"in the italian gardens of the thirteenth century...." mr. buzzacott interrupted himself to take another helping of the risotto which was being offered him. "excellent risotto this," he observed. "nobody who was not born in milan can make it properly. so they say."
"so they say," mr. topes repeated in his sad, apologetic voice, and helped himself in his turn.
"personally," said mrs. topes, with decision, "i find all italian cooking abominable. i don't like the oil—especially hot. no, thank you." she recoiled from the proffered dish.
after the first mouthful mr. buzzacott put down his fork. "in the italian gardens of the thirteenth century," he began again, making with his long, pale hand a curved and flowery gesture that ended with a clutch at his beard, "a frequent and most felicitous use was made of green tunnels."
"green tunnels?" barbara woke up suddenly from her tranced silence. "green tunnels?"
"yes, my dear," said her father. "green tunnels. arched alleys covered with vines or other creeping plants. their length was often very considerable."
but barbara had once more ceased to pay attention to what he was saying. green tunnels—the word had floated down to her, through profound depths of reverie, across great spaces of abstraction, startling her like the sound of a strange-voiced bell. green tunnels—what a wonderful idea. she would not listen to her father explaining the phrase into dullness. he made everything dull; an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead. she pictured caverns in a great aquarium, long vistas between rocks and scarcely swaying weeds and pale, discoloured corals; endless dim green corridors with huge lazy fishes loitering aimlessly along them. green-faced monsters with goggling eyes and mouths that slowly opened and shut. green tunnels....
"i have seen them illustrated in illuminated manuscripts of the period," mr. buzzacott went on; once more he clutched his pointed brown beard—clutched and combed it with his long fingers.
mr. topes looked up. the glasses of his round owlish spectacles flashed as he moved his head. "i know what you mean," he said.
"i have a very good mind to have one, planted in my garden here."
"it will take a long time to grow," said mr. topes. "in this sand, so close to the sea, you will only be able to plant vines. and they come up very slowly very slowly indeed." he shook his head and the points of light danced wildly in his spectacles. his voice drooped hopelessly, his grey moustache drooped, his whole person drooped. then, suddenly, he pulled himself up. a shy, apologetic smile appeared on his face. he wriggled uncomfortably. then, with a final rapid shake of the head, he gave vent to a quotation:
but at my back i always hear
time's winged chariot hurrying near."
he spoke deliberately, and his voice trembled a little. he always found it painfully difficult to say something choice and out of the ordinary; and yet what a wealth of remembered phrase, what apt new coinages were always surging through his mind!
"they don't grow so slowly as all that," said mr. buzzacott confidently. he was only just over fifty, and looked a handsome thirty-five. he gave himself at least another forty years; indeed, he had not yet begun to contemplate the possibility of ever concluding.
"miss barbara will enjoy it, perhaps—your green tunnel." mr. topes sighed and looked across the table at his host's daughter.
barbara was sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, staring in front of her. the sound of her own name reached her faintly. she turned her head in mr. topes's direction and found herself confronted by the glitter of his round, convex spectacles. at the end of the green tunnel—she stared at the shining circles—hung the eyes of a goggling fish. they approached, floating, closer and closer, along the dim submarine corridor.
confronted by this fixed regard, mr. topes looked away. what thoughtful eyes! he couldn't remember ever to have seen eyes so full of thought. there were certain madonnas of montagna, he reflected, very like hen mild little blonde madonnas with slightly snub noses and very, very young. but he was old; it would be many years, in spite of buzzacott, before the vines grew up into a green tunnel. he took a sip of wine; then, mechanically, sucked his drooping grey moustache.
"arthur!"
at the sound of his wife's voice mr. topes started, raised his napkin to his mouth. mrs. topes did not permit the sucking of moustaches. it was only in moments of absent-mindedness that he ever offended, now.
"the marchese prampolini is coming here to take coffee," said mr. buzzacott suddenly. "i almost forgot to tell you."
"one of these italian marquises, i suppose," said mrs. topes, who was no snob, except in england. she raised her chin with a little jerk.
mr. buzzacott executed an upward curve of the hand in her direction. "i assure you, mrs. topes, he belongs to a very old and distinguished family. they are genoese in origin. you remember their palace, barbara? built by alessi."
barbara looked up. "oh yes," she said vaguely. "alessi. i know." alessi: aleppo—where a malignant and a turbaned turk. and a turbaned; that had always seemed to her very funny.
"several of his ancestors," mr. buzzacott went on, "distinguished themselves as vice-roys of corsica. they did good work in the suppression of rebellion. strange, isn't it"—he turned parenthetically to mr. topes—"the way in which sympathy is always on the side of rebels? what a fuss people made of corsica! that ridiculous book of gregorovius, for example. and the irish, and the poles, and all the rest of them. it always seems to me very superfluous and absurd."
"isn't it, perhaps, a little natural?" mr. topes began timorously and tentatively, but his host went on without listening.
"the present marquis," he said, "is the head of the local fascisti. they have done no end of good work in this district in the way of preserving law and order and keeping the lower classes in their place."
"ah, the fascisti," mrs. topes repeated approvingly. "one would like to see something of the kind in england. what with all these strikes...."
"he has asked me for a subscription to the funds of the organisation. i shall give him one, of course."
"of course." mrs. topes nodded. "my nephew, the one who was a major during the war, volunteered in the last coal strike. he was sorry, i know, that it didn't come to a fight. 'aunt annie,' he said to me, when i saw him last, 'if there had been a fight we should have knocked them out completely—completely.'"
in aleppo, the fascisti, malignant and turbaned, were fighting, under the palm trees. weren't they palm trees, those tufted green plumes?
"what, no ice to-day? niente gelato?" inquired mr. buzzacott as the maid put down the compote of peaches on the table.
concetta apologised. the ice-making machine in the village had broken down. there would be no ice till to-morrow.
"too bad," said mr. buzzacott. "troppo male, concetta."
under the palm trees, barbara saw them: they pranced about, fighting. they were mounted on big dogs, and in the trees were enormous many-coloured birds.
"goodness me, the child's asleep." mrs. topes was proffering the dish of peaches. "how much longer am i to hold this in front of your nose, barbara?"
barbara felt herself blushing. "i'm so sorry," she mumbled, and took the dish clumsily.
"day-dreaming. it's a bad habit."
"it's one we all succumb to sometimes," put in mr. topes deprecatingly, with a little nervous tremble of the head.
"you may, my dear," said his wife. "i do not."
mr. topes lowered his eyes to his plate and went on eating.
"the marchese should be here at any moment now," said mr. buzzacott, looking at his watch. "i hope he won't be late. i find i suffer so much from any postponement of my siesta. this italian heat," he added, with growing plaintiveness, "one can't be too careful."
"ah, but when i was with my father in india," began mrs. topes in a tone of superiority: "he was an indian civilian, you know...."
aleppo, india—always the palm trees. cavalcades of big dogs, and tigers too.
concetta ushered in the marquis. delighted. pleased to meet. speak english? yés, yéss. pocchino. mrs. topes: and mr. topes, the distinguished antiquarian. ah, of course; know his name very well. my daughter. charmed. often seen the signorina bathing. admired the way she dives. beautiful—the hand made a long, caressing gesture. these athletic english signorine. the teeth flashed astonishingly white in the brown face, the dark eyes glittered. she felt herself blushing again, looked away, smiled foolishly. the marquis had already turned back to mr. buzzacott.
