Chapter III: Part 3

That night, when the thud and reverberation of the fireworks began down on the Marina, Francis and I went into the town to see them from above. The Piazza was deserted, for all Alatri had gone down to the port to take part in this procession and explosion in honour of San Costanzo, so that he might make intercession and send rain to the parched island, and we went out on to the broad paved platform which overlooks the Marina. This, too, seemed to be deserted, and perched on the railing that surrounds it, we watched the golden streaks of the ascending rockets, and their flowering into many-coloured fires. At this distance the reports reached the ear some seconds after their burstings; their plumes of flame had vanished before their echoes flapped in the cliffs of Monte Gennaro. The moon was not yet risen, and their splendour burned brilliantly against the dark background of the star-sown sky. By and by a whole sheaf of them went up together, and afterwards a detonating bomb showed that the exhibition was over. And then we saw that we were not alone, for in the dark at the far end of the railings a black figure was watching. She turned and came towards us, and I saw who it was.

"You have been looking at the fireworks, Teresa?" said Francis.

"_Sissignor._ They have been very good. San Costanzo should send us rain after that. But who knows? It is God's will, after all."

"Surely. And how goes it?"

She smiled at him with that sweet patient face, out of which fourteen years ago all joy and fire died.

"The cake-shop?" she said. "Oh, it prospers. It always prospers. I am trying a new recipe to-morrow--a meringue."

"And you--you yourself?" he asked.

"I? I am always well. But often I am tired of waiting. _Pazienza!_ Shall I send some of the new meringues up to the Villa, if they turn out well, Signor?"

Francis had an inexplicable longing that evening to play chess, and as he despises the sort of chess I play with the same completeness as I despise parsnips, I left him with someone less contemptible at the café, and strolled up to the Villa again alone, going along the paved way that overlooks the sea to the south. High up was hung an amazing planet, and I felt rather glad I was no astronomer, and knew not which it was, for the noblest of names would have been unworthy of that celestial jewel. As if it had been a moon, the reflection of its splendour made a golden path across the sea, and posturing in its light, I found that it actually cast a vague shadow of me against a whitewashed wall. To the east the rim of the hill, where is situated the wireless station, was beginning to stand out very black against a dove-coloured sky, and before I had reached the steep steps that lead past the garden wall, the rim of the full moon had cut the hill-top, dimming the stars around it, and swiftly ascending, a golden bubble in the waters of the firmament, it had shot up clear of the horizon and refashioned the world again in ivory and black. All the gamut of colours was dipped anew; blues were translated into a velvety grey, so too were greens, and though the eye could see the difference, it was impossible to say what the difference was. Simply what we call blue by daylight became some kind of grey; what we call green a totally distinct kind of grey and blacker than the darkest shadow of the stone-pine was the shouting scarlet of the geraniums. No painter (pace the Whistlerians) has ever so faintly suggested the magic of moon-colouring, and small blame to him, since the tone of it cannot be rendered in pictures that are seen in the daylight. But if you take the picture of a sunny day, and look at it in moonlight, you will see, not a daylight picture, but a moonlight scene. The same thing holds with daylight scents and night-scents, and the fragrance of the verbena by the house wall was not only dimmer in quality, but different in tone. It was recognizable but different, ghost-like, disembodied without the smack of the sun in it.

I strolled about for a little, and then having (as usual) writing on hand that should have been done days before, I went reluctantly into the house. I was quite alone in it, for Seraphina had gone home, Pasqualino was down at the Marina taking part in fireworks and _festa,_ and I had left Francis in a stuffy café pondering on gambits. We had dined early by reason of the fireworks, and before going up to my sitting-room to work, I foraged for cake and wine in the kitchen, and carried these upstairs. It was very hot, and I went first into the studio, where I set the windows wide, and next into Francis's room and Pasqualino's, where I did the same. Then I came back to my own room, exactly opposite the studio, and, stripped to shirt and trousers, with door and windows wide, I sat down for an hour's writing.

* * * * *

There is no such incentive to constructive thought as the knowledge that, humanly speaking, interruption is impossible. Seraphina would not return till morning, while _festa_ and chess would undoubtedly detain Pasqualino and Francis for the next couple of hours. I had a luxurious sense of security; should I be so fortunate as to strike the vein I was delving for, I could go on mining there without let or hindrance. Reluctant though I had been to begin, I speedily found myself delightfully engrossed in what I was doing. Probably it did not amount to much, but the illusion in the author's mind, when he tinkers away at his tale, that he is doing something vastly important, is one that is never shaken, even though he continually finds out afterwards that the masterpiece has missed fire again. While he is engaged on his scribbling (given that his pen is in an interpreting frame of mind, and records without too many stumblings the dictation his brain gives it), he is in that Jerusalem that opens its gates of pearl only to the would-be artist, be he painter or poet or writer or sculptor. He is constructing, recording his impressions, and though (I hasten to repeat) they may be totally unworthy of record, he doesn't think so when he is engaged on them, for if he did, he would be conscious of external affairs, his mind would wander, and he would stop. Often, of course, that happens, but there are other blessed occasions when he is engulfed by his own imaginings, and absorbed in the reproduction of them.

