. Saves you buying pictures. But, of course, we must have
something old downstairs.”

“I think I have exactly what you want.” Mr. Bigger got up and rang
the bell. “My daughter does a little sketching”--he pictured a large,
blonde, barmaidish personage, thirty-one and not yet married, running a
bit to seed. His secretary appeared at the door. “Bring me the Venetian
portrait, Miss Pratt, the one in the back room. You know which I mean.”

“You’re very snug in here,” said the Lord of the Manor. “Business good,
I hope.”

Mr. Bigger sighed. “The slump,” he said. “We art dealers feel it worse
than any one.”

“Ah, the slump.” The Lord of the Manor chuckled. “I foresaw it all the
time. Some people seemed to think the good times were going to last for
ever. What fools! I sold out of everything at the crest of the wave.
That’s why I can buy pictures now.”

Mr. Bigger laughed too. This was the right sort of customer. “Wish I’d
had anything to sell out during the boom,” he said.

The Lord of the Manor laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. He
was still laughing when Miss Pratt re-entered the room. She carried a
picture, shieldwise, in her two hands, before her.

“Put it on the easel, Miss Pratt,” said Mr. Bigger. “Now,” he turned to
the Lord of the Manor, “what do you think of that?”

The picture that stood on the easel before them was a half-length
portrait. Plump-faced, white-skinned, high-bosomed in her deeply
scalloped dress of blue silk, the subject of the picture seemed a
typical Italian lady of the middle eighteenth century. A little
complacent smile curved the pouting lips, and in one hand she held a
black mask, as though she had just taken it off after a day of carnival.

“Very nice,” said the Lord of the Manor; but he added doubtfully,
“It isn’t very like Rembrandt, is it? It’s all so clear and bright.
Generally in Old Masters you can never see anything at all, they’re so
dark and foggy.”

“Very true,” said Mr. Bigger. “But not all Old Masters are like
Rembrandt.”

“I suppose not.” The Lord of the Manor seemed hardly to be convinced.

“This is eighteenth-century Venetian. Their colour was always luminous.
Giangolini was the painter. He died young, you know. Not more than half
a dozen of his pictures are known. And this is one.”

The Lord of the Manor nodded. He could appreciate the value of rarity.

“One notices at a first glance the influence of Longhi,” Mr. Bigger
went on airily. “And there is something of the morbidezza of Rosalba in
the painting of the face.”

The Lord of the Manor was looking uncomfortably from Mr. Bigger to
the picture and from the picture to Mr. Bigger. There is nothing so
embarrassing as to be talked at by some one possessing more knowledge
than you do. Mr. Bigger pressed his advantage.

“Curious,” he went on, “that one sees nothing of Tiepolo’s manner in
this. Don’t you think so?”

The Lord of the Manor nodded. His face wore a gloomy expression. The
corners of his baby’s mouth drooped. One almost expected him to burst
into tears.

“It’s pleasant,” said Mr. Bigger, relenting at last, “to talk to
somebody who really knows about painting. So few people do.”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever gone into the subject very deeply,” said
the Lord of the Manor modestly. “But I know what I like when I see it.”
His face brightened again, as he felt himself on safer ground.

“A natural instinct,” said Mr. Bigger. “That’s a very precious gift. I
could see by your face that you had it; I could see that the moment you
came into the gallery.”

The Lord of the Manor was delighted. “Really, now,” he said. He felt
himself growing larger, more important. “Really.” He cocked his head
critically on one side. “Yes. I must say I think that’s a very fine bit
of painting. Very fine. But the fact is, I should rather have liked
a more historical piece, if you know what I mean. Something more
ancestor-like, you know. A portrait of somebody with a story--like Anne
Boleyn, or Nell Gwynn, or the Duke of Wellington, or some one like
that.”

“But, my dear sir, I was just going to tell you. This picture has a
story.” Mr. Bigger leaned forward and tapped the Lord of the Manor on
the knee. His eyes twinkled with benevolent and amused brightness under
his bushy eyebrows. There was a knowing kindliness in his smile. “A
most remarkable story is connected with the painting of that picture.”

“You don’t say so?” The Lord of the Manor raised his eyebrows.

Mr. Bigger leaned back in his chair. “The lady you see there,” he
said, indicating the portrait with a wave of the hand, “was the wife
of the fourth Earl Hurtmore. The family is now extinct. The ninth
Earl died only last year. I got this picture when the house was sold
up. It’s sad to see the passing of these old ancestral homes.” Mr.
Bigger sighed. The Lord of the Manor looked solemn, as though he were
in church. There was a moment’s silence; then Mr. Bigger went on in a
changed tone. “From his portraits, which I have seen, the fourth Earl
seems to have been a long-faced, gloomy, grey-looking fellow. One can
never imagine him young; he was the sort of man who looks permanently
fifty. His chief interests in life were music and Roman antiquities.
There’s one portrait of him holding an ivory flute in one hand and
resting the other on a fragment of Roman carving. He spent at least
half his life travelling in Italy, looking for antiques and listening
to music. When he was about fifty-five, he suddenly decided that it
was about time to get married. This was the lady of his choice.” Mr.
Bigger pointed to the picture. “His money and his title must have made
up for many deficiencies. One can’t imagine, from her appearance, that
Lady Hurtmore took a great deal of interest in Roman antiquities.
Nor, I should think, did she care much for the science and history
of music. She liked clothes, she liked society, she liked gambling,
she liked flirting, she liked enjoying herself. It doesn’t seem that
the newly wedded couple got on too well. But still, they avoided an
open breach. A year after the marriage Lord Hurtmore decided to pay
another visit to Italy. They reached Venice in the early autumn. For
Lord Hurtmore, Venice meant unlimited music. It meant Galuppi’s daily
concerts at the orphanage of the Misericordia. It meant Piccini at
Santa Maria. It meant new operas at the San Moise; it meant delicious
cantatas at a hundred churches. It meant private concerts of amateurs;
it meant Porpora and the finest singers in Europe; it meant Tartini
and the greatest violinists. For Lady Hurtmore, Venice meant something
rather different. It meant gambling at the Ridotto, masked balls, gay
supper-parties--all the delights of the most amusing city in the world.
Living their separate lives, both might have been happy here in Venice
almost indefinitely. But one day Lord Hurtmore had the disastrous idea
of having his wife’s portrait painted. Young Giangolini was recommended
to him as the promising, the coming painter. Lady Hurtmore began her
sittings. Giangolini was handsome and dashing, Giangolini was young.
He had an amorous technique as perfect as his artistic technique. Lady
Hurtmore would have been more than human if she had been able to
resist him. She was not more than human.”

“None of us are, eh?” The Lord of the Manor dug his finger into Mr.
Bigger’s ribs and laughed.

Politely, Mr. Bigger joined in his mirth; when it had subsided, he went
on. “In the end they decided to run away together across the border.
They would live at Vienna--live on the Hurtmore family jewels, which
the lady would be careful to pack in her suit-case. They were worth
upwards of twenty thousand, the Hurtmore jewels; and in Vienna, under
Maria-Theresa, one could live handsomely on the interest of twenty
thousand.

“The arrangements were easily made. Giangolini had a friend who did
everything for them--got them passports under an assumed name, hired
horses to be in waiting on the mainland, placed his gondola at their
disposal. They decided to flee on the day of the last sitting. The day
came. Lord Hurtmore, according to his usual custom, brought his wife
to Giangolini’s studio in a gondola, left her there, perched on the
high-backed model’s throne, and went off again to listen to Galuppi’s
concert at the Misericordia. It was the time of full carnival. Even
in broad daylight people went about in masks. Lady Hurtmore wore
one of black silk--you see her holding it, there, in the portrait.
Her husband, though he was no reveller and disapproved of carnival
junketings, preferred to conform to the grotesque fashion of his
neighbours rather than attract attention to himself by not conforming.

“The long black cloak, the huge three-cornered black hat, the
long-nosed mask of white paper were the ordinary attire of every
Venetian gentleman in these carnival weeks. Lord Hurtmore did not care
to be conspicuous; he wore the same. There must have been something
richly absurd and incongruous in the spectacle of this grave and
solemn-faced English milord dressed in the clown’s uniform of a gay
Venetian masker. ‘Pantaloon in the clothes of Pulcinella,’ was how the
lovers described him to one another; the old dotard of the eternal
comedy dressed up as the clown. Well, this morning, as I have said,
Lord Hurtmore came as usual in his hired gondola, bringing his lady
with him. And she in her turn was bringing, under the folds of her
capacious cloak, a little leather box wherein, snug on their silken
bed, reposed the Hurtmore jewels. Seated in the dark little cabin of
the gondola they watched the churches, the richly fretted palazzi, the
high mean houses gliding past them. From under his Punch’s mask Lord
Hurtmore’s voice spoke gravely, slowly, imperturbably.

“‘The learned Father Martini,’ he said, ‘has promised to do me the
honour of coming to dine with us to-morrow. I doubt if any man knows
more of musical history than he. I will ask you to be at pains to do
him special honour.’

“‘You may be sure I will, my lord.’ She could hardly contain the
laughing excitement that bubbled up within her. To-morrow at
dinner-time she would be far away--over the frontier, beyond Gorizia,
galloping along the Vienna road. Poor old Pantaloon! But no, she
wasn’t in the least sorry for him. After all, he had his music, he had
his odds and ends of broken marble. Under her cloak she clutched the
jewel-case more tightly. How intoxicatingly amusing her secret was!”

Mr. Bigger clasped his hands and pressed them dramatically over his
heart. He was enjoying himself. He turned his long, foxy nose towards
the Lord of the Manor, and smiled benevolently. The Lord of the Manor
for his part was all attention.

“Well?” he inquired.

Mr. Bigger unclasped his hands, and let them fall on to his knees.

“Well,” he said, “the gondola draws up at Giangolini’s door, Lord
Hurtmore helps his wife out, leads her up to the painter’s great room
on the first floor, commits her into his charge with his usual polite
formula, and then goes off to hear Galuppi’s morning concert at the
Misericordia. The lovers have a good two hours to make their final
preparations.

“Old Pantaloon safely out of sight, up pops the painter’s useful
friend, masked and cloaked like every one else in the streets and
on the canals of this carnival Venice. There follow embracements
and handshakings and laughter all round; everything has been so
marvellously successful, not a suspicion roused. From under Lady
Hurtmore’s cloak comes the jewel-case. She opens it, and there are loud
Italian exclamations of astonishment and admiration. The brilliants,
the pearls, the great Hurtmore emeralds, the ruby clasps, the diamond
ear-rings--all these bright, glittering things are lovingly examined,
knowingly handled. Fifty thousand sequins at the least is the estimate
of the useful friend. The two lovers throw themselves ecstatically into
one another’s arms.

