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Page 51
"He said he was sorry--pleasantly, as Italians do say
such things. But he never mentioned the baby once."
What did the baby matter when the world was suddenly
right way up? Philip smiled, and was shocked at himself for
smiling, and smiled again. For romance had come back to
Italy; there were no cads in her; she was beautiful,
courteous, lovable, as of old. And Miss Abbott--she, too,
was beautiful in her way, for all her gaucheness and
conventionality. She really cared about life, and tried to
live it properly. And Harriet--even Harriet tried.
This admirable change in Philip proceeds from nothing
admirable, and may therefore provoke the gibes of the
cynical. But angels and other practical people will accept
it reverently, and write it down as good.
"The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at
sunset," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
"And he never mentioned the baby once," Miss Abbott
repeated. But she had returned to the window, and again her
finger pursued the delicate curves. He watched her in
silence, and was more attracted to her than he had ever been
before. She really was the strangest mixture.
"The view from the Rocca--wasn't it fine?"
"What isn't fine here?" she answered gently, and then
added, "I wish I was Harriet," throwing an extraordinary
meaning into the words.
"Because Harriet--?"
She would not go further, but he believed that she had
paid homage to the complexity of life. For her, at all
events, the expedition was neither easy nor jolly. Beauty,
evil, charm, vulgarity, mystery--she also acknowledged this
tangle, in spite of herself. And her voice thrilled him
when she broke silence with "Mr. Herriton--come here--look at
this!"
She removed a pile of plates from the Gothic window, and
they leant out of it. Close opposite, wedged between mean
houses, there rose up one of the great towers. It is your
tower: you stretch a barricade between it and the hotel, and
the traffic is blocked in a moment. Farther up, where the
street empties out by the church, your connections, the
Merli and the Capocchi, do likewise. They command the
Piazza, you the Siena gate. No one can move in either but
he shall be instantly slain, either by bows or by crossbows,
or by Greek fire. Beware, however, of the back bedroom
windows. For they are menaced by the tower of the
Aldobrandeschi, and before now arrows have stuck quivering
over the washstand. Guard these windows well, lest there be
a repetition of the events of February 1338, when the hotel
was surprised from the rear, and your dearest friend--you
could just make out that it was he--was thrown at you over
the stairs.
"It reaches up to heaven," said Philip, "and down to the
other place." The summit of the tower was radiant in the
sun, while its base was in shadow and pasted over with
advertisements. "Is it to be a symbol of the town?"
She gave no hint that she understood him. But they
remained together at the window because it was a little
cooler and so pleasant. Philip found a certain grace and
lightness in his companion which he had never noticed in
England. She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness
of wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm. He
did not suspect that he was more graceful too. For our
vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable,
and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even
for the better.
Citizens came out for a little stroll before dinner.
Some of them stood and gazed at the advertisements on the tower.
"Surely that isn't an opera-bill?" said Miss Abbott.
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