"so you have decided to settle in our carrarese."
well, not settled exactly; mr. buzzacott wouldn't go so far as to say settled. a villine for the summer months. the winter in rome. one was forced to live abroad. taxation in england.... soon they were all talking. barbara looked at them. beside the marquis they all seemed half dead. his face flashed as he talked; he seemed to be boiling with life. her father was limp and pale, like something long buried from the light; and mr. topes was all dry and shrivelled; and mrs. topes looked more than ever like something worked by clockwork. they were talking about socialism and fascisti, and all that. barbara did not listen to what they were saying; but she looked at them, absorbed.
good-bye, good-bye. the animated face with its flash of a smile was turned like a lamp from one to another. now it was turned on her. perhaps one evening she would come, with her father, and the signora topes. he and his sister gave little dances sometimes. only the gramophone, of course. but that was better than nothing, and the signorina must dance divinely—another flash—he could see that. he pressed her hand again. good-bye.
it was time for the siesta.
"don't forget to pull down the mosquito netting, my dear," mr. buzzacott exhorted. "there is always a danger of anophylines."
"all right, father." she moved towards the door without turning round to answer him. he was always terribly tiresome about mosquito nets. once they had driven through the campagna in a hired cab, completely enclosed in an improvised tent of netting. the monuments along the appian way had loomed up mistily as through bridal veils. and how everyone had laughed. but her father, of course, hadn't so much as noticed it. he never noticed anything.
"is it at berlin, that charming little madonna of montagna's?" mr. topes abruptly asked. "the one with the donor kneeling in the left-hand corner as if about to kiss the foot of the child." his spectacles flashed in mr. buzzacott's direction.
"why do you ask?"
"i don't know. i was just thinking of it."
"i think you must mean the one in the mond collection."
"ah yes; very probably. in the mond...."
barbara opened the door and walked into the twilight of her shuttered room. it was hot even here; for another three hours it would hardly be possible to stir. and that old idiot, mrs. topes, always made a fuss if one came in to lunch with bare legs and one's after-bathing tunic. "in india we always made a point of being properly and adequately dressed. an englishwoman must keep up her position with natives, and to all intents and purposes italians are natives." and so she always had to put on shoes and stockings and a regular frock just at the hottest hour of the day. what an old ass that woman was! she slipped off her clothes as fast as she could. that was a little better.
standing in front of the long mirror in the wardrobe door she came to the humiliating conclusion that she looked like a piece of badly toasted bread. brown face, brown neck and shoulders, brown arms, brown legs from the knee downwards; but all the rest of her was white, silly, effeminate, townish white. if only one could run about with no clothes on till one was like those little coppery children who rolled and tumbled in the burning sand! now she was just underdone, half-baked, and wholly ridiculous. for a long time she looked at her pale image. she saw herself running, bronzed all over, along the sand; or through a field of flowers, narcissus and wild tulips; or in soft grass under grey olive trees. she turned round with a sudden start. there, in the shadows behind her.... no, of course there was nothing.
it was that awful picture in a magazine she had looked at, so many years ago, when she was a child. there was a lady sitting at her dressing-table, doing her hair in front of the glass; and a huge, hairy black monkey creeping up behind her. she always got the creeps when she looked at herself in a mirror. it was very silly. but still. she turned away from the mirror, crossed the room, and, without lowering the mosquito curtains, lay down on her bed. the flies buzzed about her, settled incessantly on her face. she shook her head, flapped at them angrily with her hands. there would be peace if she let down the netting. but she thought of the appian way seen mistily through the bridal veil and preferred to suffer the flies. in the end she had to surrender; the brutes were too much for her. but, at any rate, it wasn't the fear of anophylines that made her lower the netting.
undisturbed now and motionless, she lay stretched stiffly out under the transparent bell of gauze. a specimen under a glass case. the fancy possessed her mind. she saw a huge museum with thousands of glass cases, full of fossils and butterflies and stuffed birds and medi?val spoons and armour and florentine jewellery and mummies and carved ivory and illuminated manuscripts. but in one of the cases was a human being, shut up there alive.
all of a sudden she became horribly miserable. "boring, boring, boring," she whispered, formulating the words aloud. would it never stop being boring? the tears came into her eyes. how awful everything was! and perhaps it would go on being as bad as this all her life. seventeen from seventy was fifty three. fifty three years of it. and if she lived to a hundred there would be more than eighty.
the thought depressed her all the evening. even her bath after tea did her no good. swimming far out, far out, she lay there, floating on the warm water. sometimes she looked at the sky, sometimes she turned her head towards the shore. framed in their pinewoods, the villas looked as small and smug as the advertisement of a seaside resort. but behind them, across the level plain, were the mountains. sharp, bare peaks of limestone, green woodland slopes and grey-green expanses of terraced olive trees—they seemed marvellously close and clear in this evening light. and beautiful, beautiful beyond words. but that, somehow, only made things worse. and shelley had lived a few miles farther up the coast, there, behind the headland guarding the gulf of spezia. shelley had been drowned in this milk-warm sea. that made it worse too.
the sun was getting very low and red over the sea. she swam slowly in. on the beach mrs. topes waited, disapprovingly. she had known somebody, a strong man, who had caught cramp from staying in too long. he sank like a stone. like a stone. the queer people mrs. topes had known! and the funny things they did, the odd things that happened to them.
dinner that evening was duller than ever. barbara went early to bed. all night long the same old irritating cicada scraped and scraped among the pine trees, monotonous and regular as clockwork. zip zip, zip zip zip. boring, boring. was the animal never bored by its own noise? it seemed odd that it shouldn't be. but, when she came to think of it, nobody ever did get bored with their own noise. mrs. topes, for example; she never seemed to get bored. zip zip, zip zip zip. the cicada went on without pause.
concetta knocked at the door at half-past seven. the morning was as bright and cloudless as all the mornings were. barbara jumped up, looked from one window at the mountains, from the other at the sea; all seemed to be well with them. all was well with her, too, this morning. seated at the mirror, she did not so much as think of the big monkey in the far obscure corner of the room. a bathing dress and a bath-gown, sandals, a handkerchief round her head, and she was ready. sleep had left no recollection of last night's mortal boredom. she ran downstairs.
"good morning, mr. topes."
mr. topes was walking in the garden among the vines. he turned round, took off his hat, smiled a greeting.
"good morning, miss barbara." he paused. then, with an embarrassed wriggle of introduction he went on; a queer little falter came into his voice. "a real chaucerian morning, miss barbara. a may-day morning—only it happens to be september. nature is fresh and bright, and there is at least one specimen in this dream garden"—he wriggled more uncomfortably than ever, and there was a tremulous glitter in his round spectacle lenses of the poet's 'yonge fresshe folkes.' he bowed in her direction, smiled deprecatingly, and was silent. the remark, it seemed to him, now that he had finished speaking, was somehow not as good as he had thought it would be.
barbara laughed. "chaucer! they used to make us read the canterbury tales at school. but they always bored me. are you going to bathe?"