“The useful friend interrupts them; there are still a few last things
to be done. They must go and sign for their passports at the Ministry
of Police. Oh, a mere formality; but still it has to be done. He will
go out at the same time and sell one of the lady’s diamonds to provide
the necessary funds for the journey.”

Mr. Bigger paused to light a cigarette. He blew a cloud of smoke, and
went on.

“So they set out, all in their masks and capes, the useful friend in
one direction, the painter and his mistress in another. Ah, love in
Venice!” Mr. Bigger turned up his eyes in ecstasy. “Have you ever been
in Venice and in love, sir?” he inquired of the Lord of the Manor.

“Never farther than Dieppe,” said the Lord of the Manor, shaking his
head.

“Ah, then you’ve missed one of life’s great experiences. You can never
fully and completely understand what must have been the sensations
of little Lady Hurtmore and the artist as they glided down the long
canals, gazing at one another through the eyeholes of their masks.
Sometimes, perhaps, they kissed--though it would have been difficult
to do that without unmasking, and there was always the danger that
some one might have recognised their naked faces through the windows
of their little cabin. No, on the whole,” Mr. Bigger concluded
reflectively, “I expect they confined themselves to looking at one
another. But in Venice, drowsing along the canals, one can almost be
satisfied with looking--just looking.”

He caressed the air with his hand and let his voice droop away into
silence. He took two or three puffs at his cigarette without saying
anything. When he went on, his voice was very quiet and even.

“About half an hour after they had gone, a gondola drew up at
Giangolini’s door and a man in a paper mask, wrapped in a black cloak
and wearing on his head the inevitable three-cornered hat, got out and
went upstairs to the painter’s room. It was empty. The portrait smiled
sweetly and a little fatuously from the easel. But no painter stood
before it and the model’s throne was untenanted. The long-nosed mask
looked about the room with an expressionless curiosity. The wandering
glance came to rest at last on the jewel-case that stood where the
lovers had carelessly left it, open on the table. Deep-set and darkly
shadowed behind the grotesque mask, the eyes dwelt long and fixedly on
this object. Long-nosed Pulcinella seemed to be wrapped in meditation.

“A few minutes later there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, of
two voices laughing together. The masker turned away to look out of the
window. Behind him the door opened noisily; drunk with excitement, with
gay, laughable irresponsibility, the lovers burst in.

“‘Aha, _caro amico_! Back already. What luck with the diamond?’

“The cloaked figure at the window did not stir; Giangolini rattled
gaily on. There had been no trouble whatever about the signatures, no
questions asked; he had the passports in his pocket. They could start
at once.

“Lady Hurtmore suddenly began to laugh uncontrollably; she couldn’t
stop.

“‘What’s the matter?’ asked Giangolini, laughing too.

“‘I was thinking,’ she gasped between the paroxysms of her mirth, ‘I
was thinking of old Pantalone sitting at the Misericordia, solemn as
an owl, listening’--she almost choked, and the words came out shrill
and forced as though she were speaking through tears--‘listening to old
Galuppi’s boring old cantatas.’

“The man at the window turned round. ‘Unfortunately, madam,’ he
said, ‘the learned maestro was indisposed this morning. There was no
concert.’ He took off his mask. ‘And so I took the liberty of returning
earlier than usual.’ The long, grey, unsmiling face of Lord Hurtmore
confronted them.

“The lovers stared at him for a moment speechlessly. Lady Hurtmore
put her hand to her heart; it had given a fearful jump, and she felt
a horrible sensation in the pit of her stomach. Poor Giangolini had
gone as white as his paper mask. Even in these days of _cicisbei_, of
official gentlemen friends, there were cases on record of outraged
and jealous husbands resorting to homicide. He was unarmed, but
goodness only knew what weapons of destruction were concealed under
that enigmatic black cloak. But Lord Hurtmore did nothing brutal or
undignified. Gravely and calmly, as he did everything, he walked over
to the table, picked up the jewel-case, closed it with the greatest
care, and saying, ‘My box, I think,’ put it in his pocket and walked
out of the room. The lovers were left looking questioningly at one
another.”

There was a silence.

“What happened then?” asked the Lord of the Manor.

“The anti-climax,” Mr. Bigger replied, shaking his head mournfully.
“Giangolini had bargained to elope with fifty thousand sequins. Lady
Hurtmore didn’t, on reflection, much relish the idea of love in a
cottage. Woman’s place, she decided at last, is in the home--with the
family jewels. But would Lord Hurtmore see the matter in precisely the
same light? That was the question, the alarming, disquieting question.
She decided to go and see for herself.

“She got back just in time for dinner. ‘His Illustrissimous Excellency
is waiting in the dining-room,’ said the majordomo. The tall doors were
flung open before her; she swam in majestically, chin held high--but
with what a terror in her soul! Her husband was standing by the
fireplace. He advanced to meet her.

“‘I was expecting you, madam,’ he said, and led her to her place.

“That was the only reference he ever made to the incident. In the
afternoon he sent a servant to fetch the portrait from the painter’s
studio. It formed part of their baggage when, a month later, they set
out for England. The story has been passed down with the picture from
one generation to the next. I had it from an old friend of the family
when I bought the portrait last year.”

Mr. Bigger threw his cigarette end into the grate. He flattered himself
that he had told that tale very well.

“Very interesting,” said the Lord of the Manor, “very interesting
indeed. Quite historical, isn’t it? One could hardly do better with
Nell Gwynn or Anne Boleyn, could one?”

Mr. Bigger smiled vaguely, distantly. He was thinking of Venice--the
Russian countess staying in his pension, the tufted tree in the
courtyard outside his bedroom, that strong, hot scent she used (it
made you catch your breath when you first smelt it), and there was
the bathing on the Lido, and the gondola, and the dome of the Salute
against the hazy sky, looking just as it looked when Guardi painted it.
How enormously long ago and far away it all seemed now! He was hardly
more than a boy then; it had been his first great adventure. He woke up
with a start from his reverie.

The Lord of the Manor was speaking. “How much, now, would you want for
that picture?” he asked. His tone was detached, off-hand; he was a rare
one for bargaining.

“Well,” said Mr. Bigger, quitting with reluctance the Russian countess,
the paradisaical Venice of five-and-twenty years ago, “I’ve asked as
much as a thousand for less important works than this. But I don’t mind
letting this go to you for seven-fifty.”

The Lord of the Manor whistled. “Seven-fifty?” he repeated. “It’s too
much.”

“But, my dear sir,” Mr. Bigger protested, “think what you’d have to pay
for a Rembrandt of this size and quality--twenty thousand at least.
Seven hundred and fifty isn’t at all too much. On the contrary, it’s
very little considering the importance of the picture you’re getting.
You have a good enough judgment to see that this is a very fine work of
art.”

“Oh, I’m not denying that,” said the Lord of the Manor. “All I say is
that seven-fifty’s a lot of money. Whe-ew! I’m glad my daughter does
sketching. Think if I’d had to furnish the bedrooms with pictures at
seven-fifty a time!” He laughed.

Mr. Bigger smiled. “You must also remember,” he said, “that you’re
making a very good investment. Late Venetians are going up. If I had
any capital to spare----” The door opened and Miss Pratt’s blonde and
frizzy head popped in.

“Mr. Crowley wants to know if he can see you, Mr. Bigger.”

Mr. Bigger frowned. “Tell him to wait,” he said irritably. He coughed
and turned back to the Lord of the Manor. “If I had any capital to
spare, I’d put it all into late Venetians. Every penny.”

He wondered, as he said the words, how often he had told people that
he’d put all his capital, if he had any, into primitives, cubism,
nigger sculpture, Japanese prints....

In the end the Lord of the Manor wrote him a cheque for six hundred and
eighty.

“You might let me have a typewritten copy of the story,” he said, as
he put on his hat. “It would be a good tale to tell one’s guests at
dinner, don’t you think? I’d like to have the details quite correct.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” said Mr. Bigger, “the details are most
important.”

He ushered the little round man to the door. “Good morning. Good
morning.” He was gone.

A tall, pale youth with side whiskers appeared in the doorway. His eyes
were dark and melancholy; his expression, his general appearance, were
romantic and at the same time a little pitiable. It was young Crowley,
the painter.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Mr. Bigger. “What did you want
to see me for?”

Mr. Crowley looked embarrassed, he hesitated. How he hated having to
do this sort of thing! “The fact is,” he said at last, “I’m horribly
short of money. I wondered if perhaps you wouldn’t mind--if it would
be convenient to you--to pay me for that thing I did for you the other
day. I’m awfully sorry to bother you like this.”

“Not at all, my dear fellow.” Mr. Bigger felt sorry for this wretched
creature who didn’t know how to look after himself. Poor young Crowley
was as helpless as a baby. “How much did we settle it was to be?”

“Twenty pounds, I think it was,” said Mr. Crowley timidly.

Mr. Bigger took out his pocket-book. “We’ll make it twenty-five,” he
said.

“Oh no, really, I couldn’t. Thanks very much.” Mr. Crowley blushed
like a girl. “I suppose you wouldn’t like to have a show of some of my
landscapes, would you?” he asked, emboldened by Mr. Bigger’s air of
benevolence.

“No, no. Nothing of your own.” Mr. Bigger shook his head inexorably.

“There’s no money in modern stuff. But I’ll take any number of those
sham Old Masters of yours.” He drummed with his fingers on Lady
Hurtmore’s sleekly painted shoulder. “Try another Venetian,” he added.
“This one was a great success.”




YOUNG ARCHIMEDES


It was the view which finally made us take the place. True, the
house had its disadvantages. It was a long way out of town and had
no telephone. The rent was unduly high, the drainage system poor. On
windy nights, when the ill-fitting panes were rattling so furiously in
the window-frames that you could fancy yourself in an hotel omnibus,
the electric light, for some mysterious reason, used invariably to go
out and leave you in the noisy dark. There was a splendid bathroom;
but the electric pump, which was supposed to send up water from the
rain-water tanks in the terrace, did not work. Punctually every autumn
the drinking well ran dry. And our landlady was a liar and a cheat.

