"listen," said peter again; and some far off thing was faintly jarring the soft silence, on a crescendo note.
rodney listened, and murmured, "brute." he hated them more than peter did. he was less wide-minded and less sweet-tempered. peter had a gentle and not intolerant æsthetic aversion, rodney a fervid moral indignation.
it came storming over the rims of twilight out of an unborn dawn, and the soft dust surged behind. its eyes flamed, and lit the pale world. it was running to the city in the dim west; it was in a hurry; it would be there for breakfast. as it ran it played the opening bars of something of tchaichowsky's.
rodney and peter leant over the low white wall and gazed into grey shivering gardens. so could they show aloof contempt; so could they elude the rioting dust.
the storming took a diminuendo note; it slackened to a throbbing murmur. the brute had stopped, and close to them. the brute was investigating itself.
"perhaps," rodney hoped, but not sanguinely, "they'll have to push it all the way to florence." still contempt withheld a glance.
then a pleasant, soft voice broke the hushed dusk with half a laugh, and peter wheeled sharply about. the man who had laughed was climbing again into his seat, saying, "it's quite all right." that remark was extremely characteristic; it would have been a suitable motto for his whole career.
the next thing he said, in his gentle, unsurprised voice, was to the bare-headed figure that smiled up at him from the road.
"you, margery?... what a game. but what have you done with the hebrew? oh, that's stephen, isn't it. that accounts for it: but how did he get you? i say, you can't have slept anywhere; there's been nowhere, for miles. and have you left leslie to roam alone among the objects of beauty with his own unsophisticated taste for guide? i suppose he's chucked you at last; very decent-spirited of him, i think, don't you, stephen?"
"i chucked him," peter explained, "because he bought a sham carlo dolci. i drew the line at that. though if one must have a carlo dolci, i suppose it had better be a sham one, on the whole. anyhow, i came away and took to the road. we sleep in ditches, and we like it very much, and i make tea every morning in my little kettle. i'm going to florence to help leslie to buy bronze things for his grates—dogs, you know, and shovels and things. leslie will have been there for three days now; i do wonder what he's bought."
"you'd better come on in the car," urquhart said. "both of you. why is stephen looking so proud? i shall be at florence for breakfast. you won't, though. bad luck. come along; there's loads of room."
rodney stood by the wall. he was unlike peter in this, that his resentment towards a person who motored across tuscany between dusk and dawn was in no way lessened by the discovery of who it was.
peter stood, his feet deep in dust, and smiled at urquhart. rodney watched the two a little cynically from the wall. peter looked what he was—a limping vagabond tramp, dust-smeared, bare-headed, very much part of the twilight road. in spite of his knapsack, he had the air of possessing nothing and smiling over the thought.
peter said, "how funny," meaning the combination of urquhart and the motor-car and tuscany and the grey dawn and rodney and himself; urquhart was smiling down at them, his face pale in the strange dawn-twilight. the scene was symbolical of their whole relations; it seemed as if urquhart, lifted triumphantly above the road's dust, had always so smiled down on peter, in his vagabond weakness.
"i don't think," urquhart was saying, "that you ought to walk so far in the night. it's weakening." to urquhart peter had always been a brittle incompetent, who could not do things, who kept breaking into bits if roughly handled.
"rodney and i don't think," peter returned, in the hushed voice that belonged to the still hour, "that you ought to motor so loud in the night. it's common. rodney specially thinks so. rodney is sulking; he won't come and speak to you."
urquhart called to his cousin: "come with me to florence, you and margery. or do you hate them too much?"
"much too much," rodney admitted, coming forwards perforce. "thank you," he added, "but i'm on a walking tour, and it wouldn't do to spoil it. margery isn't, though. you go, margery, if you like."
urquhart said, "do, margery," and peter looked wistful, but declined. he wanted horribly badly to go with urquhart; but loyalty hindered.
urquhart said he was going to venice afterwards, to stay with his uncle evelyn.
