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diff --git a/33482.txt b/33482.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c2f45b --- /dev/null +++ b/33482.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5049 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Furnace, by Rose Macaulay + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Furnace + + +Author: Rose Macaulay + + + +Release Date: August 22, 2010 [eBook #33482] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FURNACE*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page +images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/thefurnace00maca + + + + + +THE FURNACE + +by + +R. MACAULAY + +Author of 'Abbots Verney' + + + + + + + +London +John Murray, Albemarle Street, W. +1907 + + + + + TO THE + OTHER CITIZENS OF SANTA CATERINA, + VARAZZE, + WHO, AT PRESENT SCATTERED LABORIOUSLY OVER + THREE CONTINENTS, + INTEND, IN THE SPACIOUS DAYS OF LEISURE + THAT AGE SHALL BRING, +TO INHABIT AGAIN THE RED HOUSE BEYOND THE TOWN + AND NAVIGATE THE WHITE CANOE. + + + 'Le metal precieux qu'on trouvera un jour au fond des cendres....' + MAURICE MAETERLINCK + + + + +CONTENTS + + + I. YOUTH IN THE CITY + + II. THE IMPRESSION-SEEKER + + III. OF MENTAL STANDPOINTS + + IV. BLIND WALLS + + V. BALAE'S BAY + + VI. GRADONI + + VII. RETROSPECT WITH THE SEARCH-LIGHT + + VIII. BROKEN BARRIERS + + IX. FURNACE FLAMES + + X. BETTY AND TOMMY + + XI. THE ETERNAL ROADS + + XII. THE ROADS DIVIDE + + XIII. PINE-BARK BOATS + + + + +THE FURNACE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +YOUTH IN THE CITY + + 'Val piu aver amici in piazza + Che denari nella cassa.' + + _Proverb._ + + +Royalty was arriving in the harbour in a steam-yacht. It had, that is, +already arrived in the harbour; it was now disembarking on the pier. It +was an interesting event. An edified crowd watched it; representatives +of the Press jotted down their impressions; some took photographs. A few +drew pictures instead. The representative of the _Marchese Peppino_, an +illustrated paper widely perused in certain circles, drew pictures; one +might gather that it was his intention to be funny, later, when he had +leisure to amplify. _Marchese Peppino_ always had that intention, and +its readers, whose judgment of humour was possibly, however, not of the +most delicate or polished type, considered that it usually fulfilled it. +The drawings now in process of production were, before they were +amplified at leisure, really quite like life; later they would become +less so, but no doubt more entertaining. They seemed to be a little +funny even now. A man looking over the artist's shoulder giggled and dug +him in the ribs. The artist was a nonchalant young man, who did not seem +to be amusing himself particularly, but to be working in a wholly +professional and business-like spirit. He had quick eyes and clever +fingers, and presumably, since he did his job really well, a suitably +developed sense of the ludicrous. + +Royalty left the pier. It was, presumably, going to have lunch before it +admired Naples. That was certainly as well; it gave the representatives +of the Press a respite, during which they, too, if they had the +inclination and the wherewithal, might have lunch. + +The representative of the _Marchese Peppino_ sat down on an inverted +basket and continued to record impressions, while the crowd thinned +slowly. + +A facetious young man, passing the artist, made a show of being doubled +up with helpless laughter--a mirth presumably anticipatory in nature and +complimentary of intent. When he wearied of the compliment he clapped +the journalist on the shoulder and observed: + +'We shall split our sides on Thursday, ne?' + +He cherished an immense admiration for the pictorial staff of the +_Marchese Peppino_. The staff gave him his usual melancholy look from +under quick brows, and said: + +'Have you seen my sister?' + +'Just now, talking over there with La Corrini.' + +From the group indicated by the jerked thumb the staff's sister emerged. +She strolled up to her brother. There did not seem to be any particular +difference between them, externally. The boy might have been +twenty-three and the girl twenty-two; or it was quite equally likely to +be the other way about. At first glance there seemed to be a certain +resemblance between them in dress as well as in face; analysis, however, +reduced this to the suggestion in each of an untidiness--one might all +but say a disreputability--that made their worldly status a matter for +speculation. The girl's hat was of broken straw, pulled over her eyes; +one of her shoes lacked a lace; her blue cotton dress was sun-bleached +and discoloured. The boy wore a ragged blazer, frayed flannel trousers, +and a very limp Panama hat, which he kept turning up, with +sweet-tempered patience, when it flopped over his eyes. + +The girl sat down beside her brother. She had--they both had--a serene +air of being admirably content to do nothing during prolonged periods. +To sit by the harbour and talk, if the day were fine and the company +agreeable, was an excellent afternoon's occupation. The streets were +always entertaining, and the harbour particularly so, with the thronging +of those who go down to the sea in ships, and the gay greetings of +friends, and the cheerful shouting of mariners. Neapolitan loafers (and +really to loaf, in the highest sense of that agreeable word, one should +go to Naples) always like the harbour. The smell of the sea, too, is +pleasant on a hot September afternoon, especially to the unfastidious, +who do not cavil at its dilution with various other odours. + +The talk between the brother and sister and the cheerful youth who was +giving himself a holiday from his shop was leisurely, of an easy +familiarity, seasoned with allusions and anecdotes that showed them to +share in common a 'set.' The girl's talk was partly professional, of the +music-hall stage, on which she made casual and irregular appearances. La +Corrini had been saying something to her.... In the report this was very +funny. The stout youth, whose name, one gathered, was Luli, roared with +laughter and spat many times. It was noticeable that the drawer of +pictures, though he, too, talked a great deal, did not spit at all: he +only stammered. + +Presently they decided to have lunch, and went off, the three of them +together, Luli affectionately clinging to the journalist's arm. They +turned into a _trattoria_ in the Toledo. At one of the marble-topped and +not very elaborately cleaned tables a finely developed young woman ate +_spaghetti_ with admirable speed and dexterity, and drank red Posilipo. +The three, seeing her, hailed her with some effusion, and joined her at +her table. There ensued a very sociable and conversational repast, and +there was a great deal of noise, with the full-bodied and rather +strident tones of the young woman of the _spaghetti_, the resonant +laughter of Luli, and the stuttering, melancholy-toned and unceasing +flow of singularly futile and inane babbling that emanated from the +journalist and his sister. These two appeared to have a somewhat +extensive circle in Naples; they exchanged greetings with most of their +fellow-eaters. Some of these were really comparatively reputable; quite +a number were very gaily attired, and most seemed light of heart. + +The journalist, after finishing his wine and his inexpensive cigar, +announced himself obliged to depart in pursuit of business. + +'I must catch them driving out. They are sure to drive out, you know.' + +His sister said she too would come, and catch them driving out. + +So they went out into the street and sauntered leisurely along it. Its +screaming, gay business was a little hushed at this hour of the hot +September day; behind closed green shutters people shunned the +vertically striking sun; the heavy noon brooded over what was almost, +for Naples, stillness. It was not, had the representative of _Marchese +Peppino_ considered the question, in the least likely that he would at +this hour 'catch them driving out.' He very likely did not particularly +care whether he so caught them or not; he liked to walk about the +streets; neither he nor his sister minded the glare and the hot, baked +smell that beat up into their faces. They had an air of very leisurely +sweet temper and content with life as it was lived as they sauntered +along the Toledo together. There were two things it was manifest that +they would not in any circumstances do: they would quarrel with no one, +and they would take no thought for the morrow. + +'I wonder,' the journalist was saying, 'if Luli would lend us twenty +francs. Think he would, Betty?' + +He spoke in English now; they always spoke English to each other when +they were alone together, though they seemed quite equally at their ease +in both languages; they also stammered equally in both. They stammered +when they were at all excited, or earnest, or tired, and very often when +they were not. When they were talking, these hiatuses were often the +only opportunities their companions had of getting in a word edgeways. + +Betty thought it improbable that Luli would lend any such sum. + +'You know, Tommy, we had ten from him last month. He won't miss it if +we don't remind him, but it would be silly to bother him again just +yet.' + +'Oh, all right. But I'm afraid we've rather got to get some somehow. +We've spent an awful lot lately. Why did we have lunch to-day? We didn't +want it.' + +'Who's been bothering?' + +From long experience Betty caught the issue. + +'The chap I get paints from. I--I told him he'd got to wait; he c-cut up +rough; said he'd waited long enough.' + +The stutter, becoming pronounced, showed Tommy a little stirred. + +'Well----' Betty's tone was depressed. There was an intonation of +melancholy, however, in general in the Crevequers' stammering speech--a +melancholy that was on the borderland of laughter, and stuttered into it +as a man stumbles unawares into puddles, walking along a wet path. Miss +Crevequer, quite suddenly, stumbled into one now, for no apparent +reason, and dragged Tommy after her. 'Well'--Betty regained, as it were, +dry ground--'let's give him this week's rent; and by next week something +will have turned up. You can win some at cards, can't you? It's a pity +I've got no job just now. At least, it's rather fun really, and we'll go +to the theatre to-night.' + +Tommy nodded. The proposition seemed a matter of course; no incongruity +struck either. There was, in fact, no incongruity; it was very simple: +the payment of debts would have been an indulgence quite beyond their +means; going to the theatre was one within them. The Crevequers could +only afford cheap pleasures. + +They settled themselves for the afternoon under an awning outside a cafe +by which royalty, it was supposed, would eventually pass. There they +conversed with friends, and Tommy drew pictures, and time, as usual, +passed agreeably and sociably. At about six o'clock there came by an +informant, who remarked that royalty had gone for a drive in the +opposite direction. Tommy started in pursuit, and did not join Betty +again till it was too late for the theatre. So they asked some friends +and had a supper-party at a restaurant instead, because the theatre +money must be somehow spent. Its spending, and a good deal more besides, +proved beautifully easy. Then they came home through the lit streets; +the flare of them and the noise of them and the gay people who lounged +and talked in them always made the Crevequers feel cheerily at home, and +flowing over with the milk of human kindness. + +Beyond the flaring, screaming world there was a soft summer moon, nearly +at the full, and spaces of silver light on the land and the dark, still +sea. But these children of the gay streets had no concern with the moon; +the lamps were for them, and the flare of lights that lit the coster's +barrow and the pedlar's awning. They loafed along with the true +vagrant's air of irresponsible well-being to their home, which was in a +narrow street sloping upwards out of the Toledo--sloping up steeply, and +laid out in shallow steps. + +The Crevequers lived in a flat at the top of a tall pink house. None of +the occupants of the house seemed to have yet retired; most of them were +in the street outside. The Crevequers stayed for a little to talk to +them, then went in and climbed many flights of dark stone stairs, and +came at last into the room where they lived. The room had an inexpensive +air. It had, however, no lack of contents, and these were, without +exception, in unexpected places; the books, for instance, lay on the +floor in a corner--a battered selection from the light literature of two +languages. There were papers, half-finished drawings, writing and +painting materials, littered over the table among half-emptied bottles, +cigarettes, and unwashed glasses. The ceiling was interesting; it was +partially covered with a design in bold colours, unfinished; it gave the +impression of being worked at, spasmodically, at irregular intervals, by +more than one artist; it had an interesting air of awaiting the next +inspiration. It was an untrammelled composite, so far, of the beauties +of nature, imaginative and highly exciting dramatic incident, and +scenes from pagan lore, with, whenever imagination or space required +padding, a cherub plunging through a festoon of flowers. Some of the +designs bore a vaguely familiar air; the visitor to Pompei might have +recognized, for instance, the lady on her knees with a bird's-nest full +of infants. The most note-worthy point about this ceiling was that it +was really not badly painted. + +The most comfortable features of the room were two large arm-chairs, one +on each side of the stove. Tommy cleared a space in one of them and +subsided into it. Betty dragged a spirit-lamp and a saucepan of milk +from under the table and knelt over it, whistling a soft, tired little +tune the while. Tommy, lying in his chair, whistled too, feeling in his +pockets for matches. + +'Cocoa, Tommy?' Betty broke her tune to say. + +'No.' He had found a match, and was scraping it perseveringly on his +knee. 'It's going to boil over,' he remarked. + +She caught it off with a deft hand and poured it into a cup, and, +carrying it to the other arm-chair, in which she did not trouble to +clear a space, she lay back with a sigh of contented languor. + +'Cigarette, please. Thank you.' + +There was a battering at the door, and an influx of three youths and two +young women. It seemed that they had been having supper together--enough +supper to raise their spirits and to make them very sociable and +amiable. The Crevequers, having also had supper, were sociable and +amiable too, and Tommy got out more wine, and the room became blue with +smoke and full of laughter; and Tommy played his banjo, and Betty sang a +song which amused them all very much, and the three young men and the +two young women shouted the chorus. None of the other occupants of the +house seemed to be disturbed--they were probably used to it. The company +stayed late. These pleasant gatherings are hard to break up, and the +Crevequers' friends seemed attached to them. With the young man who had +drunk most wine Tommy made a bet and won it; it was a five-franc note, +and it was satisfactory as it changed hands to feel that the loser, in +his then state of warm generosity, did not at all miss it. Tommy did a +further stroke of business by arranging an evening of cards with this +gentleman for the following week. At last, with hilarious leave-taking, +the visitors departed, some to their rooms in the same house, some +elsewhere, all very merry and affectionate. + +'It hasn't been a really busy day--not so very,' Betty remarked +presently. 'Why are we tired?' + +'There seems to have been plenty to do, one way and another,' Tommy +said, still gently fingering the banjo-strings. + +They spoke languidly. The tiredness of their faces seemed to slur over +the delicate discriminations that really existed between them. They +were, as a matter of fact, not quite exactly alike at ordinary times. +For example, Betty had a dimple, when she laughed, in her left cheek; +Tommy's indentation, rather fainter, was in his right. Both had blue +eyes glinting to grey, but the longer sweep of Betty's lashes made hers +oftener approach to black. When their eyes flickered from melancholy to +sudden laughter, as they did rather often, and usually on quite +unexpected and incongruous occasions, they had a trick of narrowing to +blue slits. The slant of the black brows of both was up, slightly, from +left to right; they were quick brows, that flickered a little with their +speech. + +'Let's get on our dressing-gowns and brush our hairs,' Betty suggested. + +She went into one of the two adjoining rooms, and returned with a red +dressing-gown and a hair-brush, and curled herself up in her chair. + +'Tommy, you really have done that faun's right leg so very badly--it's +getting a bad dream to me.' + +Her voice died away drowsily. The brush slipped from her hand down among +the piled contents of the chair; she yawned softly and fell asleep, her +hair hanging in two dark, unbrushed strands over either shoulder, her +cheek pillowed on one thin, scarred, childish hand. It was a curious +scar, crossing the back of her left hand, a white diagonal, drawn from +the knuckle of the fore-finger nearly to the wrist-bone. + +Tommy, his face turned complacently ceilingwards, fell asleep too. He +was very tired. They were both very tired. Betty's assertion that it had +not been a particularly busy day was doubtless correct, using the word +busy in its accepted sense. But, as Tommy had said, there seemed anyhow +to have been a good deal to do. There was usually for the Crevequers a +good deal to do, because, though they only at times and reluctantly +conformed to the law that those who would eat must work, they did +homage, thorough and without reservation, to the much more insistent +command of their being, that those who would live life as it should be +lived must make of it an exciting game, the object being to cram into +the space of each twenty-four hours as many amusements as could by +straining be confined therein. The number of points thus possible to +score each day they had discovered to be large; the chances they did +not devise for themselves by the ingenuity of their wits were devised +for them by affectionate acquaintances (the Crevequers were very +popular). They might be said, in fact, thoroughly to understand the art +of living; to understand, rather, one aspect of it--that which is +concerned with the receipt of pleasure. Their lack of means, though +deplored by them, did not very seriously incommode them. It only meant, +after all, that one had to practise a certain selection, and one could +select the right things, meaning thereby life's pleasing superfluities, +and leave the necessities to take care of themselves. The necessities +did not invariably take care of themselves; the Crevequers were +sometimes in winter cold (they liked immensely and above most things to +be warm), and sometimes remained hungry during a longer period than +seemed good to them, and were very often weary of foot, and usually +without the clothes they would have liked (mildly) to have been wearing. +But these times balanced themselves by occasional periods of luxury and +riotous living, particularly at the beginning of the year, when their +income figured before their ever-sanguine eyes, untouched, infinite and +inexhaustible in its possibilities. For they had a little besides +professional earnings; only it happened somehow that they spent always +rather more than they had, superfluities being so essential to their +existence. Lent, of course, came in opportunely, just when the first +riotous flush of the year was subsiding; in Lent one could not live in +luxury and go to theatres, even if one could afford it. The iron hand of +necessity clasped the more pliable fingers of duty, forcing them to an +unrelaxing hold. The Crevequers' confessor would, no doubt, have +approved of youth thus constrained. + +But, with all its inconveniences, life was a charmingly entertaining +game. In the faces of the children asleep, there was, besides sheer +weariness, a youthfulness almost ridiculous. They might have been +fourteen and fifteen. They were always young--very young--but when they +slept they were as two twin babes. Their youth, their childhood, seemed +somehow to obscure an aspect of them; there might have been also in it, +to the sentimentalist, a touch of pity, and to the moralist a vague +rising of dubious hope. + +Tommy, waking at a quarter-past two, stretched himself, yawned, and +threw an empty cigarette-box into Betty's lap. + +'Come to bed,' he said. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE IMPRESSION-SEEKER + + Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might + be painted in a picture? + Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung? + Or the attraction of gravity and the great laws and harmonious + combinations and the fluids of the air as subjects for the savants? + Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts? + + WALT WHITMAN. + + +It was probable that Mrs. Venables came to Naples in order to absorb +impressions. This was the business of her life; she made of herself a +sponge, and let the waters of her experiences fill her. Later, she +squeezed them out. It is admitted, of course, that any sponge will a +little colour with its own individualities of hue the water which +passes through it. She had really a fine power of discerning and +appraising significance in matters the most ordinary. When all is said, +to be easily 'struck' (her own word) must be accounted a gift, like any +other of the manifold gifts of receptiveness. Mrs. Venables was +struck--immensely struck--by the picturesque (her own word again) gaiety +of the Toledo in the late November evening. Her walk through it was a +veritable orgie to her. Her intelligent profile wore at moments a +strained look; it was as if the impressions pressed in with almost too +great a rapidity and force for capture. Capture was all she attempted; +digestion might come later. The same anxious strain may be observed in +the face of the gourmand confronted, he half fears, with more than his +match. This anxiety perhaps takes the edge from entire enjoyment; but +Mrs. Venables had not entered into life to receive pleasure, but +impressions. It was all copy to her: the pedlars' stalls with their +lights and groups of loafers, the unkempt men and women gutter-picking +('the _mozzonari_, Warren,' said Mrs. Venables, impressed), the people +eating macaroni under the awnings of travelling cooks, the rag-sellers +and the bone-buyers, and the general noisy sociability. It was all +absorbed; it would all be squeezed forth in due time; nothing would be +kept back, for the atmosphere of Southern Italy, so unique, depended on +these details. 'Be truthful, and you will certainly be interesting,' was +Mrs. Venables' theory of art; not at all 'Be interesting, and you may +possibly be truthful incidentally.' For which she deserved credit, as +the holder of a commendable ideal. + +Her son Warren knew that this walk was of the nature of an orgie. The +curve of his mother's fine lips would alone have conveyed that to him. +The set of his own evinced a little amusement; the scene to him was +ordinary enough, and there seemed to him to be a good many rather +obnoxious people about. People, obnoxious or agreeable, were not to him +copy, unless he wanted to paint them. His dark, clever face missed the +ideality of his mother's; his speculative eyes saw a good deal more. + +Outside a cafe a noisy group lounged. One of them was reading something +aloud from a paper; it seemed to be amusing. An explosion of laughter +interrupted the stuttering voice of the reader, as the Venables passed. +The reader, glancing up, looked Warren Venables full in the face. Then +the stuttering voice went on. More laughter exploded. + +'What are they reading?' Mrs. Venables wondered, as they left the group +behind them. + +'Oh, some rotten thing....' Warren Venables looked abstracted for a +moment or two. Then he jerked back his head, in sudden enlightenment. +'That was it--he was in my house in my last year at school. An infant +with a horrid stutter; I used to lick him for it; never knew whether it +was meant for cheek or not.... What was his name, now?' He pondered it. + +'What are you talking about, Warren? Look at that girl. What a striking +face! The features of the Moor and the spirit of the Greek.... Did you +see some one you know, dear boy?' + +'Yes--the man reading; I was at school with him in my last year, but I +can't think of his name.... Crevequer, that's it.... Now, that's funny, +rather,' he mused. + +'The young man reading, Warren?' + +'That's the one. I knew him by his stutter, chiefly--and the blazer. He +knew me, too, or half thought he did. Seems to be amusing himself pretty +well. Do you remember, mother, you said something about my seeing after +him, more or less, when he went to school? You'd met his father, or knew +about him in some way. I suppose that was why I felt I had to lick him +for his stutter; I don't remember that I ever had much other intercourse +with him.' + +'Crevequer?... Oh, Maddan Crevequer's boy, do you mean? Yes, I met +Maddan Crevequer once or twice, and I used to hear a good deal about +him. He was an eccentric--a genius, too, I think, only he didn't turn it +in the right directions. Shut himself up in a little place in the North +of Italy, and no one ever knew what he did there. Very striking. Then he +came to England to send his boy to school, and it killed him. He +required Italy for his existence, physically, intellectually, and +spiritually. Quite a pagan, but his wife was a Roman Catholic, and I +heard that the children were brought up to her faith, though she died +quite young.... One feels always about his books that they should be +intensely interesting, but it is an interest somehow run off the +lines.... And so that is Maddan Crevequer's boy!' + +The thought suddenly brought her up. The flare of a street lamp had +shown Tommy Crevequer rather plainly--his bare head, his frayed blazer, +his friends, girls and men, who laughed. It was, perhaps, his friends +who chiefly put the ring of surprise into Mrs. Venables' tone. Interest +followed close on its heels. The thing struck her. + +'Curious. We must find him out, Warren; get to know him.' + +'Must we, mother? Good copy, do you think? But one knows the sort'--he +made a downward movement with his hand--'when it's sober it borrows, and +that's such a bore. Besides, we shan't be able to find him--and he +won't, probably, want to be found.' + +'You might go back now....' + +'Interrupt the reading? No, I think not. He mightn't be pleased.' + +'He looked,' said Mrs. Venables, 'as if he was entering into the life of +the quite poor. That would be an enterprise of immense interest if one +could really accomplish it, really break down the barriers. We must find +the boy, Warren.' + +'All right, we'll try. But I expect he's just scum, you know. There are +lots like him in every big town; it drifts about the bottom, that sort, +and personally I don't think it's anything in its favour that it's by +way of being--or having been--a gentleman. But I've no doubt you'd like +it, mother, so we'll look for Crevequer. Only its not an easy sort to +find, I warn you. Nomadic, you know.... Oh, of course Crevequer may be +just on the spree for to-night; he may dress better as a rule.' + +The impression of Mr. Crevequer seemed to remain with Mrs. Venables, +standing out above the other dishes of her orgie. She returned to her +hotel replete. + +Tommy Crevequer met his sister at the door of the Fondo Theatre, and +walked home with her. He mentioned Venables. + +'Head of my house in my first year at school. He was decent to me, +rather. I don't suppose he knew me to-night; he had some one with him, +so I didn't stop him; but I wouldn't mind meeting him again.' + +It was quite clear that he would not mind in the least. The Crevequers +never minded meeting people; they were very sociable. + +Betty said that Morello had asked her to sit to him. + +'I suppose I'd better--had I? It will bore me quite awfully, but it +would be extravagant not to, of course. And he's asked Gina and me to +supper to-morrow. You'd better come too; it may be fun.' + +Tommy hummed an air. + +'He's a silly ass, Morello is. But we'll have supper with him by all +means, particularly with him and Gina; Gina's great sport.... It's +struck me, Betty, that perhaps Venables did know me, and was feeling +proud or something. If he's proud I should love to meet him again, and +introduce him to--to Luli and every one. It would be our duty, don't you +think? But Venables used to be an awfully good sort--I don't believe +he's really proud--and if we do run into him again, we'll take him about +with us.... I'm awfully hard up just now.' + +The Crevequers did not suffer from pride. + +Three weeks later, Venables walked into the Crevequers' room. It was +about six o'clock; the Crevequers had guests, who smoked and drank wine +and conversed. Tommy Crevequer sat astride on the table; Betty was on +the arm of a chair, leaning back against Gina Lunelli's broad shoulder. +It was confusing to come into such an intimate party. + +Tommy looked round, and broke off in the middle of what he was saying, +and got off the table. He was glad Venables had come. Venables +apologized. + +'How are you, Crevequer?... But I'm interrupting you; I'll come in +another time.' + +But Tommy drew him in, and introduced him to Betty, and to Luli and Gina +and all the rest, and offered him wine. It was a convivial gathering; +Venables, being a stranger, and wearing a rather clean collar, perhaps +threw a shade of restraint over it, but mirth broke out again before +long. At last, with common accord, the company took its leave--all but +Venables. + +'Well, how are you Crevequer? I've been looking for you, you know, all +over the place.' + +Tommy had almost forgotten how much he had admired Venables once; it +returned to him now as they talked. He would have liked to see a good +deal of Venables. Venables painted, he learnt--painted successfully, +Tommy presumed, looking at the clean collar and the well-cut coat. It +was perhaps a pity, Tommy reflected, his melancholy eyes, under their +quick, amused brows, turning from Venables to his sister, that he and +Betty were not better dressed to-day. Venables was probably a person of +prejudices, and his collar was very clean. + +Venables learned that Crevequer was a journalist. + +'What's your paper?' + +'That.' Tommy indicated _Marchese Peppino_ on the table; it came out +that day. + +'Oh.' + +Venables just glanced at it; he showed no desire to inspect it more +closely; possibly he knew enough about it already. His clever face was +scrupulously devoid of expression. + +'I chiefly do sketches,' Tommy elaborated. 