But these are the little disadvantages of every hired house, all
over the world. For Italy they were not really at all serious. I
have seen plenty of houses which had them all and a hundred others,
without possessing the compensating advantages of ours--the southward
facing garden and terrace for the winter and spring, the large cool
rooms against the midsummer heat, the hilltop air and freedom from
mosquitoes, and finally the view.

And what a view it was! Or rather, what a succession of views. For
it was different every day; and without stirring from the house one
had the impression of an incessant change of scene: all the delights
of travel without its fatigues. There were autumn days when all the
valleys were filled with mist and the crests of the Apennines rose
darkly out of a flat white lake. There were days when the mist invaded
even our hilltop and we were enveloped in a soft vapour in which the
mist-coloured olive trees, that sloped away below our windows towards
the valley, disappeared as though into their own spiritual essence; and
the only firm and definite things in the small, dim world within which
we found ourselves confined were the two tall black cypresses growing
on a little projecting terrace a hundred feet down the hill. Black,
sharp, and solid, they stood there, twin pillars of Hercules at the
extremity of the known universe; and beyond them there was only pale
cloud and round them only the cloudy olive trees.

These were the wintry days; but there were days of spring and autumn,
days unchangingly cloudless, or--more lovely still--made various by
the huge floating shapes of vapour that, snowy above the far-away
snow-capped mountains, gradually unfolded, against the pale bright
blue, enormous heroic gestures. And in the height of the sky the
bellying draperies, the swans, the aerial marbles, hewed and left
unfinished by gods grown tired of creation almost before they had
begun, drifted sleeping along the wind, changing form as they moved.
And the sun would come and go behind them; and now the town in the
valley would fade and almost vanish in the shadow, and now, like an
immense fretted jewel between the hills, it would glow as though by its
own light. And looking across the nearer tributary valley that wound
from below our crest down towards the Arno, looking over the low dark
shoulder of hill on whose extreme promontory stood the towered church
of San Miniato, one saw the huge dome airily hanging on its ribs of
masonry, the square campanile, the sharp spire of Santa Croce, and
the canopied tower of the Signoria, rising above the intricate maze
of houses, distinct and brilliant, like small treasures carved out of
precious stones. For a moment only, and then their light would fade
away once more, and the travelling beam would pick out, among the
indigo hills beyond, a single golden crest.

There were days when the air was wet with passed or with approaching
rain, and all the distances seemed miraculously near and clear. The
olive trees detached themselves one from another on the distant slopes;
the far-away villages were lovely and pathetic like the most exquisite
small toys. There were days in summer-time, days of impending thunder
when, bright and sunlit against huge bellying masses of black and
purple, the hills and the white houses shone as it were precariously,
in a dying splendour, on the brink of some fearful calamity.

How the hills changed and varied! Every day and every hour of the
day, almost, they were different. There would be moments when,
looking across the plain of Florence, one would see only a dark blue
silhouette against the sky. The scene had no depth; there was only
a hanging curtain painted flatly with the symbols of mountains. And
then, suddenly almost, with the passing of a cloud, or when the sun
had declined to a certain level in the sky, the flat scene transformed
itself; and where there had been only a painted curtain, now there were
ranges behind ranges of hills, graduated tone after tone from brown, or
grey, or a green gold to far-away blue. Shapes that a moment before had
been fused together indiscriminately into a single mass, now came apart
into their constituents. Fiesole, which had seemed only a spur of Monte
Morello, now revealed itself as the jutting headland of another system
of hills, divided from the nearest bastions of its greater neighbour by
a deep and shadowy valley.

At noon, during the heats of summer, the landscape became dim,
powdery, vague, and almost colourless under the midday sun; the hills
disappeared into the trembling fringes of the sky. But as the afternoon
wore on the landscape emerged again, it dropped its anonymity, it
climbed back out of nothingness into form and life. And its life,
as the sun sank and slowly sank through the long afternoon, grew
richer, grew more intense with every moment. The level light, with its
attendant long, dark shadows, laid bare, so to speak, the anatomy of
the land; the hills--each western escarpment shining, and each slope
averted from the sunlight profoundly shadowed--became massive, jutty,
and solid. Little folds and dimples in the seemingly even ground
revealed themselves. Eastward from our hilltop, across the plain of the
Ema, a great bluff cast its ever-increasing shadow; in the surrounding
brightness of the valley a whole town lay eclipsed within it. And as
the sun expired on the horizon, the further hills flushed in its warm
light, till their illumined flanks were the colour of tawny roses; but
the valleys were already filled with the blue mist of evening. And
it mounted, mounted; the fire went out of the western windows of the
populous slopes; only the crests were still alight, and at last they
too were all extinct. The mountains faded and fused together again into
a flat painting of mountains against the pale evening sky. In a little
while it was night; and if the moon were full, a ghost of the dead
scene still haunted the horizons.

Changeful in its beauty, this wide landscape always preserved a
quality of humanness and domestication which made it, to my mind at
any rate, the best of all landscapes to live with. Day by day one
travelled through its different beauties; but the journey, like our
ancestors’ Grand Tour, was always a journey through civilisation.
For all its mountains, its steep slopes and deep valleys, the Tuscan
scene is dominated by its inhabitants. They have cultivated every rood
of ground that can be cultivated; their houses are thickly scattered
even over the hills, and the valleys are populous. Solitary on the
hilltop, one is not alone in a wilderness. Man’s traces are across the
country, and already--one feels it with satisfaction as one looks out
across it--for centuries, for thousands of years, it has been his,
submissive, tamed, and humanised. The wide, blank moorlands, the sands,
the forests of innumerable trees--these are places for occasional
visitation, healthful to the spirit which submits itself to them for
not too long. But fiendish influences as well as divine haunt these
total solitudes. The vegetative life of plants and things is alien and
hostile to the human. Men cannot live at ease except where they have
mastered their surroundings and where their accumulated lives outnumber
and outweigh the vegetative lives about them. Stripped of its dark
woods, planted, terraced, and tilled almost to the mountains’ tops,
the Tuscan landscape is humanised and safe. Sometimes upon those who
live in the midst of it there comes a longing for some place that is
solitary, inhuman, lifeless, or peopled only with alien life. But the
longing is soon satisfied, and one is glad to return to the civilised
and submissive scene.

I found that house on the hilltop the ideal dwelling-place. For there,
safe in the midst of a humanised landscape, one was yet alone; one
could be as solitary as one liked. Neighbours whom one never sees at
close quarters are the ideal and perfect neighbours.

Our nearest neighbours, in terms of physical proximity, lived very
near. We had two sets of them, as a matter of fact, almost in the same
house with us. One was the peasant family, who lived in a long, low
building, part dwelling-house, part stables, storerooms and cowsheds,
adjoining the villa. Our other neighbours--intermittent neighbours,
however, for they only ventured out of town every now and then, during
the most flawless weather--were the owners of the villa, who had
reserved for themselves the smaller wing of the huge L-shaped house--a
mere dozen rooms or so--leaving the remaining eighteen or twenty to us.

They were a curious couple, our proprietors. An old husband, grey,
listless, tottering, seventy at least; and a signora of about forty,
short, very plump, with tiny fat hands and feet and a pair of very
large, very dark black eyes, which she used with all the skill of a
born comedian. Her vitality, if you could have harnessed it and made
it do some useful work, would have supplied a whole town with electric
light. The physicists talk of deriving energy from the atom; they
would be more profitably employed nearer home--in discovering some
way of tapping those enormous stores of vital energy which accumulate
in unemployed women of sanguine temperament and which, in the present
imperfect state of social and scientific organisation, vent themselves
in ways that are generally so deplorable: in interfering with other
people’s affairs, in working up emotional scenes, in thinking about
love and making it, and in bothering men till they cannot get on with
their work.

Signora Bondi got rid of her superfluous energy, among other ways, by
“doing in” her tenants. The old gentleman, who was a retired merchant
with a reputation for the most perfect rectitude, was allowed to have
no dealings with us. When we came to see the house, it was the wife
who showed us round. It was she who, with a lavish display of charm,
with irresistible rollings of the eyes, expatiated on the merits
of the place, sang the praises of the electric pump, glorified the
bathroom (considering which, she insisted, the rent was remarkably
moderate), and when we suggested calling in a surveyor to look over
the house, earnestly begged us, as though our well-being were her only
consideration, not to waste our money unnecessarily in doing anything
so superfluous. “After all,” she said, “we are honest people. I
wouldn’t dream of letting you the house except in perfect condition.
Have confidence.” And she looked at me with an appealing, pained
expression in her magnificent eyes, as though begging me not to insult
her by my coarse suspiciousness. And leaving us no time to pursue the
subject of surveyors any further, she began assuring us that our little
boy was the most beautiful angel she had ever seen. By the time our
interview with Signora Bondi was at an end, we had definitely decided
to take the house.

“Charming woman,” I said, as we left the house. But I think that
Elizabeth was not quite so certain of it as I.

Then the pump episode began.

On the evening of our arrival in the house we switched on the
electricity. The pump made a very professional whirring noise; but no
water came out of the taps in the bathroom. We looked at one another
doubtfully.

“Charming woman?” Elizabeth raised her eyebrows.

We asked for interviews; but somehow the old gentleman could never see
us, and the Signora was invariably out or indisposed. We left notes;
they were never answered. In the end, we found that the only method
of communicating with our landlords, who were living in the same house
with us, was to go down into Florence and send a registered express
letter to them. For this they had to sign two separate receipts and
even, if we chose to pay forty centimes more, a third incriminating
document, which was then returned to us. There could be no pretending,
as there always was with ordinary letters or notes, that the
communication had never been received. We began at last to get answers
to our complaints. The Signora, who wrote all the letters, started by
telling us that, naturally, the pump didn’t work, as the cisterns were
empty, owing to the long drought. I had to walk three miles to the post
office in order to register my letter reminding her that there had been
a violent thunderstorm only last Wednesday, and that the tanks were
consequently more than half full. The answer came back: bath water had
not been guaranteed in the contract; and if I wanted it, why hadn’t I
had the pump looked at before I took the house? Another walk into town
to ask the Signora next door whether she remembered her adjurations
to us to have confidence in her, and to inform her that the existence
in a house of a bathroom was in itself an implicit guarantee of bath
water. The reply to that was that the Signora couldn’t continue to have
communications with people who wrote so rudely to her. After that I put
the matter into the hands of a lawyer. Two months later the pump was
actually replaced. But we had to serve a writ on the lady before she
gave in. And the costs were considerable.