It was so with me that night, when I sat quite alone in the silent house, knowing that none could disturb me for a couple of hours to come. Italy, even the fact that I was in Italy, vanished from my mind, and for the sake of the curious, at the risk of egoism, I may mention that I was with Mrs. Hancock in her bedroom in her horrid villa called Arundel, and looking over her jewels with her, to see what she could spare, without missing it, as a wedding present for her daughter. Engaged in that trivial pursuit, I lost conscious touch with everything else.

Quite suddenly a very ordinary noise, though as startling as the ringing of a telephone-bell at my elbow, where there was no telephone, snatched me away from my imaginings. There was a step in the studio just opposite, and I made no doubt that Francis had got home, had come upstairs without my hearing him, and no doubt thinking that I was at work, had passed into the studio. But then, looking at my watch, which lay on the table before me, I saw that it was still only half-past ten, and that I had been at work (and he at chess) for barely half an hour. But there was no reason that I should not go on working for an hour yet, and though my sense of security from interruption was gone, I anchored myself to my page again. But something had snapped; I could not get back into Mrs. Hancock's bedroom again, and after a few feeble sentences, and a corresponding number of impatient erasures, I came to a full stop.

I sat there for some ten minutes more, vainly endeavouring to concentrate again over Mrs. Hancock's jewels, but Francis's steps were in some way strangely disturbing. They passed up the studio, paused and returned, and paused and passed up again. Then, but not till then, there came into my mind the fact that Seraphina and Pasqualino had at different times heard (or thought they heard) footsteps in the studio, and on investigation had found it empty, and I began to wonder, still rather dimly and remotely, whether these were indeed the pacings of Francis up and down the room. My reasonable mind told me that they were, but the recollection of those other occasions became momently more vivid, and I got up to see.

The door of my room and that of the studio were exactly opposite each other, with the width of a narrow passage between them. Both doors were open, and on going into the passage I saw that the studio was dark within. It seemed odd that Francis should walk up and down, as he was still continuing to do, in the dark.

I suddenly felt an intense curiosity to know whether this was Francis walking up and down in the dark, or rather an intense desire to satisfy myself that it was not. The switch of the electric light was just inside the door, and even as my hand fumbled for it I still heard the steps quite close to me. Next moment the studio leaped into light as I pressed the switch, and I looked eagerly up and down it. There was no one there, though half a second before I had heard the footsteps quite close to me.

I stood there a moment, not conscious of fear, though I knew that for some reason my heart was creaking in my throat, and that I felt an odd prickly sensation on my head. But my paramount feeling was curiosity as to who or what it was that went walking here, my paramount consciousness that, though I could see no one, and the steps had ceased, there was someone close to me all the time, watching me not unkindly. But beyond doubt, for all visible presence, the studio was empty, and I knew that the search which I now carried out, visiting the darker corners, and going on to the balcony outside, from which there was no external communication further, was all in vain. Whatever it was that I, like Pasqualino and Seraphina, had heard, it was not a thing that hid itself. It was there, waiting for us to perceive it, waiting for the withdrawal of the shutter that separates the unseen world from the seen. The shutter had been partly withdrawn, for I had heard it; I had also the strong sense of its presence. But I had no conception as to what it was, except that I felt it was no evil or malignant thing.

I went back to my room, and, oddly enough, directly after so curious an experience, I found myself able to concentrate on Mrs. Hancock again without the slightest difficulty, and spent an absorbed hour. Then I heard the garden gate open, there were steps on the stairs, and a moment afterwards Francis came up. I told him what had happened, exactly as I have set it down. He asked a few slightly scornful questions, and then proceeded to tell me how he had lost his king's bishop. I could not ask scornful questions about that, but it seemed very careless of him.

* * * * *

The very next morning there turned up information which seems to my mind (a mind which Francis occasionally describes as credulous) to bear upon the watcher and walker in the studio, and it happened in this wise. Ten days before, the careful Seraphina had collected certain table-cloths, sheets and socks that needed darning, and with a view to having them thoroughly well done, and with, I make no doubt, another motive as well in her superstitious mind, had given the job to Donna Margherita, a very ancient lady, but nimble with her needle, to whom we are all very polite. Even Francis (though he has admirable manners with everybody) goes out of his way to be civil to Donna Margherita, and no one, who is at all prudent, will fail to give her a "Good day" if he passes her in the street. But if the wayfarer sees Donna Margherita coming in his direction, and thinks she has not yet seen him, he will, if he is prudent, turn round and walk in another direction. I have known Francis to do that on some paltry excuse (and he says I have a credulous mind!), but his real reason is that though he would not admit it, he is aware that Donna Margherita has the evil eye. Consequently we islanders must not vex her or be other than scrupulously civil to her, though we keep out of her way if we can, and when we must pass her it is wise to make the sign of the Cross surreptitiously. We do not talk about her much, for it is as well not to get near the confines of dangerous things; but before now Pasqualino has told me of various occurrences which to his mind put it beyond all doubt that Donna Margherita has the _jettatura._ There was the affair of his uncle's fig-tree: he had been foolish and said sharp things to her because her goat strayed into his vineyard. And Donna Margherita just looked at the fig-tree which grows by his gate, and said: "You have a fine fig-tree there; there will be plenty of fruit this summer." Within a fortnight all the crop of little half-ripe figs dropped off. There was her landlord who threatened to turn her out unless her quarter's overdue rent was paid the same evening. Was it paid? Not a bit of it; but the very same day the landlord's kitchen roof fell in.... There is no end to such evidence, and so when ten days ago Donna Margherita asked Seraphina if there was not any mending for her to do, it is no wonder (especially since she is so neat with her needle) that Seraphina gave her our lacerated linen.