'You know the sort of thing? +They aren't funny, not a bit; but they sell. Oh, I write for it, too, of +course; and that's funnier, rather. _Novelle in corto_, you know; we +have the news in, as much as if we were anybody; combine instruction +with amusement, don't you know.' + +Venables knew quite well. + +'I wonder,' he thought afterwards, '_why_ he shoved it down my throat +like that. Mere cheek, perhaps, or to show he didn't mind, or to warn me +off at once in case I didn't like his style. Or doesn't he really, +perhaps, realize....' + +Not really to realize, Crevequer must have pushed very far from the +shores of decency. + +Venables let the topic of _Marchese Peppino_ lie where Tommy had dropped +it. He delivered his mother's message, not stiffly, but with voice and +face a little vacant of expression, lacking interest. He asked the +Crevequers to come to lunch to-morrow at Parker's Hotel. Mrs. Venables +had not been aware of Betty, but Warren supposed that her existence +would add a further element of picturesque interest to the 'impression.' +The invitation was accepted. Venables stayed a little longer, +and examined the ceiling, and discovered incidentally that the +Crevequers--probably by the sheer insane futility of their stammering +flow--had the power of pricking him at all points to sudden laughter. + +He considered it walking home. In his search for Tommy Crevequer he had +happened upon a man--he kept a billiard saloon--who knew him rather +well. His remarks, entirely friendly (he was really fond of Tommy), +conveyed to Venables several items of information about him; among +others, that Venables would at no time have any difficulty in finding +him, as a good many people thought it prudent to keep him under view. At +the same time, Tommy's acquaintances seemed to assume as a matter of +course that he might find an occasional plunge into obscurity a +convenience. These casually conveyed impressions Venables had +assimilated without surprise. As he would have said, one knew the sort. +And Venables liked people who amused him. + +But _Marchese Peppino_ stuck in his throat. + +Betty observed to Tommy: + +'What fun. We shall probably forget to go. But if we don't, we shall +have to eat so much that we shan't need any more for a week. How +economical! Lunch in England--do you remember, Tommy?' + +Tommy was thinking. + +'Betty, we don't dress well enough. I want a new hat; so do you. +Venables is better dressed than we are. We must be tidy, and cut a dash +at lunch. It's a mistake not to be well dressed; people are so +prejudiced. I shall wear a collar to-morrow--a quite clean one, like +Venables. And we won't have any supper to-night, because we shall have +to eat too much at lunch. And I suppose Mrs. Venables will talk about +father's books, as she's so interested; so let's read them.' + +'Perhaps,' said Betty, 'we'd better read her own works too; only I don't +feel sure they'd be quite nice, so I think we'll wait till we're +older--thirty-two and thirty-three. We can tell her if she asks that we +read so little that we have to be very careful about what we read. It +would be so disappointing to read a book we didn't like; she'll +understand that.' + + + + +CHAPTER III + +OF MENTAL STANDPOINTS + + 'E parea posta lor diversa legge.' + DANTE. + + +The Crevequers, as they had anticipated, did eat too much at lunch--a +good deal too much. They cast, occasionally, wondering and interested +glances round the dining-room, and took in the fact that every one at +all the little tables was also eating too much. It was borne upon them +that this exorbitance, a strange incident in their own lives, was to +these others a daily occurrence. Every day at one o'clock the +dining-room at Parker's, the dining-rooms at all the hotels of its +genus, were filled with Anglo-Saxons and a few others, all sitting round +little tables, and all eating too much. Then again at dinner-time.... +The impressiveness of the thought widened their eyes, filling them with +an awestruck solemnity. To eat too much, a good deal too much, +twice--nay, thrice--a day (for visions of the Anglo-Saxon breakfast +haunted them: one had honey, one ordered omelette) during a period of +weeks and months--it required thinking over quietly afterwards. At +present, face to face with the amazing succession of the courses, the +contemplation of all it meant made one a little dizzy. The Crevequers +took all the courses; they would not have missed one; they intended to +see this thing through. As they ate they talked stammeringly. Mrs. +Venables was struck by the melancholy of their pondering eyes. Her +interest--she had an immense fund of it--was gathering itself together +to pour itself unstintedly forth on Maddan Crevequer's children. Her son +and her daughter and her niece watched the gathering; it was a familiar +process to them. The son watched it with languid amusement; the daughter +with stolid unconcern (she was a bored child of eighteen); the niece +with eyes inscrutably remote. The Crevequers were copy; they came to be +studied, to be drawn out; they responded to the process with their usual +affability. They answered questions as to their way of life, their +friends, the customs of the Neapolitan poor, their religion. Mrs. +Venables, as she said, found the Roman Catholic standpoint quite +immensely interesting. The Crevequers groped uncomprehendingly after the +reason of such interest, and gave it up. They were, however, quite ready +to answer the questions put to them; it seemed a harmless craze enough. +Mrs. Venables had been to Mass the day before, and had, she affirmed, +been much struck by the impressive contrast of the ordered stateliness +of the service and the spontaneous gaiety of the people as they trooped +out into the piazza afterwards. It had occurred to her, watching the +devout worshippers, that Catholicism was in some of its aspects a +strange medium for the spiritual interpretation of the blithe Italian +genius. What did Mr. Crevequer think? + +Mr. Crevequer thought, but did not say, that she might have been more +profitably employed in attending to the service than in watching the +devout worshippers. + +Mrs. Venables' niece, Prudence Varley, talked about Naples, with a +certain careful accentuation of the purely ordinary point of view of the +cultivated seer of sights. Her cousin Warren, watching her, smiled +inwardly at the accentuation. He understood it perfectly well. There was +in it a certain quality of externality that gained edge from the +contrast with Mrs. Venables' all-reaching intimacy. It revealed, anyhow, +how the Crevequers wallowed in ignorance--how they knew nothing. +Museums, mosaics, pictures, sculpture, were to them less than names. +Churches they knew only in so far as they went to church in them; and it +was not from the point of view of one interested in worship, but in +architecture, that Miss Varley seemed to approach the subject, differing +herein from her aunt. When she discovered that the Crevequers knew +nothing, she did not follow the subject; she gently fell again into her +non-conversational attitude, which seemed almost a little abstracted. +(She had often that air.) The Crevequers had indeed their own knowledge +of Naples--none more so; but it was the intimacy of streets and corners, +that close acquaintance with the face of a city which belongs to those +who, as Warren Venables had said, 'drift about the bottom.' How should +they know of mosaics? They knew every little narrow _gradone_, shut in +with leaning houses, that led steeply up out of all the length of the +Toledo, from Piazza San Carlo to the doors of the museum. (Beyond the +doors their ignorance began.) They knew at what hour on Friday mornings +it was most amusing to be playing round Porta Nolana; they knew the +price at which you can get a plate of macaroni and a mezzo-litro of wine +at all the _trattorie_ (of any economy) in Naples, and at which you were +most likely to meet amusing acquaintances, and at what hours. But it was +possible that Miss Varley felt no more curiosity as to these things than +the Crevequers as to the Angevin tombs in Santa Chiara. In Naples there +seemed to be no meeting-ground, or none which Miss Varley cared to seek. +It was Mrs. Venables who talked of Pompei--of the unique, almost +oppressive, so she said, interest of it. The Crevequers knew Pompei as a +place with nice hot, bright streets, scampered over by lizards, where it +was agreeable to spend an afternoon among the gaily-hued, roofless +houses, and go to sleep. But, they said, Christian Pompei was a better +place--it had more variety. Here the gulf yawned aggressively; Mrs. +Venables strove to throw a bridge by remarking that to some mental +standpoints the present teemed with an eternal interest that quite +obscured the past. The Crevequers supposed that this might be so. + +Young Miranda Venables said that she thought the past was an awful bore. +She did not approve of Naples; she was vexed at missing the hockey and +beagling season at home, and she thought towns were beastly, especially +Italian towns. She hated them. She looked towards the Crevequers with a +rising of hope; here, it seemed, were two people who lacked intelligent +interest even as she did. Miranda was, from her mother's point of view, +a failure. She was in no way aesthetic, except sartorially. The Liberty +frocks and flopping hats that her soul loathed seemed to give an edged +incongruity to her pleasant round face, with its rosy cheeks and blue +eyes, and mouth that drooped pathetically at the corners. She did not +rebel against the bitter yoke of the picturesque: it was not worth +while; she was merely used to remark, with her customary forcible +elegance of phrase, that if her mother chose to spend money on making +her look a guy, it was her look out, though Miranda considered it a pity +that she could not get better value than that for her outlay. But her +soul was not at all in her clothes; it was in quite different +things--chiefly in hockey. + +She raised that theme. + +'I say, couldn't we get up a sort of a club? There must be a ground +somewhere.' + +But the Crevequers, it seemed, did not play hockey. It was sad how +everywhere gulfs yawned. Miranda sighed, and fell back upon her lunch. +That remains, even in Naples. + +The Crevequers, on their side of the gulf, talked; they were really +quite entertaining; their acquaintance included such various types of +persons, their experience such interesting incidents. Some of the +incidents revealed them, personally, in a light rather unusual--a light +not apt, as a rule, to illumine a lunch-party. Of this they were +sublimely unconscious; at their ignoring of it Warren Venables smiled a +little. They were wholly innocent of the half-humorous, half-boastful +posturing of the conscious rake; these things, assumed as the basis of +their stories rather than narrated, were to them entirely natural--a +matter of course. From the same outer darkness--Venables came to believe +it was that--Tommy had discoursed of _Marchese Peppino_. It was not that +they considered themselves reputable people, but simply that +reputability (and the word includes in this case common honesty) was a +thing wholly ignored by them, outside their sphere of knowledge. +Certainly, such ignoring obviated embarrassment. Meanwhile, to entertain +a tableful of strangers at lunch is an admirable gift. Mrs. Venables, +possibly, did not sufficiently appreciate it; being amused came very +much lower down on her scale of pleasures than being interested; it was +perhaps fortunate, therefore, that it was a pleasure much rarer of +attainment. She did not desire it of the Crevequers; she desired, as she +phrased it, to draw them out, to achieve a near and serious intimacy. + +When every one had finished eating too much (the Crevequers wondered to +each other afterwards why it had come to an end just at that point, no +sooner and no later; they themselves, once wound up to eat continuously, +could have carried it on indefinitely), Mrs. Venables found a divan for +herself and Betty in a secluded corner of the large hall, and continued +the process of eduction. She had formed a plan; she wished of all things +to come into contact with the real life of the people; she wanted Tommy +and Betty to help her. + +'You must be so delightfully intimate with them. With me they may be +suspicious and reserved at first. And I am not at all completely +mistress of the language. But I can at all events give them a very +genuine sympathy and interest; and it would please me to try the +experiment. I know something of our girls in London who work at the +great factories. If we could form a sort of club here--social evenings, +and so on--your help would be of immense value to me. You have achieved +a real intimacy--you and your brother. To share the same faith must be a +tremendous bond; there is no more tenacious or more beautiful tie, as +Tolstoy says.... You remember the passage, perhaps?' + +Betty shook her head. + +'We don't read much, Tommy and I don't. There seems always something +else to be done, out in the streets or somewhere.' + +'The true pagan joy in mere living,' reflected Mrs. Venables, and +continued: 'If one could call oneself, definitely, a member of any +faith.... But one cannot, after all, sacrifice truth to beauty--even to +the beauty of sympathy and close community with others.... You are happy +in having found a firm foothold.' + +Mrs. Venables was not crude enough to ask questions on these subjects; +she drew confidence gently towards her. Doubt found in her always a +ready hearer. But Betty, it seemed, was not in doubt. + +A further step in intimacy Mrs. Venables achieved. + +'If there is anything I can do to help you.... I should be glad, you +know, to be of any service to your father's children.... We must see a +great deal of each other.' + +'Thank you very much,' said Betty, considering. + +Mrs. Venables perceived the pondering glance of the melancholy eyes, and +leaned forward, laying a gentle hand on the thin childish one, waiting +confidence. + +'Well ... if you would be so awfully kind as to l-lend us twenty +francs,' the sad tones stammered. + +'Lend you....' + +Mrs. Venables drew back; her surprise startled Betty. It was, surely, a +very usual and natural request. + +'Of course,' Mrs. Venables said gently, after a moment. 'I will give it +to you now.... I am so sorry....' + +'Thank you tremendously.' + +Betty put the notes in her purse. Mrs. Venables became aware that the +Crevequer smile, with the single dimple, was rather engaging. Then Tommy +came up with Venables, and said it was time to go away. + +Miss Varley, as she said good-bye, referred to Betty's statement that +she sometimes posed. + +'Will you for me? I am painting a picture, and I should be very grateful +if you would.' + +The unsmiling directness of the tone made the request very much a matter +of business. Betty said she would. + +'Warren and Prudence are always painting,' Miranda explained mournfully. +'Their pictures are rotten, I think; I hate them.' + +The Crevequers went. + +'Very picturesque; very striking; very sad,' Mrs. Venables observed. + +'Very obvious,' Warren commented. 'I would have betted a guinea that +Crevequer would borrow from me; he did. I call that so obvious as to be +tiresome.' + +To his cousin, a little later, he remarked: + +'You're standing on a quite false pedestal of superiority, you know. +Because you're going to paint her yourself. Where's the difference?' + +'Ah, well, there is some. To me she's frankly copy, you see; I shall +pretend nothing else; I shan't call it making friends--don't you see? +There's where it comes in.' + +'All the same, you'll be doing what you repudiate; you'll be making use +for your own ends of what you wouldn't otherwise have anything to do +with. You're in a false position; you can't escape that by +sophistries.' + +'If I am, I shall have to be more than ever careful not to make it +falser by throwing veils over it,' said Prudence Varley consideringly. + +She had the air of a person of a very delicate sense of +justice--delicate almost to exaggeration. One detected it in her +farsighted grey eyes, with the twinkle that lurked just within call. + +Warren chuckled. + +'Poor model! You needn't make it so hard as all that for her; let her +have a veil or two--it's so much more comfortable.' + +Prudence shook her head with decision. + +'It wouldn't be fair; it would be ugly.' + +Warren smiled again--at her characteristic habit of arriving, with great +deliberation, at her own position in a matter, and remaining in it +unshaken. If to her perception an immense difference stretched between +the frankness of taking copy as such, and ending there, and the course +of tact and sympathy and 'achievement of intimacy' which his mother +pursued, no accusations of sophistry or overniceness would bridge that +gulf to her. + +'Well,' Venables said, half defensively, 'Mother really is interested, +you know--very much so.' + +Prudence frowned over it, half abstractedly. + +'As I see it, you either like people or you don't. If you don't, and yet +make use of them, they've got to know how the thing stands and all about +it.' + +'The Crevequers, you know,' Venables said, 'are quite clever enough to +know "all about it," even if you do use a veil or two.' + +'Are they?' Prudence's eyes mused. 'Oh, I dare say they're clever enough +to know. But, Warren, I have a feeling about them--it came to me in the +middle of lunch, quite suddenly--that they _don't_ know; that, somehow, +either because they are made so, or because they've missed their +chances, they know--well, really very little indeed about themselves and +how they stand. And that--if that's so--makes it worse; because, do you +see, if we accepted them, they would take it naturally, and be content +to be accepted; and all the time there would be all kinds of things +between us, that we knew of and that they didn't. That would be ugly. +Don't you see? But if we don't accept them, the things between don't +matter; it's all right and fair.' + +'Well, it may be. Anyhow, if that's what mother would call your "mental +standpoint," I'm a little sorry for Miss Crevequer. It will be an +embarrassing sitting--except that I can't quite imagine either of you +embarrassed.... Personally, you know, they amuse me quite a lot.' + +'Oh, well, as to that----' The twinkle came to the front of the grey +eyes. + + * * * * * + +The Crevequers, lounging about Santa Lucia that evening, had their own +comments to make. They were a little puzzled. + +'Why _not_ be a Catholic?' Tommy pondered, with knitted forehead. 'What +else should a man be? Why is it funnier than to be a heretic, or a Jew, +or a Buddhist? Perhaps those things _are_ interesting, though, if once +one begins thinking about them. We aren't interested in enough things, +Betty. Let's study agnostics, and begin with Mrs. Venables. We'll ask +her how she feels in church, and say "this is most impressive," as she +does. Do agnostics go to church, at least?' + +'She does. She watches the devout worshippers. We must think of some +nice striking things to tell her, Tommy. She likes that, and we ought to +do it, as they've been so kind to us--about how the contadini round Baja +still pray to Pan, and things of that sort, that foreigners always like +to hear. Would she take that, do you think? No, not quite, +perhaps--rather risky. It was very nice of them to lend us both money; +and they won't be in a hurry, I should think. I shall rather like to sit +to Miss Varley; she's nice to look at, don't you think? She doesn't say +very much, but then I can do that.' + +'Well, I call them all rather decent,' Tommy said. + +They stood for a little and listened to the soft sound of the little +night waves scraping the shingle, and looked over the still, dark bay, +cut across by the golden road of the three-quarter moon, to where the +pine-shaped column above Vesuvius hung and blazed intermittently. + +'Something ominous in that sign that the sleeping monster still lives,' +murmured Betty. Then, in answer to a questioning stare, 'Not my +own--Mrs. Venables. Tommy, I'm sleepy; let's go to bed.' + +'No,' said Tommy--'supper at Brunati's. We'll find some one to have it +with us.' + +Betty looked dubious. + +'To-morrow, don't you think? We really did have such a splendid +lunch....' + +'To-night,' said Tommy recklessly. 'They must have had tea just after we +left them, and dinner after that, and I expect they eat more at it than +they did at lunch. We're as good as they are, I should think.' + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +BLIND WALLS + +'The internal nature of each being is surrounded by a circle, not to be +surmounted by his fellows; and it is this repulsion which constitutes +the misfortune of the condition of life.'--SHELLEY. + +'Our eyes are hidden that we cannot see things that stare us in the +face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened.'--EMERSON. + + +'Forty-six--ninety-eight--fifteen--sixty-three--twenty-seven,' little +Silvio Sardi announced at the door of the Trattoria Buonaventura, at the +top of his strident young voice. + +When he had repeated it three times, every one understood. The expectant +stir gave place, in general, to flat disappointment. It is unfortunate +to be so sanguine that the weekly disappointment loses none of its force +with repetition. + +But Tommy Crevequer stood up suddenly. + +'Ninety-eight and sixty-three. I say, Betty----' + +Betty nodded. + +'They're ours all right. The ambo; that's how much--seventy-five +francs.' + +The Crevequers were rapid and accurate at mental arithmetic. + +Congratulation buzzed round them. + +Some one raised a voice of anguish. + +'Madre Dio, I should have won the terno if I'd staked the numbers my +husband had from the parocco, and I forgot all about it!' + +The general opinion, conveyed by shrugs and expressive pursings of the +lips, seemed to be that this was a great pity for Maddalena. They all +knew her husband, who was a Guardian of the Public Security and a hard +man. A friend of his remarked, in a confidential undertone, with no +uncertainty on the subject, 'He'll cut her throat for her.' + +'It won't be the first time if he does,' returned his neighbour. 'Dio! +what a fool!' + +A man from a table in a corner got up and came over to the Crevequers, +and sat down beside them, with an aspect of resolution, good-humoured +but adamant. + +'I shall come with you when you fetch it,' he observed, nodding +cheerfully. + +Tommy looked at him, his eyebrows a little aggrieved. + +'Oh, Grollo, you----I tell you, I've any amount to do with it; it will +go no way.' + +'On the contrary, it will go nearly all the way. For the remaining five +francs I'll wait.' + +'I've got to get my evening clothes out of pawn; I'm going out to dinner +on Monday.' + +'Well, you must go as you are, then.' + +Tommy looked at him resentfully. + +'Well, half, then--forty?' + +'I shall come with you when you fetch it,' the creditor repeated, +good-temperedly stubborn. + +'Oh, well----' Tommy shrugged his shoulders resignedly. 'Come, then; I +shall fetch it now. Coming, Betty?' + +'No.' + +Betty was talking to Gina Lunelli. Gina was a fine young woman, rather +beautiful, with black curly hair, and an immense amount of experience, +on and off the music-hall stage, for her twenty-seven years. She was a +great friend of the Crevequers; it rather entertained her that anyone +should be so silly and so young. All the men she knew made love to her +as a matter of course--or possibly she made love to them; it, anyhow, +between the two, was invariably made. Tommy Crevequer's love-making was +to both an excellent joke; to Betty also, for they were nearly always a +three-cornered party. Gina and Betty went out now and stood in the +street and talked; or rather Gina talked, and Betty listened and rather +often laughed; it took very little to amuse the Crevequers. Soon Tommy +came back; he carried a parcel; his face was rather gloomy. + +'Grollo's got it all,' he remarked resentfully. 'But I've got my +dress-clothes; I met Venables.' + +'He who walks home from the theatre with you?' Gina said to Betty. + +'Yes. He's always so kind about lending us money,' Betty explained. + +Gina nodded. She had once been introduced to Venables in the Crevequers' +room; she had been a little embarrassed with him; it was a type outside +her fairly wide sphere of experience. + +'Well, good-bye till to-night; I must go.' + +The Crevequers walked home through the darkening December afternoon. + +'Venables is really decent,' Tommy observed, with some enthusiasm. + +Betty nodded. They had seen a good deal of Venables lately. Yesterday he +and Betty had been to Baja in a motor-car; it had amused them both very +much. He was a good companion, being quite ready and able to enter into +the game of being hopelessly silly, which, the Crevequers had long since +found, very many people, otherwise pleasant, quite failed to understand. +Nobody, it seemed to them, understood it quite as well as they did +themselves; it was fortunate, therefore, as they sometimes remarked, +that they had each other to go about with. + +In the evolution of relations with the Venables, that with Warren seemed +now to be, on the whole, the most satisfactory. The relation with Mrs. +Venables, though her own 'achievement of intimacy' suffered no flagging, +had been to the Crevequers a little spoiled by a renunciation on their +side. For sometime they co-operated readily and cheerfully in the +process of eduction; knowing it their business to 'strike,' they did +their best to do so, laying on effects sometimes a little over lurid. +They instituted competitions as to which of them could call forth most +often during an interview the comment 'very striking.' Tommy usually +won, because, as Betty complained, Mrs. Venables was more easily struck +by boys than by girls. It was Tommy who appropriated Betty's idea of the +worship of Pan that lingered in country districts about Naples. + +'That's why goats are so common, all about the streets--don't you +know?' + +He turned to Miranda, who nodded. + +'I know. Beasts. I hate them.' + +Mrs. Venables was stirred. + +'So vestiges of paganism really do linger. That is extremely striking.' + +Tommy, pluming himself, happened to look across and meet Miss Varley's +eyes fastened consideringly upon him. He returned the regard with his +melancholy gaze. + +'Not only Pan, either--Venus, Jupiter, Mars----' + +'Don't!' Miranda interrupted. 