One day, towards the end of the episode, I met the old gentleman in the
road, taking his big maremman dog for a walk--or being taken, rather,
for a walk by the dog. For where the dog pulled the old gentleman
had perforce to follow. And when it stopped to smell, or scratch the
ground, or leave against a gatepost its visiting-card or an offensive
challenge, patiently, at his end of the leash, the old man had to wait.
I passed him standing at the side of the road, a few hundred yards
below our house. The dog was sniffing at the roots of one of the twin
cypresses which grew one on either side of the entry to a farm; I heard
the beast growling indignantly to itself, as though it scented an
intolerable insult. Old Signor Bondi, leashed to his dog, was waiting.
The knees inside the tubular grey trousers were slightly bent. Leaning
on his cane, he stood gazing mournfully and vacantly at the view. The
whites of his old eyes were discoloured, like ancient billiard balls.
In the grey, deeply wrinkled face, his nose was dyspeptically red.
His white moustache, ragged and yellowing at the fringes, drooped in
a melancholy curve. In his black tie he wore a very large diamond;
perhaps that was what Signora Bondi had found so attractive about him.

I took off my hat as I approached. The old man stared at me absently,
and it was only when I was already almost past him that he recollected
who I was.

“Wait,” he called after me, “wait!” And he hastened down the road in
pursuit. Taken utterly by surprise and at a disadvantage--for it was
engaged in retorting to the affront imprinted on the cypress roots--the
dog permitted itself to be jerked after him. Too much astonished to be
anything but obedient, it followed its master. “Wait!”

I waited.

“My dear sir,” said the old gentleman, catching me by the lapel of my
coat and blowing most disagreeably in my face, “I want to apologise.”
He looked around him, as though afraid that even here he might be
overheard. “I want to apologise,” he went on, “about that wretched
pump business. I assure you that, if it had been only my affair, I’d
have put the thing right as soon as you asked. You were quite right: a
bathroom is an implicit guarantee of bath water. I saw from the first
that we should have no chance if it came to court. And besides, I think
one ought to treat one’s tenants as handsomely as one can afford to.
But my wife”--he lowered his voice--“the fact is that she likes this
sort of thing, even when she knows that she’s in the wrong and must
lose. And besides, she hoped, I dare say, that you’d get tired of
asking and have the job done yourself. I told her from the first that
we ought to give in; but she wouldn’t listen. You see, she enjoys it.
Still, now she sees that it must be done. In the course of the next
two or three days you’ll be having your bath water. But I thought I’d
just like to tell you how....” But the Maremmano, which had recovered
by this time from its surprise of a moment since, suddenly bounded,
growling, up the road. The old gentleman tried to hold the beast,
strained at the leash, tottered unsteadily, then gave way and allowed
himself to be dragged off. “... how sorry I am,” he went on, as he
receded from me, “that this little misunderstanding....” But it was no
use. “Good-bye.” He smiled politely, made a little deprecating gesture,
as though he had suddenly remembered a pressing engagement, and had
no time to explain what it was. “Good-bye.” He took off his hat and
abandoned himself completely to the dog.

A week later the water really did begin to flow, and the day after our
first bath Signora Bondi, dressed in dove-grey satin and wearing all
her pearls, came to call.

“Is it peace now?” she asked, with a charming frankness, as she shook
hands.

We assured her that, so far as we were concerned, it certainly was.

“But why _did_ you write me such dreadfully rude letters?” she said,
turning on me a reproachful glance that ought to have moved the most
ruthless malefactor to contrition. “And then that writ. How _could_
you? To a lady....”

I mumbled something about the pump and our wanting baths.

“But how could you expect me to listen to you while you were in that
mood? Why didn’t you set about it differently--politely, charmingly?”
She smiled at me and dropped her fluttering eyelids.

I thought it best to change the conversation. It is disagreeable, when
one is in the right, to be made to appear in the wrong.

A few weeks later we had a letter--duly registered and by express
messenger--in which the Signora asked us whether we proposed to renew
our lease (which was only for six months), and notifying us that, if
we did, the rent would be raised 25 per cent., in consideration of the
improvements which had been carried out. We thought ourselves lucky, at
the end of much bargaining, to get the lease renewed for a whole year
with an increase in the rent of only 15 per cent.

It was chiefly for the sake of the view that we put up with these
intolerable extortions. But we had found other reasons, after a few
days’ residence, for liking the house. Of these the most cogent was
that, in the peasant’s youngest child, we had discovered what seemed
the perfect playfellow for our own small boy. Between little Guido--for
that was his name--and the youngest of his brothers and sisters there
was a gap of six or seven years. His two elder brothers worked with
their father in the fields; since the time of the mother’s death, two
or three years before we knew them, the eldest sister had ruled the
house, and the younger, who had just left school, helped her and in
between-whiles kept an eye on Guido, who by this time, however, needed
very little looking after; for he was between six and seven years old
and as precocious, self-assured, and responsible as the children of
the poor, left as they are to themselves almost from the time they can
walk, generally are.

Though fully two and a half years older than little Robin--and at that
age thirty months are crammed with half a lifetime’s experience--Guido
took no undue advantage of his superior intelligence and strength.
I have never seen a child more patient, tolerant, and untyrannical.
He never laughed at Robin for his clumsy efforts to imitate his own
prodigious feats; he did not tease or bully, but helped his small
companion when he was in difficulties and explained when he could not
understand. In return, Robin adored him, regarded him as the model and
perfect Big Boy, and slavishly imitated him in every way he could.

These attempts of Robin’s to imitate his companion were often
exceedingly ludicrous. For by an obscure psychological law, words and
actions in themselves quite serious become comic as soon as they are
copied; and the more accurately, if the imitation is a deliberate
parody, the funnier--for an overloaded imitation of some one we know
does not make us laugh so much as one that is almost indistinguishably
like the original. The bad imitation is only ludicrous when it is
a piece of sincere and earnest flattery which does not quite come
off. Robin’s imitations were mostly of this kind. His heroic and
unsuccessful attempts to perform the feats of strength and skill, which
Guido could do with ease, were exquisitely comic. And his careful,
long-drawn imitations of Guido’s habits and mannerisms were no less
amusing. Most ludicrous of all, because most earnestly undertaken and
most incongruous in the imitator, were Robin’s impersonations of Guido
in the pensive mood. Guido was a thoughtful child, given to brooding
and sudden abstractions. One would find him sitting in a corner by
himself, chin in hand, elbow on knee, plunged, to all appearances, in
the profoundest meditation. And sometimes, even in the midst of his
play, he would suddenly break off, to stand, his hands behind his back,
frowning and staring at the ground. When this happened, Robin became
overawed and a little disquieted. In a puzzled silence he looked at
his companion. “Guido,” he would say softly, “Guido.” But Guido was
generally too much preoccupied to answer; and Robin, not venturing
to insist, would creep near him, and throwing himself as nearly as
possible into Guido’s attitude--standing Napoleonically, his hands
clasped behind him, or sitting in the posture of Michelangelo’s Lorenzo
the Magnificent--would try to meditate too. Every few seconds he would
turn his bright blue eyes towards the elder child to see whether he
was doing it quite right. But at the end of a minute he began to grow
impatient; meditation wasn’t his strong point. “Guido,” he called again
and, louder, “Guido!” And he would take him by the hand and try to pull
him away. Sometimes Guido roused himself from his reverie and went back
to the interrupted game. Sometimes he paid no attention. Melancholy,
perplexed, Robin had to take himself off to play by himself. And Guido
would go on sitting or standing there, quite still; and his eyes, if
one looked into them, were beautiful in their grave and pensive calm.

They were large eyes, set far apart and, what was strange in a
dark-haired Italian child, of a luminous pale blue-grey colour. They
were not always grave and calm, as in these pensive moments. When he
was playing, when he talked or laughed, they lit up; and the surface
of those clear, pale lakes of thought seemed, as it were, to be shaken
into brilliant sun-flashing ripples. Above those eyes was a beautiful
forehead, high and steep and domed in a curve that was like the subtle
curve of a rose petal. The nose was straight, the chin small and rather
pointed, the mouth drooped a little sadly at the corners.

I have a snapshot of the two children sitting together on the parapet
of the terrace. Guido sits almost facing the camera, but looking a
little to one side and downwards; his hands are crossed in his lap and
his expression, his attitude are thoughtful, grave, and meditative. It
is Guido in one of those moods of abstraction into which he would pass
even at the height of laughter and play--quite suddenly and completely,
as though he had all at once taken it into his head to go away and had
left the silent and beautiful body behind, like an empty house, to wait
for his return. And by his side sits little Robin, turning to look up
at him, his face half averted from the camera, but the curve of his
cheek showing that he is laughing; one little raised hand is caught at
the top of a gesture, the other clutches at Guido’s sleeve, as though
he were urging him to come away and play. And the legs dangling from
the parapet have been seen by the blinking instrument in the midst
of an impatient wriggle; he is on the point of slipping down and
running off to play hide-and-seek in the garden. All the essential
characteristics of both the children are in that little snapshot.

“If Robin were not Robin,” Elizabeth used to say, “I could almost wish
he were Guido.”

And even at that time, when I took no particular interest in the child,
I agreed with her. Guido seemed to me one of the most charming little
boys I had ever seen.

We were not alone in admiring him. Signora Bondi when, in those cordial
intervals between our quarrels, she came to call, was constantly
speaking of him. “Such a beautiful, beautiful child!” she would exclaim
with enthusiasm. “It’s really a waste that he should belong to peasants
who can’t afford to dress him properly. If he were mine, I should put
him into black velvet; or little white knickers and a white knitted
silk jersey with a red line at the collar and cuffs; or perhaps a white
sailor suit would be pretty. And in winter a little fur coat, with a
squirrel skin cap, and possibly Russian boots....” Her imagination
was running away with her. “And I’d let his hair grow, like a page’s,
and have it just curled up a little at the tips. And a straight fringe
across his forehead. Every one would turn round and stare after us if I
took him out with me in Via Tornabuoni.”

What you want, I should have liked to tell her, is not a child; it’s a
clock-work doll or a performing monkey. But I did not say so--partly
because I could not think of the Italian for a clock-work doll and
partly because I did not want to risk having the rent raised another 15
per cent.

“Ah, if only I had a little boy like that!” She sighed and modestly
dropped her eyelids. “I adore children. I sometimes think of adopting
one--that is, if my husband would allow it.”

