Up and Down. Benson Edward Frederic
the firmament. It was as if some celestial painter had put body-colour into what had been a wash of pure blue; there was a certain white opacity mingled with the previous clarity of it. The sun itself, too, was a little veiled, and its heat, as Francis had said, seemed more like the radiation from hot-water pipes than the genial glow of an open fire. Round it at a distance of three or four of its diameters ran a pale complete halo, as of mist. Yet what mist could live in such a burning and be unconsumed?
"'Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,'"
quoted Francis. "But here we have the two things occurring simultaneously, which Shakespeare did not mean. But what, after all, didn't Shakespeare mean?"
We swam out round the fat German's promontory, floated, drifting with the eastward setting current, came lazily in again, and even more lazily walked up through the narrow cobbled path to where the rickety little victoria was waiting for us on the road. The tourist boat had arrived, and clouds of dust hung in the air, where their vehicles had passed, undispersed by any breeze. The intolerable oppression of the air was increasing every moment; the horse felt himself unable to evolve even the semblance of a trot, and the driver, usually the smartest and most brisk of charioteers, sat huddled up on his box, without the energy to crack his whip or encourage his steed to a livelier pace. Usually he sits upright and sideways, with bits of local news for his passengers, and greetings for his friends on the road; to-day he had nothing beyond a grunt of salutation, and a shrug of the shoulders for the tip which he usually receives with a wave of his hat, and a white-toothed "Tante grazie!" The Piazza, usually a crowded cheerful sort of outdoor club at midday, was empty, but for a few exhausted individuals who sat in the strips of narrow shadow, and the post-office clerk just chucked our letters and papers at us. The approach of Scirocco, though as yet no wind stirred, made everyone cross and irritable, and set every nerve on edge, and from the kitchen, when we arrived at the Villa, we heard sounds of shrill altercation going on between Pasqualino and Seraphina, a thing portentously unusual with those amicable souls. Pasqualino banged down the macaroni on the table, and spilt the wine and frowned and shrugged till Francis told him abruptly to mend his manners or let Seraphina serve us; on which for a moment the sunny Italian child looked out from the clouds and begged pardon, and said it was not he but the cursed Scirocco. And then, following on the cloud in the sky that had spread so quickly over the heavens, came the second cloud.
Francis had just opened the Italian paper which we had got at the post-office and gave one glance at it.
"Horrible thing!" he said. "The Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife have been murdered at Serajevo. Where is Serajevo? Pass the mustard, please."
Pasqualino's myrtle wreath fell down during lunch (he told us that it had done the same thing a good deal all morning), and he, exhausted by his early rising to pick it, and the increasing tension of Scirocco, went and lay down on the bench by the cistern in the garden as soon as his ministrations were over, and after the fashion of Italians took off his coat and put it over his head, which seemed odd on this broiling and airless day. From the kitchen came the choking reverberation of snores, and looking in, I saw Seraphina reposing augustly on the floor, with her back propped up against the kitchen dresser and her mouth wide, as if for presentation to a dentist. Francis retired to his bedroom to lie down and sleep, and, feeling like Oenone that "I alone awake," I went to my sitting-room to read the paper, and, if possible, write a letter that ought to have been sent quite a week ago.
This room is furnished exactly as I chose to furnish it; consequently it has got exactly all that I want in it, and, what is even more important, it has nothing that I don't want. There is a vast table made of chestnut wood, so big that a week's arrears can accumulate on it, and yet leave space to write, to play picquet at the corner and to have tea. (If there are any other uses for a table, I don't know them.) This table stands so that the light from the window number one falls on it, and close behind it along the wall is the spring mattress of a bed. On it lies another thick comfortable mattress; above that a stamped linen coverlet, and on that are three enormous cushions and two little ones. The debilitated author, therefore, when the fatigue of composition grows to breaking-point, can thus slide from his chair at the enormous table, and dispose the cushions so as to ensure a little repose. Opposite this couch stands a bookcase, where are those few works that are necessary to salvation, such as "Wuthering Heights," "Emma," and "The Rubáiyát," books that you can open anywhere and be instantly wafted, as on a magic carpet, to familiar scenes that never lose the challenge of novelty (for this is the reason of a book, just as it is also of a friend). After the bookcase comes the door into my bedroom, and after that, on the wall at right angles, window number two, looking south. A chair is set against the wall just beyond it, and beyond again (coming back to window number one, which looks west) another chair, big, low and comfortable, convenient to which stands a small table, on which Pasqualino has placed a huge glass wine-flask, and has arranged in it the myrtle that was left over from his wreath. The walls of this abode of peace are whitewashed and ungarnished by pictures, the ceiling is vaulted, the tiled floor is uncarpeted, and outside window number one is a small terrace, on the walls of which stand pots of scarlet geraniums, where, when nights are too hot within, I drag a mattress, a pillow and a sheet. There are electric lamps on both tables and above the couch, and I know nothing that a mortal man can really want, which is not comprised in this brief catalogue.
I wrote the letter that should have been written a week ago, found that it didn't meet the case, and after tearing it up, lay down on the couch (completely conscious of my own duplicity of purpose) in order, so I said to myself, to think it over. But my mind was all abroad, and I thought of a hundred other things instead, of the bathe, of the garden, and wondered whether if I went into the studio and played the piano very softly, it would disturb anybody. Then I had the idea that there was someone in the studio, and found myself listening as to whether I heard steps there or not. Certainly I heard no steps, but the sense that there was someone there was rather marked. Then, simultaneously I remembered how both Pasqualino and Seraphina had heard steps there, when the house was otherwise empty, and had gone there, both singly and together, to see if Francis or I had come in. But even as I did now, they have entered and found the studio empty. Often I have hoped that a ghost might lurk in those unexplained footfalls, but apparently the ghost cannot make itself more manifest than this.
I stood there a moment still feeling that there was somebody there, though I neither saw nor heard anything, and then went quietly along the passage, under the spur of the restlessness that some people experience before Scirocco bursts, and looked into Francis's room, the door of which was open. He lay on his bed in trousers and opened shirt, sleeping quietly. From here I could catch the sound of Seraphina's snoring, and from the window could see the head-muffled Pasqualino spread out in the shade of the awning above the garden cistern. And feeling more Oenone-ish than ever, I went back and lay down again. It was impossible in this stillness and stagnation of the oppressed air to do more than wait, as quiescently as possible, for the passing of the hours.
I was not in the least sleepy, but I had hardly lain down when the muddle and blur of sudden slumber began to steal over my brain. I thought I remembered seeing the murdered Archduke once in London, and was I wrong in recollecting that he always wore a fur-tippet over his mouth? I recognized that as nonsense, for I had never seen him at all, and fell to thinking about Francis lying there on his bed, with doors and windows open. It seemed to me rather dangerous that he should lie there, relaxed and defenceless, for it was quite possible that Miss Machonochie, recognizing that everything was one (even as I had felt this morning on the beach) might easily prove to be Artemis, and coming in moon-wise through Francis's window might annex her Endymion. This seemed quite sensible … or Caterina might float into the garden in similar guise, and carry off Pasqualino … perhaps both of these love-disasters might happen, and then Seraphina and I alone would be left… I should certainly swim away to my cache, and live on cigarettes and seaweed, and mercury from the thermometer… I should have to break the bulb to get at it, and I thought that I was actually doing so.
It broke with a terrific crash, which completely awoke me. Another crash followed and a scream: it was the second shutter of my window that faced south being blown against the sash, and the scream was that of the pent-up wind that burst with the suddenness of lightning out of the sky.