'You're going on just like my astronomy +mistress. She was a beast. I hated her. And I hate stars. And you do +talk rot, you two. You both tell the most awful----' + +But Tommy was looking at Miss Varley with his sad regard from under +quick black brows. + +She turned to her aunt and started a new subject. + +Tommy remarked to her as he said good-bye: + +'I'm sorry you thought I was so rude.' + +She looked at him for a moment. + +'I shouldn't have thought you were particularly sorry, you know. +Good-bye.' + +The leisurely considering tone, that quite lacked interest, seemed to +add an edge to the words. + +Tommy, going home with Betty, observed: + +'I'm not going to be striking any more. Miss Varley looks at me, and it +makes me so shy, and when one's shy one isn't convincing.... I suppose +it's really rather a rotten game, you know.' + +Betty admitted that it might be so. So that renunciation was made, and +their relation with Mrs. Venables became less amusing to themselves and, +presumably, less edifying to her. It was quite wearying having to be so +comparatively literal. + +The Crevequers wondered if Miss Varley appreciated the sacrifice. Betty +did not imagine her likely to notice it; she was a person of +abstraction. She took an interest, it seemed, in nothing but her work. +To be in her presence--in her studio, for instance--was a little like +being in the cold, rarefied atmosphere of a mountain-top. It was +curious, always, to plunge suddenly into it. To get back afterwards into +the warm valleys was also rather curious. Her conversation, when she had +any, was a little obvious in its conventionality. It seemed to Betty, +when she looked at her, surprising that this should be so. She was +pleasant to look at, slim and tall, with head poised a little high, a +little backwards; her short upper lip was caught up a little from her +lower, seeming to carry out the character of the round, lifted chin and +backward-poised head. Over her far-seeing grey eyes her fair brows often +puckered thoughtfully, as if they strove to discern. The winter +sunshine, striking in through the window, made of her light hair a +fluffy aureole. There was, perhaps, a Puritan touch somewhere about her, +emphasized by the simple lines of her green painting-smock. There was +also something remote, inaccessible. Her grey eyes, dwelling on Betty, +were artist's eyes; they seemed to take in every line, carefully noting, +and to give out nothing. There was in their regard a certain quality of +reserve, an implication of something held back. + +Betty, returning the look with her own melancholy child's gaze, took it +in without interpretation or analysis. It happens sometimes that for the +interpretation of a look we have to wait for spaces of years. +Apprehension is a thing of gradual growth; sudden lightening is rare. + +Betty felt it a pity that Miss Varley was not a more conversational +person, or at least that her conversation should be so very unexciting, +so obvious. In the unquiet condition of Vesuvius, in the fact that a +great number of visitors were staying in Naples, Betty felt not the +least interest. But Miss Varley seemed disinclined to talk of other +things; when the conversation tended to become at all autobiographical +she became inattentive and absorbed. Betty, lest she should become bored +(an unthinkable calamity), started a game, something of the nature of +that which she and Tommy played with Mrs. Venables; the object in this +case was to produce the sudden curve of the lifted upper lip, the quick +twinkle in the grey eyes, which seemed to come irrepressibly, and half +against the owner's will. When Betty scored a point--it really happened +fairly often--it cheered her very much. + +It was curious how much she liked Prudence Varley. She would have liked +to see a great deal of her, not in the rarefied altitude of the studio, +but in a more human and convivial atmosphere. She would very much have +liked to ask her to tea (the Crevequers hated tea as a drink, but the +function amused them, especially when they were the entertainers). She +did suggest it one day, but Miss Varley, it seemed, had other +engagements. Mrs. Venables came, with Miranda. Miranda was being +educated; she was being introduced to the life of the people. The people +did not interest her at all, but she liked the Crevequers, whose +function was that of go-between. She would have liked to make a friend +of Betty. She and Tommy were, of course, 'rotters'; they both talked +much too much, and usually the most awful rubbish, and their absurd +stammer made it sound sillier still, and you never knew when they meant +a thing and when they didn't; and they neither knew nor cared anything +about games or sport. + +But, all this said, Miranda was left in an attitude of half-puzzled +admiration, of which she could not have quite explained the reason. Her +frequent 'I say, you are rotters, you two!' conveyed a little +bewilderment, a touch of contempt, and an immense attraction. This +attraction put Mrs. Venables into a position of rather annoying +inconsistency. She was not strait-laced; she would have been beyond +measure distressed had prudery, or any conventional limitations, been +attributed to her--had she, in anyone's mind, been termed _bornee_. + +Nevertheless, below her aesthetic self--the self which was struck, which +designed Liberty dresses and wrote novels (those novels which the +Crevequers had decided to put off reading till they were thirty-two and +thirty-three)--there lurked a self more ordinary, to whom the artistic +issues were obscured, who could become, on occasion, purely the +disapproving, very reputable censor of conduct. It was the existence of +this self, side by side with the other, which made Prudence Varley sit +in judgment on her attitude towards the Crevequers and their kind; it +was the existence of this self which made the position of Miranda +something of a problem. + +Theoretically, it was right and desirable that Miranda should see life +as it was lived; practically, Mrs. Venables hesitated a little when +confronted by the atmosphere so corrupt and so disreputable--she could +not phrase it otherwise--in which Maddan Crevequer's children moved--an +atmosphere that seemed to hang about them, jarring so incongruously, and +at times (but not to Mrs. Venables) so laughably, with their great sad +eyes and their flow of childlike nonsense. + +So, half ashamed, Mrs. Venables held Miranda back from personal +friendship, knowing herself false to her principles, and morbidly +nervous of seeing the word _bornee_ lurking behind her son's observing +eyes. Seeing that it was expected of him, he occasionally made use of +it; in protest against it she threw herself, and threw Miranda, with +increased fervour, into the Intimate Contact with the People. In the +Intimate Contact the Crevequers were links. To the club-room in the +Vicolo de' Fiori (the steep alley next to that of the Crevequers) they +induced their friends to come; on Tuesday evenings, from half-past six +to half-past seven, girls and women (really a very creditable number) +sat and made paper hats, and Mrs. Venables achieved intimacy with them. +Then they danced; finally they paid a penny and had coffee and a bun, +over which further intimacy was achieved. On Saturday nights men and +boys came, and played bagatelle and spoof and quit, at Mrs. Venables' +suggestion, and mora and _zecchinetto_ on their own. The intimacy here +was chiefly achieved by the Crevequers, who joined in the games. But +every one was very agreeable to Mrs. Venables, though, as she said, +difference of language (and of faith) made confidential relations a +matter of slow growth. She envied the Crevequers their closer intimacy. + +Miranda on these occasions usually sat in a chair by herself, looking +about her with slightly aggrieved blue eyes. The faint disgust in the +droop of her lips implied, 'Beastly place, I hate it.' She did not wish +to achieve intimacy. She wished that Betty would come and talk to her, +instead of playing with the People. Sometimes Mrs. Venables would +command her to go and talk to someone; then she would rise reluctantly, +feeling exceedingly conscious of her movements and quite over-large. The +People, she thought, seemed mostly rather undersized. + +'What's the good, Mother? You _know_ I can't say a single thing.' Her +voice dragged plaintively. + +'It will be so good for you to try. Go to that nice-looking girl over +there, making a petticoat. She is smiling at you.' + +She certainly appeared to be doing so. The fact did not lessen Miranda's +embarrassment. She waited till her mother turned away, then turned her +back without ceremony on the nice-looking girl who smiled, and made for +her retreat in the corner. There she sat, yawning dejectedly, till Betty +Crevequer came to her. Betty stood in front of her, regarding her with a +whimsical scrutiny, her head at an angle of contemplation, her lips +twitching a little. + +'Isn't it fun here?' she remarked. 'I knew you'd like it. Can you make +paper hats?' + +'Oh, I suppose so. Beastly things. I hate them.' + +'Oh! I was afraid you might, perhaps. I was going to ask you to show +some one how; but never mind. We're going to dance now. You wouldn't +care to join, I expect?' + +Miranda would not. + +'I hate dancing. I say.' + +'Yes?' + +'Do you really like this? And how much more is there?' + +'Of course; don't you? About a quarter of an hour more. Then there's +coffee.' Beastly stuff. You'll hate it. I must go and dance.' + +'There is certainly,' Mrs. Venables remarked, watching, 'something +refreshingly picturesque in the movements of the Southern peoples. The +lithe use of their limbs----' + +She took in this impression with satisfaction. + +'Don't think any of them can dance a bit, if you ask me,' Miranda +pronounced. + +The unwary remark drew her mother's attention upon her. Mrs. Venables' +serious, fine eyes always seemed to weigh her daughter and to find her +wanting. + +'Dear Miranda, I wish you would try to take more interest in people. +Miss Crevequer, now; she is entirely in their confidence, quite one of +them, so to speak.' She turned to Betty. 'You must help this foolish +child to a larger interest, and me to a deeper understanding. I have +been having some most interesting conversations. I have been trying to +glean from some of the girls their real attitude towards life in its +deeper issues; but they are naturally reserved with foreigners--and, no +doubt, with heretics. If one could convince them of one's very real +sympathy----You are very close to them, one can see. You and I must +have some long talks. And I suppose your brother has immense influence +with the men and boys?' + +'Well, they're just f-friends of ours,' Betty said, stammering a good +deal, because she was tired. + +There were times when the artist in Mrs. Venables sank a little in the +helper; but here she ran up against a very blank inapprehensiveness. She +had perforce to grasp that her uses in this capacity were purely +financial. It is not easy to give to those who will not receive, who do +not even apprehend their own need of gifts. This inapprehensiveness was +as a blank wall; there was no surmounting it. They looked at each other +from either side of a spiritual and social gulf; and the ignoring of its +existence on the one side made any attempts at throwing, as it were, a +rope across from the other impossible. The rope would have dangled--did +dangle when experimentally thrown--ludicrously futile in mid-air. The +thrower stepped back again to the artist's standpoint, and absorbed +impressions. + +To give financial help came to assume an aspect of immorality. Loans +were gratefully taken, and no talk of repayment even remotely rose. It +was, as Warren had put it, 'very obvious'--so obvious as to be tiresome. +Illumination was shed on the aspect which the payment of debts presented +to the Crevequers on the night when they came to dinner, in their +redeemed dress-clothes, after winning on the lottery. + +'And it all went,' Tommy concluded his narrative, stammering +querulously, 'to a silly fool we owed money to. Wasn't it a shame, Mrs. +Venables? We owed it him for months; he needn't have been in such a +tearing hurry all of a sudden. Waste, wasn't it? All kinds of things, +you know, we might have done with it. If we'd hired a motor-car, would +you all have come to Pompei with us? Or would you rather have taken a +boat to Capri? You could have had your choice, anyhow. And all that +money wasted; we might just as well have dropped it into the sea, you +know--better; it would have been fun diving for it and bringing it up +with our toes. Do you know how to do that, Venables? I did it once when +a North German Lloyd was going out. You know how they swim round and +dive for money and make such a horrid row? Well, I thought I'd do it, +too, once, because it was such a nice warm day; and they threw me +pennies, but another man always brought them up with his toes; I could +never find them. Sell, wasn't it? but much funnier than paying all that +money to Grollo. People are so grasping, aren't they.' + +It was manifest that money lent to the Crevequers must be accounted a +bad debt. Mrs. Venables lent no more; her moral sense rebelled against +it. + +But Warren proved himself admirably accommodating. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +BAIAE'S BAY + + 'I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day.' + R. L. STEVENSON. + + 'Why should I care for the ages, + Because they are old and grey? + To me, like sudden laughter, + The stars are fresh and gay. + The world is a daring fancy, + And finished yesterday.' + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + +On a blue Sunday morning, not early enough to spoil their night--on +principle they shunned always the dimmer hours of dawn--the Crevequers +slipped the leash of the city and went to spend a happy day in the +country. They often spent their Sundays thus; with their wonted +inconsequent abruptness one would say to the other on Saturday evening, +'I'm tired of Naples. Let's go somewhere else by the next train,' and +they would shovel a few things--usually those among their possessions +which they were least likely to want--into a bag, and take tickets quite +at random to any place, known or unknown, which occurred to them. +Novelty was often a desirable qualification; but on this Sunday morning +they went to Baja, because a strenuous week had blunted their +imaginations; also, perhaps, a little because on the shores of Baja +there lies much healing. Their affairs had not been going altogether +smoothly of late, and the need rose in them, unworded, for stillness by +blue water and the sun upon warm sand. + +Having found these things, they entered into a contented peace, and +built a sand castle. Then they lay on the sand ten yards from it, and +took shots at it with bits of pumice-stone. + +'Well,' Tommy observed at length, 'I've won that. And now it looks like +a plum-pudding. Ducks and drakes? No; we'll go to sleep, because we got +up too early for the time we went to bed. Pity; get up later next time. +No, you can't talk yet, Betty, because I'm resting. You know, you don't +need so much rest, because you're not a newspaper man. I'm sorry I'm a +newspaper man; they're so untruthful, and when they try to be funny +they're only rude. But I'm glad we're not a daily; if we were we should +get into seven times as many rows as we do, shouldn't we. Our +mortification might be greater than we could bear. Muzzi can bear a +great deal, though; he's so brave. I'm not; I'm dreadfully sensitive. If +I die a violent death at the hands of the Sindaco--I probably shall, you +know, so will Muzzi--Mrs. Venables will have Masses said for me, because +they're such an interesting medieval survival, obviously deeply rooted +in human psychology. Why are heretics such goats? And why talk about +heretics and newspapers on our happy Sunday in the country? Your turn, +Betty; change the subject while I snatch a moment of sleep.' + +Betty, her chin in her hands, was looking across the blue bay. + +'I am thinking,' she said. 'No; I am absorbing impressions. They are +illuminating and suggestive--quite striking. They really are, you know. +Chiefly--Naples is there, and you and I are out here. To me at this +moment that is very real and vivid--immensely significant. Perhaps I +have expressed it badly, though.' + +'Communicated myself inadequately,' Tommy lazily corrected. + +Betty acknowledged his greater accuracy. + +'But,' she added, after a moment, 'it was a real impression, all the +same.' + +She thought it over, looking across the bay towards Naples. + +'Life in a populous city,' she murmured, after a moment, 'has its +problems, its trials, its disappointments.... Mrs. Venables told me a +story at tea the other day; I'll tell it to you if you like. There was a +man once who had a lot of gold; at least, he supposed it was gold. It +wasn't really; it was a base metal, most of it. Do you know what a base +metal is? Well, anyhow, it's something that melts very easily when you +put it into a fire. So he put it into the fire----' + +'What an ass.' + +'Yes; but don't interrupt. And he couldn't help putting it into the +fire, because the fire is Life--it's an allegory, did I tell you?--and +everything has to pass through it. Well, all his metal melted, and ran +away, and he saw it had been nothing but a base metal after all. But one +little bit he found which was pure gold; and that he kept, you see, +always. But it was horribly disappointing for him that there wasn't +more. When he was young he thought he had such a lot; that was where he +was wrong. That's all that story. And Mrs. Venables says if we are lucky +we may all end with a little piece of gold. Life, you see, is +a smelting-furnace, a crucible for the testing of ultimate +values.... Don't, Tommy, I can't bear it; I'll stop, really I will----' + +She warded off with her arm an irritated shower of sand. + +'That story didn't amuse me,' Tommy remarked resentfully. 'If that was +the funniest thing Mrs. Venables said at tea yesterday, I'm sorry for +you.' + +'How shallow you are, Tommy. It wasn't meant to amuse you. And Mrs. +Venables didn't make it up; she'd read it somewhere. Personally, I was +wondering if there was anything in it. I told Mrs. Venables I thought it +very striking. But you've got such a--such a _borne_ mind. I've been +trying not to be _bornee_; I don't believe you ever do. Never mind; now +we'll go to sleep till it's time for Mass.' + +It was very still on the beach and very warm, with the winter morning +sunshine on the sand. Beneath the wide blue sky the pure blue sea +stretched, with a little stir and glitter from the ruffling breeze that +just rumpled the broad blue basin's edge, crisping and whitening it, +making it tumble over with spurtling laughter, like a tiny child at +play, and draw back lisping to comfort itself for its fall. Above the +splashing and the little hushing draw, the church bells sounded from +Baja, calling the bay to Mass. There was half an hour still for +absorbing contentment on the warm sand. + +To the right the castle blocked the blue sky, shutting the little bay. +Across the wide waters to the east Pozzuoli loomed, transparent, jutting +into the sea. Further, more transparent, delicately purple, Nisida +seemed moored like a barge, with the point of Coroglio behind it. +Coroglio shut the gulf, so that one could not see how behind it the bay +swept down and ran to Naples. Naples was beyond the picture; the picture +held only the blue January morning, with its glittering waters and brown +sails and purple points and islands, and little waves that spurtled on +warm sand, and behind the bells of Baja calling. There was also the salt +smell of the sea, and the Crevequers, and their sand castle. These +things, to Betty Crevequer, became suddenly, as Mrs. Venables would have +said, very real, very vivid--in a manner all of life. She lay dreamily, +her eyes narrowed to slits blue as the sea, absorbing the impression. +Worded--but she did not word it now--it was, as she had put it, 'Naples +is there, and you and I are out here.' Naples, set pink and white upon +her shores, beyond the point, out of the picture, was life; and life, +some one had said, was a smelting-furnace, a testing of ultimate values. +Betty seemed to dream a dream--a dream of the testing of values by fire. +She saw how it might be that metal ran away, melting in the flames ... +how one might be cast up out of the fiery pit, taking with one the +knowledge of pure gold, for what that wisdom might be worth. But perhaps +also a little piece of it to keep--if one was fortunate. + +And Betty shuddered at this vision of purging by fire, and at the +'mental standpoint' of the man who had conceived life so. One should be +allowed to keep one's bright metal--gold or dross, it mattered little; +one should be allowed to keep it to play with, not looking into its +quality avariciously. There should be a ring set round it to guard it +from the flames which might melt it away in one's hands. The melting of +it would so horribly burn one's hands; and then there would be a +blankness, and nothing left to play with any more. + +It was at this moment that the 'impression' became of a great vividness. +Life might be a furnace, but here were things untouched by its flame, +cast up--so Betty saw them, with prospective eyes--out of the sea of +fire on to the high shores. Here, by the edge of the sea, were she and +Tommy and a sand-castle dotted with pumice-stone like a plum-pudding.... +A swift moment of vivid intuition came to her, illuminating her vision +of life, as she looked at Tommy, lying on his back, with his straw hat +tilted over his eyes. She was lit by a flash of great certainty, of +strange discernment. + +The flash passed, and left her as one who wakes from a trance. She lay +and looked at Tommy, and, looking, felt a desire for speech. + +'I'm thinking, Tommy, that you're very lucky to have me to play with +you, and that I'm rather lucky to have you to play with me.' + +Tommy pushed his hat a little up from one eye, and turned a meditative +and mildly surprised regard upon his sister. Her remark had had a +flavour of unusualness. But he did not comment upon it; it was as if, in +the momentary pause that followed his glance, something between them, +very definite, very permanent in its existence, entirely unquestioned, +because it had always been there, and hardly ever alluded to in words, +because they were too close to each other and too unsentimental, took +more definite and visible shape. Their friendship, their close +comradeship, their affection, stood in that moment between them, +recognized mutely of both. The kingdoms might fall, but that stood. Thus +they did not word it to themselves; but, unformed, the knowledge +illumined the consciousness of both. + +But after that moment's pause Tommy returned to normalities. + +'I grant you your luck; in fact, I might envy it you if I was less +sweet-natured. Mine, of course, is less vividly striking, as Mrs. +Venables would put it. But no matter; never be ungenerous on Sunday, +and I'm glad you should have a happy life.' + +Betty dragged him up forcibly by the hands, and they went up the beach +to Mass in the little church. That illuminated moment of insight seemed +to walk between them to the doors. + +After Mass they went to the Albergo Vittoria, and had lunch on the +terrace. + +They talked then of the Venables. Betty said she had had her last +sitting. + +'I should like her to sit to me,' Tommy said; 'the way she stands, don't +you know, with her head back'--the gesture of his own caught it not +unsuccessfully--'and her eyes when she's going to smile. And the way her +upper lip's so like her chin.' + +Betty nodded. She, too, had gathered all that in the rarefied mountain +air of the studio. + +'I wish she'd come and see us, as the others do. Why doesn't she like us +more?' + +It was a simple question, thrown out casually and without much +wondering; after all, every one cannot like everybody else. + +But it was curious how Tommy grew abruptly red. + +'How do you mean like us? I should think she does, doesn't she? Why--why +shouldn't she?' + +Betty's eyes consideringly took him in. He seemed, from his stammer +grown aggressive, to feel an interest. Obviously he had been +moved--moved a good deal--by 'the way she stands, don't you know, and +her eyes when she's going to smile.' + +'Well, you see,' Betty amended, 'she's too keen on her work, I expect, +to want to see much of anyone. I dare say that's all.' + +Tommy was a little appeased. + +'She always talks a lot to me when I meet her.' + +Betty's doubting eyebrows became a mark of interrogation. She demurred, +not to the 'lot of talk,' but to the apportionment of it--the order, in +fact, of the personal pronouns. Tommy frowned stubbornly, holding to it, +and drank a glass of wine with a defiant regard over the brim. Betty, +looking at him with puzzled eyes, at last shook a despairing head. + +'No, Tommy, I can't; I can't imagine it. If you don't put it the other +way round quickly, my brain will break with the effort.' + +Tommy, between a frown and a reluctant laugh, lit a cigarette. + +'Oh, don't rot.... And what's the odds, anyhow, as long as we're both +interested?' + +'I'm glad she's interested,' Betty said, reflectively striking a match. +'Then, they're all interested, which is nice. Mrs. Venables and Mr. +Venables, and the baby Venables, (she loves us very much, did you know? +Only she doesn't really think we're up to much, because we're rotters +and we don't play hockey), and Miss Varley too. I'm glad we're so +interesting, Tommy--aren't you? And now we've had lunch. We'll go in a +boat next, I think. What a nice expensive lunch we've had! Let's pay for +it.' + +Then they took a fishing-boat with a large triangular sail, and turned +and twisted about the bay, with erratic deviations of course and sudden +heeling and recoveries. Then they landed, and lay again on the beach to +dry in the afternoon sun, and played ducks and drakes, and composed +limericks and wrote them on the sand with pieces of shell till it was +time to go home. + +But before this time Warren Venables had joined them. He had motored +over from Naples to find them and bring them back with him. + +'Of course we will,' Betty said; 'the road's much nicer, and it will +take longer and save us our fares. We never get returns, in case +anything should turn up, or we shouldn't be coming back or something. +And we'll drive by turns; what fun!' + +They stayed on the shore till the sky behind the castle glowed to a soft +daffodil colour. Venables was a good companion; his limericks and his +riddles and his anecdotes were nearly as silly, nearly as devoid of all +point or relevance, as the Crevequers' own. He might have been capable, +on occasion, of exercising a more grown-up and polished wit; but when he +played with the Crevequers he admirably adapted himself to their young +comprehension. He was a person of tact, when he chose to use it. He did +not always choose. He had a habit--an insolent habit, his cousin called +it--of wearing in his manner, plain to be read by the initiated, the +shades of feeling which he merely did not think it worth while to hide +better, because he relied, with careless, supercilious confidence, on +the inapprehensiveness, the unreceptive blindness, of those with whom he +came in contact. The world was, after all, in the main stupid; his own +cleverness possibly sometimes overrated this stupidity; the swift +enlightenment of a glance, the flash of some phrase, would occasionally +rend his veil across and reveal him--even to the stupid--sitting, +amused, contemptuous, discerning, behind his flimsy screen. This +attitude, of lurking in careless concealment, his cousin characterized +as insolent. + +'One should try not to insult people's intelligence more than one can +help, I suppose,' she would observe. + +'Well, but when they haven't got any----Anyhow, we all do it; one's got +to in polite life,' he would aver, defending himself. + +'They've mostly got some; and if one's real self sits despising and +criticizing, one's outer self has no business to be a decoy. Even if the +real self keeps quite behind the screen, it's unfair; and if it keeps +looking out, as yours does, it's insolent as well. You insult them by as +good as saying, "It's not much of a screen, but it will do for you. If +you do see behind it sometimes, it doesn't matter very much; and if the +people looking on, who know me better, see behind all the time, it +doesn't matter in the least." A screen, to be at all courteous, should +be impenetrable both to the people concerned and to the lookers-on; and +even then it's not honest--one should quite withdraw.' + +'You know, if one quite withdrew from all the people one doesn't quite +like, one's world would get very limited.' + +'Well, yes'--she wrinkled her forehead in doubt--'only they should know +the terms, that's all.' + +It was probable that Miss Varley might have disapproved of the manner of +the homeward journey in the motor, for the Crevequers, who were slightly +inexperienced, drove, as they had suggested, by turns; and behind +Venables' screen of serenity his real self undoubtedly watched +anxiously, and occasionally looked out, betraying itself by the nervous +tension of the hands waiting in readiness to seize the wheel; the screen +was, indeed, rather insultingly flimsy. They ran along the white coast +road, with the gold of the west behind them, and the pale blue winter +sea beside them, and the bright city of many hues growing larger in +front of them as they circled the bay. They went much too fast, and it +was very amusing. + +'You must show Baja to my mother sometime,' Venables said. 