"good," said peter. "leslie and i are going to do venice directly we've cleared florence of its objects of beauty. you can imagine the way leslie will go about florence, his purse in his hand, asking the price of the bargello. 'worth having, isn't it? a good thing, i think?' if we decide that it is he'll have it, whatever the price; he always does. he's a sportsman; i can't tell you how attached i am to him." peter had not told even urquhart that one was ever glad of a rest from leslie.
urquhart said, "well, if you won't come," and hummed into the paling twilight, and before him fled the circle of golden light and after him swept the dust. peter's eyes followed the golden light and the surging whiteness till a bend in the road took them, and the world was again dim and grey and very still. only the little cool wind that soughed among the olive leaves was like the hushed murmuring of quiet waves. eastwards, among the still, mysterious hills and silver plains, a translucent dawn was coming.
peter's sigh was very unobtrusive. "after all," he murmured, "motoring does make me feel sick."
rodney gave half a cynical smile with the corner of his mouth not occupied with his short and ugly pipe. peter was pipeless; smoking, perhaps, had the same disastrous effect.
"but all the same," said peter, suddenly aggrieved, "you might be pleasant to your own cousin, even if he is in a motor. why be proud?"
he was really a little vexed that rodney should look with aloofness on urquhart. for him urquhart embodied the brilliance of life, its splendidness and beauty and joy. rodney, with his fanatical tilting at prosperity, would, peter half consciously knew, have to see urquhart unhorsed and stripped bare before he would take much notice of him.
"too many things," said rodney, indistinctly over his thick pipe. "that's all."
peter, irritated, said, "the old story. the more things the better; why not? you'd be happy on a desert island full of horrid naked savages. you think you're civilised, but you're really the most primitive person i know."
rodney said he was glad; he liked to be primitive, and added, "but you're wrong, of course. the naked savages would like anything they could get—beads or feathers or top hats; they're not natural ascetics; the simple life is enforced.... st. francis took off all his clothes in the piazza and began his new career without any."
"disgusting," murmured peter.
"that," said rodney, "is what people like denis should do. they need to unload, strip bare, to find themselves, to find life."
"denis," said peter, "is the most alive person i know, as it happens. he's found life without needing to take his clothes off—so he scores over st. francis."
denis had rushed through the twilight vivid like a flame—he had lit it for a moment and left it grey. peter knew that.
"but he hasn't," rodney maintained, "got the key of the thing. if he did take his clothes off, it would be a toss-up whether he found more life or lost what he's got. that's all wrong, don't you see. that's what ails all these delightful, prosperous people. they're swimming with life-belts."
"you'll be saying next," said peter, disgusted, "that you admire savonarola and his bonfire."
"i do, of course. but he'd only got hold of half of it—half the gospel of the empty-handed. the point is to lose and laugh." for a moment rodney had a vision of peter standing bare-headed in the dust and smiling. "to drop all the trappings and still find life jolly—just because it is life, not because of what it brings. that's what st. francis did. that's where italy scores over england. i remember at lerici the beggars laughing on the shore, with a little maccaroni to last them the day. there was a man all done up in bandages, hopping about on crutches and grinning. smashed to bits, and his bones sticking out of his skin for hunger, but there was the sun and the sea and the game he was playing with dice, and he looked as if he was saying, 'nihil habentes, omnia possidentes; isn't it a jolly day?' when denis says that, i shall begin to have hopes for him. at present he thinks it's a jolly day because he's got money to throw about and a hundred and one games to play at and friends to play them with, and everything his own way, and a new motor.... well, but look at that now. isn't it bare and splendid—all clean lines—no messing and softness; it might be cut out of rock. oh, i like tuscany."
they had rounded a bend, and a spacious country lay there stretched to the morning, and over it the marvel of the dawn opened and blossomed like a flower. from the basin of the shining river the hills stood back, and up their steep sides the vine-hung mulberries and close-trimmed olives climbed (olives south of the serchio are diligently pruned, and lack the generous luxuriance of the north), and against the silver background the sentinel cypresses stood black, like sharp music notes striking abruptly into a vague symphony; and among the mulberry gardens and the olives and the cypresses white roads climbed and spiralled up to little cresting cities that took the rosy dawn. tuscany emerging out of the dim mystery of night had a splendid clarity, an unblurred cleanness of line, an austere fineness, as of a land hewn sharply out of rock.
peter would not have that fine bareness used as illustration; it was too good a thing in itself. rodney the symbolist saw the vision of life in it, peter the joy of self-sufficient beauty.
