Up and Down. Benson Edward Frederic
it. For here in the far south of Europe, the droughts of summer and early autumn render unpractical any horticultural legislation with a view to securing colour in your flower-beds all the year round. However much you legislated, you would never get your garden to be gay through July and August, and so, resigning yourself to emptiness then, you console yourself with an intoxication of blossom from March to June. And never was a garden so drunk with colour as is ours to-day; never have I seen so outrageous a riot. Nor is it in the garden-beds alone that rose and carnation and hollyhock and nasturtium and delphinium unpunctually but simultaneously sing and blaze together. The southern front of the house is hidden in plumbago and vines with green seed-pearl berries, and as for the long garden wall, it is literally invisible under the cloak of blue morning-glory that decks it as with a raiment from foundation to coping-stone. Every morning fresh battalions of blue trumpets deploy there as soon as the sun strikes it, and often as I have seen it thus, I cannot bring myself to believe that it is real; it is more like some amazing theatrical decoration. Beyond on the further side lies the orchard of fig and peach, and I observe with some emotion that the figs, like the lady in Pickwick, are swelling visibly.
Within, the house has assumed its summer toilet, which is another way of saying that it has been undressed; carpets and curtains have been banished; doors are latched back, and the air sweeps softly from end to end of it. A sitting-room that faces south has been dismantled, and its contents put in the big studio that looks northwards, and even in the height of summer, we hope, will not get over-hot, especially since a few days ago we had the roof whitewashed and thick matting hung over its one southern window. Breakfast and dinner, now that the true May weather has begun, we have on the terrace-top of the big cistern in the garden, roofed over between the pilasters of its pergola with trellis, through which the vineleaves wriggle and wrestle. But now at noon it is too hot in the garden, and to-day I found lunch ready in the square vaulted little dining-room, with Pasqualino bringing in macaroni and vine-leaf-stoppered decanter, and Francis, who refrained from bathing this morning owing to the Martha-cares of the household, debating with Seraphina (the cook) as to whether the plumbago ought not to be pruned. It has come right into the room, and, as Seraphina most justly remarks, it is already impossible to shut the window. But since we shall not need to shut the window for some months to come, I give my vote to support Francis, and suffer the plumbago to do exactly as it likes. So we are two to one, and Seraphina takes her defeat, wreathed in smiles, and says it is not her fault if burglars come. That is a poor argument, for there are no burglars in Alatri, and, besides, there is nothing to steal except the grand piano…
Just now social duties weigh rather heavily on Francis and me, for the British colony in Alatri consider that, as we have moved into a new house, they must behave to us as if we were new-comers, and have been paying formal visits. These civilities must be responded to, and we have had two house-warmings and are going to have a third and last to-day. The house-warmings should perhaps be described as garden-warmings, since we have tea on the terrace in great pomp, and then get cool in the house afterwards. Rather embarrassing incidents have occurred, as, for instance, when Miss Machonochie came to a garden-warming the day before yesterday. She is a red amiable Scotchwoman, with a prodigious Highland accent, which Francis, whom she has for years tried to marry, imitates to perfection. So perfect, indeed, is his mimicry of it, that when Miss Machonochie appeared and began to talk about the wee braw garden, Pasqualino, who was bringing out a fresh teapot, had to put it hurriedly down on the ground, and run back again into the kitchen, from which issued peal after peal of laughter. So overcome was he, that after a second attempt (Miss Machonochie being still full of conversation) he had to retire again, and Seraphina must serve us till Miss Machonochie went away. This she did not do for a long time, since, after just a little vermouth, she wanted no persuasion at all to sing a quantity of Scotch ditties about Bonnie Charlie and Loch Lomond, and other beautiful and interesting topics. Technically, I should say that she had one note in her voice, which she was in a great hurry to get on to and very loath to leave. This had an amazing timbre like a steam siren, and as I played her accompaniment for her, my left ear sang all the evening afterwards. But her accent was indubitably Highland, and Mrs. Macgregor declared she could smell the heather. I was glad of that, for I was afraid that what I smelled (it being now near dinner-time) was the fritura that Seraphina was preparing in the kitchen.