'She has only +visited it with the native guides so far; and you will be able to tell +her so much that's interesting and new--very new.' + +Betty sighed after that renounced game. + +'I'm afraid not, do you know.... Tommy, you awfully nearly slew that +goat. And I'm sure it's my turn now.' + +She had swerved from the subject with a laudable impulse of shame, her +first in this matter. At the same time, she knew very well that +Venables minded nothing; also, that if she had looked at him his amused +eyes would have twinkled into hers. That she did not might have been +taken to imply in her the rudiments of a growing conscience; or possibly +of a feeling that, though she and Tommy might laugh at a person's +mother, the person might well keep out of it. His not resenting it--but +this she did not word to herself at all, for she would not for some time +know it--showed that he accepted so much, easily and without surprise. +Why resent that, of all things? it seemed to imply. It was, indeed, +hardly worth a comment; it was so wholly in keeping; as he would have +said, so obvious. + +This easy, unsurprised acceptance of things as they were, in which +Prudence Varley might have discovered insult, bore to the Crevequers no +message, no implication. Their attitude towards such tolerance was the +measure of their inapprehensiveness. + +But, as Betty had had her moment of half-realization, so Tommy had his. +Perhaps such moments came to the one whose turn to drive it was not, +and who had therefore leisure to perceive. Tommy's moment came through +_Marchese Peppino_. Betty observed, abstractedly, between fluctuating +swerves and recoveries: + +'Tommy's paper, you know ... has been getting into rows ... being sued +for libel....' + +Venables, his eyes on the road, his hand waiting in nervous readiness +for emergency, said: + +'Yes?... Mind that flock of goats.' It was, possibly, the distance of +the flock of goats--quite two hundred yards--which partly gave Tommy his +moment of enlightenment. Perhaps he had half known it before; anyhow, he +took in freshly now that the large acceptance did not quite include +_Marchese Peppino_. Even the tolerance of contempt has got, after all, +to draw its line somewhere. Tommy almost took in, too, the slight lift +of the brows, which might be taken to convey 'Does anyone really think +it worth the sueing--that rag?' Venables himself had certainly the air +of not thinking it, under any circumstances, in the least worth the +sueing. + +Tommy, his melancholy eyes on Venables' profile, faintly flushed. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +GRADONI + + 'Les clefs des portes sont perdues, + Il faut attendre, il faut attendre, + Les clefs sont tombees de la tour, + Il faut attendre, il faut attendre, + Il faut attendre d'autres jours....' + MAETERLINCK. + + +There are steep streets called _gradoni_, which climb up from the old +town below to the new town above; their slope is assisted by shallow +steps at intervals. So shallow are the steps that you hardly notice each +as you take it. Not until you arrive at the top and look down on the +ascending way do you perceive how its climbing was assisted. Of like +nature is the ascending alley of human penetration. At the top is the +daylight; in the analogy, perceptiveness quite achieved. + +In her ascending alley Betty should, by the end of February, have got +far enough not to have taken Miranda Venables to lunch at the Trattoria +Buonaventura with her friends Gina Lunelli and Morello, the painter. She +met Miranda on Santa Lucia. Miranda remarked: + +'I say, I'm jolly glad I've met you. I've lost Prudence. Mother sent me +out with her to look at churches and things, because my ignorance is a +disgrace, and Prudence stayed so long looking at some rotten mosaic +things that I had to come out. Then we somehow missed each other, and +I've been playing about alone. I say, I should think it would do if you +showed me things, if I must see them. But there's nothing to see, is +there? Nothing but the Aquarium, and I've seen that. Well, anyhow, I'll +come round a bit with you, shall I, and then I can say I've seen +something. Mother goes about with Murray; rotten book; I hate it. You +haven't got it about you, have you?' she added suspiciously. + +'No. You see, I'm a mine of information in myself. It is so nice to be +well informed, isn't it?' + +Miranda observed, between compliment and irony: + +'You know an awful lot, I suppose.' + +Betty nodded. + +'One picks things up--one likes to learn. We might have a really +instructive morning, only it's time for lunch. You'd better come and +have lunch too. The Trattoria Buonaventura, in the Toledo--do you know +it? No, probably not. I'm going to meet some friends there.' + +'Well, I'll come. But it's only half-past twelve; it's a funny time for +lunch.' + +Betty supposed that it might seem so, remembering the breakfast at +Parker's. + +They went towards the Trattoria Buonaventura, and Betty pointed out +objects cursorily, and, as a rule, with creditable veracity, by the way. + +'The English church. Perhaps you know it, though? Is it nice inside?' + +'No, it's not. But I don't like any churches; they're all stuffy. Mother +keeps going to them, though she's an agnostic, you know. She hasn't got +a religion--oh, I wasn't to say that; I mean she rejects dogmatic +formulas--I think that's what she says. She won't let me reject them, +because she says I'm not old enough to have thought it out yet.... What +a funny place! Do you often come here? I love meals in restaurants, +don't you?' + +Miranda was introduced to Morello, the painter, whose ugly flexible face +and expressive gestures set her wondering, and whose extraordinary skill +at rapidly absorbing immense lengths of macaroni fascinated her. He +talked with some vehemence, and did not seem to like to be interrupted. +Betty, who never left anyone out, talked to Miranda, and acted as +interpreter. The Signorina Lunelli ate and drank a great deal, and +smiled with immense cheerfulness; Miranda admired her large beauty and +fine physique very much. All three, she perceived, were great friends, +not only with each other, but with nearly every one in the room. It was +a very sociable and merry meal. + +'You don't smoke, I think?' Betty said, as the coffee arrived. + +'I don't mind trying,' Miranda replied. 'I was ill last time, but that +was three years ago. I was a kid then; besides, it was a cigar of +Warren's. Dare say I could manage a cigarette now.' + +'Oh, I wouldn't,' Betty counselled. + +After about a minute and a half, Miranda wholly agreed with her. Her +feeling when she looked up and saw her brother at the door was sheer +relief. + +'I expect Warren's come for me,' she said, coughing out a cloud of +smoke. + +Warren had come for her. It seemed that Mrs. Venables was anxious. + +'I knew this was your lunch-place,' he explained to Betty, 'and we +guessed she might be with you. I'm sorry to interrupt--but you have +finished, haven't you? My mother will be anxious, you see.' + +Miranda rose rather shakily and said good-bye. She had quite decided not +to take to smoking. + +The aspect which the episode bore of the rescue of a truant child from +corrupting company was not assisted, certainly, by look or speech. It +was perhaps an aspect obvious enough to be left to itself, unaccentuated +and unadorned. Rather, indeed, it required, for courtesy's sake, +modification. Venables possibly intended to give it this. He had greeted +Betty and Gina and Morello (he had met these two before) with +pleasantness. He always was pleasant to the Crevequers' friends, though +the screen was sometimes rather flimsy. He was not, it seemed, shocked +or annoyed to find his young sister smoking in such a restaurant among +such company--merely his mother was anxious. His face, as his eyes had +passed from one to the other of his sister's companions, had been quite +impassive. What gave to Betty such realization as she at the time +got--it was not much--was mainly Mrs. Venables' anxiety, which must so +hurriedly be appeased. Betty had not known Mrs. Venables for an anxious +person; to be a fussing mother was to be _bornee_. But the suggestion +was not aggressive. Partly the green tints of Miranda's round face +served as a screen for the other elements in the situation. No one likes +his sister to look sick in a restaurant. + +So Venables informed Miranda as they drove to their hotel. + +'It's not considered particularly good form, you know, to smoke in +restaurants till you can do it fairly well. And, anyhow, that's not an +especially elegant place to select for the purpose--or, for that matter, +for any other purpose.' + +'She always goes there,' Miranda returned limply. + +Warren's eyebrows went up. + +'Oh--she.... That's got nothing to do with you. Each lot of people's got +its own resorts.' + +'But, Warren, you like her, don't you?' + +'Who is "her"? Miss Crevequer? What's that got to do with it? I only +said she wasn't your sort. And if you want to know whether I like Signor +Morello and Signorina Gina Lunelli, I can tell you I certainly don't. +And your doing this sort of thing puts mother in a very awkward +position; she won't know whether she can logically scold you or not. She +sent you out to see things, didn't she? Well, you've seen them now, +that's one thing--quite enough for one morning.' + +Tommy, it seemed, had got his enjoyment out of the business. He had, he +informed Betty, 'been helping Miss Varley to look for her cousin all +over the place.' Miss Varley's version was, 'Mr. Crevequer came about +with me; I don't know what use he thought he was, except to suggest +quite impossible places, and to talk till I felt quite giddy with it. +The way those absurd infants babble! And it's mostly such nonsense, when +one listens to it; they always make me feel as if I was Alice and they +were Tweedledum and Tweedledee; or perhaps the White Knight, because of +the sort of gentle melancholy they've got. When they come to a meal it's +exactly like the Mad Tea-Party. And it's so ridiculous the way, when one +of them stops to stammer, the other finishes the remark, or goes on with +it till the first one is ready again.' + +Tommy's relations with Miss Varley had, during the past months, greatly +interested him. As she so pleased him externally, it was natural that he +should desire to make friends; and as this was an enterprise in which he +was not used to fail, he embarked on it with some audacity. There was a +certain detachment, lack of human interest, about Prudence Varley, as he +saw her, which were to him merely walls to be knocked down. He set about +razing them with cheerful serenity. It had certainly never occurred to +him that, if he wished to make friends with anyone, he would have any +difficulty in doing so. But the walls were rather solid, he found. +Against the battering-rams of his light-hearted sociability and +friendliness they seemed to stand firm; he was only occasionally cheered +by 'her eyes when she's going to smile.' + +He one evening came to dinner in a mood of reckless resolution; however +uninterested, she should this one night be interested, more or less, in +him; he would break through the guard somehow and 'achieve intimacy.' +He skilfully arranged contiguity with her when they sat on the balcony +after dinner and listened to the mandolins in the road below. To tune +the scene to the note of seriousness he regarded as desirable--nonsense +having failed--he was silent for an unusual minute, to let the night +sink in: the broad stillness of the sea below the high road, with the +moon cutting its silver lane across it; Naples curving round the water's +edge, a great cluster of sparkling jewels; far off across the bay the +red glowing column above Vesuvius, that flared and darkened and flared +again. To the persistent tinkle of the mandolins below a tenor voice +sang 'Addio, bella Napoli!' + +Tommy, having given the impression its chance of absorption, inquired: + +'Do you like it?' + +She turned to him a little absently, and the glow across the water +seemed to strike high-lights in her eyes. + +'What?' + +He swept his hand towards it. + +'Naples--all that.' + +'Yes.' She had a faculty of conveying all she meant by a simple +affirmative or negative; it is, if one comes to think of it, a habit +rather rare; most people supplement or qualify or explain. She added: +'The little of it I see. It's not much.' + +Tommy enlarged; he would force personality into it. + +'It's not my Naples. Mine is different.' + +She assented, 'I know,' and he realized with triumph that she had +accepted the personal element; she had hitherto always passed it blankly +by. + +'My Naples,' she said, 'isn't human; it's colour, and light and shadow, +and the way the streets go--cut like deep gorges and climbing up--you +know? I'm getting to know that a little. But that's Naples in one sense +only--one meaning. The people who live in it I don't know.' + +'You don't want to know them, do you?' + +Having found the personal tack for once, Tommy adhered to it. + +'Well----' + +Her considering silence seemed to discriminate delicately between the +various types of 'the people who live in it.' It seemed that one might +want to know some and not others. + +'You don't care about knowing people, only things,' Tommy told her. + +She accepted it in silence. Discrimination between 'people' would +hardly, in the circumstances, have been courteous. Her next remark was a +swerve, as usual, to 'things.' + +'Oh, look there!... Some one told me it hadn't been so excited for +years. I wonder if it means anything by it.' + +Tommy left the achievement of further intimacy for another occasion. He +meant to carry it through. That was a few days before he had 'helped her +to look for her cousin all over the place.' During that search he had +found her a little abstracted; she had not appeared to be listening to +him much. Her habit of attending to him with a small portion of her mind +only, if that, did not baulk him; it pricked him to renewed effort. The +element of deliberateness in it passed, as so much passed, over his +head. + +But he partially caught it--he hardly could have missed it--on one +occasion. That was on the first day of March. The steady strokes of the +rain lashed the city, beginning with swift unexpectedness; the +Crevequers, coming home from lunch, found Prudence Varley and Miranda at +their door, delivering a note. They both looked very wet. The +Crevequers, mournfully looking from under their large and disreputable +umbrella--of all things they hated rain--felt an immense pity, a pity +that would have seemed to Prudence disproportionate; she was used to +present to the elements a tranquil inattention, and rather liked rain +than not. Miranda, too, was of hard fibre; both, anyhow, were used to +England. The Crevequers, from under the umbrella (they more than ever +resembled Tweedledum and Tweedledee) said (in turns): + +'Come up with us till it stops'--'You mustn't get any wetter just +now'--'Or you'll be too wet'--'The only safe way is to get dry'--'In +between'--'At the stove'--'We're so dull'--'We've no one to talk to; do +come'--'Oh, but do'--'Well, anyhow, take the umbrella'--'We shan't want +it; we never go out in the wet'--'We should hate to.' + +The entirety of the failure of it all had pathos. Significance seemed to +be suddenly brought by that failure into the fact that while three +members of the Venables family had long been familiar with the room at +the top of the pinkish house, the fourth had never set foot on the +lowest of the stone stairs. + +Tweedledum and Tweedledee went up to their room in silence. + +It was then that the room seemed newly to become an impression to them; +it was as if it had broken through barriers and suddenly pierced their +senses. Their melancholy eyes took it in--a certain tawdriness it had, +the litter of things incongruous: on the table a scattered pack of dingy +cards; bottles and glasses, unwashed from last night, making red sticky +circles on _Marchese Peppino_; everywhere was _Marchese Peppino_: one +could not escape from it. From the half-painted, absurd ceiling to the +stone floor stale air brooded, breathing of smoke and wine. + +Betty thought suddenly of cold, rarefied air, with a faint smell of +paint, and winter sunshine striking in through open windows. + +Tommy said an odd thing, a thing it is possible he had never said +before. + +'W-what a beastly mess!' + +Then he shoved a space for himself on the table, among glasses and +papers, and began to make pictures for _Marchese Peppino_. + +It was about this time, early in March, that the Crevequers took to +quarrelling. It was a thing not usual with them, because they liked, of +all things, a pleasant harmony. Rows, as they observed, made them feel +ill. But at this time they developed a new touchiness; possibly Lent was +partly accountable. Tommy wrangled with his editor, disputed truculently +with the good-tempered Luli, assumed a mien of impertinent defiance +towards his more urgent creditors, and snapped at Betty, who snapped +back, and then they would stammer rude and unpleasant comments on each +other for a minute or two--it took them longer to quarrel than it takes +people who can fling their remarks unhaltingly straight from the +lips--until one or other was ashamed and said: + +'D-dry up.' + +They quarrelled once about _Marchese Peppino_. Betty referred to it to +Warren Venables, who, as usual, did not pursue the subject with +enthusiasm. When Venables had left them, Tommy, sitting on the table +with his hands in his pockets, looked down at his sister rather moodily. + +'Wish you'd let my shop alone, Betty. Venables doesn't care a hang about +it--can't you see?' + +The surprise in Betty's melancholy eyes testified to the rarity of the +ill-tempered tone; particularly it was rare from one of them to the +other. + +'Well--what does it matter, though?' + +Tommy was frowning. + +'It does. It bores him to hear about it. It doesn't amuse him; he +doesn't think it's funny--and it's not particularly--and w-what's the +good of making bores of ourselves?' + +Betty regarded him thoughtfully. + +'I don't think he's so easily bored as all that, you know.' + +Tommy remained gloomy. + +A curious element had come, just of late, into his relations with +Venables--the element of embarrassment. How it began he could not have +said, nor whence it sprang. It was unfortunate, as they saw so extremely +much of Venables. More and more Tommy left him to Betty, refusing to +make a third in their expeditions and amusements. Yet he liked Venables; +he liked him as much as he had liked him at first, when the meeting face +to face had carried him back curiously to the old days of school +hero-worship. Now, for the last few weeks, he had become growingly +silent in his presence; the difficulty of conversation made him rather +angry; it was a difficulty he was unused to, and he could not account +for it. It oppressed him, too, now, in Miss Varley's presence; the +achievement of intimacy did not progress. Tommy supposed it might have +something to do with Lent; Lent often affected one's spirits +unfavourably. Life in general, in fact, was rather a bore. Tommy told +Betty so. + +'I'm tired of being overworked,' he remarked. 'I wish I wasn't a +newspaper man. I wish I wrote novels, like Mrs. Venables. Let's write a +novel, Betty. I wish I had a motor-car to play with, like Venables. I +wish we were older, Betty--old enough to go home to Santa Caterina and +live in peace on our hard-won earnings. Let's chuck it and go. We've got +enough, if we leave our debts behind us, and eat like moderate +Christians, and are out of reach of shops. What's the good of fooling +here, and never having enough to live on, and--and----' + +His stammer or his disgust choked the rest of his grievances from his +lips. + +Betty looked sympathetic. + +'You'll feel better in the morning,' she said, 'if it's a fine day.' + +She was standing by the open window, leaning out into the soft darkness. +From the narrow steep alley below, and from the wide lit thoroughfare +into which it ran, the cheerful revel of Naples at night hummed up. + +'Let's come out,' said Betty, 'into the streets.' + +And the two seekers after a quiet life strolled through the city +together. They returned home a little after midnight, having made a very +heroic and quite successful fight against care. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +RETROSPECT WITH THE SEARCH-LIGHT + + 'D'autres jours ouvriront les portes, + La foret garde les verrous, + La foret brule autour de nous, + C'est la clarte des feuilles mortes, + Qui brulent sur le seuil des portes....' + MAETERLINCK. + + +At the end of the first week in March the Venables went to Sicily; they +would stay there, probably, for the rest of the month. + +'So for three weeks we shan't have a chance of eating too much at +lunch,' Tommy remarked, on the evening after they had gone. 'Pity, isn't +it? I loved those lunches.' + +Betty nodded. She was feeling horribly flat. They both, that first +evening, felt horribly flat. By the measure of their flatness they might +have gauged the late immensity of their interest; there was revelation +in it. To shake it off they went to their favourite gambling-place, and +lost some money, and talked to some friends, and in general raised their +spirits. + +Something of this convivial nature they did every evening for a week. +Then they stopped. Inexplicably, it was becoming boring. On the first +night it had cheered them; on the second and third they had shut their +eyes to the fact that they were bored; the other nights had been, +growingly, of the nature of a fight against something--they could not +have said what. It was something which seemed to grow, slowly, vaguely, +yet with an irresistible sureness. + +It is not during constant intercourse and association that influence +gives birth to new comprehension. These fill the foreground; they loom +too large in present interest to allow of a penetrating vision. The +vision, the perception, the discernment, growing from vague abstractions +to poignancy, come later, growing very slowly from seeds sown +unnoticed. From the carelessly received seeds the plant pushes its +gradual, painful way upwards, breaking the earth to make a place for +itself, growing, perhaps, to be a tree, striking and spreading roots all +through the upheaved soil. + +So it began to be with the Crevequers. Absence and time began now their +inevitable work. Atmosphere, doubtless at the time absorbed, but +unconsciously, now sent its message from system to brain. Retrospect +meant the slow beginnings of perception; therefore they fought against +retrospect. What at the time had passed them serenely by, came back to +memory in strange new lights. What at the time had been bewildering, put +on, day by day, robes of increasingly translucent clearness. What at the +time they had known, unheeding and uncaring, assumed a vividness quite +new. With the accidentals of intercourse no longer overlaying, wrapping +up and entangling the issues, these pushed a slow way out, and emerged +at last, standing forth unconfused and unadorned, bald in their lucid +simplicity. + +Through the slow days and long nights retrospect gave birth thus to a +glimmering perception; perception, its gropings not to be checked, to +comprehension. + +In the Crevequers' eyes the melancholy pondering grew more noticeable +than before. Their brows sometimes drew together suddenly, as if, in the +straying of their thoughts, they had lit upon something they did not +like. + +Of the Venables they spoke to each other less day by day. Each did not +know how it fared with the other; each hardly knew how it fared with +himself. It was well, perhaps, that during much of the day they had +plenty to do. But there were the evenings. It was certainly a pity that +they had begun to find convivial evenings so little amusing to them. +Except when their friends came to see them they sat alone together. +After a little while, when retrospect had taken them some way, they +would often, by reading or talking, try to keep it at bay. But it was, +at best, only a question of deferring; there remained always the nights. +It was in the nights, of course, that retrospect most tyrannically had +its way. The masterless nights are escaped steeds run loose for +anybody's annexing. Retrospect annexed them, and rode them hard. In the +nights, at all events, there is no confusing of issues, no foreground to +obscure the vision. + +It took a succession of nights and days for perception to reach full +stature. Each, lying awake, or sitting together through the evenings +while Tommy drew pictures for _Marchese Peppino_, caught new aspects of +the things which moved in progression through their memory. + +It seemed that each of the Venables family, marching through memory, +flung at the Crevequers something which retrospect could turn into a +ball for its game. + +From Miranda Betty collected guileless remarks in inverted commas (some +of the inverted commas Miranda had supplied, some Betty filled in now) +as to 'different sorts of people,' and how each sort had its own +conventions and its own resorts. Plaints, also, about liberty of +association tampered with--Miranda was a veritable garden for such +flowers. There was also that day at the Trattoria Buonaventura, with +Warren Venables standing at the door, impassive, observing, unable to +linger because his mother was anxious.... + +Then, in the procession, marched Mrs. Venables. Mrs. Venables had one +day sloughed a self. She had not liked doing so; it was a self she +valued; her most natural self, also--the aesthetic self, so easily and so +deeply struck. From this self she had reluctantly emerged temporarily to +stand forth a reputable, conventional Philistine--more, a maternal +Philistine, of all creatures the most _bornee_. Driven by circumstances, +she had talked to Betty Crevequer on the subject of friendship, its uses +and abuses. A certain impersonal detachment she had used, choosing her +words with careful discretion, to throw as much veil as might be over +the maternal Philistinism. She had not wanted to hurt Betty, nor had she +at all wanted that Betty should in her mind call her _bornee_. She +might have been relieved to know that this was a word only in the +Crevequers' vocabulary as culled second-hand from herself, and stored in +the same carefully treasured category with 'standpoint' and 'forceful.' +Not knowing this, she had really shown some self-sacrifice in taking her +risks. To minimize them she had laid stress on the purely aesthetic +protests that her taste made, leaving propriety aside. A certain +refinement she herself exacted from those whom she selected for +companionship--she began quite a long way off, in her anxiety for +impersonal detachment; how should Betty have grasped it?