"not before breakfast." mr. topes shook his head. "one is getting a little too old for that."
"is one?" why did the silly old man always say 'one' when he meant 'i'? she couldn't help laughing at him. "well, i must hurry, or else i shall be late for breakfast again, and you know how i catch it."
she ran out, through the gate in the garden wall, across the beach, to the striped red-and-white bathing cabin that stood before the house. fifty yards away she saw the marchese prampolini, still dripping from the sea, running up towards his bathing hut. catching sight of her, he flashed a smile in her direction, gave a military salute. barbara waved her hand, then thought that the gesture had been too familiar—but at this hour of the morning it was difficult not to have bad jolly manners—and added the corrective of a stiff bow. after all, she had only met him yesterday. soon she was swimming out to sea, and, ugh! what a lot of horrible huge jelly-fish there were.
mr. topes had followed her slowly through the gate and across the sand. he watched her running down from the cabin, slender as a boy, with long, bounding strides. he watched her go jumping with great splashes through the deepening water, then throw herself forward and begin to swim. he watched her till she was no more than a small dark dot far out.
emerging from his cabin, the marquis met him walking slowly along the beach, his head bent down and his lips slightly moving as though he were repeating something, a prayer or a poem, to himself.
"good morning, signore." the marquis shook him by the hand with a more than english cordiality.
"good morning," replied mr. topes, allowing his hand to be shaken. he resented this interruption of his thoughts.
"she swims very well, miss buzzacott."
"very," assented mr. topes, and smiled to himself to think what beautiful, poetical things he might have said, if he had chosen.
"well, so, so," said the marquis, too colloquial by half. he shook hands again, and the two men went their respective ways.
barbara was still a hundred yards from the shore when she heard the crescendo and dying boom of the gong floating out from the villa. damn! she'd be late again. she quickened her stroke and came splashing out through the shallows, flushed and breathless.
she'd be ten minutes late, she calculated; it would take her at least that to do her hair and dress. mrs. topes would be on the war-path again; though what business that old woman had to lecture her as she did, goodness only knew. she always succeeded in making herself horribly offensive and unpleasant.
the beach was quite deserted as she trotted, panting, across it, empty to right and left as far as she could see. if only she had a horse to go galloping at the water's edge, miles and miles. right away down to bocca d'arno she'd go, swim the river—she saw herself crouching on the horse's back, as he swam, with legs tucked up on the saddle, trying not to get her feet wet—and gallop on again, goodness only knew where.
in front of the cabin she suddenly halted. there in the ruffled sand she had seen a writing. big letters, faintly legible, sprawled across her path.
o clara d'ellébeuse.
she pieced the dim letters together. they hadn't been there when she started out to bathe. who?... she looked round. the beach was quite empty. and what was the meaning? "o clara d'ellébeuse." she took her bath-gown from the cabin, slipped on her sandals, and ran back towards the house as fast as she could. she felt most horribly frightened.
it was a sultry, headachey sort of morning, with a hot sirocco that stirred the bunting on the flagstaffs. by midday the thunderclouds had covered half the sky. the sun still blazed on the sea, but over the mountains all was black and indigo. the storm broke noisily overhead just as they were drinking their after-luncheon coffee.
"arthur," said mrs. topes, painfully calm, "shut the shutters, please."
she was not frightened, no. but she preferred not to see the lightning. when the room was darkened, she began to talk, suavely and incessantly.
lying back in her deep arm-chair, barbara was thinking of clara d'ellébeuse. what did it mean and who was clara d'ellébeuse? and why had he written it there for her to see? he—for there could be no doubt who had written it. the flash of teeth and eyes, the military salute; she knew she oughtn't to have waved to him. he had written it there while she was swimming out. written it and then run away. she rather liked that—just an extraordinary word on the sand, like the footprint in robinson crusoe.
"personally," mrs. topes was saying, "i prefer harrod's."
the thunder crashed and rattled. it was rather exhilarating, barbara thought; one felt, at any rate, that something was happening for a change. she remembered the little room half-way up the stairs at lady thingumy's house, with the bookshelves and the green curtains and the orange shade on the light; and that awful young man like a white slug who had tried to kiss her there, at the dance last year. but that was different—not at all serious; and the young man had been so horribly ugly. she saw the marquis running up the beach, quick and alert. copper coloured all over, with black hair. he was certainly very handsome. but as for being in love, well ... what did that exactly mean? perhaps when she knew him better. even now she fancied she detected something. o clara d'ellébeuse. what an extraordinary thing it was.
with his long fingers mr. buzzacott combed his beard. this winter, he was thinking, he would put another thousand into italian money when the exchange was favourable. in the spring it always seemed to drop back again. one could clear three hundred pounds on one's capital if the exchange went down to seventy. the income on three hundred was fifteen pounds a year, and fifteen pounds was now fifteen hundred lire. and fifteen hundred lire, when you came to think of it, was really sixty pounds. that was to say that one would make an addition of more than one pound a week to one's income by this simple little speculation. he became aware that mrs. topes had asked him a question.
"yes, yes, perfectly," he said.
mrs. topes talked on; she was keeping up her morale. was she right in believing that the thunder sounded a little less alarmingly loud and near?
mr. topes sat, polishing his spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. vague and myopic between their puckered lids, his eyes seemed lost, homeless, unhappy. he was thinking about beauty. there were certain relations between the eyelids and the temples, between the breast and the shoulder; there were certain successions of sounds. but what about them? ah, that was the problem—that was the problem. and there was youth, there was innocence. but it was all very obscure, and there were so many phrases, so many remembered pictures and melodies; he seemed to get himself entangled among them. and he was after all so old and so ineffective. he put on his spectacles again, and definition came into the foggy world beyond his eyes. the shuttered room was very dark. he could distinguish the renaissance profile of mr. buzzacott, bearded and delicately featured. in her deep arm-chair barbara appeared, faintly white, in an attitude relaxed and brooding. and mrs. topes was nothing more than a voice in the darkness. she had got on to the marriage of the prince of wales. who would they eventually find for him?
clara d'ellébeuse, clara d'ellébeuse. she saw herself so clearly as the marchesa. they would have a house in rome, a palace. she saw herself in the palazzo spada—it had such a lovely vaulted passage leading from the courtyard to the gardens at the back. "marchesa prampolini, palazzo spada, roma"—a great big visiting-card beautifully engraved. and she would go riding every day in the pincio. "mi porta il mio cavallo" she would say to the footman, who answered the bell. porta? would that be quite correct? hardly. she'd have to take some proper italian lessons to talk to the servants. one must never be ridiculous before servants. "voglio il mio cavallo. haughtily one would say it sitting at one's writing-table in a riding-habit, without turning round. it would be a green riding-habit, with a black tricorne hat, braided with silver.
