Читать книгу They Winter Abroad - T. H. White - Страница 5

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Mr. McInvert was sitting on one of the small terraces tucked away to the right of the main front on the seaward side of the hotel. On his left the cliff fell abruptly to the sea, on his right was the sunny wall of the main terrace. He was shaded by olive trees. What he believed to be a withered asphodel grew at the top of the cliff, beyond the iron railings. If he were to climb over those railings and scramble a few steps past the asphodel, he would have the opportunity of a clear drop almost into the cobalt sea. He could see right down into the water. It was green or blue, quite beyond the grasp of northern races. The colours varied in patches, so that over certain areas of rock the blue was ultramarine, and over certain other areas the green was viridian. The blood of some gigantic dragon had been spilled long ago over the sea floor. The waves were not appreciable. At the cliff foot, certainly, there was a lazy foam among the jagged rocks, but farther off nothing seemed to move. The sun shone; the cliff road wound statically along the contours of the peninsula; the sea led out and out, vast, beautiful and careless, beyond the farthest islands. Against the blue of the sea the land shewed with a sunny light. The haze of dust over the road, though nobody seemed to move on it, stretched up among the pink and white dice which were the toy houses. It rose in a golden mist, beyond Porgerola and the hill villages, to the baked summits of the mountains. This dust gave a quality of sunlight to the whole scene, washing the vineyards and the stone outcrops impartially, till it rose to tinge the snowy bosoms of the clouds themselves, and finally the blue sky also, which stooped down again on the seaward side, in a full circle, to meet the blue of the sea.

It was an extraordinary landscape. Mr. McInvert attempted to estimate the height of Monte S. Angelo. He was not good at estimating heights. Two, three, four thousand? He wondered. In any case, from that very respectable altitude the coast-line slipped down at a slope which made roads interminably curly and hewn steps necessary for direct descent. It tumbled straight down. The vineyards were themselves stepped, by the hand of man, for there was nothing horizontal anywhere. If you wanted a field you had to build it. Your garden was a staircase, with olives and oranges and nespoli growing on the treads, with a neat drop between them.

All this clove down in little capes and promontories, generally precipitous, like the knuckles of a clutching hand with the fingers submerged in water. The whole thing was a single sweep into the sea, which caught up the motion, carried it out and up into the sky. The sky took it and wheeled it over the zenith, dropping down again in distant august clouds upon the summits of S. Angelo.

Mr. McInvert basked in the full circle of beauty.

He watched a lizard on the wall of the main terrace. It was a big lizard, and its throat throbbed. He watched it freezing in its crack, cold-blooded, antediluvian, stone-motionless except for the beating of its gullet. It sat there, with its wall eyes, absorbing the sun. What a close expression!

Mr. McInvert moved his hand for a stone to throw at it, and the creature was gone. Extraordinary. There was a flick, a distinct click almost, like a tape-measure reeling into its container, and then there was no lizard. First lizard, and then no lizard. In either case equally enigmatical.

A devil entered into Mr. McInvert, and he searched for the stone all the same. The creature would come out again, and he would throw a stone at it: he would surprise that close expression, bring some feeling to that silurian face. Nothing could be allowed to be so secret.

The lizard reappeared, and Mr. McInvert moved his hand, to accustom it to his movements. He wanted it to stay whilst he took a leisurely shot. The lizard flicked its head towards him at the movement, but did not retreat. It stared at him, without surprise or supposition.

Mr. McInvert stayed his hand. Why should he attempt to kill this living creature? Something superstitious in him urged that a man who might be dying himself ought to prolong his life mimetically, by not taking life. If he killed the lizard, God might kill him.

But no. He would miss it in any case. No harm in throwing the stone. And then, what a complacent creature! What stupidity and assurance lay behind that perfect expressionless expression. It was so perfect that it must be broken. Be shocked, at least.

Mr. McInvert threw the stone quickly. He had never hit anything before in his life; but because he really did not want to, he now realised, he hit this one. It was a perfect shot, and the animal toppled down along with the stone, its head crushed in. It lay at Mr. McInvert’s feet, no longer expressionless, but with a distinct expression of defencelessness. It was dead, innocent, and without protection.

Mr. McInvert got out of his deck-chair hurriedly and went to the other end of the garden.

On the side of the garden which Mr. McInvert now visited there was a busy scene. The proprietor of the Santo Biagio was said to be a great philanthropist where the affairs of his neighbouring peasantry were concerned. If it was philanthropy to find them employment, and if the people he employed could be said to be his neighbours though they came from Agerola, then he was.

The proprietor was a man of very penetrating perception, one of the few Italians who were able to make a shrewd guess at the English mentality. He had measured two facts about the English. First, he knew that the maiden ladies who travelled in Italy liked to be English. They enjoyed the foreign sights, and the kudos of travel; but in their hearts they preferred to enjoy these advantages from a comfortable base. Their ideal was to visit cathedrals, and all that sort of thing, and to speak a few words of Italian; but they only really enjoyed it if they could come back in the evenings to a comfortable un-Italian hotel—or rather to a mock-Italian hotel, which gave them the Italian flavour. So more and more English maiden ladies gravitated to the Santo Biagio. They found the Italian atmosphere, the English comforts, and English society.

The proprietor had been wise enough to make no challenge to the great tripper hotels. The Quisisana in Amalfi, for instance, existed precariously by overcharging rich visitors who stayed for a night at most, perhaps only for a meal. The Santo Biagio definitely turned its back on this class. It sought the longer and less expensive sojourners. It was an hotel for English people to live in.