This island-life is the busiest sort of existence, though I suppose a stockbroker would say it was the laziest, and, in consequence, these social efforts give one a sense of rush that I have never felt in London. The whole of the morning is taken up with bathing (of which more presently), and on the way up you call at the post-office for papers and letters. The letters it is impossible to answer immediately, since there is so much to do, and the pile on my table grows steadily, waiting for a wet day. After lunch you read the papers, and then, following the example of the natives, who may be supposed to know the proper way of living in their own climate, you have a good siesta. After tea, the English habit of physical exercise asserts itself, and we walk or water the garden till dinner. After dinner it is, I take it, permissible to have a little relaxation, and we either play a game or two of picquet up here in the studio, or more often stroll down to the piazza and play in the café, or attend a thrilling cinematograph show. In the country it is natural to go to bed early, and, behold, it is to-morrow almost before you knew it was to-day. When it rains, or when the weather is cold, it is possible to do some work, and Francis asserts that he does an immense quantity during the winter. I daresay that is so; I should be the last person to quarrel with the statement, since he so amiably agrees that it is impossible to behave like that in the summer.
The mind is equally well occupied, for we always take down books to the bathing-place, and for the rest the affairs of the island, Pasqualino and his family, Seraphina and her family, the fact that Mrs. Macgregor has dismissed her cook, that Mr. Tarn has built a pergola, completely absorb the intellectual and speculative faculties. What happens outside the island seems not to matter at all. England, with its fogs and its fuss, is less real and much further away than the hazy shores of the mainland, where all that concerns us is the smoke of Vesuvius, which during the last week has been increasing in volume, and now stands up above the mountain like a huge stone-pine. The wiseacres shake their heads and prophesy an eruption, but che sarà, sarà– if it comes, it comes, and meantime it is a marvellous thing to see the red level rays at sunset turn the edges of the smoke-cloud into wreaths of rose-colour and crimson; the denser portions they are unable to pierce, and can but lay a wash of colour on them, through which the black shows like a thing of nightmare. In the calm weather, which we have been having, this stone-pine of smoke is reflected in the bay, and the great tree of vapour steals slowly across the water, nearer and nearer every day. The observatory reports tell us that its topmost wreaths are eight vertical miles away from the earth. Sometimes when it is quite calm here we see these tops torn by winds and blown about into fantastic foliage, but the solidity of the trunk remains untouched.
But Vesuvius is far away, twenty-five miles at the least, and here in this siren, lotus-eating island nothing across the sea really interests us. But island affairs, as I have said, are perfectly absorbing, and during this last fortnight we have been in vertiginous heights of excitement. Only yesterday occurred the finale of all this business, and Francis thinks with excellent reason, that he is accomplice to a felony. The person chiefly concerned was Luigi, nephew of our cook Seraphina, who till six months ago was valet, butler, major-domo, and gardener to Francis. Then, in a misguided moment, he thought to "better himself" by going as hall-boy to the Grand Hotel in Alatri. There were tips, no doubt, in the tourist season at the Grand Hotel, but there was also trouble. It happened like this.
From the day of the supposed crime the sympathy of the island generally was on the side of Luigi, in the fiery trials that awaited him. It was felt to be intolerable that a boy who had just changed into his best clothes, and had taken a carnation from one of the tables in the dining-room, and was actually going out of the hotel gate to spend the afternoon of the festa in the Piazza, should have been summarily ordered back by the porter, and commanded to show a fat white German gentleman, who was staying in the hotel, the way to the bathing-place at the Palazzo a mare, and carry his towels and bathing-dress for him, the latter of which included sandals, so that the fat white gentleman should not hurt his fat white toes on the shingle. This abominable personage had also preferred, in the unaccountable manner of foreigners, to go all the way on foot, instead of taking a victoria, which would have conveyed