"prendero la mia collazzione al letto." was that right for breakfast in bed? because she would have breakfast in bed, always. and when she got up there would be lovely looking glasses with three panels where one could see oneself sideface. she saw herself leaning forward, powdering her nose, carefully, scientifically. with the monkey creeping up behind? ooh. horrible! ho paura di questa scimmia, questo scimmione.
she would come back to lunch after her ride. perhaps prampolini would be there; she had rather left him out of the picture so far. "dov' è il marchese?" "nella sala di pranza, signora." i began without you, i was so hungry. pasta asciutta. where have you been, my love? riding, my dove. she supposed they'd get into the habit of saying that sort of thing. everyone seemed to. and you? i have been out with the fascisti.
oh, these fascisti! would life be worth living when he was always going out with pistols and bombs and things? they would bring him back one day on a stretcher. she saw it. pale, pale, with blood on him. il signore è ferito. nel petto. gruvamente. e morto.
how could she bear it? it was too awful; too, too terrible. her breath came in a kind of sob; she shuddered as though she had been hurt. e morto, e morto. the tears came into her eyes.
she was roused suddenly by a dazzling light. the storm had receded far enough into the distance to permit of mrs. topes's opening the shutters.
"it's quite stopped raining."
to be disturbed in one's intimate sorrow and self-abandonment at a death-bed by a stranger's intrusion, an alien voice.... barbara turned her face away from the light and surreptitiously wiped her eyes. they might see and ask her why she had been crying. she hated mrs. topes for opening the shutters; at the inrush of the light something beautiful had flown, an emotion had vanished, irrecoverably. it was a sacrilege.
mr. buzzacott looked at his watch. "too late, i fear, for a siesta now," he said. "suppose we ring for an early tea."
"an endless succession of meals," said mr. topes, with a tremolo and a sigh. "that's what life seems to be—real life."
"i have been calculating"—mr. buzzacott turned his pale green eyes towards his guest—"that i may be able to afford that pretty little cinque cassone, after all. it would be a bit of a squeeze." he played with his beard. "but still...."
after tea, barbara and mr. topes went for a walk along the beach. she didn't much want to go, but mrs. topes thought it would be good for her; so she had to. the storm had passed and the sky over the sea was clear. but the waves were still breaking with an incessant clamour on the outer shallows, driving wide sheets of water high up the beach, twenty or thirty yards above the line where, on a day of calm, the ripples ordinarily expired. smooth, shining expanses of water advanced and receded like steel surfaces moved out and back by a huge machine. through the rain-washed air the mountains appeared with an incredible clarity. above them hung huge masses of cloud.
"clouds over carrara," said mr. topes, deprecating his remark with a little shake of the head and a movement of the shoulders. "i like to fancy sometimes that the spirits of the great sculptors lodge among these marble hills, and that it is their unseen hands that carve the clouds into these enormous splendid shapes. i imagine their ghosts"—his voice trembled—"feeling about among superhuman conceptions, planning huge groups and friezes and monumental figures with blowing draperies; planning, conceiving, but never quite achieving. look, there's something of michelangelo in that white cloud with the dark shadows underneath it." mr. topes pointed, and barbara, nodded and said, "yes, yes," though she wasn't quite sure which cloud he meant. "it's like night on the medici tomb; all the power and passion are brooding inside it, pent up. and there, in that sweeping, gesticulating piece of vapour—you see the one i mean—there's a bernini. all the passion's on the surface, expressed; the gesture's caught at its most violent. and that sleek, smug white fellow over there, that's a delicious absurd canova." mr. topes chuckled.
"why do you always talk about art?" said barbara. "you bring these dead people into everything. what do i know about canova or whoever it is?" they were none of them alive. she thought of that dark face, bright as a lamp with life. he at least wasn't dead. she wondered whether the letters were still there in the sand before the cabin. no, of course not; the rain and the wind would have blotted them out.
mr. topes was silent; he walked with slightly bent knees and his eyes were fixed on the ground; he wore a speckled black-and-white straw hat. he always thought of art; that was what was wrong with him. like an old tree he was; built up of dead wood, with only a few fibres of life to keep him from rotting away. they walked on for a long time in silence.
"here's the river," said mr. topes at last.
a few steps more and they were on the bank of a wide stream that came down slowly through the plain to the sea. just inland from the beach it was fringed with pine trees; beyond the trees one could see the plain, and beyond the plain were the mountains. in this calm light after the storm everything looked strange. the colours seemed deeper and more intense than at ordinary times. and though all was so clear, there was a mysterious air of remoteness about the whole scene. there was no sound except the continuous breathing of the sea. they stood for a little while, looking; then turned back.
far away along the beach two figures were slowly approaching. white flannel trousers, a pink skirt.
"nature," mr. topes enunciated, with a shake of the head. "one always comes back to nature. at a moment such as this, in surroundings like these, one realises it. one lives now—more quietly, perhaps, but more profoundly. deep watery. deep waters...."
the figures drew closer. wasn't it the marquis? and who was with him? barbara strained her eyes to see.
"most of one's life," mr. topes went on, "is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. your father and i, we collect pictures and read about the dead. other people achieve the same results by drinking, or breeding rabbits, or doing amateur carpentry. anything rather than think calmly about the important things."
mr. topes was silent. he looked about him, at the sea, at the mountains, at the great clouds, at his companion. a frail montagna madonna, with the sea and the westering sun, the mountains and the storm, all eternity as a background. and he was sixty, with all a life, immensely long and yet timelessly short, behind him, an empty life. he thought of death and the miracles of beauty; behind his round, glittering spectacles he felt inclined to weep.
the approaching couple were quite near now.
"what a funny old walrus," said the lady.
"walrus? your natural history is quite wrong." the marquis laughed. "he's much too dry to be a walrus. i should suggest some sort of an old cat."
"well, whatever he is, i'm sorry for that poor little girl. think of having nobody better to go about with!"
"pretty, isn't she?"
"yes, but too young, of course."
"i like the innocence."
"innocence? cher ami! these english girls. oh, la la! they may look innocent but, believe me...."
"sh, sh. they'll hear you."
"pooh, they don't understand italian."
the marquis raised his hand. "the old walrus...." he whispered; then addressed himself loudly and jovially to the newcomers.
"good evening, signorina. good evening, mr. topes. after a storm the air is always the purest, don't you find, eh?"
barbara nodded, leaving mr. topes to answer. it wasn't his sister. it was the russian woman, the one of whom mrs. topes used to say that it was a disgrace she should be allowed to stay at the hotel. she had turned away, dissociating herself from the conversation; barbara looked at the line of her averted face. mr. topes was saying something about the pastoral symphony. purple face powder in the daylight; it looked hideous.
"well, au revoir."
the flash of the marquis's smile was directed at them. the russian woman turned back from the sea, slightly bowed, smiled languidly. her heavy white eyelids were almost closed; she seemed the prey of an enormous ennui.
"they jar a little," said mr. topes when they were out of earshot—"they jar on the time, on the place, on the emotion. they haven't the innocence for this ... this...."—he wriggled and tremoloed out the just, the all too precious word—"this prelapsarian landscape."
he looked sideways at barbara and wondered what she was so thoughtfully frowning over. oh, lovely and delicate young creature! what could he adequately say of death and beauty and tenderness? tenderness....