* * * * *

Such is the history of Donna Margherita, and so when this morning, as we were breakfasting, her knock came at the garden door, and she entered, Francis jumped up, and called Seraphina from the kitchen to pay for the mending and give Donna Margherita a glass of wine on this hot morning. It was cool and shady under the pergola where we were breakfasting, and as the old lady had a fancy to sit down for a little after her walk, she came along and sat down with us. And, vying with each other in courtesies, Pasqualino brought her a slice of cake, and Seraphina a glass of wine, and then hastily retired from the dangerous neighbourhood, and looked out on the interview with troubled faces from an upper window.

To judge by her dried-apple cheek, and her gnarled and knotted hands, Donna Margherita might almost number the years with which Alatri credits her, asserting that she is a hundred summers old. Eighty, at any rate, she must be, since she has good recollection of the events of more than seventy years ago, and as she sipped her wine and clinked the soldi Seraphina (grossly overpaying) had given her, she talked amiably enough about our house and her early memories of it.

"Yes, it's a fine villa that the Signori have," she said; "but I can remember it as but a farm-house before additions were made to it. The farm buildings used to lean against it on the north, where later the big room was built by the English artist; byre and cow-house were there, and when I was a little girl a strange thing happened."

She mumbled her cake a little in her toothless jaws and proceeded:

"The farm in those days belonged to Giovanni Stofa, long since dead, and there he lived alone with his son, who is long dead also. One night after the house was shut up, and they sat together before going to bed, there came a noise and a clatter from the cow-house, very curious to hear. Giovanni thought that one of the cows had convulsions and ran out of the house and round by the kitchen, and into the shed where the two cows were stabled. And as he opened the door he was near knocked down, for both of them ran out with hoofs in the air and tails switching. Then, not knowing what should meet his eyes, he turned the lantern that he carried into the cow-house, and there standing in the middle was a _strega_ (witch). But she looked at him not unkindly, and said: 'I have come to guard the house, and from henceforth I shall always guard it, walking up and down, ever walking up and down.'

"The _strega_ smiled at him as she spoke, and his knees ceased to tremble, for this was no black visitant.

"'Your cattle will not be frightened again,' she said. 'Look, even now they come back.'

"As she spoke, first one and then the other of the cows came into the stable again, and walked right up to where the _strega_ stood, blowing hard through their nostrils. And next moment they lay down close to her, one on each side.

"'You will often hear me walking about here,' said the _strega;_ 'but have no fear, for I guard the house.'

"And with that there came just one puff of wind, and Giovanni's lantern flickered, and lo! when the flame was steady again there was no _strega_ there."

* * * * *

Donna Margherita took a sip of wine after her recitation.

"And does she still walk up and down where the cow-house was?" I asked.

"Surely; but fat ears cannot hear even the thunder," quoted Donna Margherita. "And now, Signori, I will be walking. And thanks for the soldi and the cake and the wine."

Francis got up too.

"You are active still, Donna Margherita," he said.

Donna Margherita stepped briskly down the path.

"Eh, yes, Signor," she said. "I am old but active; I can still do such a day's work as would surprise you."

Francis's eye and mine met; we were behind her, so that she could not see the exchanged glance. What was in both our minds was the affair of Pasqualino's uncle's fig-tree, for that had certainly been a surprising day's work. But after she had gone, he alluded again to the steps I had heard in the studio in a far more respectful manner. The fact is, so I made bold to tell him, that he does not like Donna Margherita's unconscious innuendo that he has fat ears.