So the proprietor’s main business was to adapt the whole concern to English, though pseudo-Italian, comfort. And here his second flash of inspiration came to work. He guessed that maiden ladies shared God Almighty’s passion for a garden.

The garden of the Santo Biagio was small, but it was not neglected. Half the money which the proprietor set aside annually for improvements was devoted to it.

It was a pretty garden.

The paths were always weeded and flowers always bloomed along their borders. Lawns were, of course, impossible on that precipitous shore; but then the foreign atmosphere was an advantage so long as it was kept comfortable and picturesque. The ground was laid out in a succession of terraces and winding walks. There were shady nooks and crazy pavements. Everything was petite and tidy—‘So English, after the squalor that one finds elsewhere.’ The orange trees were sprayed every morning before the guests were up, so that the round fruit looked spick and span, not dusty as they were beside the roads outside. Mr. Pupillary came to suspect the proprietor of tying on china oranges, which could be washed up overnight, and he had a long talk with him before he left about possible English improvements. He told the proprietor that all English gardens had stone seats with mottoes cut on them. He was good enough to supply him with a favourite English motto:—

A garden is a lovesome thing,

What, what!

But the proprietor consulted Miss Albino about it, who was doubtful: so the motto was never used.

❆

When Mr. McInvert fled from his victim he found himself looking down on a peasant gang who were busy making some improvement on the opposite side. It was an ambitious improvement, which involved blasting, and there were many hands at work.

Mr. McInvert hung over the balustrade above their battle-ground and watched the bodies moving.

What a contrast, he thought, between the English and the Italian workman! Here there were no clay pipes, hobnailed boots, red handkerchiefs. The men had bare feet and singlets. The dust had settled on them like a golden pollen. None of them seemed over thirty. Nor was the work done only by the men. There were girls, mothers and young children. All the arms were brown and muscular, rippling sleekly to the weight of stones. The breasts were round and fruitful. There was nothing crude or hurried. The work proceeded without tempo or visible progress; the workmen laughed or sang. In a corner under an olive tree were three boys, all handsome, but one beautiful as Adonis. Mr. McInvert caught his breath. He actually had a set of reeds, the authentic Pan-pipe, and was going to play on them. He played. It was not an American fox-trot or an English ‘Tipperary.’ It was the Torna a Surrient’, perfectly executed.

The boy’s downcast eyes, lowered over the pipes, gave him an expression of perfect distance: lovely, unattainable. The sweet plaintive notes trickled over the lazy scene with melancholy. The brown bodies moved quietly with their stones. A girl of seventeen, whose face nothing could describe, looked up at Mr. McInvert and smiled. Her teeth burst from her red lips, the melting white pips of some heavenly fruit. Mr. McInvert watched and listened in a trance. He moved once with a sort of nervous start.

❆

Meanwhile Miss Prune had discovered the lizard. She usually went for long walks, often with Mrs. Skimlit, in the mornings and afternoons. It was still rather cold for bathing, or she would have done a good deal of energetic swimming into the bargain. Cold as it was, she might have swum to-day, or any day, except that there was nobody to swim with. Of course this was not a real prohibition, for exercise may be taken alone just as well as in company. Miss Prune, if she had properly lived up to her standards, ought to have swum daily, in one of those flopping costumes. But Miss Prune had some human traits.

The sea really was cold: it really was nicer to stay warm outside it: and since nobody else bathed there was nobody to reproach her for not doing so. And, besides, ‘walks’ were an almost recognised form of exercise. One did them at school, on Sundays.

To-day Miss Prune had become immoral altogether. She had taken no exercise since breakfast. It was all because of a book. Last night she had found a book by Ruby M. Ayres in the hotel library. (The library numbered forty-eight volumes, all left behind by departing guests.) Doubtless this would not have been sufficient temptation to stay at home, by itself. But the sly devils of temptation had worked against her subtly, here a little and there a little. Nobody, for instance, had actually asked her to go for a walk. Dr. Arnold-Browne was making preparations for a trip to Capri, and was busy in the town. The roads looked dusty, the sun looked hot (this did not prevent the sea from being cold), and Ruby Ayres was all about a dashing officer in the Indian Army.

Miss Prune stayed at home.

She was pleased to find the deck-chair, left by Mr. McInvert, unoccupied—Miss Prune was one of those people who believe that it is possible to read out of doors—and decided to settle down there ‘for a good read.’ Then she saw the lizard. Poor, poor little fellow! Its jaw was dislocated in the crushed head, so that it protruded sideways, shewing the faint pink inside the mouth.

Miss Prune went down on her knees beside it, though she did not like to touch it with her fingers. She declaimed against the vandal who had brutally shattered this little brother. Her lips trembled with emotion over the salient teeth. Cruelty to animals! Our dumb friends! She saw the lizard as it had been when it was alive: dumb, but ever so anxious to be able to talk (what bad luck on it to be dumb! what an affliction!), friendly, desirous of fraternising with humans, but always driven away, frightened, persecuted: a poor little social pariah, starving for love. Miss Prune saw the lizard peering fearfully out of its crack, wondering whether it would be safe to make advances, wishing that it could have a friend among these human gods: forgiving them their cruelty, believing even that they were perfectly good, wondering what it had done wrong? And then the wanton murder.

Miss Prune knew that she must bury it. She hurried indoors for a receptacle, for a little ribbon, a little funeral finery.

❆

Whilst she was away the professor arrived. He also was delighted to find the deck-chair empty. He liked to rest for half an hour before luncheon. Before he sat down, however, he picked the lizard up by its tail and threw it over the cliff.

When Miss Prune came back he pretended to be asleep, to evade offering her the chair. She hardly liked to wake him.