the quiet road bore them through the hushed translucence of the dawn-clear land. everything was silent in this limpid hour; the little wind that had whitened the olives and set the sea-waves whispering there had dropped now and lay very still.
the road ran level through the river basin. far ahead they could see it now, a white ribbon laid beside a long golden gleam that wound and wound.
peter sighed, seeing so much of it all at once, and stopped to rest on the low white wall, but instead of sitting on it he swayed suddenly forward, and the hill cities circled close about him, and darkened and shut out the dawn.
the smell of the dust, when one was close to it, was bitter and odd. somewhere in the further darkness a voice was muttering mild and perplexed imprecations. peter moved on the strong arm that was supporting him and opened his eyes and looked on the world again. between him and the rosy morning, rodney loomed large, pouring whisky into a flask.
it all seemed a very old and often-repeated tale. one could not do anything; one could not even go a walking-tour: one could not (of this one was quite sure) take whisky at this juncture without feeling horribly sick. the only thing that occurred to peter, in the face of the dominant rodney, was to say, "i'm a teetotaller." rodney nodded and held the flask to his lips. rodney was looking rather worried.
peter said presently, still at length in the dust, "i'm frightfully sorry. i suppose i'm tired. didn't we get up rather early and walk rather fast?"
"i suppose," said rodney, "you oughtn't to have come. what's wrong, you rotter?"
peter sat up, and there lay the road again, stretching and stretching into the pink morning.
"thirty kilometres to breakfast," murmured peter. "and i don't know that i want any, even then. wrong?... oh ... well, i suppose it's heart. i have one, you know, of a sort. a nuisance, it's always been. not dangerous, but just in the way. i'm sorry, rodney—i really am."
rodney said again, "you absolute rotter. why didn't you tell me? what in the name of anything induced you to walk at all? you needn't have."
peter looked down the long road that wound and wound into the morning land. "i wanted to," he said. "i wanted to most awfully.... i wanted to try it.... i thought perhaps it was the one thing.... football's off for me, you know—and most other things.... only diabolo left ... and ping-pong ... and jig-saw. i'm quite good at those ... but oh, i did want to be able to walk. horribly i wanted it."
"well," said rodney practically, "it's extremely obvious that you aren't. you ought to have got into that thing, of course. only then, as you remarked, you would have felt sick. really, margery...."
"oh, i know," peter stopped him hastily. "don't say the usual things; i really feel too unwell to bear them. i know i'm made in germany and all that—i've been hearing so all my life. and now i should like you to go on to florence, and i'll follow, very slow. it's all very well, rodney, but you were going at about seven miles an hour. talk of motors—i couldn't see the scenery as we rushed by. that's such a vandal-like way of crossing tuscany."
"well, you can cross the rest of tuscany by train. there's a station at montelupo; we shall be there directly."
peter, abruptly renouncing his intention of getting up, lay back giddily. the marvellous morning was splendid on the mountains.
"how extremely lucky," remarked peter weakly, "that i wasn't in this position when denis came by. denis usually does come by at these crucial moments you know—always has. he probably thinks by now that i am an escaped inhabitant of the permanent casualty ward. bother. i wish he didn't."
"since it's obvious," said rodney, "that you can't stand, let alone walk, i had better go on to montelupo and fetch a carriage of sorts. i wonder if you can lie there quietly till i come back, or if you'll be having seizures and things? well, i can't help it. i must go, anyhow. there's the whisky on your left."
peter watched him go; he went at seven miles an hour; the dust ruffled and leapt at his heels.
peter sat very still leaning back against the rough white wall, and thought what a pity it all was. what a pity, and what a bore, that one could not do things like other people. short of being an urquhart, who could do everything and had everything, whose passing car flamed triumphant and lit the world into a splendid joy, and was approved under investigation with "quite all right"—short of that glorious competence and pride of life, one might surely be an average man, who could walk from san pietro to florence without tumbling on the road at dawn. peter sighed over it, rather crossly. the marvellous morning was insulted by his collapse; it became a remote thing, in which he might have no share. as always, the inexorable "not for you" rose like a barred gate between him and the lucid country the white road threaded.