The hot, serene days pursued their relentless course without our experiencing any of the watery benefits we had hoped for from the treat of fireworks that we had given to San Costanzo, for immediately after that improvised _festa_ the falling barometer retraced its downward steps, and the needle stood, steady as if it had been painted there, on the "V" of "Very Dry." Miss Machonochie's cistern, so she informed us, had barely a foot of water in it, and she came up to ask if she might borrow a few pailfuls from ours of a morning. "Borrow" was good, since naturally she could not pay it back till the rain came and replenished her store, and the moment the rain came it would be a foolish thing to go carrying pailfuls of water from one house to another when all were plentifully supplied. But she made a great point of putting down exactly how many pailfuls she borrowed, and also made a great point of coming to thank Francis every other afternoon about tea-time for his kindness. She did not care about thanking me, though I had been just as kind as Francis, and eventually, owing to the awful frequency of these visits, we posted Pasqualino on the balcony overlooking the path to give warning (like Brangäene from her tower) of Miss Machonochie's fell approach, while we had tea, so that we could effect an exit through the kitchen door, and live, like outlaws, in the heather, till Miss Machonochie had left her gratitude behind her. It was not sufficient to instruct Pasqualino to say we were out, for then Miss Machonochie would sit and rest in the garden for a little, or come up to the studio to write a letter of thanks (always to Francis). But with Pasqualino on the balcony, we can sit in peace over tea, till with a broad grin that occasionally explodes into laughter, he comes in to say that the Scotch Signorina's sunshade is a-bobbing up the path. Then we hastily scald ourselves with tea and go for a walk, for no longer in this dearth of water can the garden be refreshed, but must needs lie waterless, till the rain revisits us.

To-day we made an expedition up Monte Gennaro, the great crag that rises sheer from the south side of the island in two thousand feet of unscalable cliff. From the west the ascent is a mild, upward path over a stony hill-side, and the more delectable way is on its east side, where a very steep ascent burrows among thick growing scrub of laburnum and arbutus till it reaches the toppling precipices that frown above it. There, squeezing through interstices and fissures, it conducts to a huge grassy upland, unsuspected from below, that sweeps upward to the summit. A pine-tree or two stand sentinel here, but there is little anchorage of soil for trees, and for the most part the hill-side is clothed in long jungle grasses and spaces of sunny broom, the scent of which hangs sweet and heavy in the windless air. Here the dews are thicker, and the heat less intense, and though the rain has been so long withheld, the hill-side is still green and unwithered, and deep among the grasses we saw abundance of the great orange-coloured lilies that we had come to gather. But that task was for the downward journey, and first we ascended to the peak itself. As we climbed, the island dwindled below us, and at last at the summit it had shrunk to a pin's-head in the girdle of the dim sea, domed with huge blue.

West, south and north, straight to the high horizon, stretched the untarnished and liquid plain; here and there, like some minute fly walking on a vast sheet of sapphire glass, moved an ocean-going steamer. Eastwards there floated, distant and dreamlike but curiously distinct, the shores and peaks of the mainland, and from it, on this side and that, there swam the rocks of the Siren isles, as if trying to join Alatri, the boldest swimmer of them all. The remoteness and tranquillity of mountain tops lay round us, and curious it was to think that down there, where Naples sparkled along the coast, there moved a crowd of insatiable ant-like folk, busy on infinitesimal things that absorbed and vexed and delighted them. Naples itself was so little; it was as if, in this great emptiness of sea and sky, some minute insect was seen, and one was told that that minute insect swarmed with other minute forms of life. To look at it was to look at a piece of coral, and remember that millions of animalculæ built up the structure that was but a bead in a necklace. And here, lying at ease on the grass, were just two more of the coral-insects that mattered so much to themselves and to each other....

We slewed round again seawards, and looked over the precipitous southern cliffs. A little draught of wind blew up them, making the grasses at the rim shake and tremble. From below a hawk swooped upwards over the cliff edge, saw us, and fell away again with a rustle of reversed feathers into the air. Round the base of the cliffs the sapphire of the sea was trimmed with brilliant bottle-green, and not the faintest line of foam showed where it met the land. To the left on the island, the town of Alatri, with all its house-roofs and spires, looked as flat as on a map, and on the hill-side above it we could just make out the stone-pine cutting the white façade of the Villa Tiberiana. For a moment that anchored me to earth; but slipping my cable again, I spread myself abroad in the openness and the emptiness. Was I part of it, or it part of me? That did not matter much; we were certainly both part of something else, something of tumultuous energy that whirled the stars on their courses, and was yet the peace that passed understanding....

* * * * *

The days had slipped away. Before the orange lilies, which we gathered that afternoon on Monte Gennaro, were withered, there remained to me but a week more for the present of island life, which flowed on hour by hour in the normal employments that made up the day. But all the small events, the sights and sounds, had to me then, as they have now, a curious distinctness, as when before a storm outlines of hills and houses are sharp and defined, and the details of the landscape are etched vividly in the metallic tenseness of the preceding calm. But, as far as I knew, there were in life generally no threats of approaching storm, no clouds that broke the serenity of the sky. Privately, my friendships and affairs were prosperous, and though by the papers it appeared that politicians were turning anxious eyes to Ireland, where ferment was brewing over Home Rule, I supposed, in the happy-go-lucky way in which the average English citizen goes whistling along, that those whose business it was to attend to such things would see to it. Personally I intended to go back to England for a couple of months, and then return here for the warm golden autumn that often lasts into the early days of December. Established now, in this joint house, "_piccolo nido in vasto mar,_" I meant to slide back often and for prolonged periods down the golden cord that has always bound me to Italy. But though these days were so soon to be renewed, I found myself clinging to each minute as it passed with a sense that they were numbered; that the sands were running out, and that close behind the serenity of the heavens there lurked the flare of some prodigious judgment. Yet, day by day there was nothing to warrant those ominous presages. I swam to my cache, smoked my cigarette, basked on the beach, and continued weaving the adventures of Mrs. Hancock. The same sense of instability, I found, beset Francis also, and this in spite of the fact that the beleaguerings of Miss Machonochie were suddenly and celestially put a stop to.