--and she would +have others exact it too. If youth is to lower the value of the precious +jewel, its friendship, bringing it down to common--very common--earth, +youth will inevitably be the poorer. There is, after all, something in +the belief so widely current about touching pitch.... To lounge about +the streets--to be exact, outside the doors of a theatre--at midnight, +in company with people of the stamp of Betty's companions of last +night---- + +'Gina?' Betty had wondered. 'And Luli? But----' + +The mournful pondering of her eyes was rather inscrutable. It might +possibly refer to the Achievement of Intimate Contact, which must Shun +Nothing. + +Mrs. Venables had suddenly at this point dropped the artist self to her +feet, and risen out of it for a moment entirely, becoming purely the +reputable, conventional, disapproving mother. She had said a most +_borne_ thing. + +'It looked very strange last night. The Essingtons--the friends I was +with--did not know what to think.' + +The allusion, with that, had seemed to her to have attained enough +personality to be safely left. The kernel of the matter, which, wrapped +up delicately in aesthetic abstractions, was, 'My son must not do that +sort of thing,' had been, in the speaker's eyes, almost too manifestly +reached. Mrs. Venables had meandered away among the wrappings. It might +have been necessary, but the consciousness of having said that anything +'looked very strange' had oppressed her. It had really been +uncharacteristic. The phrase, of such an immeasurable depth of +crudeness, must have been somewhere innate in her, passed down from a +long line of reputable ancestors, and it had leaped out without her +volition. She had endeavoured to retire from it, to wrap it up. + +It was perhaps unfortunate for her that at the time she had quite +succeeded. Or, rather, the kernel of the thing, so extremely plain to +Mrs. Venables, had not been reached by Betty at all. She had been +willing to admit that to lounge in the streets so late had, perhaps, +looked strange. It was an admission very simple, and not at all galling. +Against the use of the word 'pitch' to describe Gina Lunelli and Luli +(she had quite missed any ambiguity there might be in its use, and had +accepted, naturally, the assumption, put forward on the surface, that +Tommy and she were the touchers, who might be defiled) she had +protested: + +'You see, we're all quite the same sort of people--Tommy and I and they. +There's no difference. You can't--you can't separate us.' + +Retrospect remarked that Mrs. Venables had not really, with any great +determination, tried to do so. + +Yet even then Betty's words had seemed to imply that she had begun, +however vaguely, to discriminate between one 'sort of person' and +another. Retrospect now completed that discrimination. Retrospect gave +her, in plain language, the kernel, so carefully wrapped up, which Mrs. +Venables had thought she could scarcely have missed. It was laid now in +her hands for her to look at; she looked at it, missing nothing. + +Retrospect pushed Mrs. Venables aside, having quite elucidated her, and +showed in turn Warren. It painted him outside the theatre, in a +difficult position--the Essingtons and his mother on one side of the +picture, Gina and Luli and Betty Crevequer on the other. The picture was +not without its instructiveness. In an awkward position Warren had +relied, with the careless confidence his cousin termed insolent, on the +obtuseness which saw nothing. His confidence was justified; the +obtuseness had still seen nothing. He had not, probably, taken +retrospect into account, or he might have adopted another course; he +might either have turned his back on the Essingtons and his mother, or +even--but this would hardly have been feasible--have introduced his +companions into their company. In the course he did take, the Essingtons +thought he showed good taste and a proper sense of the fitness of +things. + +Gina and Luli and Betty were no authorities on taste or the fitness of +things. + +Warren was everywhere; retrospect, exploiting him, never came to an end. +It was strange, it was marvellous, how it was possible to miss +things--things that so stared one in the face. Yet, how should one have +known? There was no reason why one should know now; only the slow +pervasion of atmosphere, that enabled one to look at things with such +strangely new eyes, the eyes, doubtless, of others, with the added +illumination of the subjective standpoint. This illumination shed its +fiery light, growing from glimmer to flame through the masterless +nights, upon the things Warren had said and done, the things they had +done together, the things he would not have suggested, not contemplated +even in thought, if he had regarded her as one of his own 'sort of +people,' sharing his conventions. Who should blame him? He had been +adequately justified; she had shown herself from the very outset--he had +no doubt waited to be sure of it, so as not to risk insult--of a sort of +people immeasurably different: so different that she had not even +grasped the difference, had only not been surprised at hints of it +because they had passed her so serenely by. They had passed clear over +her head; dragged back through space by retrospect, they struck her full +in the face. + +She saw, in the blinding light of an illuminative moment, Warren's +attitude towards a girl placed by him among his own 'sort of people'; +she saw him brushing aside, lest they should touch and smirch her, the +Ginas, the Morellos, the Lulis, who might have crossed her path; she saw +his considerate respect, his equal comradeship. + +She had given him no chance of respecting her, had he tried to do so. +The things crowded back.... On the evening after the first lunch-party +he had met her in the street alone at midnight. He had walked home with +her; she read into his manner now a touch of the protective regard that +she imagined in him towards his own sort. But it had been tinged with +uncertainty; even then he had probably known her. Not to risk misjudging +her, however, he had walked with her to her home, assuming, doubtfully, +that she had lost her escort. + +It had not taken many days to confirm the doubt, to obviate all +necessity for such assumption. + +And then--how they had played together! Each had been so contented with +the other; they had had such fun. Retrospect with the search-light could +not quite spoil that--not all of it. But it did its best; it dragged it +through the mud till it was hidden, inches deep. + +Prudence Varley would have seen a flimsy screen toppling over with a +crash, revealing the lurker behind with his contemptuous smile. So Betty +too very bitterly saw him: but she was aware also that the smile was not +all contempt. Only the contempt, real or imagined, poisoned the rest. + +The search-light flashed over the large, tolerant acceptance, so +unsurprised, so unremonstrating, so uncriticizing, which had at the time +missed its message. It did not miss now. She saw herself accepted, Tommy +accepted, their friends accepted; all the things they did, their ways of +life, taken easily, without surprise, with scorn lurking behind the +screen. Their unpaid debts, and eluded duns; their disreputable haunts, +their more disreputable friends, their street-loafing, their very +dress.... Even at the outset Tommy had said: 'We don't dress well +enough. I want a new hat; so do you.' So that obvious discrimination +between 'sorts of people' their elementary perceptions had made at once; +they had reached just up to that, and no higher. + +The question of discrimination brought the quick question, What share of +the gift had the Venables? For there were discriminations that might be +made, between the things that the Crevequers had done, and other things +that they had not done--things from which they had been kept, perhaps, +less by any code, moral or conventional, than by the inherent force of +inherited tendency, which, strike what new and individual roads we will, +will not cease to follow us along them. The question of the +discriminating powers of the Venables Betty left. She simply did not +know. + +All the time, while the search-light glared over the things that Warren +had said and done, there remained, outlined lucidly against the +background, the things that Prudence Varley had not said and not done. +She, with her tacit omissions, was the influence almost preponderating. +Her atmosphere was the most deeply absorbed--the rarefied atmosphere of +the studio. Across the gulf of months Betty met the direct, far-seeing +look, which took in all and gave out nothing. It had waited for its +interpretation till now. + +With the interpretation--which was that of things held back, +reserved--Betty came to evolve a discrimination. The discrimination was +between two attitudes. Both had held back something; neither had given +unreservedly. One had held back all of friendship, offering nothing; the +other had given friendship, withholding from it an element--the element +of respect. + +Retrospect made the most of both. It would have been hard to say which +it found the more effectual weapon. There were moments when Betty could +have caught at the sharp blade of one to escape the other, each was +driven in alternately. Finally, in spite of all which she would have +during these months foregone had she been taken at her word, in spite of +all that retrospect with the search-light could not wholly spoil, she +attained at times to endorsing the working principle of the entire +withholder, as it had been once phrased by her--'One should quite +withdraw.' Retrospect, on the whole, made it out a principle more +honest, more kind. + +Tommy, who was every day being shown a little more how Prudence Varley +had from the beginning 'quite withdrawn,' concerned himself, not with +the honesty or the kindness of the principle, but merely with its +immediate basis. + +So, coming to an understanding of its basis, he saw vividly his own +hopelessly unachieved intimacy, his attempts so driven back upon +themselves, yet gaily denying defeat, his battering at walls which had +been built--not at all, as he had supposed, of abstraction, but of +entire perception. He saw now more and more each day the impenetrability +of those walls; retrospect illumined for him the unheeding detachment, +the abrupt swerves from persons to things, so frequent because he had +been so indomitable in his return to persons, perceiving them for gates +in the impenetrable walls. + +There had been times, there had been moments, when the gates had +yielded a very little; one had, as it were, got sudden glimpses through. +After all, the Crevequers had never failed, till now, to achieve any +intimacy.... + +The half-conscious, vague knowledge of this made the shut gates the more +significant; their barred faces were written over, large, with words. +The Crevequers, having begun to learn to read, spelt them out. + +Tommy's reading was perhaps attained to with greater slowness, greater +difficulty--the fault of sex--than Betty's; but in the end the +attainment was equally complete. + +To Tommy one element in the business was all-important; before it the +other elements shrivelled into nothing. But there were other elements +which at times had their turn. There was the attitude of Venables, now +realized as the basis of the embarrassment which had for some time been +oddly, inexplicably, growing into their intercourse with each other. +Wholly to absorb that attitude Tommy had to go back some years, to an +old atmosphere--an atmosphere of discriminations between the things a +man could do and the other things which he could not do. It is curious +how environment can choke an atmosphere. This, of a certain social and +moral decency, as evolved by youth in community, had been brought back +to Tommy by Venables. Venables and the atmosphere reacted on each other; +each explained the other. This was rather a question of the renewal of +old things than of new acquirements. Four years--those four years--do +not easily slip out of life. They had not slipped out of Tommy's; but it +had needed Venables to make them stand and deliver their message. They +delivered it, with whispers growing to clamour--a sordid recital of the +things which a man cannot do. From the friendly inexpressiveness of +Venables' eyes, Tommy gathered the classification 'just scum.' With a +side glance at Betty's part in the business, he admitted that there were +also, beyond doubt, the things which a girl cannot do--beyond doubt, +too, Betty had done them; but here old atmosphere did not come to his +help: his ignorance was as outer darkness. Those things were Betty's +concern. He wondered a little what she made of them, if anything. He +wondered a little also if he was angry with Venables; on the whole, it +hardly seemed logical enough to be worth while. (Betty in this matter +cut herself adrift from logic.) + +Still nothing was said between them; still neither knew how it fared +with the other. They, who shared all their thoughts, kept these thoughts +locked from each other's sight. + +Then, on the twenty-sixth of March, a letter was brought in to them as +they sat over supper. They knew what it would say. The Venables had +returned to Parker's--they would like to see the Crevequers at lunch the +next day. Mrs. Venables was eager to resume the Intimate Contact with +the People; she must have a talk with Betty about it. + +Betty handed the note to Tommy, who was hunting in his pocket for +matches to light his pipe. He glanced at it, then tore it neatly and +with careful deliberation into strips, and folded them into lighters. +Betty watched him; when he had done, he held one over the lamp and lit +his pipe with it. + +Having successfully carried out this operation, he turned to her. + +'You didn't want it, did you?' + +Betty shook her head. She had not wanted it at all. + +Tommy got up and leaned out of the open window, his back to the room. + +'I shall be busy to-morrow,' he remarked. + +'So shall I,' Betty said slowly. + +Tommy said presently: + +'How much longer are they going to be in Naples?' + +'Don't know,' said Betty, her chin in her hands. She was thinking it +over. + +Tommy said suddenly, 'Oh, confound!' and explained, after a moment, 'My +pipe's gone out.' + +They came thus to a perception of each other's position in the matter. +By whatever steps this position had been attained, it stood clearly +defined. Both were too busy to go to lunch at Parker's Hotel; that +emerged saliently. With no words uttered on the subject, their points of +view had marched together, side by side, immeasurable miles from the +evening, three weeks ago, when one had said to the other, 'So for three +weeks we shan't have a chance of eating too much at lunch. Pity, isn't +it? I loved those lunches.' + +The march of the other's point of view each accepted, silently, without +surprise. The only matter for surprise would have been the march of one +without the other. For, backwards or forwards, they had always moved +side by side. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +BROKEN BARRIERS + + 'The barriers break; life opens all about us; + The faces grown so long familiar are become as words, + Each one with infinite meanings, a new world.' + + HENRY BINNS. + + +It was hard to deny Mrs. Venables entrance; her intimacy was so +all-reaching. The Crevequers did not see how it was to be done. Betty +almost reached the conclusion that it could not be done, and echoed +Tommy's question, 'How much longer are they going to be in Naples?' In +ignorance of the answer to that, the Crevequers built meanwhile their +flimsy, pitiful wall, piling for bricks excuse upon excuse, lie upon +lie. + +Over the wall Mrs. Venables swept like a wave of the sea. She saw +nothing; but, whatever she had seen, she would not have been deterred, +but the more impelled. When she did see--if ever she saw--it would be an +impression of the first order, most immensely striking. + +What she at present saw was that the Crevequers had become unsociable; +three weeks had been enough to throw them so entirely back upon their +old friends and their old amusements that the new friends, with their +atmosphere so widely different, had slid to a great distance, and were +not welcomed. + +'Atmosphere counts for a good deal. We have not, perhaps, made allowance +enough for the strain--for it is a strain--of stepping out of one +atmosphere into another. It takes time.' + +Prudence Varley said: + +'Only, when you don't step out at all, but carry your own atmosphere +about with you, the strain is less. The Crevequers have always seemed, +anyhow, to bear up under it.' + +Since the Crevequers, finding the strain too great, refused to come to +the atmosphere, the atmosphere came to them. It was carried by Mrs. +Venables and Miranda; it spread itself over the sitting-room while Mrs. +Venables talked. Mrs. Venables wanted another social evening in the +Vicolo Fiori. + +'Yes,' said Betty. 'I'll l-let people know.' (She was stammering +horribly to-day.) 'But--but I'm afraid I shall be busy myself.' + +Since the evening had not been specified, this was rather too manifestly +a brick in the wall. Mrs. Venables pointed it out, with 'Every night, my +dear?' and a lift of the brows. + +Betty held to it. + +'And--and every day as well. We're very busy just now, Tommy and I.' + +They had become bored with the new atmosphere; they wanted to throw it +wholly off, and be left in peace with their less reputable friends; this +Mrs. Venables deduced, with displeasure now rising. + +'I think,' she said, 'that it is to be regretted--very much to be +regretted.' + +Her tone dragged in to be regretted so very much more than the mere +fact--the only one offered her--of the Crevequers' excess of occupation, +that Betty's dark brows flickered nervously, resentfully, as if she +feared something. + +Miranda's round eyes beamed with sympathy. The desire to avoid another +social evening with the very poor was wholly within the sphere of her +comprehension. + +'It's a rotten game; I hate it,' she observed. + +Mrs. Venables spoke to her quite sharply for once on the subject of +limitations of interest and ungracefulness of speech. Miranda, indeed, +was a little in the way at the moment; she made intimate approach +difficult. + +Then Tommy came in, with Luli clinging to his arm. Both were so +dishevelled, so flushed, so hilarious, that only one supposition was +tenable. Mrs. Venables held it, and her eyes grew still more inclusive +in their regret. She did not realize that it took really very little to +excite the Crevequers and Luli. + +Again Miranda was in the way. Betty realized it, looking, with the +acquirements of her three weeks' retrospect in her pondering eyes, from +one to another. It was not suitable that Miranda should be there. Betty, +with the realization, achieved a fuller comprehension of the suitable +than Mrs. Venables possessed; the thought amused her. Mrs. Venables +caught the half-smile flickering to her eyes. + +'The gulf of mirth,' she observed afterwards, 'is wider than the gulf of +tears. One doubts if there is any bridge across it.' + +The regret deepened in her eyes. + +When Mrs. Venables had gone, and when Luli (much later) had gone also, +Tommy said: + +'What rot, Betty. What can we do to stop it?' + +'Very little,' said Betty. + +'It's such a bore,' Tommy explained. (They had not accepted the fact +that their attitude towards the Venables could stand by itself, +unexplained by one to the other. Unnecessarily, absurdly, each for the +other's education piled bricks on the wall, with 'I'm busy,' or 'I'm +bored.') + +Tommy jingled the coins in his pockets, and whistled sombrely through +his teeth. + +'Venables been?' he said presently. + +Betty's nod merely admitted the fact, without supplement or +amplification. Nor did she state the exact number of times that Venables +had 'been' during the past few days. + +It seemed that they had now all been--all except Prudence Varley. The +inadequacy of the wall was manifest; it kept out nothing. + +Tommy, catching as he looked up a certain pinched look about Betty's +lips, a strain of brows and forehead, a heaviness of lids, speculated +again as to the extent of her realization of the things which a girl +could not do; speculated also as to what, in the circumstances, would be +one's attitude towards Warren Venables. He deduced resentment, and a +desire for subsequent aloofness--a desire which might, perhaps, find +itself at combat with other things.... Such a combat would hardly be +pleasant; it would not conduce to restful nights. Betty did not look as +if her nights were restful. + +So much, in a moment snatched from egoism, the boy saw of the girl--saw +uncertainly, with doubting divination, then returned upon himself, and, +to flee from that, said: + +'Come out. We'll get hold of somebody and come up to Vomero. I want a +lark.' + +The girl saw on the whole, perhaps, more of the boy. She saw, with tired +compassion, a good deal of him. She saw how he shunned things (the +facing of them had been forced on her, but not on him), yet how he too +would probably face them eventually. When he had faced them, they would +stand at the same point again; now she stood a little ahead. For she had +faced things; there had been no shunning allowed to her. She faced them +every day; she wondered in how many days she would be allowed to step +on and turn her back upon them. If it was to be very many, what Mrs. +Venables called the 'strain' might become rather oppressive. + +As it happened, Tommy caught up Betty the next day, suddenly, and wholly +unexpectedly to himself. He lunched with a friend on the Vomero; +afterwards, being left by himself, he strolled through San Martino and +came out on the belvedere. Prudence Varley was there, sketching. The +leisureliness of her greeting seemed to take him for granted, to +relegate him, almost, to part of the scenery. He speculated momentarily +on the change in his own attitude towards this abstraction; how it had +been to him once the absent remoteness of one interested mainly in +things; how it was to him now the remoteness, not absent, but very +deliberate, of one whose realization of and discrimination between +'sorts of people' was quite complete. It certainly might well have been +clear to him from the first; there seemed no obscurity in it. + +And here again they were together, looking over the spread of Naples. +Before, he had swept his hand towards it and said, 'Do you like it?' + +He had been pleased on that evening by what he had considered an +advance, however slight, in the achievement of intimacy. He had +flattered himself that she was slowly unbarring the gates. Once or +twice, after that evening, he had, he had thought, induced the removal +of a few more bars. + +Now, standing outside the shut gates, having realized of what they were +built, he flushed slowly to his forehead. + +And then, even as he turned away, the old desire swept over him, +ironically new in form. He would not batter at the gates again; that was +done with. But he must, it was borne in upon him, show that he moved no +more in the old mists of crass ignorance, show that he knew, even as she +did, of the gates, their nature and their inexorability. That she should +continue to think that he knew nothing was not to be borne. + +So, turning, he checked himself, and stood still a little behind her, +and looked down over the great tinted city circling the blue bay--her +Naples, 'colour and light and shadow, and the way the streets go, cut +like deep gorges, and climbing up.' + +Looking over it, Tommy said, with surprising abruptness: + +'You said once--or I said--that your Naples was different from mine.' + +She glanced round at him for a moment, with her usual unadorned 'Yes.' + +'And I didn't know then,' he went on, 'how much it was true. I think you +perhaps knew I didn't know it. And now I should like you to know that I +have learnt that much; that I'm not quite--not quite a b-blind ass. I +know more or less how we stand--how we must always stand. That's all. I +wanted you to know that I see them--all the things ... the things you've +seen all along.... I wanted you to know.... Oh, there's nothing you can +say....' + +Thus the melancholy, stammering flow, till it, as usual, choked itself +and died. + +She heard it out in silence--as always. This silent hearing was the +carrying out of what had from the first constituted their intercourse. +For always he had talked and she had heard; Betty had once quite failed +to accept Tommy's assertion that it was ever 'the other way round.' But +the silence seemed now to hold a new element--the element of +receptiveness. She listened wholly, swerving from nothing. It seemed +that here was his triumph, long striven for; he had sounded the personal +note and she had accepted it; in a manner, he had broken through the +gates. + +When the stammered flow broke, she continued the silence for a little. +Then she assented to his last phrase, saying, very gently: + +'No--I can't say anything. There is nothing to say.' + +The sad, judicial candour of it set the seal on the position. If he had +still wildly, faintly hoped that she had not, perhaps, seen so utterly +'how they stood, how they must always stand,' that hope died then. He +had divined so much correctly; there might even, perhaps, be more of +it, that it would take some years yet to divine. + +The glow of the coloured city made his eyes ache as he looked. + +He said again, what seemed to be the final expression of the situation +between them, this time altering the pronoun: + +'There is nothing I can say.' + +All he might have said, all he now knew that he would have said, had +they stood differently in each other's eyes, all that it would have +been, as they did stand, an insolence to say, seemed to lie in the +silence between them. Since she was (now) so receptive, she possibly +took it in, or a little of it. But 'there is nothing to say' finally +summed the situation. + +Tommy stammered 'Good-bye,' and went. + +The Crevequers had supper at home and alone together that evening. Over +it Tommy said nothing at all, and Betty talked without a break for the +edification of the two of them. After supper Tommy lit a pipe and began +to work at some sketches. Betty, in the other arm-chair, counted pence +in a money-box for the week's rent. + +'It would be too much to expect that it should be right, of course,' she +murmured, 'But w-why it should be eighty centesimi out, I can't +understand.' + +Then she looked up and met Tommy's eyes. All his sharp hurt was in them; +they were heavy with a bitter, dumb hopelessness. If she had known it, +her own eyes looked with the same heaviness, the same sharp hurt. The +Crevequers were absurdly like each other just now. + +'Eighty out,' Betty repeated, looking away from that other hurt. 'I +can't--I can't understand----' + +Unexpectedly, her voice broke on the words. Tears took her; she leaned +her forehead on her hand. She was horribly tired of talking; she had +talked all day--talked nonsense, stammering over it. She could not talk +any more; the end of a tether often comes quite suddenly so. + +Tommy looked at her gloomily, under his brows. Betty never cried; tears +no more belonged to her than to him. When they had been children, one +had hardly ever cried without the other. Tommy looked at Betty's tears +now, speculating on her 'mental standpoint,' and on how far she divined +his. + +'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Anything ... I can do...?' + +If it was merely the mental standpoint, he knew that she would not word +it; so he exposed himself to her answer, unafraid. They had never failed +each other by betraying such trust. The completeness of his trust +enabled one to watch the other's tears without wincing. + +'N-nothing,' said Betty, and her voice, in its weariness, caught upon a +laugh, while her eyes were still wet. 