"all this," he went on desperately, and waved his hand to indicate the sky, the sea, the mountains, "this scene is like something remembered, clear and utterly calm; remembered across great gulfs of intervening time."
but that was not really what he wanted to say.
"you see what i mean?" he asked dubiously. she made no reply. how could she see? "this scene is so clear and pure and remote; you need the corresponding emotion. those people were out of harmony. they weren't clear and pure enough." he seemed to be getting more muddled than ever. "it's an emotion of the young and of the old. you could feel it, i could feel it. those people couldn't." he was feeling his way through obscurities. where would he finally arrive? "certain poems express it. you know francis jammes? i have thought so much of his work lately. art instead of life, as usual; but then i'm made that way. i can't help thinking of jammes. those delicate, exquisite things he wrote about clara d'ellébeuse."
"clara d'ellébeuse?" she stopped and stared at him.
"you know the lines?" mr. topes smiled delightedly. "this makes me think, you make me think of them. 'f'aime dans les temps clara d'ellébeuse....' but, my dear barbara, what is the matter?"
she had started crying, for no reason whatever.
v: nuns at luncheon
"what have i been doing since you saw me last?" miss penny repeated my question in her loud, emphatic voice. "well, when did you see me last?"
"it must have been june," i computed.
"was that after i'd been proposed to by the russian general?
"yes; i remember hearing about the russian general."
miss penny threw back her head and laughed. her long ear-rings swung and rattled corpses hanging in chains: an agreeably literary simile. and her laughter was like brass, but that had been said before.
"that was an uproarous incident. it's sad you should have heard of it. i love my russian general story. 'vos yeux me rendent fou.'" she laughed again.
vos yeux—she had eyes like a hare's, flush with her head and very bright with a superficial and expressionless brightness. what a formidable woman. i felt sorry for the russian general.
"'sans coeur et sans entrallies,'" she went on, quoting the poor devil's words. "such a delightful motto, don't you think? like 'sans peur et sans reproche.' but let me think; what have i been doing since then?" thoughtfully she bit into the crust of her bread with long, sharp, white teeth.
"two mixed grills," i said parenthetically to the waiter.
"but of course," exclaimed miss penny suddenly. "i haven't seen you since my german trip. all sorts of adventures. my appendicitis; my nun."
"your nun?"
"my marvellous nun. i must tell you all about her."
"do." miss penny's anecdotes were always curious. i looked forward to an entertaining luncheon.
"you knew i'd been in germany this autumn?"
"well, i didn't, as a matter of fact. but still—"
"i was just wandering round." miss penny described a circle in the air with her gaudily jewelled hand. she always twinkled with massive and improbable jewellery.
"wandering round, living on three pounds a week, partly amusing myself, partly collecting material for a few little articles. 'what it feels like to be a conquered nation'—sob-stuff for the liberal press, you know—and 'how the hun is trying to wriggle out of the indemnity,' for the other fellows. one has to make the best of all possible worlds, don't you find? but we mustn't talk shop. well, i was wandering round, and very pleasant i found it. berlin, dresden, leipzig. then down to munich and all over the place. one fine day i got to grauburg. you know grauburg? it's one of those picture-book german towns with a castle on a hill, hanging beer-gardens, a gothic church, an old university, a river, a pretty bridge, and forests all round. charming. but i hadn't much opportunity to appreciate the beauties of the place. the day after i arrived there—bang!—i went down with appendicitis—screaming, i may add."
"but how appalling!"
"they whisked me off to hospital, and cut me open before you could say knife. excellent surgeon, highly efficient sisters of charity to nurse me—i couldn't have been in better hands. but it was a bore being tied there by the leg for four weeks—a great bore. still, the thing had its compensations. there was my nun, for example. ah, here's the food, thank heaven!"
the mixed grill proved to be excellent. miss penny's description of the pun came to me in scraps and snatches. a round, pink, pretty face in a winged coif; blue eyes and regular features; teeth altogether too perfect—false, in fact; but the general effect extremely pleasing. a youthful teutonic twenty eight.
"she wasn't my nurse," miss penny explained. "but i used to see her quite often when she came in to have a look at the tolle engl?nderin. her name was sister agatha. during the war, they told me, she had converted any number of wounded soldiers to the true faith—which wasn't surprising, considering how pretty she was."
"did she try and convert you?" i asked.
"she wasn't such a fool." miss penny laughed, and rattled the miniature gallows of her ears.
i amused myself for a moment with the thought of miss penny's conversion—miss penny confronting a vast assembly of fathers of the church, rattling her earrings at their discourses on the trinity, laughing her appalling laugh at the doctrine of the immaculate conception, meeting the stern look of the grand inquisitor with a flash of her bright, emotionless hare's eyes. what was the secret of the woman's formidableness?
but i was missing the story. what had happened? ah yes, the gist of it was that sister agatha had appeared one morning, after two or three days absence, dressed, not as a nun, but in the overalls of a hospital charwoman, with a handkerchief instead of a winged coif on her shaven head.
"dead," said miss penny; "she looked as though she were dead. a walking corpse, that's what she was. it was a shocking sight. i shouldn't have thought it possible for anyone to change so much in so short a time. she walked painfully, as though she had been ill for months, and she had great burnt rings round her eyes and deep lines in her face. and the general expression of unhappiness—that was something quite appalling."
she leaned out into the gangway between the two rows of tables, and caught the passing waiter by the end of one his coat-tails. the little italian looked round with an expression of surprise that deepened into terror on his face.
"half a pint of guinness," ordered miss penny. "and, after this, bring me some jam roll."
"no jam roll to-day, madam."
"damn!" said miss penny. "bring me what you like, then."
she let go of the waiter's tail and resumed her narrative.
"where was i? yes, i remember. she came into my room, i was telling you, with a bucket of water and a brush, dressed like a charwoman. naturally i was rather surprised. 'what on earth are you doing, sister agatha?' i asked. no answer. she just shook her head, and began to scrub the floor. when she'd finished, she left the room without so much as looking at me again. 'what's happened to sister agatha?' i asked my nurse when she next came in. 'can't say.'—'won't say,' i said. no answer. it took nearly a week to find out what really had happened. nobody dared tell me; it was strengst verboten, as they used to say in the good old days. but i wormed it out in the long run. my nurse, the doctor, the charwomen—i got something out of all of them. i always get what i want in the end." miss penny laughed like a horse.
"i'm sure you do," i said politely.
"much obliged," acknowledged miss penny. "but to proceed. my information came to me in fragmentary whispers. 'sister agatha ran away with a man.'—dear me.—'one of the patients.'—you don't say so.—'a criminal out of the jail.'—the plot thickens.—'he ran away from her.'—it seems to grow thinner again.—'they brought her back here; she's been disgraced. there's been a funeral service for her in the chapel—coffin and all. she had to be present at it—her own funeral. she isn't a nun any more. she has to do charwoman's work now, the roughest in the hospital. she's not allowed to speak to anybody, and nobody's allowed to speak to her. she's regarded as dead.'" miss penny paused to signal to the harassed little italian. "my small 'guinness,'" she called out.