We had strolled down to the Piazza one evening after dinner, and mingled with the crowd that stood watching a great display of thunderstorm that was bursting over the mainland twenty miles away. Above us here was a perfectly clear sky, in which the full moon rode high, and by its light we could see that the whole of the coast was smothered in cloud, out of which broke ten times to the minute flashes of lightning, while the low, remote roar of the thunder, faintly echoed on the cliffs of Monte Gennaro, boomed without ceasing. Then we saw that long streamers of cloud were shooting out of that banked rampart towards us, and we had barely got back to the Villa again before the moon and the stars were obscured, and hot single drops of rain, large as a five-franc piece, steamed and vanished on the warm cement of the terrace.

All night long the rain fell in sheets, and through the slats of the shutters I saw the incessant flashes, while the thunder roared and rattled overhead, and the pipe from the house-roof, that feeds our depleted cistern, gurgled and gulped and swallowed the rain it was thirsting for. Hour after hour the downpour continued, and when morning broke the garden-paths were riddled with water-courses, and the gathered waters gleamed in the cisterns, and Miss Machonochie need "borrow" no more, nor come up about tea-time to thank Francis for his largesse, and hound us from our tea to seek refuge on arid hill-sides. Pasqualino remarked that San Costanzo had been a long time thanking us for the fireworks; did I suppose that----And as Pasqualino's remarks about the hierarchy of Heaven are sometimes almost embarrassingly child-like in their reasonableness, I skilfully changed the subject by telling him to measure the water in the cistern.

But though Francis need no longer be afraid of Miss Machonochie, "the arrow that flieth by day" so constantly transfixing him, and though after prolonged thought he confessed that there was nothing else in life which bothered him, except that in two years' time Pasqualino would have to go for his military service, and he himself would have to find another servant (which really seemed a trial, the fieriness of which need not be allowed to scorch so soon), he shares my sense of instability and uneasiness, and, like me, cannot in any way account for it. To encourage him and myself on the morning of my departure as we had our last bathe, I was noble enough to let him into the secret of my cache of cigarettes in the seaweed-hung recess in the rock, and together we lit the farewell incense to the _Palazzo a mare,_ sitting on the rock.

"And there are two left," said I, "which we will smoke together here the first day that I come back."

"Is that a promise?" he said.

"Surely."

"And when will you keep it?"

"About the middle of September."

"And if you don't?" he asked.

"Well, it will only mean that I have been run over by a motor-car, or got cancer, or something of the sort, or that you have. If we are still in control of ourselves we'll do it. I wonder if those two cigarettes will be mouldy or pickled with brine by that time?"

"Kippered or mouldy or pickled, I will smoke one of them on the day you return," said he.

"And I the other. But I hope it won't be mouldy. Or I shall be sick," said I.

"Likely. Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to sit on a rock all wet in the blaze of the sun! I wonder if it's all too pleasant--whether Nemesis has her wooden eye on me? Oh, Mother Nemesis, beautiful, kind Lady Nemesis, remove your wooden eye from me! Your wooden eye offends me; pluck it out and cast it from thee! I don't do much harm; I sit in the sea and eat my food, and have a tremendous quantity of great ideas, none of which ever come to anything."

"You might be called lazy, you know," said I. "Lady Nemesis would explain that to you before she beat you."

"I might be called whatever you choose to call me," said he, "but it need not be applicable. I'm not lazy; my brain is an exceedingly busy one, though it doesn't devote itself to the orthodox pursuits of losing money in the city and labelling yourself a financier, or playing bridge in a country town and labelling yourself a soldier, or writing a lot of weary stories and calling yourself an author."

"I never did," said I hastily.

"Well, you permit other people to do so, if you will put on the cap like that. Don't rag, or I shall push you into the sea. I was saying that I was not lazy, because I think. Most people imagine that energy must be spent in action, and they will tell you quite erroneously (as you did just now) that if you don't sit in an office, or something of that kind, or do something, that you are indolent. The reason is that most people can't think, and so when they cease from acting they are unemployed. But people who can think are never so busy as when they cease from action. Most people are beavers; they build a dam, in which they shut up their souls. And they call it civilization. The world as pictured by such Progressionists will be an awful place. There will be wonderful drainage, and milk for children, and capsuled food, and inoculation against all diseases, and plenty of peace and comfort for everybody, and a chromolithograph of Mr. H. G. Wells on every wall. Then the millennium will come, the great vegetable millennium, in which the whole human race will stretch from world's end to world's end like rows of cabbages, each in his own place in straight lines, and all seated on the ground, as the hymn says. Why, the whole glory of the human race is that we're not content, not happy, missing something always, yearning for something that eludes us and glorifies our search...."