'Only--only I think I've been +talking too much to-day--and that's so tiring.' (It would seem that the +Crevequers must lead an exhausting life.) 'And I met the baby Venables +sitting outside a church, and it talked about beagling; you run after a +hare till you catch it--did you know? It's so jolly. Thinking of that +made me feel tired, I expect. And have you been stealing eighty out of +the rent? Because I haven't.' + +She was counting the pence again, laying them in precarious piles on the +arm of her chair. + +Tommy had gone to the window, and stood looking out into the soft +darkness and the noisy street below, his hands in his pockets. + +Those tears had somehow a little loosed his speech. + +'The beastly thing,' he said drearily, 'is how everything is such a +bore, and how it will go on always, just like this.' + +Betty did not need him to tell her that that was a bad thing--one of +them, but not the chief. She said: + +'I know.' + +'No; but you can't quite know,' Tommy told her, 'because--because for +you it's rather different.' + +The quick movement of Betty's hand sent the pence scattering on to the +floor, ringing on the bare stone. + +'There'll be more than eighty out now,' she said. 'And it's not +different; it's quite the same.' + +Tommy turned and faced her, pondering, looking at her from under gloomy +brows, seeing how she had sunk her chin on to one clenched hand, and was +looking down at the pennies on the floor sombrely. He was speculating on +her position, how it could be quite the same. She elucidated it a little +with, 'It's what one can take that counts ... nothing else.... So it's +quite the same.' + +Tommy thought it over, and said, 'I see.' + +Yet it seemed to him that what one had been offered might also, in the +long run, count a little--anyhow, in the retrospect. + +Such an amount seemed to have been now admitted between them that Betty +could say, 'We're down on our luck, you and I.... Tommy, I'm horribly +sorry.' + +The last was pity, and he took it from her now without wincing; that it +was 'quite the same' for both of them made it a simple thing to give +and take. He gave his in return, gently, now that her position had thus +emerged to him. + +'I'm sorry, too,' he said. + +So their affection for each other put out reaching, groping fingers +through the glooming mists of pain that blinded each. As yet that touch +could not heal: but it seemed to wait its hour. + +Tommy returned to his drawing. Betty sought for and gathered up the +coins from the stone floor. Their copper jingling seemed to ring in her +soul dully. The beastly thing--to use Tommy's phrase--was that one must +oneself throw one's bright metal away. Though it might burn to the +touch, the flinging of it away was a wrenching that hurt more. Betty +envied Tommy, with the bitterness of his down-bent face before her; her +bitterness must of necessity be the deeper, because her bright metal had +been laid in her hands, to keep if she would. Also, to throw it away had +bruised and hurt not her alone.... + +Betty's thin, scarred hand covered her lips, steadying them. + +'We shall be better soon,' she said to herself. 'We'll play in the +streets and smell the sea ... and summer's coming.... We shall be better +soon.' + +Then she sought a narcotic in literature, and got from the shelf a book +of poetry and began to read: + + 'When you are out alone I hope + You will not meet the antelope....' + +The Crevequers used often to cheer themselves with that book when they +were in low spirits. But to-night it did not seem efficacious. Betty +supposed she knew it too well; she could think as she read, which was +not desirable. So she turned to fiction, and read 'Sea Urchins.' + +The church clocks struck ten. Tommy, holding his sketch from him, said, +'How damned bad!' and tore it abruptly in two, muttering, 'Muzzi would +if I didn't.' Then he got up and said, 'It's stifling in here. I shall +go out.' + +He went out. + +Betty, her hand over her shaking lips, muttered, 'Poor Tommy--oh, poor +Tommy! We've no luck at all, he and I.' + +She was aware how he must have faced things, and how once more they +stood at the same point. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +FURNACE FLAMES + + 'Ahi quanto a dir qual era e cosa dura + Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte, + Che nel pensier rinnova la paura! + Tanto e amara, che poco e piu morte: + Ma per trattar del ben ch' ivi trovai, + Diro dell' altre cose, ch' io v' ho scorte.' + + DANTE. + + +Beneath the hail of black dust and fiery ashes that blew in gusts from +Vesuvius across the bay, Tommy Crevequer screwed his eyes and tilted his +straw hat forwards and drew, getting an excellent view, if not of +Vesuvius, which was blotted in brown mist, at any rate of the population +who thronged the harbour, and of the way in which they received their +impressions. Foreigners--never-failing game--were much in evidence, a +North German Lloyd having recently arrived; there were also the Sindaco, +and various other celebrities. The artist of _Marchese Peppino_ made +them seem rather funny. It was the first morning after the breaking out +of the eruption, and interest everywhere was vivid. Journalists recorded +their impressions with smarting eyes. + +A little way from Tommy, Warren Venables stood, a leaf torn from a +sketch-book thrust beneath his hat to guard forehead and eyes. Tommy had +seen him some time ago; he was rather bored when Venables looked round +and saw him, and strolled towards him. + +'Interesting,' said Venables concisely; and Tommy nodded. + +Venables half looked over the artist's shoulder, with a careless 'May I +see?' + +Tommy shut his notebook with deliberation, and put his pencil into his +pocket. Then, after a moment's interval, he flushed, slowly and with +great completeness. + +'You know it's a rotten rag,' he said, hurling down the other's screen +with an angry blow that sent it crashing in pieces. + +Venables, looking at his resentment for a moment in silence, said +simply: + +'I beg your pardon, Crevequer.' + +He, too, had flushed. He was learning, it seemed, the 'insolent +flimsiness' (as Prudence had it) of all his screens, this among the +rest. He wondered for how long Crevequer had known that he 'knew it was +a rotten rag'--or, rather, for how long he had cared. + +The red, fine ash drifted before a push of wind into Tommy's eyes and +mouth; his sullen anger surged in him, and broke stammeringly out. +Inconsequently, he was glad to see how the soft, drifting dust lay on +Venables' coat and very clean collar. + +'You thought--you thought I--we--didn't know a thing about it, or about +anything else, all this time. Well, w-what business was it of yours? +and--and why couldn't you have let us alone?' Querulously he stuttered +it out, and coughed out the dust as he ended. + +Venables said again, 'I beg your pardon.' + +Tommy glowered at him resentfully. + +'That's no good. You--you had no business....' + +His own outbreak had taken him by surprise. He was seeing the pinched +look round Betty's lips, the strained heaviness of her eyes. + +Venables, his quiet face very inexpressive beneath the paper guard, +said, 'No, possibly not;' and that again took Tommy by surprise. + +His flare of anger flickered down to a sullen smoulder; it seemed to +lack fuel. Venables' silence, as they stood together, seemed to put him, +as usual, in the right. After all, though 'what one can take' may be the +only thing that counts on one side, what has been offered can hardly be +left out of a sane vision of the other. Tommy, resentfully aware of +this, was stirred to surprise, not for the first time, at the part +latterly played by Venables in this matter. It seemed hardly +characteristic; a certain reckless unwisdom it had, which was +incongruous. Tommy wondered whether it was that play had at last grown +suddenly to earnest, an irresistible tide swamping judgment, or whether +this late development might perhaps be sheer amends. + +Anyhow, now, since Venables, from whatever motive, had thus done the +decent thing, they were again seas apart. Venables had, in a manner, by +doing the things which retrospect had exhibited to the Crevequers as not +quite decent, come down for a little to their level. It had only been +for a little; he had now regained his own. His apology for his descent +set him there with more entire security than before. + +Tommy, as they stood together, wished--he had of late wished it a good +deal--that he liked Venables less. It was that element in any +relationship that made the difference of plane oppressive. + +Venables, who had been standing in considering silence, seemed to +remember that there was very little left to say between them. He nodded +good-bye, and turned away. + +Tommy slowly opened his notebook, and stared at his half-completed +sketch beneath drawn-down brows. + +'What rot; what sickening rot,' he murmured, and finished the drawing +with quick, skilful strokes. + +This was a great time for newspaper men. Leaving the harbour, Tommy +strolled into the town, to seek impressions. The most vivid, coming to +him unsought, was one of cinders and black dust falling like +intermittent rain into his eyes. To protect them he followed Venables' +example, and thrust a page from his sketch-book under his hat. In the +street outside Santa Chiara he encountered Mrs. Venables and Miranda; +they were coming out of the church. Beneath her swathing motor veil, +Mrs. Venables' face was alight with exaltation. She also, manifestly, +was seeking--and finding--impressions. She accosted Tommy. + +'Immensely striking.... But too pitiful'--she indicated the church--'the +prayers, the unreasoning, childlike terror. In the streets, too, the +poor terrified refugees, clasping their household gods and lighting +candles to the saints as they walk ... infinitely pathetic ... if one +could tell them how futile!' + +She paused, remembering, perhaps, that Tommy, as belonging to the same +childlike faith, might also, on occasion, light a candle to the saints. + +'It seems a natural thing to try, under the circumstances,' he remarked, +confirming her suspicion. + +'Poor souls,' she murmured. 'I must get over to Bosco Trecase +to-morrow.... Human nature in the raw ... deeply impressive. One's heart +bleeds for all the broken-up homes. And the way they take it--children +hurt without knowing why. That seems to me to be infinitely pathetic; +don't you think so, Mr. Crevequer?' + +Mr. Crevequer tapped his sketch-book with his pencil. The difference of +plane did not oppress him particularly in Mrs. Venables' presence; he +still almost enjoyed it. + +'It's got, you know, to seem f-funny to me,' he explained. 'But I admit +it's a little forced, some of the humour.' + +'Oh yes--your paper.' + +Mrs. Venables became vague; her eyes greedily took in impressions from +the passers-by. + +Miranda said, 'Oh, I say, do let's see!' + +Tommy did not open his book. He changed the subject. + +'Rather pretty, the way the cinders fall, don't you think?' + +Miranda said that the atmosphere was beastly, and that she hated it. + +'It gets right inside my clothes--all gritty.' She wriggled +distressfully. 'And my shoes are quite full of it. I want to go home to +lunch, but mother won't. Mother likes it, I believe.' + +'The worst, I am afraid, may be still to come,' Mrs. Venables murmured. +'They say we may expect a terrible night. There are sinister omens....' + +'Oh, it is a rotten place,' said Miranda, disgusted. + +It grew to be so, more and more, through the day. Tommy met Betty for +lunch, then continued his impression-seeking, coated from head to foot +in black dust. They arranged to be in for supper at eight. Betty was not +surprised when Tommy failed to appear; there was so much of increasing +interest going on. Instead, Gina Lunelli came in, seeking cheerful +society because she was horribly afraid, with the abandoned physical +terror of large, full-blooded people. The Crevequers always cheered one, +made one laugh; she sought them, therefore, and found Betty alone, +waiting for supper. + +Supper restored Gina a little; she became more cheerful, though still +observing that there seemed every probability of the world coming to an +end in the course of the night. + +'The way it blazes--Madre Dio! And the ashes that choke one! And this +horrible storm! And Tommy--he's out in it!' + +'Oh, Tommy's all right.' + +Gina shrugged her broad shoulders. + +'What with the storm, and the ashes they're shovelling in great heaps +off the roofs, and the wild people there are about, and no one to keep +order, and the convulsion of the earth.... But who knows? We must hope +for the best, and the saints are good.' + +Later on in the evening there actually was a slight convulsion of the +earth. It shook the furniture and made a rattling, and caused Gina to +have a fit of hysteria, and sent her running out into the street, +notwithstanding the storm, averring that she would on the whole prefer +to be slain by lightning than by a collapsing roof. + +Betty curled herself up in her chair and listened to the voices of the +night. It was about eleven o'clock then--a black, wild night, full of +the storm. The earth growled back strange mutterings in answer to the +rumblings of the sky. It was as if all hell was loose, and playing about +Naples that night. The thunder-peals and the answering earth-growls grew +in reverberance, in sullen rage. + +Betty wanted Tommy. + +There might be many reasons, but there seemed on the face of it to be no +reason, why he should not have come in. He had probably been asked to +supper by some one. But he had said, for certain, that he would come +home.... Betty did not think that Tommy had lately been in a mood to +seek sociable evenings with friends. + +Gina's terror, the wild night, the storm in the air, caught hold of +Betty with an insistent grip. The voice of the travailing earth played +on her strung nerves as if they had been banjo-strings. She smoked +cigarettes to still them; she tried to read, to ignore them. + +A little after midnight the city shook with great definiteness. The room +quivered and rattled from floor to ceiling. Betty, after that, went out +into the streets, to see how things were, to meet other people, to find +Tommy, to escape her own society. The Crevequers were gregarious; they +on all occasions sought other people's society in preference to their +own. + +Betty was in the fashion; every one seemed, upon that upheaval, to have +sought the open, more or less regardless of whether or not they were +clad suitably to face it. Some of them were not at all clad suitably; +they gave an impression of extreme haste. Close to Betty a stout lady in +a nightdress shivered, and clasped a whimpering pug in her arms. + +There was an influx into the churches; there was crying and moaning and +telling of beads. An impromptu procession passed, bearing lighted +candles, and a wax San Gennaro lent from his altar by his _parocco_. + +Meanwhile the mountain across the bay flung into the black night its +glowing masses. Above it hung an immense fiery pillar, blazing across +the dark, restless sea. + +Vesuvius had not done yet. + +Betty looked for Tommy. + +She did not find him; she found instead Mrs. Venables, and thought, with +a vague, detached part of her mind, what an orgie this must be. + +Mrs. Venables was not pleased with Betty, but the strikingness of the +present occasion seemed to unite them. + +'Deeply impressive.... I suppose few of us have ever experienced such a +night.... I am going into the church.' + +'I'm l-looking for Tommy,' Betty said mechanically, staring down the +street. + +Mrs. Venables did not hear; she was borne away by the crowd, murmuring, +'The city of dreadful night,' the light of exaltation kindling her fine +plain face. + +'But probably he's home by now,' Betty suddenly thought, and pressed a +way through the people to her own street, and climbed the black stairs +to the small room, where the lamp flickered dimly and nothing else +moved. + +Betty huddled again into her own arm-chair, and rested her chin on her +drawn-up knees, and stared across at the empty chair opposite her. She +wanted Tommy; Tommy who would so have talked if he had been there--the +last more silent weeks had slipped from memory; Tommy, who was so often +late in returning, who might be occupied in so many ways during this +strange night, yet whose absence, nevertheless, grew with the hours to +have a sinister meaning, as well as an infinite solitary sadness. + +The storm rolled over Naples. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +BETTY AND TOMMY + + 'So flesh + Conjures tempest-flails to thresh + Good from worthless. Some clear lamps + Light it; more of dead marsh-damps.' + + GEORGE MEREDITH. + + +Through the black, slow hours Betty stared with wide unswerving eyes at +the other arm-chair. On one of its arms lay a pipe, on the other a +half-finished drawing. Between them, it was strange how Tommy sat, +drawing, with face bent down, saying nothing. His presence grew, till +the loneliness of the room was conquered. How should it be lonely? It +held, as always, a companionship of two. As always, one had only to look +up to see the other. So had all the past been; so would all the future +be. No other state was within the bounds of imagination. As Betty once, +at Baja by the sea, had looked up swiftly and seen, for life and all it +meant, all it contained, herself and Tommy on warm sand, and a +sand-castle dotted with pumice-stone like a plum-pudding, and had then +been lit by a flash of vivid insight, of great certainty; so now she +came, by slower steps, through the black night to the same realization. +For it was after all a thing always known, if unexpressed, this +companionship of two which should endure, stronger than death, surer +than the thing called love, failing nowhere. It had been from the dawn +of the days. + +To the further north there lay, in sunshine, a little warm bay of blue +sea, and a Ligurian fishing-city, pink and yellow and white and green, +was set curving round it--Santa Caterina, of deep stone-paved streets, +where odours dwelt of roasting coffee, and drying fish, and cheese, and +drains, and tar, and the breath of the brown seaweed, and of the nets +that had drawn in shoals of _bianchetti_ at daybreak, and lay through +the day drying on the hot sands. + +A town of people most companionable, who played a kind of croquet (it is +more amusing than ordinary croquet; you kneel in the road, and use +boards for mallets) in the piazzas, and along the dusty roads where the +white walls shaded them; who sat and talked outside the church on Sunday +mornings, while their women tied their handkerchiefs over their heads +and went in to Mass. During Mass the sweetness of the church smothered +the saltness of the sea, but when the church-goers came out again into +the hot piazza the sea's breath caught theirs, stealing up to meet them, +calling most insistently, through deep little arches, that framed blue +glimpses like pictures in a row. Going down on to the shore--it lay just +outside the stone streets--one saw how, from the point of Savona in the +west, across to the white gleaming of Genoa, the city of ships, all the +blue bay stretched. Down by the tideless still edge of it a white canoe +with a red stripe waited--a canoe for two (but it held five quite +nicely, if some one sat astride on each end, so that its owners, being +sociably inclined, sometimes took parties of friends). + +In the canoe the owners came to Mass, from their house at the very end +of the long town, well outside the stone streets, with a stretch of +white dusty road to be traversed, unless they took the sea-way. Paddling +back across the bay, the canoe landed beneath a little square, dark red +house, with green shutters and a wide veranda and a small sweet-smelling +garden of close-crowded flowers--roses and tall lilies and evening +primroses; and for the trees, oranges and lemons, pomegranates, and +fragrant eucalyptus, and fluttering bamboos, with vine trellises +overhead. The house stood literally on the seashore, so that when the +waves were high they came in through the green iron bars of the gate and +washed the growing things with brine. On one memorable occasion they +flowed in through the basement windows; the exultant household then went +downstairs and floated about on tubs. + +Inside, the house was artistic, in an unconventional way of its own; its +owner had been called an eccentric of genius. He had been a lovable +person, wrapped in his own thoughts and his own work, giving his +children most of the things it occurred to them to demand, spoiling them +entirely, and leaving them for the rest to shift for themselves, which +they did, with infinite enjoyment, on the sea and on the hills, and +chiefly in the companionable streets of the town, where they played in +the piazza and talked in the _farmacia_, and loved many friends, and +learnt the art of how to be happy though doing nothing. + +No one inquired after their movements, except on occasional mornings +when it occurred to the master of the house that he would teach them +something. Even then they had all the hot afternoons and long, still +evenings for their own, with a warm, happy, gay world to play in, with +rocks half a mile up the shore, where the white canoe paddled about and +turned over suddenly in the warm water (one then navigated it upside +down, which was quite as agreeable), with the cheerful town waiting +always; and just behind the house steep hills of silver olive-gardens, +walling the bay from the trans-Apennine winds. + +Climbing the stony paths that led straight up from the stone streets of +the town, one passed through gardens of oranges and sweet-smelling +lemons and long vineyards, and above the grey olive terraces and +chestnut woods, to the place of rocks and dark cypresses and green +stone-pines. Up there was a little lake of deep green water, with red +pine-bark lying in heaps by the edge, so that one made boats and raced +them across. + +Thus, however much the Crevequers enjoyed the kind, gay and amusing +world--and they enjoyed it, as a rule, tremendously--they were always +aware that there was a better place waiting for them. Some day they +meant to go back there for good, in the days of repose that age should +bring them, and live together in the house beyond the long town (it +belonged to them; they had little other heritage), and cross the bay in +the canoe with the red stripe, that lay in the basement now and horribly +needed caulking, and land on the beach below the little city, and go up +to Mass in Sant' Ambrogio, and afterwards play games in the piazza and +sit outside the _parrucchiere's_ in the sun. + +They had left Santa Caterina ten years ago; a sudden pricking of duty +had come to the hermit of the red house; his obedience to it had, as +Mrs. Venables said, cost him his life shortly afterwards. + +Three most forlorn things Betty had in her memory, following on each +other: the leaving of Santa Caterina, Tommy's going away to school, and +the death, a year later, of the careless, indulgent eccentric. At the +first and last she and Tommy had wept together pitifully; at the middle +tragedy of the three the iron had entered into her soul, too deep for +tears. It had mattered infinitely most. + +But there had been, through those four years, the holidays--holidays +mostly spent in an untrammelled and lawless liberty in London, with a +light-hearted and irresponsible old Irish gentleman, their grandfather. +It was in those days that they learnt to love the glamour of a great +city. London they had known, as they now knew Naples, with a vagabond +intimacy for the most part denied to the children of their class. The +gamin strain that seemed innate in their blood was developed and +strengthened thus. + +Part of these years had been spent with a family of cousins in a country +vicarage. The memory of this portion of their career still lay like a +heavy load on the Crevequers' consciousness. The atmosphere--an +atmosphere, one would think, of fairly ordinary respectability--had not +till then come their way. They stifled under it. No one in the household +but themselves was in the least degree foolish, and they, being frankly +babyish, and quite disreputable in their tastes, were more than ever +driven to one another, facing the rest of the world hand-in-hand, +hopelessly recognizing the impossibility of explanations, hopelessly +failing to arrive at any perception of the civilized and usual code. It +was to them merely an oppression, but from the oppression each had the +other to fall back upon, and they were content. But, notwithstanding +the smothering weight of civilization, they had always, even in those +days, got on extremely amicably with the world in general. The failure +to achieve friendship had not entered into their view of life as it was +lived by them. That was a thing they had had to learn later, and at +first with blank non-comprehension. + +The little of decency that had in these days penetrated into them--no +one can quite escape the impress of the educative years--had during +their life in Naples slipped quite out of sight. In Naples they had +entered into a feckless, laughing world, where they had lived from hand +to mouth, and made friends in every street, and 'drifted about the +bottom.' So drifting, they had been still together. For that reason +everything had so greatly amused them; jests coming their way had, in +passing from the eyes of one to the eyes of the other, acquired an +overpowering humour; the world had been a merry playroom for two. Any +friend made by one of them had been introduced, as a matter of course, +into a three-cornered party; no other way could ever have occurred to +either. + +And now, out of life the crucible, immutable values seemed to evolve +themselves. That story which Tommy had found so tedious on the beach at +Baja had been fulfilling itself of late. Life had truly proved a +furnace, whose pitiless flames melted one's bright metal and horribly +burnt one's hands. + +Those who in the end emerged from that furnace would certainly know +their metal for what it was. Betty, still in the flames, could look +ahead: she saw with increasing clearness the result of that testing and +the gold that would remain--gold that could not, by any alchemy of newly +acquired knowledge, be proved base. + +But if one lost that gold, then life--the essential interpretation of +it--would end there. It were better that the name of it--the poor +kernelless shell--should be swiftly crushed too. It would, no doubt, +find itself crushed somehow before long, because no continuance of it +was in the least degree imaginable. One cannot separate two lives so +tied together. + +So, through the slow hours, life resolved itself into certainties, that +rose like sharp rocks out of the mists of doubt. With their increasing +clearness of outline, the emptiness of the other arm-chair became a +jarring outrage; it was as if, to one who has learnt to say, 'This one +thing matters, this one thing I must have,' the curt reply is flung, +'This one thing for the present you must go lacking.' The solitude +became an offence, insupportable, oppressive. + +Betty horribly wanted Tommy; it seemed that she had never wanted +anything else, so the slow hours had stretched. + +Between two and three the city shook with a stronger motion, more +violent and prolonged. In the streets buildings must surely be +falling.... Betty went out to see. + +Others, too, had gone out, fleeing from the danger of roofs and walls, +or merely seeking companionship in blind fear. The streets were +thronged; the churches were full of praying and crying. The +_carabinieri_ and the _guardie municipali_ kept order as best they could +among a crowd on the verge of hysteria. Here and there trooped in file +homeless peasants from the ruined villages, their possessions bound on +their backs or the backs of their beasts. From the comments tossed about +one might infer this disaster to be probably the work of the good God or +of the Evil One, or merely the spontaneous freakish rage of the +eternally cursed mountain. Each view had its adherents. + +Betty, at a street corner, ran into Luli. Like all the others, he was a +shadow to her, a shadow to whom she said: + +'Have you seen Tommy?' + +He had not seen Tommy; he walked with her, helping her to look for +Tommy; he was to her a shadow moving at her side, who