I thought of the poor old gentleman being dragged along at the heels of
his big white dog and inwardly smiled.

“But I don’t know if he would,” the Signora was continuing, “I don’t
know if he would.” She was silent for a moment, as though considering a
new idea.

A few days later, when we were sitting in the garden after luncheon,
drinking our coffee, Guido’s father, instead of passing with a nod and
the usual cheerful good-day, halted in front of us and began to talk.
He was a fine handsome man, not very tall, but well proportioned,
quick and elastic in his movements, and full of life. He had a thin
brown face, featured like a Roman’s and lit by a pair of the most
intelligent-looking grey eyes I ever saw. They exhibited almost too
much intelligence when, as not infrequently happened, he was trying,
with an assumption of perfect frankness and a childlike innocence, to
take one in or get something out of one. Delighting in itself, the
intelligence shone there mischievously. The face might be ingenuous,
impassive, almost imbecile in its expression; but the eyes on these
occasions gave him completely away. One knew, when they glittered like
that, that one would have to be careful.

To-day, however, there was no dangerous light in them. He wanted
nothing out of us, nothing of any value--only advice, which is a
commodity, he knew, that most people are only too happy to part with.
But he wanted advice on what was, for us, rather a delicate subject:
on Signora Bondi. Carlo had often complained to us about her. The old
man is good, he told us, very good and kind indeed. Which meant, I
dare say, among other things, that he could easily be swindled. But
his wife.... Well, the woman was a beast. And he would tell us stories
of her insatiable rapacity: she was always claiming more than the half
of the produce which, by the laws of the metayage system, was the
proprietor’s due. He complained of her suspiciousness: she was for ever
accusing him of sharp practices, of downright stealing--him, he struck
his breast, the soul of honesty. He complained of her short-sighted
avarice: she wouldn’t spend enough on manure, wouldn’t buy him another
cow, wouldn’t have electric light installed in the stables. And we had
sympathised, but cautiously, without expressing too strong an opinion
on the subject. The Italians are wonderfully non-committal in their
speech; they will give nothing away to an interested person until they
are quite certain that it is right and necessary and, above all,
safe to do so. We had lived long enough among them to imitate their
caution. What we said to Carlo would be sure, sooner or later, to get
back to Signora Bondi. There was nothing to be gained by unnecessarily
embittering our relations with the lady--only another 15 per cent.,
very likely, to be lost.

To-day he wasn’t so much complaining as feeling perplexed. The Signora
had sent for him, it seemed, and asked him how he would like it if she
were to make an offer--it was all very hypothetical in the cautious
Italian style--to adopt little Guido. Carlo’s first instinct had been
to say that he wouldn’t like it at all. But an answer like that would
have been too coarsely committal. He had preferred to say that he would
think about it. And now he was asking for our advice.

Do what you think best, was what in effect we replied. But we gave it
distantly but distinctly to be understood that we didn’t think that
Signora Bondi would make a very good foster-mother for the child. And
Carlo was inclined to agree. Besides, he was very fond of the boy.

“But the thing is,” he concluded rather gloomily, “that if she has
really set her heart on getting hold of the child, there’s nothing she
won’t do to get him--nothing.”

He too, I could see, would have liked the physicists to start on
unemployed childless women of sanguine temperament before they tried
to tackle the atom. Still, I reflected, as I watched him striding away
along the terrace, singing powerfully from a brazen gullet as he went,
there was force there, there was life enough in those elastic limbs,
behind those bright grey eyes, to put up a good fight even against the
accumulated vital energies of Signora Bondi.

It was a few days after this that my gramophone and two or three
boxes of records arrived from England. They were a great comfort to
us on the hilltop, providing as they did the only thing in which
that spiritually fertile solitude--otherwise a perfect Swiss Family
Robinson’s island--was lacking: music. There is not much music to
be heard nowadays in Florence. The times when Dr. Burney could tour
through Italy, listening to an unending succession of new operas,
symphonies, quartets, cantatas, are gone. Gone are the days when a
learned musician, inferior only to the Reverend Father Martini of
Bologna, could admire what the peasants sang and the strolling players
thrummed and scraped on their instruments. I have travelled for weeks
through the peninsula and hardly heard a note that was not “Salome” or
the Fascists’ song. Rich in nothing else that makes life agreeable or
even supportable, the northern metropolises are rich in music. That is
perhaps the only inducement that a reasonable man can find for living
there. The other attractions--organised gaiety, people, miscellaneous
conversation, the social pleasures--what are those, after all, but
an expense of spirit that buys nothing in return? And then the cold,
the darkness, the mouldering dirt, the damp and squalor.... No, where
there is no necessity that retains, music can be the only inducement.
And that, thanks to the ingenious Edison, can now be taken about in a
box and unpacked in whatever solitude one chooses to visit. One can
live at Benin, or Nuneaton, or Tozeur in the Sahara, and still hear
Mozart quartets, and selections from the Well-Tempered Clavichord, and
the Fifth Symphony, and the Brahms clarinet quintet, and motets by
Palestrina.

Carlo, who had gone down to the station with his mule and cart to fetch
the packing-case, was vastly interested in the machine.

“One will hear some music again,” he said, as he watched me unpacking
the gramophone and the disks. “It is difficult to do much oneself.”

Still, I reflected, he managed to do a good deal. On warm nights we
used to hear him, where he sat at the door of his house, playing his
guitar and softly singing; the eldest boy shrilled out the melody
on the mandoline, and sometimes the whole family would join in, and
the darkness would be filled with their passionate, throaty singing.
Piedigrotta songs they mostly sang; and the voices drooped slurringly
from note to note, lazily climbed or jerked themselves with sudden
sobbing emphases from one tone to another. At a distance and under the
stars the effect was not unpleasing.

“Before the war,” he went on, “in normal times” (and Carlo had a hope,
even a belief, that the normal times were coming back and that life
would soon be as cheap and easy as it had been in the days before the
flood), “I used to go and listen to the operas at the Politeama. Ah,
they were magnificent. But it costs five lire now to get in.”

“Too much,” I agreed.

“Have you got _Trovatore_?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“_Rigoletto?_”

“I’m afraid not.”

“_Bohème? Fanciulla del West? Pagliacci?_”

I had to go on disappointing him.

“Not even _Norma_? Or the _Barbiere_?”

I put on Battistini in “La ci darem” out of _Don Giovanni_. He agreed
that the singing was good; but I could see that he didn’t much like the
music. Why not? He found it difficult to explain.

“It’s not like _Pagliacci_,” he said at last.

“Not palpitating?” I suggested, using a word with which I was sure he
would be familiar; for it occurs in every Italian political speech and
patriotic leading article.

“Not palpitating,” he agreed.

And I reflected that it is precisely by the difference between
_Pagliacci_ and _Don Giovanni_, between the palpitating and the
non-palpitating, that modern musical taste is separated from the old.
The corruption of the best, I thought, is the worst. Beethoven taught
music to palpitate with his intellectual and spiritual passion. It
has gone on palpitating ever since, but with the passion of inferior
men. Indirectly, I thought, Beethoven is responsible for _Parsifal_,
_Pagliacci_, and the _Poem of Fire_; still more indirectly for
_Samson and Delilah_ and “Ivy, cling to me.” Mozart’s melodies may be
brilliant, memorable, infectious; but they don’t palpitate, don’t catch
you between wind and water, don’t send the listener off into erotic
ecstasies.

Carlo and his elder children found my gramophone, I am afraid, rather a
disappointment. They were too polite, however, to say so openly; they
merely ceased, after the first day or two, to take any interest in the
machine and the music it played. They preferred the guitar and their
own singing.

Guido, on the other hand, was immensely interested. And he liked, not
the cheerful dance tunes, to whose sharp rhythms our little Robin
loved to go stamping round and round the room, pretending that he was
a whole regiment of soldiers, but the genuine stuff. The first record
he heard, I remember, was that of the slow movement of Bach’s Concerto
in D Minor for two violins. That was the disk I put on the turntable
as soon as Carlo had left me. It seemed to me, so to speak, the most
musical piece of music with which I could refresh my long-parched
mind--the coolest and clearest of all draughts. The movement had just
got under way and was beginning to unfold its pure and melancholy
beauties in accordance with the laws of the most exacting intellectual
logic, when the two children, Guido in front and little Robin
breathlessly following, came clattering into the room from the loggia.

Guido came to a halt in front of the gramophone and stood there,
motionless, listening. His pale blue-grey eyes opened themselves
wide; making a little nervous gesture that I had often noticed in him
before, he plucked at his lower lip with his thumb and forefinger. He
must have taken a deep breath; for I noticed that, after listening
for a few seconds, he sharply expired and drew in a fresh gulp of air.
For an instant he looked at me--a questioning, astonished, rapturous
look--gave a little laugh that ended in a kind of nervous shudder, and
turned back towards the source of the incredible sounds. Slavishly
imitating his elder comrade, Robin had also taken up his stand in front
of the gramophone, and in exactly the same position, glancing at Guido
from time to time to make sure that he was doing everything, down to
plucking at his lip, in the correct way. But after a minute or so he
became bored.

“Soldiers,” he said, turning to me; “I want soldiers. Like in London.”
He remembered the rag-time and the jolly marches round and round the
room.

I put my fingers to my lips. “Afterwards,” I whispered.

Robin managed to remain silent and still for perhaps another twenty
seconds. Then he seized Guido by the arm, shouting, “Vieni, Guido!
Soldiers. Soldati. Vieni giuocare soldati.”

It was then, for the first time, that I saw Guido impatient. “Vai!”
he whispered angrily, slapped at Robin’s clutching hand and pushed
him roughly away. And he leaned a little closer to the instrument, as
though to make up by yet intenser listening for what the interruption
had caused him to miss.

Robin looked at him, astonished. Such a thing had never happened
before. Then he burst out crying and came to me for consolation.

When the quarrel was made up--and Guido was sincerely repentant, was as
nice as he knew how to be when the music had stopped and his mind was
free to think of Robin once more--I asked him how he liked the music.
He said he thought it was beautiful. But _bello_ in Italian is too
vague a word, too easily and frequently uttered, to mean very much.

“What did you like best?” I insisted. For he had seemed to enjoy it so
much that I was curious to find out what had really impressed him.

He was silent for a moment, pensively frowning. “Well,” he said at
last, “I liked the bit that went like this.” And he hummed a long
phrase. “And then there’s the other thing singing at the same
time--but what are those things,” he interrupted himself, “that sing
like that?”

