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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Angels Fear to Tread, by E. M. Forster
+
+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: Where Angels Fear to Tread
+
+Author: E. M. Forster
+
+Posting Date: January 10, 2009 [EBook #2948]
+Release Date: December, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Richard Fane
+
+
+
+
+
+WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
+
+By E. M. Forster
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+They were all at Charing Cross to see Lilia off--Philip, Harriet, Irma,
+Mrs. Herriton herself. Even Mrs. Theobald, squired by Mr. Kingcroft,
+had braved the journey from Yorkshire to bid her only daughter good-bye.
+Miss Abbott was likewise attended by numerous relatives, and the sight
+of so many people talking at once and saying such different things
+caused Lilia to break into ungovernable peals of laughter.
+
+"Quite an ovation," she cried, sprawling out of her first-class
+carriage. "They'll take us for royalty. Oh, Mr. Kingcroft, get us
+foot-warmers."
+
+The good-natured young man hurried away, and Philip, taking his place,
+flooded her with a final stream of advice and injunctions--where to
+stop, how to learn Italian, when to use mosquito-nets, what pictures
+to look at. "Remember," he concluded, "that it is only by going off the
+track that you get to know the country. See the little towns--Gubbio,
+Pienza, Cortona, San Gemignano, Monteriano. And don't, let me beg
+you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy's only a museum of
+antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italians, for the people
+are more marvellous than the land."
+
+"How I wish you were coming, Philip," she said, flattered at the
+unwonted notice her brother-in-law was giving her.
+
+"I wish I were." He could have managed it without great difficulty,
+for his career at the Bar was not so intense as to prevent occasional
+holidays. But his family disliked his continual visits to the Continent,
+and he himself often found pleasure in the idea that he was too busy to
+leave town.
+
+"Good-bye, dear every one. What a whirl!" She caught sight of her little
+daughter Irma, and felt that a touch of maternal solemnity was required.
+"Good-bye, darling. Mind you're always good, and do what Granny tells
+you."
+
+She referred not to her own mother, but to her mother-in-law, Mrs.
+Herriton, who hated the title of Granny.
+
+Irma lifted a serious face to be kissed, and said cautiously, "I'll do
+my best."
+
+"She is sure to be good," said Mrs. Herriton, who was standing pensively
+a little out of the hubbub. But Lilia was already calling to Miss
+Abbott, a tall, grave, rather nice-looking young lady who was conducting
+her adieus in a more decorous manner on the platform.
+
+"Caroline, my Caroline! Jump in, or your chaperon will go off without
+you."
+
+And Philip, whom the idea of Italy always intoxicated, had started
+again, telling her of the supreme moments of her coming journey--the
+Campanile of Airolo, which would burst on her when she emerged from the
+St. Gothard tunnel, presaging the future; the view of the Ticino and
+Lago Maggiore as the train climbed the slopes of Monte Cenere; the view
+of Lugano, the view of Como--Italy gathering thick around her now--the
+arrival at her first resting-place, when, after long driving through
+dark and dirty streets, she should at last behold, amid the roar of
+trams and the glare of arc lamps, the buttresses of the cathedral of
+Milan.
+
+"Handkerchiefs and collars," screamed Harriet, "in my inlaid box! I've
+lent you my inlaid box."
+
+"Good old Harry!" She kissed every one again, and there was a moment's
+silence. They all smiled steadily, excepting Philip, who was choking in
+the fog, and old Mrs. Theobald, who had begun to cry. Miss Abbott got
+into the carriage. The guard himself shut the door, and told Lilia that
+she would be all right. Then the train moved, and they all moved with it
+a couple of steps, and waved their handkerchiefs, and uttered cheerful
+little cries. At that moment Mr. Kingcroft reappeared, carrying a
+footwarmer by both ends, as if it was a tea-tray. He was sorry that
+he was too late, and called out in a quivering voice, "Good-bye, Mrs.
+Charles. May you enjoy yourself, and may God bless you."
+
+Lilia smiled and nodded, and then the absurd position of the foot-warmer
+overcame her, and she began to laugh again.
+
+"Oh, I am so sorry," she cried back, "but you do look so funny. Oh, you
+all look so funny waving! Oh, pray!" And laughing helplessly, she was
+carried out into the fog.
+
+"High spirits to begin so long a journey," said Mrs. Theobald, dabbing
+her eyes.
+
+Mr. Kingcroft solemnly moved his head in token of agreement. "I wish,"
+said he, "that Mrs. Charles had gotten the footwarmer. These London
+porters won't take heed to a country chap."
+
+"But you did your best," said Mrs. Herriton. "And I think it simply
+noble of you to have brought Mrs. Theobald all the way here on such a
+day as this." Then, rather hastily, she shook hands, and left him to
+take Mrs. Theobald all the way back.
+
+Sawston, her own home, was within easy reach of London, and they were
+not late for tea. Tea was in the dining-room, with an egg for Irma, to
+keep up the child's spirits. The house seemed strangely quiet after a
+fortnight's bustle, and their conversation was spasmodic and subdued.
+They wondered whether the travellers had got to Folkestone, whether it
+would be at all rough, and if so what would happen to poor Miss Abbott.
+
+"And, Granny, when will the old ship get to Italy?" asked Irma.
+
+"'Grandmother,' dear; not 'Granny,'" said Mrs. Herriton, giving her
+a kiss. "And we say 'a boat' or 'a steamer,' not 'a ship.' Ships have
+sails. And mother won't go all the way by sea. You look at the map of
+Europe, and you'll see why. Harriet, take her. Go with Aunt Harriet, and
+she'll show you the map."