spoke and was +answered nothing. His speaking was: + +'How should we find him to-night? It's hopeless. He'll turn up all right +in the morning; there's nothing to be frightened about.' + +It was irrelevant; Betty heard it as from a great distance; she was +looking for Tommy--looking for him at street corners, going up steep +climbing _vicoli_ and down again, searching all the faces in the crowd. +The shadow kept patiently at her side, with a shrug for the folly of it. +The storm and the earthquake had certainly dazed her, set her wits +wandering; he advised her many times to go home and sleep, since the +shocks were now over and would very likely not recur. + +'Tommy may be home by now,' the shadow said. + +Betty shook her head; she knew that in the dim room nothing stirred but +the flickering lamp. She looked for Tommy. + +Out of the Toledo they came into the Piazza del Plebiscito, and so down +the Strada del Gigante to Santa Lucia by the sea, where Tommy was so +often, but was not now. Looking from Santa Lucia across the black bay, +they saw the blazing game that the fiery cone was still playing untired; +the earth's groaning sounded above the sweeping of the shaken sea. + +Into the town they plunged again, Betty and the protesting shadow, who +wanted to go to bed. The storm had dropped; upon the wind of dawn came +the red rain of the cinders, the black clouds of the dust, blinding and +choking. Behind these the grey morning grew; a dim day broke slowly on +the tired, shaken city. + +Since he could not prevail on Betty to go home, Luli went home himself; +he could not walk the streets all night looking for Tommy, who was, no +doubt, well amused somewhere. + +'It isn't a fit night for you to be out,' he told Betty, 'but I am +falling asleep: I must have rest. What would you have? You'd much better +go home too.' + +So they parted. + +Betty took to going into all the churches she came to, to see if Tommy +was there. She would sit down by the door and look at the praying +people--the churches were thronged to-night--and dreamily wander into +hazy speculations, soothed by the chanting voices and the sweet, heavy +air, till she woke with a start, and so out again into the dim city, +where the ashes came riding on the east wind like rain. + +Once a _carabiniere_ asked her where she was going, why she walked alone +so in the disturbed city. She said: + +'I am looking for my brother. Have you seen him? He is like me, only he +carries a sketch-book and a pencil; and what do you suppose is likely to +have happened to him?' + +The _carabiniere_ conveyed by a shrug that he could not say. + +'But something is more likely to happen to you. It's a bad night to be +walking in the town. All kinds of ruffians are about.' + +That, being irrelevant, Betty did not hear. + +It was strange how every one was abroad in Naples to-night. In the +Piazza Sant' Angelo, a little after five o'clock, Betty met Warren +Venables. She said to him: + +'Help me, please, to find Tommy.' + +He looked gently at her--they had hurt one another so badly that nothing +but gentleness seemed possible between them now--and divined (it was a +fresh hurt to him) how entirely he was a shadow to her; how the world +was a crowded shadow-land, through which she moved alone, seeking the +one reality, her other self. His discernment let him realize how all +things but one must have slipped away through the wild hours of the +night. He knew it by her wide, unseeing eyes, her strained, sallow face, +the mechanic words, which were her only greeting. He was glad to be able +to do her at least this service; he was glad to be at her side, taking +care of her, though it might be only as an unnoticed shadow. It was in +his mind, but not in hers, how she had not long since begged him not to +see her any more. + +He said gently: + +'You're tired; you must go home. Tommy is all right.' + +She said: + +'I want Tommy. Help me, please, to find Tommy.' + +He walked at her side, through the rain of the dust, which lay thick on +the streets and gritted underfoot as they walked. Neither ever forgot +that harsh gritting, or the sulphurous breath of that dim dawn. It hurt +them both in memory for always. + +There is a narrow alley which leads up out of the Strada San Biagio, +climbing a little. They went up it--Betty neglected no street--and there +they found Tommy. + +Some scaffolding had fallen, tossed down by the storm or the earthquake, +in a corner where no one passed. Tommy lay with his face to the street, +his sketch-book clutched in the hand of one flung-out arm, the other arm +pinned to his side, with a twelve-foot plank across his back and two +poles across his legs. Tommy and the scaffolding both wore a coat an +inch deep of black dust. + +Venables lifted away the plank: it took most of his strength; then he +moved the poles. Then he turned Tommy over very gently, and the black +dust drifted down on to the upturned face. Betty raised it on to her lap +and shielded it with her two hands, saying always, and not knowing what +she said: + +'Tommy--Tommy--Tommy.' + +Venables said: + +'I will fetch help. I will be as quick as I can.' + +She looked at him with unseeing eyes. He paused a moment, then turned +and left her, slipping away into the shadows, one of a world of shadows, +leaving those two alone together, as, for her, they had been alone +together through all the long night. + +She looked down into her lap, and made a shield of her two hands, and +muttered: + +'Tommy--Tommy.' + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE ETERNAL ROADS + + 'We are the creatures of birth, of ancestry, of circumstance; + we are surrounded by law, physical and psychical.... The ways + are dark, and the grey years bring a mysterious future which we + cannot see.'--J. H. SHORTHOUSE. + + 'The law of the past cannot be eluded, + The law of the present and future cannot be eluded, + The law of the living cannot be eluded--it is eternal.' + + WALT WHITMAN. + + +There was peace in Naples, and sunshine breaking at last through +clouds--rest and brightness following days of fear. It remained to put +things together--all the broken things, human and otherwise. The city +was full of those who reached hopeless hands for prop and support, +having lost everything; full of those who gathered closely to them the +fragments that remained, fragments they had snatched from ruin and +clutched in their arms as they fled. + +On the many dead, the many broken and dying, the many who grasped +fragments, the many who had lost all, the clear sun looked down, on this +13th of April, with its gay, lucid light. It seemed to hold a promise, +to mention a hope far off. It seemed to drag the world out of the dark +pit, to give the task of rehabilitation and reconstruction the air, not +of a far dream, but of a possibility--far too. It gave it also the air, +quite definitely, of a necessity. It was like the first youth of the +spring, with its forgetting of the black storms past, its promise of a +brave renewal. + +Betty Crevequer walked home through the sunny streets from the hospital. +The gay sun had lit the long ward, sending dusty beams across the room +to the broken, bandaged figures in the beds. By the side of one of the +broken, bandaged figures Betty had sat and talked, and Tommy had talked +too, to-day for the first time--talked for the first time, that is, in +the Crevequers' generous sense of that elastic word. + +Betty had for four days known that Tommy would not die, but live; now +the sunshine in the streets brought her to a more vivid realization of +it. The sunshine in the streets, the keen smell of the sea that caught +her breath as she turned down towards it, the fresh wind from the west, +blowing the ashes away from Naples, brought sudden tears to her eyes, +sudden, vague thoughts of far-off renewals, of the mending of all broken +things. In her weariness she could not stay the tears; they stood in her +eyes and quivered to her lashes. When she had climbed up to the little +room at the top of the steep stairs, they took her wholly; she leaned +her chin on her two hands and looked out over the city, not knowing +whether the tears dropping slowly were for the old things broken and +spilt, or for the slow mending that might yet be. Anyhow, the city lying +so in the afternoon sunshine had a most sad gaiety. It brought back to +Betty how Tommy's smile had to-day flickered out from the bandages, +lightening the sad eyes. + +She was horribly tired; it seemed that she had been living at high +pressure, not only for these past few days--she could not count +them--but for days and weeks before that. The time comes when strung +nerves break like worn-out fiddle-strings; there is no more strength in +them. + +So, in her hour of weakness, Betty wept, having fallen through the +broken floor of circumstance till she touched bottom, looking without +hope at some far, possible ascent, through the sad dimness of tears. The +west wind dried her tears on her face as she looked out; and Prudence +Varley came in. + +Betty turned and faced her, as she paused for a moment to knock at the +open door, standing with chin a little raised to suit with the caught-up +lip, straight and tall, with the grey, artist's eyes that took in +everything and had been wont to give out nothing. Betty's mournful eyes +met the look with her new, sad comprehension of that restraint which had +always so held back everything. Yet now it seemed that it did not so +entirely hold back everything; its remoteness was less complete. Betty +hardly knew this; she knew chiefly how the room was tawdry and breathed +of stale smoke, how the table was littered with cards and _Marchese +Peppino_, how the other had come, perhaps, straight from a cool place, +smelling cleanly of paint, full of the April sunshine, spacious and pure +and bare. + +Prudence Varley said: + +'How do you do? May I come in? or----' + +She paused, waiting. Betty was hardly used to such waiting on the part +of her visitors; as a rule they came in, deeming questions superfluous. + +Betty considered it for a moment, her lower lip caught between her +teeth, her eyes pondering. She might, she knew, have said 'No.' Prudence +Varley neither offered nor demanded adornment of speech. It was an open +question she had asked, to be answered truly. 'No' would have sent her +simply away without comment or offence. + +Betty considered 'No,' and rejected it, perhaps because the direct eyes +seemed no longer to hold everything back; perhaps because, like a child +hurt and bewildered, she wanted help; perhaps because, from the first to +the last, she had always so liked Prudence Varley. + +She said 'Yes,' and came forward and cleared a space in her own chair, +and sat down herself on the arm of Tommy's. The clearing of Tommy's +would have been too arduous a task. + +Prudence sat down simply, unembarrassed. But Betty's thin, childish +fingers, clasped round her knee, worked nervously in and out; she +clenched her teeth over her lower lip. + +'How is your brother?' Prudence said. + +'B-better. He talked to-day, quite a lot.' + +That extremely probable fact, Prudence perhaps thought, could hardly be +taken as conclusive proof of the Crevequers' good health. But she said: + +'I am very glad. Then he may be up before very long, perhaps?' + +'I don't know how long; they c-can't tell me.' Betty stammered a good +deal over it. She paused for recovery. 'When he's well enough,' she +resumed, 'we want to go north for a rest.' + +'To England?' + +'No. Oh no; that w-wouldn't be a rest. To Santa Caterina. It's our home; +we used to live there.... Tommy won't be able to do much for some time.' + +'No; of course. You won't come back till the autumn, when it's cooler, I +expect.' + +The two looks met, the one faintly questioning and half asking pardon +for the question, the other with all its depth of sad bewilderment +stirred--a miserable gaze like a child's. + +'I don't know,' said Betty, and bit her lip. Then quite suddenly the +depths surged up and broke through. Her sad eyes hung on the lucid grey +ones that looked with such gentleness at her. 'I don't know--oh, I don't +know.... I don't know what we can do ... how we're to do it.... Can't +you tell me?... Because it's been you, you know, who've spoilt +things.... And what next?' + +Prudence accepted it, meeting the claim with puckered brows of thought. +She did not know what next. She was an idealist, of a continual and +never-failing hope; but, striving to see, she saw only roads running +eternally sundered, as Betty too had seen them from the first hour of +comprehension. + +Betty said again, half to herself, how they were spoilt, the old things. +'And what new things can there be, ever, for us?' On Prudence, who had +done her share of the spoiling, she still made her stammering claim, +blind-eyed, without hope. + +Prudence's response to it was a doubting question. + +'If they're spoilt then ... you'll leave them?' + +Betty's eyes hung on hers. + +'You mean not come back here? Oh, we don't want to; I've told you that's +spoilt. But where else?... Tommy couldn't get anything to do at Santa +Caterina.' + +Prudence said there were other places in Italy for a journalist. Or +perhaps even England.... But at that Betty shook her head. No spoilt +things should drive her to that place of damp half-lights. + +'Not England. We couldn't live there; it's never, never warm.... Perhaps +Genoa; we know it so well. But Tommy may not find anything to do; he's +never been on a regular, proper paper....' Swiftly, at _Marchese +Peppino_, the colour surged over her face; the room was so full of it. +She said quickly, a sudden throbbing of helpless anger choking her +speech: 'That, too--that, too--everything--you've spoilt it--and w-what +can you give us instead?' + +'What would you take?' Prudence said, with a very grave and very gentle +directness, turning the tables thus. + +Betty's sad regard, emptied of anger, owned them turned. But she felt a +sudden desire to know. + +'If we could take anything ... would you give it? You?' + +The emphasis on the pronoun put it in the singular number, thus setting +Betty's own acceptance or refusal of offerings outside the range of +question and answer, as she had meant. For she was very tired of talking +about that. To the personal question Prudence, after a full minute of +thinking it over, returned a deliberating answer: + +'I don't quite know.' + +It was indeed what she had been for some time wondering. But the spoken +words seemed to strike her with a sense of incompleteness, of a gap +somewhere between themselves and the thought they should have accurately +fitted. Prudence, who did not very often clothe her thoughts, was +fastidious, when she did, about the garments' fit. She tried something +else--a dubious 'I can't be sure, but I suppose ... in the end ... I +probably should.' + +Betty watched the doubtful pondering. She said: + +'You mean because you would think we had a claim? Yes, I know.' + +And Prudence returned slowly: + +'A little that. But that shouldn't count much.... There would be other +things, and they would all have to be weighed.... It wouldn't be easy.' + +'No,' Betty said; 'I suppose not. So it's just as well, really, that it +can't come to that, that we can't take anything--not either of us, not +ever, because of all the things between.' + +Then, all the things between growing with the words to insistence, Betty +mentioned some of them, impelled, now the barriers were so breaking, to +have everything clear. + +'There are so many things.... There's all the money we owe. We must pay +it back.' + +Prudence silently assented. She wondered how much the Crevequers owed +Warren Venables. + +'There are c-crowds of other things,' the sad voice stammered +on--'everything, almost.... But you know it all. You have known it all +the time.' + +Their eyes met and looked away. Prudence did not at all deny that she +had known it all the time. + +'You've all of you known it all the time,' went on the dreary voice, +without anger, without hope. Anger had been spent before, on another of +those who had 'known it all the time.' (The passionate fires of the days +of reparation had burned resentment to ashes, and on these had dropped +the tears of pity and pain.) Hope there was none. 'But Tommy and +I--we've only got to know it lately, you see. We--we didn't understand +before. But we understand now. We understand why--why you wouldn't be +friends with us.' + +Prudence looked away sadly. It was terrible to have to accept it all so, +denying nothing. She wanted to heal, but knew no way. + +In the pause Betty took up a cigarette-case from Tommy's chair, +mechanically fingering it. Then abruptly she dropped it, and looked +defiantly up. + +'But lots of people do that--the other sort--your sort!' she cried. + +Imagination, in these days so morbidly alive, continually invented for +her attacks unthought of, and called out defence to meet what needed +none. For discrimination was of so new a growth. + +Prudence said quickly, 'But I know--oh, I know! Please +don't!'--protesting, apologizing for the existence of this gulf, which +had so yawned to exaggeration. Such an over-recognition of it as that +last had implied hurt her more than what had gone before; it showed so +vividly how the Crevequers staggered under their new knowledge, +pitifully unsteady as yet on the fresh ground. She said presently, +having thought things over: 'If I have been horrid, and hurt you, I beg +your pardon. I am very sorry.' + +'It's just you,' said Betty, 'out of all of you, you know, who oughtn't +to say that. Because you pretended nothing. You kept everything back, +all along, instead of--instead of giving everything but just one +thing--oh, well.' She could not speak of that. She ended with half a +laugh. 'Nobody, you know, could have thought for a moment that you liked +us.' + +'I suppose not,' said Prudence simply. She went on, with something +between explanation and apology: 'You see, I'm not like Aunt Ida; I +don't write.' Betty was grateful to her for making the comparison solely +with her Aunt Ida. 'People to me are simply people....' + +Betty nodded. + +'I know. Not--not copy.' + +'And, you see, friendship isn't a name to me. It's something rather real +and serious. I make friends slowly, I suppose.' + +'And you didn't want to make friends with us. Oh, I know.' + +'As I saw it, it wouldn't have been fair, you see,' Prudence explained +very gently, looking away, asking forgiveness with her voice. + +Betty assented. + +'No; it wouldn't have been very fair.' + +So their past intercourse was defined in few words. That done, Prudence +turned to the present. + +'But now--now it would be fair--if you will.' + +Betty shook her head. Prudence had supposed that she would. + +'No, not now. That wouldn't at all do.' + +They rested on that for a minute before Betty went on. + +'Tommy and I have got each other; and that is the way it must be, the +way we've got to do it--don't you see?' + +Her eyes seemed to entreat Prudence to see, to make, if she could, +others see. + +'It's like this,' the sad tones stammeringly explained. 'We're in a +mess, Tommy and I; and we've got to get out of it somehow, if we +can--find, you know, things we don't hate, things to go on with. That's +all we want: to go on somehow and be happy, as we used to be happy. You +know, you can't be happy if you're wishing all the time to have things +you can't have, and to be things you can't be. So, either we must stop +wishing--and we may do that in time--or we must find new things that we +like. But that's bound to be a long job.' No movement of Prudence's +demurred to that; its truth stared one in the face. 'And perhaps we +can't do that; perhaps things stick always.' + +And to that, too, no denial came from the idealist of continual hope, +who yet saw the eternal roads running. + +Betty, because she, too, saw their running, said finally: + +'I suppose, really, one stays pretty much the same sort of person to the +end.... And that's all right, as long as one doesn't run up against +other sorts; it hurts to do that'--at the pain of that clash of codes +her brows knit--'and that's why we won't try m-mixing the sorts; it +wouldn't be what you call fair, on either sort.' + +Prudence heard the finality in that: it found its echo in her soul; but +still she pleaded Warren's cause (he cared so much) with: + +'But if both cared to.... Oh, that isn't quite all there is to it, I +know--I'm not a fool who can only see one thing--but it's a thing that +should count a great deal. Of all the many, many things, I believe +that's the one that, perhaps, in the end counts most.' + +Betty admitted it. + +'More than any one other; but not more than all the others together. You +see, there are rather many, and it wouldn't do. It wouldn't w-work, you +know it wouldn't; and--and it would hurt rather.... Oh, it wouldn't do.' + +She clenched her lip again between her teeth, perhaps to steady it. + +Prudence thought it all over, admitting it true, before saying, with a +quick tremor in her own voice: + +'But, perhaps, sometime--afterwards....' + +Betty unclasped her hands from her knee and leaned her chin on them, and +looked straight in front of her. + +'No,' she said; 'I think never. Then she gave it a turn, swerving as +usual from her own part, with 'You know it--you yourself.' + +Prudence said nothing. That she knew it hardly needed affirmation; she +knew it with such a sad, hopeless certainty. For the eternal roads run +straitly, and their running is between gateless walls. The grey, +artist's eyes were suddenly wet and blind, with a swift surging of many +feelings. Seeing them, Betty said again: + +'It wouldn't work--for any of us,' with a new gentle cadence in her +tone. Then she went on: 'Tommy and I have got each other. We can help +each other, and no one else in the world can help us. Don't you see? +Because we know each other so awfully well; we mean a good deal to each +other, you know. There's always been just us two. There always will be, +and that's the one thing that really matters--the one thing that always +will matter. In the end no one else c-counts.' + +In that was the ring of certainty; it had not needed to be thought out; +it was as if it had always been there, waiting to be defined. + +After a moment Betty went on, with this time a little tremor in the +tired monotony of her voice. + +'I think I should like you to understand--how it's been, you know, +always. We've had each other, but we've had no one else much, ever. We +rather brought ourselves up; we weren't taught anything about--well, all +the things that I suppose you were taught. We came to England when we +were about thirteen and fourteen; we hated it, the awful w-weather and +all our relations. Directly Tommy left school we came back to Italy, +and--well, Tommy got work here. And we knew nobody but--but--well, you +probably know the sort our friends are; I expect the others have told +you,' she added in parenthesis, with a passing glint of laughter, +remembering how Prudence had not sought the close acquaintance which +should enable her to know. 'We're very fond of them,' she added, and +affection submerged the laughter; 'we've had g-good times together. +Well, we hadn't much to live on, and the people round us gambled and ran +up debts, and never paid them till they had to; and we did, too. We +didn't think--or care--whether the things we did were decent, or honest, +or anything of that sort. We just went on from day to day, playing +round with each other and our friends, and we were very happy.... I +don't think, somehow, that we've ever had a proper chance.... And when +you j-judge us, you might, perhaps, remember that.' + +Prudence, who had listened gravely in silence, as always, said now: + +'How should I judge you, or you me? I have not done that, ever.' + +Betty said, smiling a little sadly: + +'No; you only--you only kept away. I know.... But all the same, I should +like you to understand a little.' + +'I do understand,' said Prudence. + +'Well, when we met all of you last winter, we didn't know the +difference--or didn't care, anyhow. We thought it was funny; and it was, +rather--Mrs. Venables, you know, and being s-studied, and--and all +that----' Laughter flickered again to the sad eyes, but died swiftly. +'And then, after some time, we got to understand.' The stammering +monotone was expressionless and hard. 'And ... well, that's all.... +We've both of us rather minded.... I have been angry, I suppose, about +some things; but that's all done now.... And now we've kind of come to +see that the old things are no good any more--all spoilt, anyhow for +now--and we've got to go and look for new things, and perhaps we shan't +find them; but anyhow no one else can help.' + +'I am sorry,' said Prudence Varley, after a moment, being able to offer, +it seemed, no help but that. Her eyes asked forgiveness, because, having +helped to break, she could have no share in the mending. She knew it was +true that 'we can help each other, and no one else in the world can help +us.' + +To her sorrow, Betty returned, 'We've got each other, you know,' and +even smiled a little. They had so nearly lost that possession. + +Prudence got up, and stood close to the small figure on the chair-arm, +her hands clasped behind her. She was not demonstrative; where some +people might kiss, she merely stood and spoke. + +'You've thought, I dare say,' she said gently, 'that I've been standing +on a pedestal and looking down--a horrid prig. Well, I suppose I have +been a prig; I am made so, and I am sorry. But--please believe this--I +haven't been on a pedestal; I've only been shut in between walls. Oh, +you know as well as I do that we each have walls all round us, and it's +not easy to knock them down; they shut us in.... But sometimes gaps come +in them, so that we can see through--see the landscape outside, and all +the other roads running. I suppose, perhaps, there have come lately gaps +in all our walls. Anyhow, I should like to thank you for the gaps in +mine. I hope very much they will not get bricked up again.... Being shut +into dark, narrow paths prevents one from seeing anything outside--the +daylight and all the other roads. But of course when a gap is made, one +looks out through it. And looking out means looking up.' She paused a +moment, and added softly, looking over the dark head out of the window: +'I think, you know, we're all trying to make what amends we can by +looking up now, if we ever looked at all down. I hope you entirely +believe that; and I hope you'll remember it, and not too much hate us, +when you think about us at all.' + +The silence that followed was broken by a sudden sob. The dark head was +bowed; Betty broke down utterly into crying for the second time that +day. Her tears shook her; she could say no word. + +A hand was on the bowed shoulder. + +'Don't--oh, don't' + +The sobs died at last chokingly away to long, shaken breaths. + +'Please go now,' said Betty. 'Thank you for--for everything, and for +saying that just now. And I don't know why I cried--only I'm so t-tired. +And you can't do anything more. And please go now, if you don't mind.' + +'I suppose,' said Prudence, 'it's good-bye. We're leaving Naples next +week.... But sometime later we may meet again, all of us.... And +meanwhile, if there's anything we can do--ever----' + +'Only leave us your address, please. We'll send what we borrowed; we've +not got it just now. And will you please say good-bye for us to--to Mrs. +Venables and your cousins?' + +'Keep them away,' the sad eyes entreated; and Prudence promised, 'Yes; I +will.' + +She stood for a moment longer by the small crouched figure with its +bent, dark head; her eyes were full of her powerless, ineffectual +desires to heal, to help. Having the gift of comprehension, she wholly +knew their ineffectualness. She could only go, for all had been said +between them, and there remained the doing, wherein she had no part nor +lot. + +She turned and went down into the city, and saw with wet eyes how it was +full of the sunshine, with the sea-wind blowing through it like hope. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE ROADS DIVIDE + + 'So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament + and unknown inspiration, enters into life, that we doubt we can + say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each + other.'