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Page 43
"Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with
what she doesn't understand! Look at this letter! The man
who wrote it will marry her, or murder her, or do for her
somehow. He's a bounder, but he's not an English bounder.
He's mysterious and terrible. He's got a country behind him
that's upset people from the beginning of the world."
"Harriet!" exclaimed his mother. "Harriet shall go
too. Harriet, now, will be invaluable!" And before Philip
had stopped talking nonsense, she had planned the whole
thing and was looking out the trains.
Chapter 6
Italy, Philip had always maintained, is only her true self
in the height of the summer, when the tourists have left
her, and her soul awakes under the beams of a vertical sun.
He now had every opportunity of seeing her at her best, for
it was nearly the middle of August before he went out to
meet Harriet in the Tirol.
He found his sister in a dense cloud five thousand feet
above the sea, chilled to the bone, overfed, bored, and not
at all unwilling to be fetched away.
"It upsets one's plans terribly," she remarked, as she
squeezed out her sponges, "but obviously it is my duty."
"Did mother explain it all to you?" asked Philip.
"Yes, indeed! Mother has written me a really beautiful
letter. She describes how it was that she gradually got to
feel that we must rescue the poor baby from its terrible
surroundings, how she has tried by letter, and it is no
good--nothing but insincere compliments and hypocrisy came
back. Then she says, 'There is nothing like personal
influence; you and Philip will succeed where I have failed.'
She says, too, that Caroline Abbott has been wonderful."
Philip assented.
"Caroline feels it as keenly almost as us. That is
because she knows the man. Oh, he must be loathsome!
Goodness me! I've forgotten to pack the ammonia! . . . It
has been a terrible lesson for Caroline, but I fancy it is
her turning-point. I can't help liking to think that out of
all this evil good will come."
Philip saw no prospect of good, nor of beauty either.
But the expedition promised to be highly comic. He was not
averse to it any longer; he was simply indifferent to all in
it except the humours. These would be wonderful. Harriet,
worked by her mother; Mrs. Herriton, worked by Miss Abbott;
Gino, worked by a cheque--what better entertainment could he
desire? There was nothing to distract him this time; his
sentimentality had died, so had his anxiety for the family
honour. He might be a puppet's puppet, but he knew exactly
the disposition of the strings.
They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the
streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the
vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and
drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be
beautiful. And the train which had picked them at sunrise
out of a waste of glaciers and hotels was waltzing at sunset
round the walls of Verona.
"Absurd nonsense they talk about the heat," said Philip,
as they drove from the station. "Supposing we were here for
pleasure, what could be more pleasurable than this?"
"Did you hear, though, they are remarking on the cold?"
said Harriet nervously. "I should never have thought it cold."
And on the second day the heat struck them, like a hand
laid over the mouth, just as they were walking to see the
tomb of Juliet. From that moment everything went wrong.
They fled from Verona. Harriet's sketch-book was stolen,
and the bottle of ammonia in her trunk burst over her
prayer-book, so that purple patches appeared on all her
clothes. Then, as she was going through Mantua at four in
the morning, Philip made her look out of the window because
it was Virgil's birthplace, and a smut flew in her eye, and
Harriet with a smut in her eye was notorious. At Bologna
they stopped twenty-four hours to rest. It was a FESTA, and
children blew bladder whistles night and day. "What a
religion!" said Harriet. The hotel smelt, two puppies were
asleep on her bed, and her bedroom window looked into a
belfry, which saluted her slumbering form every quarter of
an hour. Philip left his walking-stick, his socks, and the
Baedeker at Bologna; she only left her sponge-bag. Next day
they crossed the Apennines with a train-sick child and a hot
lady, who told them that never, never before had she sweated
so profusely. "Foreigners are a filthy nation," said
Harriet. "I don't care if there are tunnels; open the
windows." He obeyed, and she got another smut in her eye.
Nor did Florence improve matters. Eating, walking, even a
cross word would bathe them both in boiling water. Philip,
who was slighter of build, and less conscientious, suffered
less. But Harriet had never been to Florence, and between
the hours of eight and eleven she crawled like a wounded
creature through the streets, and swooned before various
masterpieces of art. It was an irritable couple who took
tickets to Monteriano.
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