“They’re called violins,” I said.

“Violins.” He nodded. “Well, the other violin goes like this.” He
hummed again. “Why can’t one sing both at once? And what is in that
box? What makes it make that noise?” The child poured out his questions.

I answered him as best I could, showing him the little spirals on the
disk, the needle, the diaphragm. I told him to remember how the string
of the guitar trembled when one plucked it; sound is a shaking in the
air, I told him, and I tried to explain how those shakings get printed
on the black disk. Guido listened to me very gravely, nodding from
time to time. I had the impression that he understood perfectly well
everything I was saying.

By this time, however, poor Robin was so dreadfully bored that in pity
for him I had to send the two children out into the garden to play.
Guido went obediently; but I could see that he would have preferred
to stay indoors and listen to more music. A little while later, when
I looked out, he was hiding in the dark recesses of the big bay tree,
roaring like a lion, and Robin, laughing, but a little nervously, as
though he were afraid that the horrible noise might possibly turn out,
after all, to be the roaring of a real lion, was beating the bush with
a stick, and shouting, “Come out, come out! I want to shoot you.”

After lunch, when Robin had gone upstairs for his afternoon sleep, he
re-appeared. “May I listen to the music now?” he asked. And for an hour
he sat there in front of the instrument, his head cocked slightly on
one side, listening while I put on one disk after another.

Thenceforward he came every afternoon. Very soon he knew all my library
of records, had his preferences and dislikes, and could ask for what he
wanted by humming the principal theme.

“I don’t like that one,” he said of Strauss’s “Till Eulen Spiegel.”
“It’s like what we sing in our house. Not really like, you know. But
somehow rather like, all the same. You understand?” He looked at us
perplexedly and appealingly, as though begging us to understand what he
meant and so save him from going on explaining. We nodded. Guido went
on. “And then,” he said, “the end doesn’t seem to come properly out of
the beginning. It’s not like the one you played the first time.” He
hummed a bar or two from the slow movement of Bach’s D Minor Concerto.

“It isn’t,” I suggested, “like saying: All little boys like playing.
Guido is a little boy. Therefore Guido likes playing.”

He frowned. “Yes, perhaps that’s it,” he said at last. “The one you
played first is more like that. But, you know,” he added, with an
excessive regard for truth, “I don’t like playing as much as Robin
does.”

Wagner was among his dislikes; so was Debussy. When I played the record
of one of Debussy’s Arabesques, he said, “Why does he say the same
thing over and over again? He ought to say something new, or go on, or
make the thing grow. Can’t he think of anything different?” But he was
less censorious about the “Après-Midi d’un Faune.” “The things have
beautiful voices,” he said.

Mozart overwhelmed him with delight. The duet from _Don Giovanni_,
which his father had found insufficiently palpitating, enchanted Guido.
But he preferred the quartets and the orchestral pieces.

“I like music,” he said, “better than singing.”

Most people, I reflected, like singing better than music; are more
interested in the executant than in what he executes, and find the
impersonal orchestra less moving than the soloist. The touch of the
pianist is the human touch, and the soprano’s high C is the personal
note. It is for the sake of this touch, that note, that audiences fill
the concert halls.

Guido, however, preferred music. True, he liked “La ci darem”; he liked
“Deh vieni alla finestra”; he thought “Che soave zefiretto” so lovely
that almost all our concerts had to begin with it. But he preferred the
other things. The _Figaro_ overture was one of his favourites. There
is a passage not far from the beginning of the piece, where the first
violins suddenly go rocketing up into the heights of loveliness; as the
music approached that point, I used always to see a smile developing
and gradually brightening on Guido’s face, and when, punctually, the
thing happened, he clapped his hands and laughed aloud with pleasure.

On the other side of the same disk, it happened, was recorded
Beethoven’s _Egmont_ overture. He liked that almost better than
_Figaro_.

“It has more voices,” he explained. And I was delighted by the
acuteness of the criticism; for it is precisely in the richness of its
orchestration that _Egmont_ goes beyond _Figaro_.

But what stirred him almost more than anything was the _Coriolan_
overture. The third movement of the Fifth Symphony, the second movement
of the Seventh, the slow movement of the Emperor Concerto--all these
things ran it pretty close. But none excited him so much as _Coriolan_.
One day he made me play it three or four times in succession; then he
put it away.

“I don’t think I want to hear that any more,” he said.

“Why not?”

“It’s too ... too ...” he hesitated, “too big,” he said at last. “I
don’t really understand it. Play me the one that goes like this.” He
hummed the phrase from the D Minor Concerto.

“Do you like that one better?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, it’s not that exactly. But it’s easier.”

“Easier?” It seemed to me rather a queer word to apply to Bach.

“I understand it better.”

One afternoon, while we were in the middle of our concert, Signora
Bondi was ushered in. She began at once to be overwhelmingly
affectionate towards the child; kissed him, patted his head, paid him
the most outrageous compliments on his appearance. Guido edged away
from her.

“And do you like music?” she asked.

The child nodded.

“I think he has a gift,” I said. “At any rate, he has a wonderful ear
and a power of listening and criticising such as I’ve never met with in
a child of that age. We’re thinking of hiring a piano for him to learn
on.”

A moment later I was cursing myself for my undue frankness in praising
the boy. For Signora Bondi began immediately to protest that, if
she could have the upbringing of the child, she would give him the
best masters, bring out his talent, make an accomplished maestro of
him--and, on the way, an infant prodigy. And at that moment, I am sure,
she saw herself sitting maternally, in pearls and black satin, in the
lea of the huge Steinway, while an angelic Guido, dressed like little
Lord Fauntleroy, rattled out Liszt and Chopin, to the loud delight of a
thronged auditorium. She saw the bouquets and all the elaborate floral
tributes, heard the clapping and the few well-chosen words with which
the veteran maestri, touched almost to tears, would hail the coming
of the little genius. It became more than ever important for her to
acquire the child.

“You’ve sent her away fairly ravening,” said Elizabeth, when Signora
Bondi had gone. “Better tell her next time that you made a mistake, and
that the boy’s got no musical talent whatever.”

In due course, the piano arrived. After giving him the minimum of
preliminary instruction, I let Guido loose on it. He began by picking
out for himself the melodies he had heard, reconstructing the harmonies
in which they were embedded. After a few lessons, he understood the
rudiments of musical notation and could read a simple passage at
sight, albeit very slowly. The whole process of reading was still
strange to him; he had picked up his letters somehow, but nobody had
yet taught him to read whole words and sentences.

I took occasion, next time I saw Signora Bondi, to assure her that
Guido had disappointed me. There was nothing in his musical talent,
really. She professed to be very sorry to hear it; but I could see
that she didn’t for a moment believe me. Probably she thought that we
were after the child too, and wanted to bag the infant prodigy for
ourselves, before she could get in her claim, thus depriving her of
what she regarded almost as her feudal right. For, after all, weren’t
they her peasants? If any one was to profit by adopting the child it
ought to be herself.

Tactfully, diplomatically, she renewed her negotiations with Carlo.
The boy, she put it to him, had genius. It was the foreign gentleman
who had told her so, and he was the sort of man, clearly, who knew
about such things. If Carlo would let her adopt the child, she’d
have him trained. He’d become a great maestro and get engagements
in the Argentine and the United States, in Paris and London. He’d
earn millions and millions. Think of Caruso, for example. Part of the
millions, she explained, would of course come to Carlo. But before they
began to roll in, those millions, the boy would have to be trained.
But training was very expensive. In his own interest, as well as in
that of his son, he ought to let her take charge of the child. Carlo
said he would think it over, and again applied to us for advice. We
suggested that it would be best in any case to wait a little and see
what progress the boy made.

He made, in spite of my assertions to Signora Bondi, excellent
progress. Every afternoon, while Robin was asleep, he came for his
concert and his lesson. He was getting along famously with his reading;
his small fingers were acquiring strength and agility. But what to me
was more interesting was that he had begun to make up little pieces
on his own account. A few of them I took down as he played them and I
have them still. Most of them, strangely enough, as I thought then,
are canons. He had a passion for canons. When I explained to him the
principles of the form he was enchanted.

“It is beautiful,” he said, with admiration. “Beautiful, beautiful. And
so easy!”

Again the word surprised me. The canon is not, after all, so
conspicuously simple. Thenceforward he spent most of his time at the
piano in working out little canons for his own amusement. They were
often remarkably ingenious. But in the invention of other kinds of
music he did not show himself so fertile as I had hoped. He composed
and harmonised one or two solemn little airs like hymn tunes, with a
few sprightlier pieces in the spirit of the military march. They were
extraordinary, of course, as being the inventions of a child. But a
great many children can do extraordinary things; we are all geniuses
up to the age of ten. But I had hoped that Guido was a child who was
going to be a genius at forty; in which case what was extraordinary for
an ordinary child was not extraordinary enough for him. “He’s hardly a
Mozart,” we agreed, as we played his little pieces over. I felt, it
must be confessed, almost aggrieved. Anything less than a Mozart, it
seemed to me, was hardly worth thinking about.

He was not a Mozart. No. But he was somebody, as I was to find out,
quite as extraordinary. It was one morning in the early summer
that I made the discovery. I was sitting in the warm shade of our
westward-facing balcony, working. Guido and Robin were playing in the
little enclosed garden below. Absorbed in my work, it was only, I
suppose, after the silence had prolonged itself a considerable time
that I became aware that the children were making remarkably little
noise. There was no shouting, no running about; only a quiet talking.
Knowing by experience that when children are quiet it generally means
that they are absorbed in some delicious mischief, I got up from my
chair and looked over the balustrade to see what they were doing. I
expected to catch them dabbling in water, making a bonfire, covering
themselves with tar. But what I actually saw was Guido, with a burnt
stick in his hand, demonstrating on the smooth paving-stones of the
path, that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is
equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.

Kneeling on the floor, he was drawing with the point of his blackened
stick on the flagstones. And Robin, kneeling imitatively beside him,
was growing, I could see, rather impatient with this very slow game.

“Guido,” he said. But Guido paid no attention. Pensively frowning, he
went on with his diagram. “Guido!” The younger child bent down and then
craned round his neck so as to look up into Guido’s face. “Why don’t
you draw a train?”

“Afterwards,” said Guido. “But I just want to show you this first. It’s
so beautiful,” he added cajolingly.

“But I want a train,” Robin persisted.