He paused a moment, and drew the thermometer out of the water.

"It's an affair of conscience," he said; "I do what my conscience tells me is of most importance."

I felt rather sore at the fact that this afternoon I had to start on my northern career across Europe in a dusty train, with the knowledge that Francis would be here, still cool and clean, in the sea, while the smuts poured in on to the baked red velvet of my carriage, and that here he would remain, while I, dutiful and busy, saw the sooty skies of the town on the Thames, which seemed a most deplorable place of residence. Some of this soreness oozed into my words.

"Your conscience is very kind to you," I said. "It tells you that it is of the highest importance that you should live in this adorable island and spend your day exactly as you choose."

"But if it said I should go back to England, and sweep a crossing in--what's the name of that foul street with a paddock on one side of it?--Oh, yes, Piccadilly--sweep a crossing in Piccadilly, I should certainly go!" said he.

Unfortunately for purposes of argument, I knew that this was true.

"I know you would," I said, "but on the day of departure you must excuse my being jealous of such a well-ordered conscience. Oh, Francis, how bleak the white cliffs of our beloved England will look! Sometimes I really wish Heaven hadn't commanded, and that Britain had remained at the bottom of the azure main instead of arising from out of it. How I shall hate the solemn, self-sufficient faces of the English. English faces always look as if they knew they were right, and they generally are, which makes it worse. A quantity of them together are so dreadful, large and stupid and proper and rich and pompous, like rows of well-cooked hams. Italian faces are far nicer; they're a bed of pansies, all enjoying the sun and nodding to each other. I don't want to go to England! Oh, not to be in England now that July's here! I wish you would come, too. Take a holiday from being good, and doing what your conscience tells you, and spending your days exactly as you like. Come and eat beef and beer, and feel the jolly north-east wind and the rain and the mud and the fogs, and all those wonderful influences that make us English what we are!"

Francis laughed.

"It all sounds very tempting, very tempting indeed," he said. "But I shall resist. The fact is I believe I've ceased to be English. It's very shocking, for I suppose a lack of patriotism is one of the most serious lacks you can have. But I've got it. Even your sketch of England doesn't arouse any thrill in me. Imagine if war was possible between England and Italy. Where would my sympathies really be? I know quite well, but I shan't tell you."

The daily tourist steamer, the same that in a few hours' time would take me away, came churning round the point, going to the Marina, where it would lie at anchor till four o'clock. It was obviously crammed with passengers--Germans, probably, for the most part, and the strains of the "Watch by the Rhine" played by the ship's band (cornet, violin and bombardon) came fatly across the water to us. Francis got up.

"Sorry, but it's time to swim back and dress," he said. "There's the steamer."

"There's the cart for Tyburn," said I mournfully.

So we put the tin box with the thermometer and the two cigarettes to be smoked on the rock one day in the middle of September, back in its curtained cave, and swam to land, lingering and lying on the sea and loath to go. Then we dressed and walked through the dappled shade of the olive trees on the cobbled paths between the vineyards to where on the dusty road our carriage waited for us, and so up to the Villa.

I had but little to do in the way of packing, for with this house permanently ours and the certainty (in spite of qualms) of coming back in a couple of months' time, I was making deposit of clothes here, and a few hours later I stood on the deck of the crowded steamer and saw the pier, with Francis standing white and tall on the end of it, diminish and diminish. The width of water between me and the enchanted island increased, and the foam of our wash grew longer, like a white riband endlessly laid out on a table of sapphire blue. All round me were crowds of German tourists, gutturally exclaiming on the beauty of the island and the excellence of the beer. And soon the haze of hot summer weather began to weave its veil between us and Alatri: it grew dim and unsubstantial; the solidity of its capes and cliffs melted and lost its clarity of outline till it lay dream-like and vague, a harp-shaped shell of grey floating on the horizon to the west. Already, before we got to Naples, it seemed years ago that I sat on its beaches and swam in its seas with a friend called Francis.

AUGUST, 1914

Out of the serene stillness, and with the swiftness of the hurricane, the storm came up. It was in June that there appeared the little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, when the heir to the Austrian throne was murdered at Serajevo. There it hung on the horizon, and none heeded, though in the womb of it lurked the seed of the most terrific tempest of blood and fire that the world has ever known. Suddenly in the last week of July that seed fructified, shooting out monstrous tendrils to East and West. A Note was sent from Vienna to Servia making demands, and insisting on terms that no State could possibly entertain, if it was henceforth to consider itself a free country. Servia appealed to Russia for protection, and Russia remonstrated with those who had framed or (more accurately) those who had sent that Note. The remonstrance fell on ears that had determined not to hear, and the throttling pressure of the inflexible hands was not abated. London and Paris appealed for a conference, for arbitration that might find a peaceful solution, for already all Europe saw that here was a firebrand that might set the world aflame. And then we began to see who it was that had caused it to be lit and flung, and who it was that stood over it now, forbidding any to quench it.