"coming, coming," and the foreign voice cried "guinness" down the lift, and from below another voice echoed, "guinness."
"i filled in the details bit by bit. there was our hero, to begin with; i had to bring him into the picture, which was rather difficult, as i had never seen him. but i got a photograph of him. the police circulated one when he got away; i don't suppose they ever caught him." miss penny opened her bag. "here it is," she said. "i always carry it about with me; it's become a superstition. for years, i remember, i used to carry a little bit of heather tied up with string. beautiful, isn't it? there's a sort of renaissance look about it, don't you think? he was half-italian, you know."
italian. ah, that explained it. i had been wondering how bavaria could have produced this thin-faced creature with the big dark eyes, the finely modelled nose and chin, and the fleshy lips so royally and sensually curved.
"he's certainly very superb," i said, handing back the picture.
miss penny put it carefully away in her bag. "isn't he?" she said. "quite marvellous. but his character and his mind were even better. i see him as one of those innocent, childlike monsters of iniquity who are simply unaware of the existence of right and wrong. and he had genius—the real italian genius for engineering, for dominating and exploiting nature. a true son of the roman aqueduct builders he was, and a brother of the electrical engineers. only kuno—that was his name—didn't work in water; he worked in women. he knew how to harness the natural energy of passion; he made devotion drive his mills. the commercial exploitation of love-power, that was his specialty. i sometimes wonder," miss penny added in a different tone, "whether i shall ever be exploited, when i get a little more middle-aged and celibate, by one of these young engineers of the passions. it would be humiliating, particularly as i've done so little exploiting from my side."
she frowned and was silent for a moment. no, decidedly, miss penny was not beautiful; you could not even honestly say that she had charm or was attractive. that high scotch colouring, those hare's eyes, the voice, the terrifying laugh, and the size of her, the general formidableness of the woman. no, no, no.
"you said he had been in prison," i said. the silence, with all its implications, was becoming embarrassing.
miss penny sighed, looked up, and nodded. "he was fool enough," she said, "to leave the straight and certain road of female exploitation for the dangerous courses of burglary. we all have our occasional accesses of folly. they gave him a heavy sentence, but he succeeded in getting pneumonia, i think it was, a week after entering jail. he was transferred to the hospital. sister agatha, with her known talent for saving souls, was given him as his particular attendant. but it was he, i'm afraid, who did the converting."
miss penny finished off the last mouthful of the ginger pudding which the waiter had brought in lieu of jam roll.
"i suppose you don't smoke cheroots," i said, as i opened my cigar-case.
"well, as a matter of fact, i do," miss penny replied. she looked sharply round the restaurant. "i must just see if there are any of those horrible little gossip paragraphers here to-day. one doesn't want to figure in the social and personal column to-morrow morning: 'a fact which is not so generally known as it ought to be is, that miss penny, the well-known woman journalist, always ends her luncheon with a six-inch burma cheroot. i saw her yesterday in a restaurant—not a hundred miles from carmelite street—smoking like a house on fire.' you know the touch. but the coast seems to be clear, thank goodness."
she took a cheroot from the case, lit it at my proffered match, and went on talking.
"yes, it was young kuno who did the converting. sister agatha was converted back into the worldly melpomene fugger she had been before she became the bride of holiness."
"melpomene fugger?"
"that was her name. i had her history from my old doctor. he had seen all grauburg, living and dying and propagating for generations. melpomene fugger why, he had brought little melpel into the world, little melpchen. her father was professor fugger, the great professor fugger, the berümter geolog. oh, yes, of course, i know the name. so well.... he was the man who wrote the standard work on lemuria—you know, the hypothetical continent where the lemurs come from. i showed due respect. liberal-minded he was, a disciple of herder, a world-burgher, as they beautifully call it over there. anglophile, too, and always ate porridge for breakfast—up till august 1914. then, the radiant morning of the fifth, he renounced it for ever, solemnly and with tears in his eyes. the national food of a people who had betrayed culture and civilisation—how could he go on eating it? it would stick in his throat. in future he would have a lightly boiled egg. he sounded, i thought, altogether charming. and his daughter, melpomene—she sounded charming, too; and such thick, yellow pig-tails when she was young! her mother was dead, and a sister of the great professor's ruled the house with an iron rod. aunt bertha was her name. well, melpomene grew up, very plump and appetising. when she was seventeen, something very odious and disagreeable happened to her. even the doctor didn't know exactly what it was; but he wouldn't have been surprised if it had had something to do with the then professor of latin, an old friend of the family's, who combined, it seems, great erudition with a horrid fondness for very young ladies."
miss penny knocked half an inch of cigar ash into her empty glass.
"if i wrote short stories," she went on reflectively "(but it's too much bother), i should make this anecdote into a sort of potted life history, beginning with a scene immediately after this disagreeable event in melpomene's life. i see the scene so clearly. poor little melpel is leaning over the bastions of grauburg castle, weeping into the june night and the mulberry trees in the garden thirty feet below. she is besieged by the memory of what happened this dreadful afternoon. professor engelmann, her father's old friend, with the magnificent red assyrian beard.... too awful—too awful! but then, as i was saying, short stones are really too much bother; or perhaps i'm too stupid to write them. i bequeath it to you. you know how to tick these things off."
"you're generous."
"not at all," said miss penny. "my terms are ten per cent commission on the american sale. incidentally there won't be an american sale. poor melpchen's history is not for the chaste public of those states. but let me hear what you propose to do with melpomene now you've got her on the castle bastions."
"that's simple," i said. "i know all about german university towns and castles on hills. i shall make her look into the june night, as you suggest; into the violet night with its points of golden flame. there will be the black silhouette of the castle, with its sharp roofs and hooded turrets, behind her. from the hanging beer-gardens in the town below the voices of the students, singing in perfect four-part harmony, will float up through the dark-blue spaces. 'r?slein, r?slein, r?slein rot' and 'das ringlein sprang in zwei'—the heart-rendingly sweet old songs will make her cry all the more. her tears will patter like rain among the leaves of the mulberry trees in the garden below. does that seem to you adequate?"
"very nice," said miss penny. "but how are you going to bring the sex problem and all of its horrors into the landscape?"
"well, let me think." i called to memory those distant foreign summers when i was completing my education. "i know. i shall suddenly bring a swarm of moving candles and chinese lanterns under the mulberry trees. you imagine the rich lights and shadows, the jewel-bright leafage, the faces and moving limbs of men and women, seen for an instant and gone again. they are students and girls of the town come out to dance, this windless, blue june night, under the mulberry trees. and now they begin, thumping round and round in a ring, to the music of their own singing.
"wir k?nnen spielen
vio-vio-vio-lin
wir k?nnen spielen
vi-o-lin
"now the rhythm changes, quickens.
"und wir k?nnen tanzen bumstarara,
bumstarara, bumstarara,
und wir k?nnen tanzen bumstarara,
bumstarara-rara.
