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Page 19
"I never suggested that for a moment," said Philip
courteously. "You are honourable, I am sure; but are you
wise? And let me remind you that we want her with us at
home. Her little daughter will be motherless, our home will
be broken up. If you grant my request you will earn our
thanks--and you will not be without a reward for your
disappointment."
"Reward--what reward?" He bent over the back of a chair
and looked earnestly at Philip. They were coming to terms
pretty quickly. Poor Lilia!
Philip said slowly, "What about a thousand lire?"
His soul went forth into one exclamation, and then he
was silent, with gaping lips. Philip would have given
double: he had expected a bargain.
"You can have them tonight."
He found words, and said, "It is too late."
"But why?"
"Because--" His voice broke. Philip watched his face,--a
face without refinement perhaps, but not without
expression,--watched it quiver and re-form and dissolve from
emotion into emotion. There was avarice at one moment, and
insolence, and politeness, and stupidity, and cunning--and
let us hope that sometimes there was love. But gradually
one emotion dominated, the most unexpected of all; for his
chest began to heave and his eyes to wink and his mouth to
twitch, and suddenly he stood erect and roared forth his
whole being in one tremendous laugh.
Philip sprang up, and Gino, who had flung wide his arms
to let the glorious creature go, took him by the shoulders
and shook him, and said, "Because we are
married--married--married as soon as I knew you were, coming.
There was no time to tell you. Oh. oh! You have come all
the way for nothing. Oh! And oh, your generosity!"
Suddenly he became grave, and said, "Please pardon me; I am
rude. I am no better than a peasant, and I--" Here he saw
Philip's face, and it was too much for him. He gasped and
exploded and crammed his hands into his mouth and spat them
out in another explosion, and gave Philip an aimless push,
which toppled him on to the bed. He uttered a horrified
Oh! and then gave up, and bolted away down the passage,
shrieking like a child, to tell the joke to his wife.
For a time Philip lay on the bed, pretending to himself
that he was hurt grievously. He could scarcely see for
temper, and in the passage he ran against Miss Abbott, who
promptly burst into tears.
"I sleep at the Globo," he told her, "and start for
Sawston tomorrow morning early. He has assaulted me. I
could prosecute him. But shall not."
"I can't stop here," she sobbed. "I daren't stop here.
You will have to take me with you!"
Chapter 3
Opposite the Volterra gate of Monteriano, outside the city,
is a very respectable white-washed mud wall, with a coping
of red crinkled tiles to keep it from dissolution. It would
suggest a gentleman's garden if there was not in its middle
a large hole, which grows larger with every rain-storm.
Through the hole is visible, firstly, the iron gate that is
intended to close it; secondly, a square piece of ground
which, though not quite, mud, is at the same time not
exactly grass; and finally, another wall, stone this time,
which has a wooden door in the middle and two
wooden-shuttered windows each side, and apparently forms the
facade of a one-storey house.
This house is bigger than it looks, for it slides for
two storeys down the hill behind, and the wooden door, which
is always locked, really leads into the attic. The knowing
person prefers to follow the precipitous mule-track round
the turn of the mud wall till he can take the edifice in the
rear. Then--being now on a level with the cellars--he lifts
up his head and shouts. If his voice sounds like something
light--a letter, for example, or some vegetables, or a bunch
of flowers--a basket is let out of the first-floor windows by
a string, into which he puts his burdens and departs. But
if he sounds like something heavy, such as a log of wood, or
a piece of meat, or a visitor, he is interrogated, and then
bidden or forbidden to ascend. The ground floor and the
upper floor of that battered house are alike deserted, and
the inmates keep the central portion, just as in a dying
body all life retires to the heart. There is a door at the
top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is
admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily
cold. There are several rooms, some dark and mostly
stuffy--a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs,
wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit--German bad
taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also
a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when
the refining influence of hospitality is absent, and real
bedrooms; and last, but not least, the loggia, where you can
live day and night if you feel inclined, drinking vermouth
and smoking cigarettes, with leagues of olive-trees and
vineyards and blue-green hills to watch you.
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