Out of the gathering darkness there arose, like some overtopping genius, the figure of Germany, with face inexorable and flint-like, ready at last for _Der Tag,_ for the dawning of which during the last forty years she had been making ready, with patient, unremitting toil, and hell in her heart. She was clad in the shining armour well known in the flamboyant utterances of her megalomaniac Nero, and her hand grasped the sword that she had already half-drawn from its scabbard. She but waited, as a watcher through the night waits for the morn that is imminent, for the event that her schemes had already made inevitable, and on the first sign of the mobilization of the Russian armies, demanded that that mobilization should cease. Long years she had waited, weaving her dream of world-wide conquest; now she was ready, and her edict went forth for the dawning of The Day, and, like Satan creating the world afresh, she thundered out: "Let there be night." Then she shut down her visor and unsheathed her sword.

She had chosen her moment well, and, ready for the hazard that should make her mistress of the world, or cause her to cease from among the nations, she paid no heed to Russia's invitation to a friendly conference. She wished to confer with none, and she would be friendly with none whom she had not first battered into submission, and ground into serfdom with her iron heel. On both her frontiers she was prepared; on the East her mobilization would be complete long before the Russian troops could be brought up, and gathering certain of her legions on that front, she pulled France into the conflict. For on the Western front she was ready, too; on the word she could discharge her troops in one bull-like rush through Belgium, and, holding the shattered and dispersed armies of France in check, turn to Russia again. Given that she had but those two foes to deal with, it seemed to her that in a few weeks she must be mistress of Europe, and prepared at high noon of _Der Tag_ to attack the only country that really stood between her and world-wide dominion. She was not seeking a quarrel with England just yet, and she had strong hopes that, distracted by the imminence of civil war in Ireland, we should be unable to come to the help of our Allies until our Allies were past all help. Here she was staking on an uncertainty, for though she had copious information from her army of spies, who in embassy and consulate and city office had eaten the bread of England, and grasped every day the hands of English citizens, it could not be regarded as an absolute certainty that England would stand aside. But she had strong reasons to hope that she would.

It was on the first day of this month that Germany shut her visor down and declared war on Russia. Automatically, this would spread the flame of war over France, and next day it was known that Germany had asked leave to march her armies through Belgium, making it quite clear that whatever answer was given her, she would not hesitate to do it. Belgium refused permission, and appealed to England. On Monday, August 3rd, Germany was at war with France, and began to move her armies up to and across the Belgian frontier, violating the territory she had sworn to respect, and strewing the fragments of her torn-up honour behind her. Necessity, she averred, knew no law, and since it was vital for the success of her dream of world-conquest that her battalions should pass through Belgium, every other consideration ceased to exist for her. National honour, the claim, the certificate of a country's right to be reckoned among the civilizing powers of the world, must be sacrificed. She burned in the flame of the war she had kindled the patent of her rights to rank among civilized states.

It was exactly this, which meant nothing to her, that meant everything to us, and it upset the calculation on which Germany had based her action, namely, that England was too much distracted by internal conflict to interfere. There was a large party, represented in the Government, which held that the quarrel of Germany with France and Russia was none of our business, and that we were within our rights to stand aside. All that Monday the country waited to know what the decision of the Cabinet and of the House would be.

The suspense of those hours can never be pictured. It belongs to the nightmare side of life, where the very essence of the threatening horror lies in the fact that it is indefinite. But this I know, that to thousands of others, even as to myself, England, from being a vague idea in the background which we took for granted and did not trouble about, leaped into being as a mother, or a beloved personage, of whose flesh and bone we were, out of whose womb we had sprung. All my life, I am willing to confess I had not given her a thought, I had not even consciously conceived of her as a reality; she had been to me but like the heroine of some unreal sentimental tale, a thing to blush at if she was publicly spoken of. But on those days she, who had hitherto meant nothing to me, sprang to life, deep-bosomed, with patient hands and tender eyes, in which was no shadow of reproach for all those years of careless contempt. And by the curious irony of things, on the day that she was revealed to me, she stood in a place, from which, if she chose, she could withdraw herself into isolation, and from which, if she chose, she could step forth to meet the deadliest peril that had ever assailed her. But even in the moment of the first knowledge and love of her that had ever entered my soul, I prayed in a silent agony of anxiety that she should leave her sheltered isle for the unimaginable danger of the tempest that raged beyond the sea that was hers. For, indeed, if she did not, she was but a phantom of the pit; no mother of mine, but some unspeakable puppet, a thing to be hidden away in her shame and nakedness.