peter in the dust began to whistle softly, to cheer himself, and because he was really feeling better, and because anyhow, for him or not for him, the land at dawn was a golden and glorious thing, and he loved it. what did it matter whether he could walk through it or not? there it lay, magical, clear-hewn, bathed in golden sunrise.
round the turn of the road a bent figure came, stepping slowly and with age, a woodstack on his back. heavier even than a knapsack containing a spirit kettle and a decameron and biscuit remainders in a paper bag, it must be. peter watched the slow figure sympathetically. would he sway and topple over; and if he did would the woodstack break his fall? the whisky flask stood ready on peter's left.
peter stopped whistling to watch; then he became aware that once more the hidden distances were jarring and humming. he sat upright, and waited; a little space of listening, then once again the sungod's chariot stormed into the morning.
peter watched it grow in size. how extremely fortunate.... even though one was again, as usual, found collapsed and absurd.
the woodstack pursued its slow advance. the music from tchaichowsky admonished it, as a matter of form, from far off, then sharply, summarily, from a lessening distance. the woodstack was puzzled, vaguely worried. it stopped, dubiously moved to one side, and pursued its cautious way a little uncertainly.
urquhart, without his chauffeur this time, was driving over the speed-limit, peter perceived. he usually did. but he ought to slacken his pace now, or he would miss peter by the wall. he was nearing the woodstack, just going to pass it, with a clear two yards between. it was not his doing: it was the woodstack that suddenly lessened the distance, lurching over it, taking the middle of the road.
peter cried, "oh, don't—oh, don't," idiotically, sprawling on hands and knees.
the car swung sharply about like a tugged horse; sprang to the other side of the road, hung poised on a wheel, as near as possible capsized. a less violent jerk and it would have gone clean over the woodstack that lay in the road on the top of its bearer.
by the time peter got there, urquhart had lifted the burden from the old bent figure that lay face downwards. gently he turned it over, and they looked on a thin old face gone grey with more than age.
"he can't be," said urquhart. "he can't be. i didn't touch him."
peter said nothing. his eyes rested on the broken end of a chestnut-stick protruding from the faggot, dangling loose by its bark. urquhart's glance followed his.
"i see," said urquhart quietly. "that did it. the lamp or something must have struck it and knocked him over. poor old chap." urquhart's hand shook over the still heart. peter gave him the whisky flask. two minutes passed. it was no good.
"his heart must have been bad," said urquhart, and the soft tones of his pleasant voice were harsh and unsteady. "shock, i suppose. how—how absolutely awful."
how absolutely incongruous, peter was dully thinking. urquhart and tragedy; urquhart and death. it was that which blackened the radiant morning, not the mercifully abrupt cessation of a worn-out life. for peter death had two sharply differentiated aspects—one of release to the tired and old, for whom the grasshopper was a burden; the other of an unthinkable blackness of tragedy—sheer sharp loss that knew no compensation. it was not with this bitter face that death had stepped into their lives on this clear morning. one could imagine that weary figure glad to end his wayfaring so; one could even imagine those steps to death deliberately taken; and one did imagine those he left behind him accepting his peace as theirs.
peter said, "it wasn't your fault. it was his doing—poor chap."
the uncertain quaver in his voice brought urquhart's eyes for a moment upon his face, that was always pale and was now the colour of putty.
"you're ill, aren't you?... i met stephen.... i was coming back anyhow; i knew you weren't fit to walk."
he muttered it absently, frowning down on the other greyer face in the grey dust. again his hand unsteadily groped over the still heart, and lay there for a moment.
abruptly then he looked up, and met peter's shadow-circled eyes.
"i was over-driving," he said. "i ought to have slowed down to pass him." he stood up, frowning down on the two in the road.
"we've got to think now," he said, "what to do about it."
to that thinking peter offered no help and no hindrance. he sat in the road by the dead man and the bundle of wood, and looked vaguely on the remote morning that death had dimmed. denis and death: peter would have done a great deal to sever that incredible connection.
but it was, after all, for denis to effect that severing, to cut himself loose from that oppressing and impossible weight.
he did so.
"i don't see," said denis, "that we need ... that we can ... do anything about it."
above the clear mountains the sun swung up triumphant, and the wide river valley was bathed in radiant gold.