“In a moment. Do just wait a moment.” The tone was almost imploring.
Robin armed himself with renewed patience. A minute later Guido had
finished both his diagrams.

“There!” he said triumphantly, and straightened himself up to look at
them. “Now I’ll explain.”

And he proceeded to prove the theorem of Pythagoras--not in Euclid’s
way, but by the simpler and more satisfying method which was, in all
probability, employed by Pythagoras himself. He had drawn a square and
dissected it, by a pair of crossed perpendiculars, into two squares
and two equal rectangles. The equal rectangles he divided up by their
diagonals into four equal right-angled triangles. The two squares
are then seen to be the squares on the two sides of any one of these
triangles other than the hypotenuse. So much for the first diagram.
In the next he took the four right-angled triangles into which the
rectangles had been divided and re-arranged them round the original
square so that their right angles filled the corners of the square,
the hypotenuses looked inwards, and the greater and less sides of the
triangles were in continuation along the sides of the square (which are
each equal to the sum of these sides). In this way the original square
is redissected into four right-angled triangles and the square on the
hypotenuse. The four triangles are equal to the two rectangles of the
original dissection. Therefore the square on the hypotenuse is equal to
the sum of the two squares--the squares on the other two sides--into
which, with the rectangles, the original square was first dissected.

In very untechnical language, but clearly and with a relentless logic,
Guido expounded his proof. Robin listened, with an expression on his
bright, freckled face of perfect incomprehension.

“Treno,” he repeated from time to time. “Treno. Make a train.”

“In a moment,” Guido implored. “Wait a moment. But do just look at
this. _Do._” He coaxed and cajoled. “It’s so beautiful. It’s so easy.”

So easy.... The theorem of Pythagoras seemed to explain for me Guido’s
musical predilections. It was not an infant Mozart we had been
cherishing; it was a little Archimedes with, like most of his kind, an
incidental musical twist.

“Treno, treno!” shouted Robin, growing more and more restless as the
exposition went on. And when Guido insisted on going on with his proof,
he lost his temper. “Cattivo Guido,” he shouted, and began to hit out
at him with his fists.

“All right,” said Guido resignedly. “I’ll make a train.” And with his
stick of charcoal he began to scribble on the stones.

I looked on for a moment in silence. It was not a very good train.
Guido might be able to invent for himself and prove the theorem of
Pythagoras; but he was not much of a draughtsman.

“Guido!” I called. The two children turned and looked up. “Who taught
you to draw those squares?” It was conceivable, of course, that
somebody might have taught him.

“Nobody.” He shook his head. Then, rather anxiously, as though he were
afraid there might be something wrong about drawing squares, he went
on to apologise and explain. “You see,” he said, “it seemed to me so
beautiful. Because those squares”--he pointed at the two small squares
in the first figure--“are just as big as this one.” And, indicating the
square on the hypotenuse in the second diagram, he looked up at me with
a deprecating smile.

I nodded. “Yes, it’s very beautiful,” I said--“it’s very beautiful
indeed.”

An expression of delighted relief appeared on his face; he laughed
with pleasure. “You see, it’s like this,” he went on, eager to initiate
me into the glorious secret he had discovered. “You cut these two long
squares”--he meant the rectangles--“into two slices. And then there
are four slices, all just the same, because, because--oh, I ought to
have said that before--because these long squares are the same, because
those lines, you see....”

“But I want a train,” protested Robin.

Leaning on the rail of the balcony, I watched the children below. I
thought of the extraordinary thing I had just seen and of what it meant.

I thought of the vast differences between human beings. We classify men
by the colour of their eyes and hair, the shape of their skulls. Would
it not be more sensible to divide them up into intellectual species?
There would be even wider gulfs between the extreme mental types than
between a Bushman and a Scandinavian. This child, I thought, when he
grows up, will be to me, intellectually, what a man is to a dog. And
there are other men and women who are, perhaps, almost as dogs to me.

Perhaps the men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of
the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of
us--what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real men,
we should have found out almost nothing at all. Almost all the ideas
with which we are familiar could never have occurred to minds like
ours. Plant the seeds there and they will grow; but our minds could
never spontaneously have generated them.

There have been whole nations of dogs, I thought; whole epochs in
which no Man was born. From the dull Egyptians the Greeks took crude
experience and rules of thumb and made sciences. More than a thousand
years passed before Archimedes had a comparable successor. There has
been only one Buddha, one Jesus, only one Bach that we know of, one
Michelangelo.

Is it by a mere chance, I wondered, that a Man is born from
time to time? What causes a whole constellation of them to come
contemporaneously into being and from out of a single people? Taine
thought that Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were born when they
were because the time was ripe for great painters and the Italian scene
congenial. In the mouth of a rationalising nineteenth-century Frenchman
the doctrine is strangely mystical; it may be none the less true for
that. But what of those born out of time? Blake, for example. What of
those?

This child, I thought, has had the fortune to be born at a time when he
will be able to make good use of his capacities. He will find the most
elaborate analytical methods lying ready to his hand; he will have a
prodigious experience behind him. Suppose him born while Stone Henge
was building; he might have spent a lifetime discovering the rudiments,
guessing darkly where now he might have had a chance of proving. Born
at the time of the Norman Conquest, he would have had to wrestle with
all the preliminary difficulties created by an inadequate symbolism;
it would have taken him long years, for example, to learn the art of
dividing MMMCCCCLXXXVIII by MCMXIX. In five years, nowadays, he will
learn what it took generations of Men to discover.

And I thought of the fate of all the Men born so hopelessly out of
time that they could achieve little or nothing of value. Beethoven
born in Greece, I thought, would have had to be content to play thin
melodies on the flute or lyre; in those intellectual surroundings
it would hardly have been possible for him to imagine the nature of
harmony.

From drawing trains, the children in the garden below had gone on to
playing trains. They were trotting round and round; with blown round
cheeks and pouting mouth, like the cherubic symbol of a wind, Robin
puff-puffed, and Guido, holding the skirt of his smock, shuffled
behind him, tooting. They ran forward, backed, stopped at imaginary
stations, shunted, roared over bridges, crashed through tunnels, met
with occasional collisions and derailments. The young Archimedes
seemed to be just as happy as the little tow-headed barbarian. A few
minutes ago he had been busy with the theorem of Pythagoras. Now,
tooting indefatigably along imaginary rails, he was perfectly content
to shuffle backwards and forwards among the flower-beds, between the
pillars of the loggia, in and out of the dark tunnels of the laurel
tree. The fact that one is going to be Archimedes does not prevent
one from being an ordinary cheerful child meanwhile. I thought of
this strange talent distinct and separate from the rest of the mind,
independent, almost, of experience. The typical child-prodigies are
musical and mathematical; the other talents ripen slowly under the
influence of emotional experience and growth. Till he was thirty Balzac
gave proof of nothing but ineptitude; but at four the young Mozart was
already a musician, and some of Pascal’s most brilliant work was done
before he was out of his teens.

In the weeks that followed, I alternated the daily piano lessons
with lessons in mathematics. Hints rather than lessons they were;
for I only made suggestions, indicated methods, and left the child,
himself to work out the ideas in detail. Thus I introduced him to
algebra by showing him another proof of the theorem of Pythagoras.
In this proof one drops a perpendicular from the right angle on to
the hypotenuse, and arguing from the fact that the two triangles thus
created are similar to one another and to the original triangle, and
that the proportions which their corresponding sides bear to one
another are therefore equal, one can show in algebraical form that
_c² + d²_ (the squares on the other two sides) are equal to _a² + b²_
(the squares on the two segments of the hypotenuse) + 2_ab_;
which last, it is easy to show geometrically, is equal to (_a + b_)²,
or the square on the hypotenuse. Guido was as much enchanted
by the rudiments of algebra as he would have been if I had given him
an engine worked by steam, with a methylated spirit lamp to heat the
boiler; more enchanted, perhaps--for the engine would have got broken,
and, remaining always itself, would in any case have lost its charm,
while the rudiments of algebra continued to grow and blossom in his
mind with an unfailing luxuriance. Every day he made the discovery of
something which seemed to him exquisitely beautiful; the new toy was
inexhaustible in its potentialities.

In the intervals of applying algebra to the second book of Euclid, we
experimented with circles; we stuck bamboos into the parched earth,
measured their shadows at different hours of the day, and drew exciting
conclusions from our observations. Sometimes, for fun, we cut and
folded sheets of paper so as to make cubes and pyramids. One afternoon
Guido arrived carrying carefully between his small and rather grubby
hands a flimsy dodecahedron.

“È tanto bello!” he said, as he showed us his paper crystal; and when I
asked him how he had managed to make it, he merely smiled and said it
had been so easy. I looked at Elizabeth and laughed. But it would have
been more symbolically to the point, I felt, if I had gone down on all
fours, wagged the spiritual outgrowth of my os coccyx, and barked my
astonished admiration.

It was an uncommonly hot summer. By the beginning of July our little
Robin, unaccustomed to these high temperatures, began to look pale and
tired; he was listless, had lost his appetite and energy. The doctor
advised mountain air. We decided to spend the next ten or twelve weeks
in Switzerland. My parting gift to Guido was the first six books of
Euclid in Italian. He turned over the pages, looking ecstatically at
the figures.

“If only I knew how to read properly,” he said. “I’m so stupid. But now
I shall really try to learn.”

From our hotel near Grindelwald we sent the child, in Robin’s name,
various post cards of cows, Alp-horns, Swiss chalets, edelweiss, and
the like. We received no answers to these cards; but then we did
not expect answers. Guido could not write, and there was no reason
why his father or his sisters should take the trouble to write for
him. No news, we took it, was good news. And then one day, early in
September, there arrived at the hotel a strange letter. The manager
had it stuck up on the glass-fronted notice-board in the hall, so that
all the guests might see it, and whoever conscientiously thought that
it belonged to him might claim it. Passing the board on the way into
lunch, Elizabeth stopped to look at it.

“But it must be from Guido,” she said.

I came and looked at the envelope over her shoulder. It was unstamped
and black with postmarks. Traced out in pencil, the big uncertain
capital letters sprawled across its face. In the first line was
written: AL BABBO DI ROBIN, and there followed a travestied version
of the name of the hotel and the place. Round the address bewildered
postal officials had scrawled suggested emendations. The letter had
wandered for a fortnight at least, back and forth across the face of
Europe.