It was known that night that England would not tolerate the violation of Belgian soil, and had sent an ultimatum to Germany which would expire in twenty-four hours. And from the whole country there went up one intense sigh of relief that we were resolved to embark on what must be the most prodigious war that the world had ever seen. "Give War in our time, O Lord!" was the prayer of all who most truly knew that the only peace possible to us was a peace which would stamp the name of England with indelible infamy. And God heard their prayer, and on Wednesday we woke to a world where all was changed. The light-hearted, luxurious, unreflective days were gone, never probably in our time to return. Already the tempest of fire and blood was loosened in Europe; a line was drawn across the lives of everyone, and for the future there were but two periods in one's consciousness, the time before the war, and war-time.

It was during this week that I had a long letter from Francis written before the English ultimatum was known, but delayed in posts that were already scrutinized and censored. Though I had no friend in the world so intimate as he, his letter revealed him now as a person strangely remote, speaking an unintelligible language. So little a while ago I had spoken the same tongue as he; now all he said seemed to be gibberish, though his sentiments were just such as I might have expressed myself, if, since then, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday had not been among the days of my life.

"Things look black," he said, "and the papers, for once
reflecting the mind of the people, are asking what Italy
will do, if Germany and Austria go to war with France
and Russia. I believe (and, remember, I speak entirely
from the Italian point of view, for verily I have long
ceased to be English) that it is frankly impossible that
we should range ourselves side by side with Austria, our
hereditary foe. It seems one of the things that can't
happen; no ministry could remain in office that proposed
that. And yet we are the ally of Austria and Germany,
unless it is true, as the _Corriere_ tells us, that the
terms of our alliance only bind us to them in the event
of aggression on the part of two nations of the Triple
Entente. Be that as it may, I don't believe we can come
in with Austria.

"I am extremely glad of it, for I am one of those
queer creatures who do not believe that a quarrel
between two countries can be justly settled by making
a quantity of harmless young men on both sides shoot
each other. I don't see that such a method of settling
a dispute proves anything beyond showing which side
has the better rifles, and has been better trained,
unless you deliberately adopt the rule of life that
'Might is Right.' If you do let us be consistent, and
I will waylay Caterina as she goes home with the money
Seraphina has given her for the washing, rob, and, if
necessary, murder her. If she proves to be stronger than
me, she will scratch my face and bring her money safely
home. And her father will try to shoot me next day, and
I will try to shoot him. That's the logical outcome of
Might is Right.

"I am glad, too, of this, that I myself am a
denationalized individual, and if I have a motherland
at all, it is this beloved stepmother-land, who for so
long has treated me as one of her children. Damnable as
I think war is, I think I could fight for her, if anyone
slapped her beautiful face. And yet how could I fight
against the country to whom we owe not only so much of
the art and science, but of Thought itself? Germany
taught mankind how to think.

"Let me know how things go in England. It looks as if
you could keep out of this hurly-burly. So if Italy
does too, I hope to see you here again in September.
Seraphina suggests that Italy should make pretence of
being friends with the '_bestia fedente,_' by which she
means the Austrians, and that when they are fighting the
Russians, she should run swiftly from them and seize the
Trentino again. There seems much good sense in this, for
'the Trentino is ours, and it is right and proper to
take what belongs to us.'

"England must be peculiarly beastly with all these
disturbances going on. Why don't you pack up your
tooth-brush and your comb and come back again at once?
The _Palazzo a mare_ is better than Piccadilly, and the
purple figs are ripe, and the cones are dropping from
the stone-pine, and never were there such fat kernels
for Seraphina to fry in oil. Perhaps if you come back
the _strega_ would continue walking; she seems to have
had no exercise since you were here. Your room is empty,
and the door makes sorrowful faces at me as I go along
the passage. It frowns at me, and says it isn't I it
wants. And I share the silent verdict of your door.

"I don't see what quarrel England can have with Germany,
and it is unthinkable that Italy should go in with the
Central Powers against the Triple Entente. Besides,
how is England to fight Germany? It is the elephant
and the whale. England hasn't got an army, has it? I
can't remember anything connected with soldiers in
England, except some sort of barracks with a small
temple or chapel in front of it somewhere in St. James's
Park. And I suppose the German fleet is only a sort of
herring-boat compared to a liner, if it comes to ships.
So really I don't see how the two countries could fight
each other even if they wanted to.

"Even if you don't come now, you'll be certain to be
back in September, won't you? Otherwise I shall think
that there is some validity in presentiments, for you
went away with a notion that it was not only for a
month or two that you went. Better put an end to vain
superstition by coming back before.

"Ever yours,

"Francis."

"P.S.--Send a wire if you are coming. They say the posts
are disorganized.

"Donna Margherita has had words with Miss Machonochie's
cook. I'm sure I don't want any harm to come to Miss
Machonochie or her household, but I think there must
already be a leak in her cistern. That would be a good
day's work for Donna Margherita, wouldn't it? Otherwise,
when we all have plenty of water, why should Miss M.
alone be wanting it?"