"the dance becomes a rush, an elephantine prancing on the dry lawn under the mulberry trees. and from the bastion melpomene looks down and perceives, suddenly and apocalyptically, that everything in the world is sex, sex, sex. men and women, male and female—always the same, and all, in the light of the horror of the afternoon, disgusting. that's how i should do it, miss penny."
"and very nice, too. but i wish you could find a place to bring in my conversation with the doctor. i shall never forget the way he cleared his throat, and coughed before embarking on the delicate subject. 'you may know, ahem, gracious miss,' he began—'you may know that religious phenomena are often, ahem, closely connected with sexual causes.' i replied that i had heard rumours which might justify me in believing this to be true among roman catholics, but that in the church of england —and i for one was a practitioner of anglicanismus—it was very different. 'that might be,' said the doctor; he had had no opportunity in the course of his long medical career of personally studying anglicanismus. but he could vouch for the fact that among his patients, here in grauburg, mysticismus was very often mixed up with the geschlechtsleben. melpomene was a case in point. after that hateful afternoon she had become extremely religious; the professor of latin had diverted her emotions out of their normal channels. she rebelled against the placid agnosticismus of her father, and at night, in secret, when aunt bertha's dragon eyes were closed, she would read such forbidden books as the life of st. theresa, the little flowers of st. francis, the imitation of christ, and the horribly enthralling book of martyrs. aunt bertha confiscated, these works whenever she came upon them; she considered them more pernicious than the novels of marcel prévost. the character of a good potential housewife might be completely undermined by reading of this kind. it was rather a relief for melpomene when aunt bertha shuffled off, in the summer of 1911, this mortal coil. she was one of those indispensables of whom one makes the discovery, when they are gone, that one can get on quite as well without them. poor aunt bertha!"
"one can imagine melpomene trying to believe she was sorry, and horribly ashamed to find that she was really, in secret, almost glad." the suggestion seemed to me ingenious, but miss penny accepted it as obvious.
"precisely," she said; "and the emotion would only further confirm and give new force to the tendencies which her aunt's death left her free to indulge as much as she liked. remorse, contrition—they would lead to the idea of doing penance. and for one who was now wallowing in the martyrology, penance was the mortification of the flesh. she used to kneel for hours, at night, in the cold; she ate too little, and when her teeth ached, which they often did,—for she had a set, the doctor told me, which had given trouble from the very first,—she would not go and see the dentist, but lay awake at night, savouring to the full her excruciations, and feeling triumphantly that they must, in some strange way, be pleasing to the mysterious powers. she went on like that for two or three years, till she was poisoned through and through. in the end she went down with gastric ulcer. it was three months before she came out of hospital, well for the first time in a long space of years, and with a brand new set of imperishable teeth, all gold and ivory. and in mind, too, she was changed—for the better, i suppose. the nuns who nursed her had made her see that in mortifying herself she had acted supererogatively and through spiritual pride; instead of doing right, she had sinned. the only road to salvation, they told her, lay in discipline, in the orderliness of established religion, in obedience to authority. secretly, so as not to distress her poor father, whose agnosticismus was extremely dogmatic, for all its unobtrusiveness, melpomene became a roman catholic. she was twenty-two. only a few months later came the war and professor fugger's eternal renunciation of porridge. he did not long survive the making of that patriotic gesture. in the autumn of 1914 he caught a fatal influenza. melpomene was alone in the world. in the spring of 1915 there was a new and very conscientious sister of charity at work among the wounded, in the hospital of grauburg. here," explained miss penny, jabbing the air with her forefinger, "you put a line of asterisks or dots to signify a six years' gulf in the narrative. and you begin again right in the middle of a dialogue between sister agatha and the newly convalescent kuno."
"what's their dialogue to be about?" i asked.
"oh, that's easy enough," said miss penny. "almost anything would do. what about this, for example? you explain that the fever has just abated; for the first time for days the young man is fully conscious. he feels himself to be well, reborn, as it were, in a new world—a world so bright and novel and jolly that he can't help laughing at the sight of it. he looks about him; the flies on the ceiling strike him as being extremely comic. how do they manage to walk upside down? they have suckers on their feet, says sister agatha, and wonders if her natural history is quite sound. suckers on their feet—ha, ha! what an uproarious notion! suckers on their feet—that's good, that's damned good! you can say charming, pathetic, positively tender things about the irrelevant mirth of convalescents the more so in this particular case, where the mirth is expressed by a young man who is to be taken back to jail as soon as he can stand firmly on his legs. ha, ha! laugh on, unhappy boy. it is the quacking of the fates, the parc?, the norns!"
miss penny gave an exaggerated imitation of her own brassy laughter. at the sound of it the few lunchers who still lingered at the other tables looked up, startled.
"you can write pages about destiny and its ironic quacking. it's tremendously impressive, and there's money in every line."
"you may be sure i shall."
"good! then i can get on with my story. the days pass and the first hilarity of convalescence fades away. the young man remembers and grows sullen; his strength comes back to him, and with it a sense of despair. his mind broods incessantly on the hateful future. as for the consolations of religion, he won't listen to them. sister agatha perseveres—oh, with what anxious solicitude!—in the attempt to make him understand and believe and be comforted. it is all so tremendously important, and in this case, somehow, more important than in any other. and now you see the geschlechtsleben working yeastily and obscurely, and once again the quacking of the norns is audible. by the way," said miss penny, changing her tone and leaning confidentially across the table, "i wish you'd tell me something. tell me, do you really—honestly, i mean—do you seriously believe in literature?"
"believe in literature?"
"i was thinking?" miss penny explained, "of ironic fate and the quacking of the norns and all that."
"'m yes."
"and then there's this psychology and introspection business; and construction and good narrative and word pictures and le mot juste and verbal magic and striking metaphors."
i remembered that i had compared miss penny's tinkling ear-rings to skeletons hanging in chains.
"and then, finally, and to begin with—alpha and omega—there's ourselves, two professionals gloating, with an absolute lack of sympathy, over a seduced nun, and speculating on the best method of turning her misfortunes into cash. it's all very curious, isn't it?—when one begins to think about it dispassionately."
"very curious," i agreed. "but, then, so is everything else if you look at it like that."
"no, no," said miss penny. "nothing's so curious as our business. but i shall never get to the end of my story if i get started on first principles."
miss penny continued her narrative. i was still thinking of literature. do you believe in it? seriously? ah! luckily the question was quite meaningless. the story came to me rather vaguely, but it seemed that the young man was getting better; in a few more days, the doctor had said, he would be well—well enough to go back to jail. no, no. the question was meaningless. i would think about it no more. i concentrated my attention again.