“Al Babbo di Robin. To Robin’s father.” I laughed. “Pretty smart of the
postmen to have got it here at all.” I went to the manager’s office,
set forth the justice of my claim to the letter and, having paid the
fifty-centime surcharge for the missing stamp, had the case unlocked
and the letter given me. We went in to lunch.

“The writing’s magnificent,” we agreed, laughing, as we examined the
address at close quarters. “Thanks to Euclid,” I added. “That’s what
comes of pandering to the ruling passion.”

But when I opened the envelope and looked at its contents I no longer
laughed. The letter was brief and almost telegraphical in style. “SONO
DALLA PADRONA,” it ran, “NON MI PIACE HA RUBATO IL MIO LIBRO NON VOGLIO
SUONARE PIU VOGLIO TORNARE A CASA VENGA SUBITO GUIDO.”

“What is it?”

I handed Elizabeth the letter. “That blasted woman’s got hold of him,”
I said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Busts of men in Homburg hats, angels bathed in marble tears
extinguishing torches, statues of little girls, cherubs, veiled
figures, allegories and ruthless realisms--the strangest and most
diverse idols beckoned and gesticulated as we passed. Printed indelibly
on tin and embedded in the living rock, the brown photographs looked
out, under glass, from the humbler crosses, headstones, and broken
pillars. Dead ladies in the cubistic geometrical fashions of thirty
years ago--two cones of black satin meeting point to point at the
waist, and the arms: a sphere to the elbow, a polished cylinder
below--smiled mournfully out of their marble frames; the smiling faces,
the white hands, were the only recognisably human things that emerged
from the solid geometry of their clothes. Men with black moustaches,
men with white beards, young clean-shaven men, stared or averted their
gaze to show a Roman profile. Children in their stiff best opened
wide their eyes, smiled hopefully in anticipation of the little bird
that was to issue from the camera’s muzzle, smiled sceptically in the
knowledge that it wouldn’t, smiled laboriously and obediently because
they had been told to. In spiky Gothic cottages of marble the richer
dead privately reposed; through grilled doors one caught a glimpse of
pale Inconsolables weeping, of distraught Geniuses guarding the secret
of the tomb. The less prosperous sections of the majority slept in
communities, close-crowded but elegantly housed under smooth continuous
marble floors, whose every flagstone was the mouth of a separate grave.

These continental cemeteries, I thought, as Carlo and I made our way
among the dead, are more frightful than ours, because these people
pay more attention to their dead than we do. That primordial cult
of corpses, that tender solicitude for their material well-being,
which led the ancients to house their dead in stone, while they
themselves lived between wattles and under thatch, still lingers here;
persists, I thought, more vigorously than with us. There are a hundred
gesticulating statues here for every one in an English graveyard. There
are more family vaults, more “luxuriously appointed” (as they say of
liners and hotels) than one would find at home. And embedded in every
tombstone there are photographs to remind the powdered bones within
what form they will have to resume on the Day of Judgment; beside each
are little hanging lamps to burn optimistically on All Souls’ Day. To
the Man who built the Pyramids they are nearer, I thought, than we.

“If I had known,” Carlo kept repeating, “if only I had known.” His
voice came to me through my reflections as though from a distance. “At
the time he didn’t mind at all. How should I have known that he would
take it so much to heart afterwards? And she deceived me, she lied to
me.”

I assured him yet once more that it wasn’t his fault. Though, of
course, it was, in part. It was mine too, in part; I ought to have
thought of the possibility and somehow guarded against it. And he
shouldn’t have let the child go, even temporarily and on trial, even
though the woman was bringing pressure to bear on him. And the pressure
had been considerable. They had worked on the same holding for more
than a hundred years, the men of Carlo’s family; and now she had made
the old man threaten to turn him out. It would be a dreadful thing to
leave the place; and besides, another place wasn’t so easy to find. It
was made quite plain, however, that he could stay if he let her have
the child. Only for a little to begin with; just to see how he got on.
There would be no compulsion whatever on him to stay if he didn’t like
it. And it would be all to Guido’s advantage; and to his father’s, too,
in the end. All that the Englishman had said about his not being such
a good musician as he had thought at first was obviously untrue--mere
jealousy and little-mindedness: the man wanted to take credit for Guido
himself, that was all. And the boy, it was obvious, would learn nothing
from him. What he needed was a real good professional master.

All the energy that, if the physicists had known their business,
would have been driving dynamos, went into this campaign. It began
the moment we were out of the house, intensively. She would have more
chance of success, the Signora doubtless thought, if we weren’t there.
And besides, it was essential to take the opportunity when it offered
itself and get hold of the child before we could make our bid--for it
was obvious to her that we wanted Guido just as much as she did.

Day after day she renewed the assault. At the end of a week she sent
her husband to complain about the state of the vines: they were in a
shocking condition; he had decided, or very nearly decided, to give
Carlo notice. Meekly, shamefacedly, in obedience to higher orders, the
old gentleman uttered his threats. Next day Signora Bondi returned to
the attack. The padrone, she declared, had been in a towering passion;
but she’d do her best, her very best, to mollify him. And after a
significant pause she went on to talk about Guido.

In the end Carlo gave in. The woman was too persistent and she held
too many trump cards. The child could go and stay with her for a month
or two on trial. After that, if he really expressed a desire to remain
with her, she could formally adopt him.

At the idea of going for a holiday to the seaside--and it was to the
seaside, Signora Bondi told him, that they were going--Guido was
pleased and excited. He had heard a lot about the sea from Robin.
“Tanta acqua!” It had sounded almost too good to be true. And now he
was actually to go and see this marvel. It was very cheerfully that he
parted from his family.

But after the holiday by the sea was over, and Signora Bondi had
brought him back to her town house in Florence, he began to be
homesick. The Signora, it was true, treated him exceedingly kindly,
bought him new clothes, took him out to tea in the Via Tornabuoni and
filled him up with cakes, iced strawberry-ade, whipped cream, and
chocolates. But she made him practise the piano more than he liked, and
what was worse, she took away his Euclid, on the score that he wasted
too much time with it. And when he said that he wanted to go home, she
put him off with promises and excuses and downright lies. She told him
that she couldn’t take him at once, but that next week, if he were good
and worked hard at his piano meanwhile, next week.... And when the
time came she told him that his father didn’t want him back. And she
redoubled her petting, gave him expensive presents, and stuffed him
with yet unhealthier foods. To no purpose. Guido didn’t like his new
life, didn’t want to practise scales, pined for his book, and longed
to be back with his brothers and sisters. Signora Bondi, meanwhile,
continued to hope that time and chocolates would eventually make the
child hers; and to keep his family at a distance, she wrote to Carlo
every few days letters which still purported to come from the seaside
(she took the trouble to send them to a friend, who posted them back
again to Florence), and in which she painted the most charming picture
of Guido’s happiness.

It was then that Guido wrote his letter to me. Abandoned, as he
supposed, by his family--for that they shouldn’t take the trouble to
come to see him when they were so near was only to be explained on the
hypothesis that they really had given him up--he must have looked to me
as his last and only hope. And the letter, with its fantastic address,
had been nearly a fortnight on its way. A fortnight--it must have
seemed hundreds of years; and as the centuries succeeded one another,
gradually, no doubt, the poor child became convinced that I too had
abandoned him. There was no hope left.

“Here we are,” said Carlo.

I looked up and found myself confronted by an enormous monument. In a
kind of grotto hollowed in the flanks of a monolith of grey sandstone,
Sacred Love, in bronze, was embracing a funerary urn. And in bronze
letters riveted into the stone was a long legend to the effect that
the inconsolable Ernesto Bondi had raised this monument to the memory
of his beloved wife, Annunziata, as a token of his undying love for
one whom, snatched from him by a premature death, he hoped very soon
to join beneath this stone. The first Signora Bondi had died in 1912.
I thought of the old man leashed to his white dog; he must always, I
reflected, have been a most uxorious husband.

“They buried him here.”

We stood there for a long time in silence. I felt the tears coming
into my eyes as I thought of the poor child lying there underground. I
thought of those luminous grave eyes, and the curve of that beautiful
forehead, the droop of the melancholy mouth, of the expression of
delight which illumined his face when he learned of some new idea that
pleased him, when he heard a piece of music that he liked. And this
beautiful small being was dead; and the spirit that inhabited this
form, the amazing spirit, that too had been destroyed almost before it
had begun to exist.

And the unhappiness that must have preceded the final act, the child’s
despair, the conviction of his utter abandonment--those were terrible
to think of, terrible.

“I think we had better come away now,” I said at last, and touched
Carlo on the arm. He was standing there like a blind man, his eyes
shut, his face slightly lifted towards the light; from between his
closed eyelids the tears welled out, hung for a moment, and trickled
down his cheeks. His lips trembled and I could see that he was making
an effort to keep them still. “Come away,” I repeated.

The face which had been still in its sorrow, was suddenly convulsed; he
opened his eyes, and through the tears they were bright with a violent
anger. “I shall kill her,” he said, “I shall kill her. When I think of
him throwing himself out, falling through the air....” With his two
hands he made a violent gesture, bringing them down from over his head
and arresting them with a sudden jerk when they were on a level with
his breast. “And then crash.” He shuddered. “She’s as much responsible
as though she had pushed him down herself. I shall kill her.” He
clenched his teeth.

To be angry is easier than to be sad, less painful. It is comforting to
think of revenge. “Don’t talk like that,” I said. “It’s no good. It’s
stupid. And what would be the point?” He had had those fits before,
when grief became too painful and he had tried to escape from it. Anger
had been the easiest way of escape. I had had, before this, to persuade
him back into the harder path of grief. “It’s stupid to talk like
that,” I repeated, and I led him away through the ghastly labyrinth of
tombs, where death seemed more terrible even than it is.

By the time we had left the cemetery, and were walking down from San
Miniato towards the Piazzale Michelangelo below, he had become calmer.
His anger had subsided again into the sorrow from which it had derived
all its strength and its bitterness. In the Piazzale we halted for
a moment to look down at the city in the valley below us. It was a
day of floating clouds--great shapes, white, golden, and grey; and
between them patches of a thin, transparent blue. Its lantern level,
almost, with our eyes, the dome of the cathedral revealed itself in
all its grandiose lightness, its vastness and aerial strength. On the
innumerable brown and rosy roofs of the city the afternoon sunlight
lay softly, sumptuously, and the towers were as though varnished and
enamelled with an old gold. I thought of all the Men who had lived here
and left the visible traces of their spirit and conceived extraordinary
things. I thought of the dead child.




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