--R. W. EMERSON. + + +Prudence, according to her promise, exerted herself to keep her family +from going to say good-bye to the Crevequers. It was not a very easy +task. She represented to her aunt that looking after Tommy took most of +Betty's time. + +'I doubt if they allow her at the hospital much,' said Mrs. Venables; +'and the child must be terribly anxious and lonely. I should like to do +what I can for her.' + +Mrs. Venables was very kind; late failures of intimacy had slipped from +her memory since Tommy's disaster. She had been to see him at the +hospital, and had met Betty there. Tommy, during her visit, had +apparently been asleep. Betty had hardly spoken, for fear, she said, of +waking him. + +'It is a long time,' said Mrs. Venables, 'since I had a satisfactory +talk with either of those interesting children. Yes, Prudence, they +_are_ interesting, owing to their very peculiar circumstances and ways +of life, whatever may be their personal limitations. I grant that one +does not come across great depths in them--or, anyhow, that the depths +are as yet quite unstirred; but those childlike, seemingly almost +soulless natures are a most interesting study to me. One wonders how far +their climate and their faith contribute towards the result as we see +it. There is certainly something in the beauty and gay paganism of this +city, mingled as it is with the simple devoutness of a symbolic faith, +that seems to develop such characters freely. I should like to watch +those children's career--to see what they grow into. Who knows but that +they may sometime find their souls? That would be a strange +consummation, deeply impressive; I should much like to try to bring it +about, but I am afraid the time is very far from ripe as yet. However, I +should at all events wish to see them once again before we part. We +have, after all, attained to some intimacy, they and I; we have shared +so many vivid experiences, and had so much striking talk together.' + +But Mrs. Venables was at last induced to put her parting words into a +letter--four sheets, closely written. Betty took it to read to Tommy, +and they composed an answer together, with immense pains, resisting +manfully the temptations to 'strike' which assailed them. + +'And so that's the end of Mrs. Venables,' said Betty, sighing as she +signed her name. 'And I suppose no one will ever think us so interesting +again.... I wonder, Tommy, if we made the most of our opportunities....' + +They mournfully pondered over the unreturning past. Yet they had +certainly made, if not the most, at any rate a good deal, of those +regretted opportunities. They had, both purposely and accidentally, +succeeded in being a real and profound impression. When they arrived at +the age that in their opinion justified them in reading Mrs. Venables' +works, they would probably get much pleasure out of their own portraits. + +Miranda Venables came to see Betty the day before her family left +Naples. She came in with a dejected air. + +'I've come to say good-bye. We're going to-morrow. It'll be rather +ripping getting home and getting some cricket and tennis, only I'm +simply too awfully slack for anything after all this fooling round doing +nothing. Feel.' She held out a plump arm for Betty to pinch. 'Horrid +flabby, isn't it? And I say, I'm awfully sick at having to say good-bye, +you know.' + +The round face was tragically despondent. Miranda had scarcely realized +till now how much she liked the Crevequers. She said so. + +'You are rotters, you two, but you do make things go, you know,' she +explained, a little embarrassed at her own frankness. 'And, I say, I +hope we all meet again sometime--not in this beastly place, but at home. +You might come and stay with us; you'd get some hockey. Oh, I forgot; +you don't care about doing things. But it's beastly saying good-bye. I +hate it.' + +'So do I,' Betty said. 'So I never do it. Let's not. Let's come and have +ices instead.' + +They went and had ices at Caflisch's, and the pathos of the occasion was +salient. Miranda, after the second ice, worked up at length to: + +'It's all very well, but I like your sort of people, if it _is_ +different (like Warren said once, and mother says), a jolly sight better +than ours--so there!' + +'It's all a q-question of taste, of course,' Betty said. 'And now I must +go; and as we aren't going to say good-bye, there's no more to be said. +I hope we shall all of us have a j-jolly summer.' + +'Please say good-bye for me,' said Miranda tearfully, referring to +Tommy, who had a pedestal of his own. 'And I hope he'll soon be better, +and ... oh dear!' + +So that parting was effected. It should, after all, count for something +that one's friends should weep to say good-bye. + +Next day the Venables left Naples. + +When she knew that they had gone, Betty seemed to lose suddenly the +strength she had summoned to her for resistance; she had no more need of +it; the long struggle was over. She shivered a little at that past +bitterness, and buried her face in her two hands. When she looked up +again, the past lay, as it were, slain; all the future waited. + +The struggle, made so hard and bitter at the first, had at the last been +easy. Warren Venables had let it rest in the end, realizing bitterly at +last the ineffectualness of contest. Prudence had assisted him to that +realization. + +'We can't do anything for them now; we're no good to them; we only hurt +them. We've got to leave them alone.' + +It was strange to Warren to see how her eyes were wet. + +'It's easy enough for you,' he said, his voice hard and level. 'You +don't know how much I care.' + +She said, very gently, 'I do,' and then was silent for a moment, +thinking perhaps that what she did not know was rather how much she +herself might possibly have cared, had many things been wholly +different; had not the unconquerable 'there is nothing to say' finally +summed up the situation as far as her part in it went. But of those +vague might-have-beens Warren knew nothing. + +Prudence said: + +'I do know. And that's why you'll leave them alone--because you care. +For if you don't, you'll hurt them--horribly. Don't you see? We've hurt +them enough; this is the only amends possible--the only amends they will +take.' + +'Amends!' His face was set like a flint, his way when he was hurt. +'That's just it. I've been a brute all along; and when I came to know +it, through _their_ coming to know it, and through my coming to care so +much, I wasn't allowed to make any amends. That's what I can't stand.' + +(He had been shaken and stirred of late out of all his self-containment; +Prudence had heard many things from him.) + +'You've made your amends,' she said. 'First by the things you've said to +her; and now you will be making them again by leaving her alone, as she +wishes. There's no other you can make. Don't you see?' + +'I see I've got to,' he said harshly. 'I've been made to see that +clearly enough lately. Oh, I suppose I've got to accept it--sit down +under it.' + +Prudence mused over it. + +'It's been rather strange all along,' she said, more to herself than to +him. 'For we did our part to them, for good or evil, and they theirs to +us, by accident, and now that it's done we can't be of any more use to +each other, in the straits we're all, I suppose, in, through all we've +come to see and know. They want nothing of us, and we had better want +nothing of them; our uses for each other are over; there it is, you +see. They must leave us to help ourselves, and we must leave them to +help themselves and each other. And I hope we shall all do that; only it +will have to be along our own lines, not along other people's. You can't +step out of your own road into somebody else's; there are chasms +between, too wide to jump. And if you do manage to jump them, you don't +know the geography of the new road, and you only lose your way. I can't +help being stiff and puritanical and disliking certain things. They +can't help being--well, street-children of gregarious habits and wide +tastes. Why should they? It's merely being themselves. But though I may +be a prig, I can yet try to understand and not to keep aloof; and though +they may be--well, they can improve their roads too. It's always open to +us to improve our own roads--only not, I think, successfully to leave +them.' + +Thus Prudence, working it out for her own satisfaction, her considering +brows puckered over the light that her thought had kindled in her +far-seeing, discerning artist's eyes. This side of it--the moral side, +the ultimate side, call it what you will--was of salient clearness to +her; it predominated, rising vividly out of the tangle of issues. It was +to her the thing that greatly mattered, that it was always open to us to +improve our own roads. + +To Warren (the discrimination was partly, perhaps, one of sex, a good +deal between the idealist and one who was not, whatever he was, at all +an idealist) what may be called the moral aspect was obscured. He had +wanted something and had failed to get it; that for him summed up the +matter. Later, he might come to realize many things, all the things that +Prudence realized, that the Crevequers realized--how the fusion of two +'sorts' was at the best a rash experiment, at the worst a most tragical +catastrophe; how the matter had been, no doubt, wisely decided. Now he +knew but one thing: what he so greatly desired he might not have. +Prudence's vision of it seemed of little relevance to him. They might +all follow their improved roads anywhere they chose; they might climb +heights, in that grey future wherein he at least must be (so it seemed +to him at this time) a solitary pedestrian; how they might help +themselves and each other concerned him not at all. + +His clever face was very bitterly set as he stared at the ground, +brooding over it. It was probable that he too had learned something, the +insolence, as his cousin had termed it, of his past attitude having so +recoiled upon himself. + +'Oh,' said Prudence, suddenly, following up her own talk of roads, 'I +wish we _could_ leave them--I wish we could; but walls shut us in. The +walls of character, and circumstances, and old habit; we can't break +through them. We only knock against them--and it hurts.' She stopped, +because her voice shook strangely. After a moment she said quietly: 'We +can't do that. We can only try to keep the gaps wide, and look through +them.... But there are one or two things we can do besides that. Mr. +Crevequer will want to get something to do afterwards; I told you, +didn't I, that they are giving everything up.' + +'Oh! That charming paper. About time, too, I should say. Well?' + +'Well, I thought you might write to that _Settimana Illustrata_ man you +know at Genoa. They are going to their old home for the present; but +eventually they would like work at Genoa. I should think the _Settimana_ +might give him something to start on; he's quite clever, of course; and +he really can draw, can't he? Genoa's near their home. They'll have all +their old friends to play with, and of course they'll make new ones, and +of course their friends will be of all sorts; their road takes them +there. What I don't know,' she added presently, 'is where else it is +going to take them, and where ours are going to take us.' + +Warren did not think it particularly mattered, and said so. Prudence, +who did, proceeded to explain to herself, rather than to him, where +their roads had, in the past, taken them. She liked to be quite sure, +to arrive at sureness by thinking things thoroughly out. + +'We've all been wrong, and all through different lacks in us--different +failures of understanding. I've hated ugliness so much that I haven't +tried--I haven't even wanted--to see the beauty that's always tangled +into it. I've just looked the other way. That was through being a prig, +and stupid. You've minded ugliness so little (though you've seen it all +right) that you've accepted it, traded on it. That was through being +lacking in some sense--I think, perhaps, the sense of beauty, and a +little in the moral sense, too.' Prudence was being offensively frank, +as she was apt to be when she thought things out aloud. 'And the +Crevequers haven't known, really, what ugliness was. That was through +never having learnt, chiefly. And,' she summed up after a moment, 'there +we all stand.' + +'So it seems,' Warren said. 'It must be a satisfaction to have it all so +clearly arranged.' + +Prudence went on, undisturbed. + +'And what I should like to know is where we shall eventually stand. You +say it doesn't matter; of course, as a matter of fact, it is the one +thing which does. Where we go, and what we see by the way--oh, what else +is there?' + +'Where we mayn't go,' Warren answered her drearily, 'and what we miss by +the way. It matters more, for it's better--more worth going to, better +worth seeing.' + +To that she said nothing. They both thought of it all, silently: of how +four ways had come together for a little at the cross roads, how those +who travelled along them had met and spoken and taken again the parted +ways, where they ran beyond range of sight into a grey land, towards +horizons blind with mist--blind and dark to one of the two who stood now +and looked; but to the other limitless, luminous, soft with the shrouded +brightness of the dawn. + +'Oh,' said Prudence presently, her thought running on what we miss by +the way, 'we--our sort of people--being so respectable and so honest and +so refined, sit on our pedestals and look down and talk and analyse, +because we've got a few things that they haven't; but, really, I am +looking up all the time. For, whatever they haven't got and haven't +done, they've at all events lived. They keep on doing that all the time; +they always will, in whatever particular way they do it. It's such an +immense thing, that. Living is like an art, that some people never learn +at all; I suppose the Crevequers were born knowing it--they had no need +to learn it. And if they haven't learnt quite all about it yet, well, +that's only a question of time. They've got the genius of it all right. +That's what I look up to in them. And,' she added, since the Crevequers +were being so thoroughly thought out, 'they have another thing--the best +thing they've got, the thing that will in the end matter, however much +everything else fails--they have each other.' + +At that Warren's face took a greater bitterness. + +'So I was given to understand,' he said. 'I was told that they, being so +much the same sort, wanted no other companionship. The combination of +either with anyone else, it seemed, would not work--would be a +disastrous fiasco, in fact.' + +Prudence acknowledged his right to his bitterness, the hurt being still +so new and sore, his anger with himself going so deep. + +But she said, after a moment, pleading, 'Don't grudge them that. For, do +you see, it's about all they've got left,' and so ended, with wet eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +PINE-BARK BOATS + + 'I thenke forto touche also + The world which neweth every dai, + So as I can, so as I mai.' + + JOHN GOWER. + + 'Earth loves her young: a preference manifest.' + + GEORGE MEREDITH. + + +A dozen or so of the Crevequers' friends came down to the harbour to see +them off to Santa Caterina. The Crevequers leaned over the rail of the +crowded launch, which was bearing them out to the _Koenig Albrecht_, and +waved their hands and stammered good-bye to every one. Tommy was very +weak and wan, and carried one arm in a sling; he had been out of +hospital for just a week. That week they had spent in selling most of +their effects, wringing out of their various debtors, with much +exertion, some of the money owed them, and raising in the end quite a +creditable sum, with which they paid their extensive debts and booked +their passage by sea, and finally, having a little over, asked about a +dozen of their most intimate friends to a supper-party at the Trattoria +Pallino, on the Vomero. There, last night, they had said good-bye. + +Last night had been full of regrets--the sadness of parting, the pathos +of a merry company broken--a pathos hidden in jests, yet oppressive, +nevertheless, in the blue May twilight. They had sat beneath the hanging +purple veil of the wistaria, and the sweetness of the May roses had +mingled with the blue fragrance of the Tuscan cigars to which Tommy had +recklessly risen, and through the sweetness and the fragrance the salt +keenness of the sea had pierced, and its washing edge had whispered a +soft undertone to the city sounds that rang up through the still evening +air. They had looked down and seen how the spreading city far below +bloomed like a great rose of many colours in the soft falling twilight; +how the sky and the sea were still delicately flushed with the +afterglow; how, above the flattened cone of Vesuvius, a great yellow +moon swung up into the blue still east. It had looked upon the city with +a large, mellow charity, softly touching its many colours, deepening the +steep shadows of the streets that ran through it like gorges. It had +laid a broad yellow path for itself across the blue spaces of the +evening sea, and so twilight had deepened tenderly to night. + +They had all drunk to each other in red Posilipo, and wished themselves +and each other good luck, and Gina Lunelli had said, for the twentieth +time, 'You won't find any place so good to live in as Naples,' and Tommy +had said, 'You must come and stay with us some time at Santa +Caterina--all of you,' with a comprehensive sweep of his arm, generous +with the large hospitality of red Posilipo. Betty had said how Genoa, +too, was a gay place, with plenty doing, only the winds that blew down +its streets in winter were certainly evil and bitter, and one had to +wear all one's clothes at once. But Santa Caterina was different; Italy +certainly held no such other place, and they must, of course, one day +all come and see. + +Thus they talked, and laughed, and sang songs, and looked away from the +city which held in its deep shadows so much of their life. It would have +been quite easy then to slip down among the shadows and the colours and +take that life again, broken as it was, in time perhaps forgetting +everything. New beginnings were so hard, the call of the old things so +insistent. The old things that they had of late so hated, as spoilers of +their lives, they knew that they would not always hate--if now they went +down into the shadowed streets and took them again, striving to forget, +in the end all but forgetting, this cleavage which so lay across life. +For all cleavages may be bridged with time. + +So, sick-hearted, the Crevequers had looked at the old ways which so +clogged them, which would possibly (why not?) always clog them, clinging +heavily like mire; and at the new ways which they were seeking wearily, +with no heart, with 'too late' echoing in their souls like a knell. + +But this May morning, blown by a light wind that set the blue sea +dancing and would soon make them very ill, astir with the thronging of +ships in the harbour, and the hooting of voyages begun, was full of +unquenchable hopes and unvanquished youth and gay beginnings. + +Some one on the launch was playing 'Addio, bella Napoli' on a mandolin; +the Crevequers called again 'Good-bye,' and leaned over the rail and +watched the sea-face of the city, crowned by Castel St. Elmo on the +hill, growing smaller in the distance. So much of life lay there.... + +They left it there, gold and dross, in that crucible which had so +transmuted it. Gold or dross, it seemed to matter little; it had melted +from them, burning their hands. + +They looked at it once more, saw it dwindle far away, then turned +together to the wide, blue newness of the sea. + + * * * * * + +Betty had to make both the boats, because Tommy could not yet use his +right hand. She made them out of the pieces of red bark which flaked off +the pine-trunks and lay in heaps by the edge of the pool. Each boat was +about six inches long and two inches wide, square about the stern and +pointed in the bows, with a pine-needle mast and an envelope sail. To +prevent bitterness and evil speaking, Tommy had his choice of them when +they were finished. Then they were launched, and the Crevequers lay and +watched them, knowing that not for a long time need they go across to +the other side to welcome them to port. They made a slow voyage in the +windless afternoon. There was never much wind up here, though it was up +among the hills, because the pines stood close and thick about the +water, shutting it in to a deep green gloom. + +The Crevequers lay by the water, upon the slippery brown needles, and +drank in the warm resinous fragrance. It was always pleasant to step +from the winding stone path, where the afternoon sun lay hot, where +mule-carts climbed up and jingled their bells lazily, into this deep +green shadowed place, where in the water the images of the pines nearly +met from side to side, leaving a little circle of blue between. It had +always been a favourite place; the Crevequers had spent much of their +youth here, sailing pine-bark boats from side to side, hanging head +downwards over the water with jars to catch water-beetles, bathing, or +dangling an ineffectual line for fish. + +They had spent the morning paddling about the seashore and among the +rocks in the white canoe, which leaked horribly. Now they had come up +here to get dry. + +It was note-worthy how these weeks in Santa Caterina had left their +healing touch upon both. They had been weeks of playing in the warm +sunshine (there is nowhere else such sunshine, so bright and yet so +gentle), of renewals of many friendships, with laughter and embraces, of +rest and healing after strain of mind and body. Recuperation had begun +its slow work. Tommy looked less ill, Betty less nervous and weary; +laughter flickered from eyes sad and pondering, but not now, as a rule, +unhappy. + +With broken ways behind them, new roads in front of them as yet untried, +they seemed thus to be waiting a little, putting fragments together, +finding, as it were, their foothold, or perhaps seeking it, as yet +blindly. Prudence Varley's optimism would doubtless have averred that +the finding was only a matter of time. The Crevequers averred nothing; +it was not in them to analyse, as Prudence analysed and thought out. But +deep in their pondering eyes lay unsolved questions--questions they did +not consciously put to themselves; questions as to the happy road they +so blindly sought--whether it ran through new places or through old; +whether, if through new, it could be reached, seeing that temperament, +which had at least as much moulded circumstance as circumstance had +forced temperament, was probably in the end master of all the roads, +insisting that every one remained, as Betty had said, pretty much the +same sort of person as he began. + +If one was so to remain, it would perhaps be wiser to seek no more. For +the basis of these new desires was, after all, so irremediably +shattered. What the Crevequers did not know was whether the desires had +any independent standing. For they would never be self-tormentors; they +would seek always, and have a considerable gift for finding, the +happiest way; they understood, as Prudence had said, the art of living +well enough for that. But where that quest would lead them it was not +given to them, not given to anyone, to know. + +So, among all the confusion and the chaos of things broken and problems +unsolved, two facts alone stood out, stable and unquestioned, inevitably +sure. One was the complete breakage of the basis of their new +desires--its scattering into fragments, never, whatever else might come +to pass, to be pieced together. That destruction they had accepted; it +was too inevitable for rebellion. They had left that behind them; and +time would heal the memory, as time heals all hurts. + +The other thing that emerged unquestionably out of the chaos was how +they were together; how they had been together through everything; how +they were together now, sailing pine-bark boats and seeking fresh roads; +how, along any roads they might chance to find, they would journey +together, knowing themselves admirable travelling-companions, knowing +that to be well amused on the road is three-parts of the journey's hope. +As Betty had said, 'We can help each other, and no one else in the world +can help us. Because we know each other so awfully well. Don't you see?' + +Prudence had seen--seen, too, that it was the best thing they had--the +thing that would in the end matter, however much everything else failed. +She had seen the Crevequers cast up, as it were, out of fire, holding +this gold to them, when all else--the old and the new things alike--had +melted from their hands. + +And to all their questioning life could give them as yet this answer +alone. The other answers would work themselves out through the veiled +years, slowly, painfully perhaps. It was, then, a triumphant thing to +have one possession safe for all time--one thing that the inscrutable +years, and failure and joy and tears, could not touch; one thing, in a +world of uncertain values, that the flames of the crucible would not at +all transmute. It was, in fine, an admirable thing that they had one +another to sail boats with. + +Tommy was throwing stones, with his left hand, after his boat, with +intent to hasten it. In the long run, even taking into account undoubted +occasional successes, experience goes to show that this is not really a +very useful thing to do, even when the right hand is used. Tommy's boat +presently was struck and capsized. + +'All right,' Tommy observed. 'Yours isn't going to come in to shore by +itself--you needn't think it. We'll have a bombardment.... Mine was a +rotten boat.... If I couldn't make a better boat than that.... There, +that's got it. Now they can race in upside down. C-come round and get +them.' + +The race in upside down was a leisurely process. The owners got bored at +last, and decided to abandon the crafts, which remained bobbing together +upside down, twin derelicts far from the shore. + +Out of the shadowed green pine-gloom the Crevequers came up again on to +the steep, climbing hill-path, whose stones were hot with the evening +sunshine. The warm still air was sweet with the pines, salt with the +breath of the sea below. From up here, looking down through the +silver-grey screen of the olives, one saw all the little bay lying, +golden with the sunset, the sea stretching level and limpid, blue as +evening, between jutting points, the fishing-city, pink and yellow and +white, curving round it, set close on the still, clear, tideless edge, +that was as a lake's margin, lifted by no ripple, but having for waves a +soft soundless sway to and fro. + +The Crevequers loved this waveless evening sea. Betty gave a little sigh +of content, and slipped her hand into Tommy's. + +'Come on,' she said, 'l-let's run down, and get r-really hot, then we'll +go and upset ourselves out of the canoe. What fun.' + +They did so. + + +THE END + + + + +BY THE SAME AUTHOR + +ABBOTS VERNEY + + +'A fine novel.'--_Review of Reviews._ + +'A novel of great promise.'--_Sheffield Telegraph._ + +'A clever book--unusually so; a thoughtful, judicious, well-developed +book, full of interesting people.'--_Daily Chronicle._ + +'A singularly clever novel.'--_Truth._ + +'"Abbots Verney" has charm and distinction ... an unusually capable +book.'--_Morning Post._ + +'Far above the common run of novels.'--_Literary World._ + +'A notably sound, original, and well-constructed story.'--_Birmingham +Post._ + +'The characters are realized vividly and with insight; the story, which +is carefully written and full of interest, is unfolded with no little +skill.'--_Bookman._ + +'A remarkable novel.... It is finely written. The style is crisp, +brilliant, and pointed. There is not a superfluous paragraph, line, or +phrase. The book will make its mark.'--_Scotsman._ + + + + + * * * * * + + + +Transcriber's note: + +In the Table of Contents, the title of Chapter V is "Balae's Bay," +but in the text the title of Chapter V is "Baiae's Bay." This +difference was present in the original text. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FURNACE*** + + +******* This file should be named 33482.txt or 33482.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/3/4/8/33482 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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