"sister agatha," i heard miss penny saying, "prayed, exhorted, indoctrinated. whenever she had half a minute to spare from her other duties she would come running into the young man's room. 'i wonder if you fully realise the importance of prayer?' she would ask, and, before he had time to answer, she would give him a breathless account of the uses and virtues of regular and patient supplication. or else, it was: 'may i tell you about st. theresa?' or 'st. stephen, the first martyr—you know about him, don't you?' kuno simply wouldn't listen at first. it seemed so fantastically irrelevant, such an absurd interruption to his thoughts, his serious, despairing thoughts about the future. prison was real, imminent and this woman buzzed about him with her ridiculous fairy-tales. then, suddenly, one day he began to listen, he showed signs of contrition and conversion. sister agatha announced her triumph to the other nuns, and there was rejoicing over the one lost sheep. melpomene had never felt so happy in her life, and kuno, looking at her radiant face, must have wondered how he could have been such a fool as not to see from the first what was now so obvious. the woman had lost her head about him. and he had only four days now—four days in which to tap the tumultuous love power, to canalise it, to set it working for his escape. why hadn't he started a week ago? he could have made certain of it then. but now? there was no knowing. four days was a horribly short time."
"how did he do it?" i asked, for miss penny had paused.
"that's for you to say," she replied, and shook her ear-rings at me. "i don't know. nobody knows, i imagine, except the two parties concerned and perhaps sister agatha's confessor. but one can reconstruct the crime, as they say. how would you have done it? you're a man, you ought to be familiar with the processes of amorous engineering."
"you flatter me," i answered. "do you seriously suppose—" i extended my arms. miss penny laughed like a horse. "no. but, seriously, it's a problem. the case is a very special one. the person, a nun, the place, a hospital, the opportunities, few. there could be no favourable circumstances—no moonlight, no distant music; and any form of direct attack would be sure to fail. that audacious confidence which is your amorist's best weapon would be useless here."
"obviously," said miss penny. "but there are surely other methods. there is the approach through pity and the maternal instincts. and there's the approach through higher things, through the soul. kuno must have worked on those lines, don't you think? one can imagine him letting himself be converted, praying with her, and at the same time appealing for her sympathy and even threatening—with a great air of seriousness—-to kill himself rather than go back to jail. you can write that up easily and convincingly enough. but it's the sort of thing that bores me so frightfully to do. that's why i can never bring myself to write fiction. what is the point of it all? and the way you literary men think yourselves so important—particularly if you write tragedies. it's all very queer, very queer indeed."
i made no comment. miss penny changed her tone and went on with the narrative.
"well," she said, "whatever the means employed, the engineering process was perfectly successful. love was made to find out a way. on the afternoon before kuno was to go back to prison, two sisters of charity walked out of the hospital gates, crossed the square in front of it, glided down the narrow streets towards the river, boarded a tram at the bridge, and did not descend till the car had reached its terminus in the farther suburbs. they began to walk briskly along the high road out into the country. 'look!' said one of them, when they were clear of the houses; and with the gesture of a conjurer produced from nowhere a red leather purse. 'where did it come from?' asked the other, opening her eyes. memories of elisha and the ravens, of the widow's cruse, of the loaves and fishes, must have floated through the radiant fog in poor melpomene's mind. 'the old lady i was sitting next to in the tram left her bag open. nothing could have been simpler.' 'kuno! you don't mean to say you stole it?' kuno swore horribly. he had opened the purse. 'only sixty marks. who'd have thought that an old camel, all dressed up in silk and furs, would only have sixty marks in her purse. and i must have a thousand at least to get away. it's easy to reconstruct the rest of the conversation down to the inevitable, 'for god's sake, shut up,' with which kuno put an end to melpomene's dismayed moralising. they trudge on in silence. kuno thinks desperately. only sixty marks; he can do nothing with that. if only he had something to sell, a piece of jewellery, some gold or silver anything, anything. he knows such a good place for selling things. is he to be caught again for lack of a few marks? melpomene is also thinking. evil must often be done that good may follow. after all, had not she herself stolen sister mary of the purification's clothes when she was asleep after night duty? had not she run away from the convent, broken her vows? and yet how convinced she was that she was doing rightly! the mysterious powers emphatically approved; she felt sure of it. and now there was the red purse. but what was a red purse in comparison with a saved soul—and, after all, what was she doing hut saving kuno's soul?" miss penny, who had adapted the voice and gestures of a debater asking rhetorical questions, brought her hand with a slap on to the table. "lord, what a bore this sort of stuff is!" she exclaimed. "let's get to the end of this dingy anecdote as quickly as possible. by this time, you must imagine, the shades of night were falling fast—the chill november twilight, and so on; but i leave the natural descriptions to you. kuno gets into the ditch at the roadside and takes off his robes. one imagines that he would feel himself safer in trousers, more capable of acting with decision in a crisis. they tramp on for miles. late in the evening they leave the high road and strike up through the fields towards the forest. at the fringe of the wood they find one of those wheeled huts where the shepherds sleep in the lambing season.
"the real 'maison du berger.'"
"precisely," said miss penny, and she began to recite:
"si ton coeur gémissant du poids de notre vie
se traine et se débat comme un aigle blessé....
"how does it go on? i used to adore it all so much when i was a girl.
"le seuil est perfumé, l'alc?ve est large et sombre,
et là parmi les fleurs, nous trouverons dans l'ombre,
pour nos cheveux unis un lit silencieux.
"i could go on like this indefinitely."
"do," i said.
"no, no. no, no. i'm determined to finish this wretched story. kuno broke the padlock of the door. they entered. what happened in that little hut?" miss penny leaned forward at me. her large hare's eyes glittered, the long ear-rings swung and faintly tinkled. "imagine the emotions of a virgin of thirty, and a nun at that, in the terrifying presence of desire. imagine the easy, familiar brutalities of the young man. oh, there's pages to be made out of this—the absolutely impenetrable darkness, the smell of straw, the voices, the strangled crying, the movements! and one likes to fancy that the emotions pulsing about in that confined space made palpable vibrations like a deep sound that shakes the air. why, it's ready-made literature, this scene. in the morning," miss penny went on, after a pause, "two woodcutters on their way to work noticed that the door of the hut was ajar. they approached the hut cautiously, their axes raised and ready for a blow if there should be need of it. peeping in, they saw a woman in a black dress lying face downward in the straw. dead? no; she moved, she moaned. 'what's the matter?' a blubbered face, smeared with streaks of tear-clotted grey dust, is lifted towards them. 'what's the matter?'—'he's gone!' what a queer, indistinct utterance. the woodcutters regard one another. what does she say? she's a foreigner, perhaps. 'what's the matter?' they repeat once more. the woman bursts out violently crying. 'gone, gone! he's gone,' she sobs out in her vague, inarticulate way. 'oh, gone. that's what she says. who's gone?'—'he's left me.'—'what?'—'left me....'—'what the devil...? speak a little more distinctly.'—'i can't,' she wails; 'he's taken my teeth.'—'your what?—'my teeth!'—and the shrill voice breaks into a scream, and she falls back sobbing into the straw. the woodcutters look significantly at one another. they nod. one of them applies a thick yellow-nailed forefinger to his forehead."
miss penny looked at her watch. "good heavens!" she said, "it's nearly half-past three. i must fly. don't forget about the funeral service," she added, as she put on her coat. "the tapers, the black coffin, in the middle of the aisle, the nuns in their white-winged coifs, the gloomy chanting, and the poor cowering creature without any teeth, her face all caved in like an old woman's, wondering whether she wasn't really and in fact dead—wondering whether she wasn't already in hell. good-bye."