+
+"Righto!" said the little girl, and dragged the reluctant Harriet
+into the library. Mrs. Herriton and her son were left alone. There was
+immediately confidence between them.
+
+"Here beginneth the New Life," said Philip.
+
+"Poor child, how vulgar!" murmured Mrs. Herriton. "It's surprising that
+she isn't worse. But she has got a look of poor Charles about her."
+
+"And--alas, alas!--a look of old Mrs. Theobald. What appalling
+apparition was that! I did think the lady was bedridden as well as
+imbecile. Why ever did she come?"
+
+"Mr. Kingcroft made her. I am certain of it. He wanted to see Lilia
+again, and this was the only way."
+
+"I hope he is satisfied. I did not think my sister-in-law distinguished
+herself in her farewells."
+
+Mrs. Herriton shuddered. "I mind nothing, so long as she has gone--and
+gone with Miss Abbott. It is mortifying to think that a widow of
+thirty-three requires a girl ten years younger to look after her."
+
+"I pity Miss Abbott. Fortunately one admirer is chained to England. Mr.
+Kingcroft cannot leave the crops or the climate or something. I don't
+think, either, he improved his chances today. He, as well as Lilia, has
+the knack of being absurd in public."
+
+Mrs. Herriton replied, "When a man is neither well bred, nor well
+connected, nor handsome, nor clever, nor rich, even Lilia may discard
+him in time."
+
+"No. I believe she would take any one. Right up to the last, when her
+boxes were packed, she was 'playing' the chinless curate. Both the
+curates are chinless, but hers had the dampest hands. I came on them in
+the Park. They were speaking of the Pentateuch."
+
+"My dear boy! If possible, she has got worse and worse. It was your idea
+of Italian travel that saved us!"
+
+Philip brightened at the little compliment. "The odd part is that she
+was quite eager--always asking me for information; and of course I was
+very glad to give it. I admit she is a Philistine, appallingly ignorant,
+and her taste in art is false. Still, to have any taste at all is
+something. And I do believe that Italy really purifies and ennobles all
+who visit her. She is the school as well as the playground of the world.
+It is really to Lilia's credit that she wants to go there."
+
+"She would go anywhere," said his mother, who had heard enough of the
+praises of Italy. "I and Caroline Abbott had the greatest difficulty in
+dissuading her from the Riviera."
+
+"No, Mother; no. She was really keen on Italy. This travel is quite a
+crisis for her." He found the situation full of whimsical romance: there
+was something half attractive, half repellent in the thought of this
+vulgar woman journeying to places he loved and revered. Why should she
+not be transfigured? The same had happened to the Goths.
+
+Mrs. Herriton did not believe in romance nor in transfiguration, nor in
+parallels from history, nor in anything else that may disturb domestic
+life. She adroitly changed the subject before Philip got excited. Soon
+Harriet returned, having given her lesson in geography. Irma went to bed
+early, and was tucked up by her grandmother. Then the two ladies worked
+and played cards. Philip read a book. And so they all settled down to
+their quiet, profitable existence, and continued it without interruption
+through the winter.
+
+It was now nearly ten years since Charles had fallen in love with Lilia
+Theobald because she was pretty, and during that time Mrs. Herriton had
+hardly known a moment's rest. For six months she schemed to prevent
+the match, and when it had taken place she turned to another task--the
+supervision of her daughter-in-law. Lilia must be pushed through life
+without bringing discredit on the family into which she had married. She
+was aided by Charles, by her daughter Harriet, and, as soon as he was
+old enough, by the clever one of the family, Philip. The birth of Irma
+made things still more difficult. But fortunately old Mrs. Theobald, who
+had attempted interference, began to break up. It was an effort to her
+to leave Whitby, and Mrs. Herriton discouraged the effort as far as
+possible. That curious duel which is fought over every baby was fought
+and decided early. Irma belonged to her father's family, not to her
+mother's.
+
+Charles died, and the struggle recommenced. Lilia tried to assert
+herself, and said that she should go to take care of Mrs. Theobald.
+It required all Mrs. Herriton's kindness to prevent her. A house was
+finally taken for her at Sawston, and there for three years she lived
+with Irma, continually subject to the refining influences of her late
+husband's family.
+
+During one of her rare Yorkshire visits trouble began again. Lilia
+confided to a friend that she liked a Mr. Kingcroft extremely, but
+that she was not exactly engaged to him. The news came round to Mrs.
+Herriton, who at once wrote, begging for information, and pointing out
+that Lilia must either be engaged or not, since no intermediate state
+existed. It was a good letter, and flurried Lilia extremely. She left
+Mr. Kingcroft without even the pressure of a rescue-party. She cried a
+great deal on her return to Sawston, and said she was very sorry. Mrs.
+Herriton took the opportunity of speaking more seriously about the
+duties of widowhood and motherhood than she had ever done before. But
+somehow things never went easily after. Lilia would not settle down in
+her place among Sawston matrons. She was a bad housekeeper, always in
+the throes of some domestic crisis, which Mrs. Herriton, who kept her
+servants for years, had to step across and adjust. She let Irma stop
+away from school for insufficient reasons, and she allowed her to wear
+rings. She learnt to bicycle, for the purpose of waking the place up,
+and coasted down the High Street one Sunday evening, falling off at the
+turn by the church. If she had not been a relative, it would have been
+entertaining. But even Philip, who in theory loved outraging English
+conventions, rose to the occasion, and gave her a talking which she
+remembered to her dying day. It was just then, too, that they discovered
+that she still allowed Mr. Kingcroft to write to her "as a gentleman
+friend," and to send presents to Irma.
+
+Philip thought of Italy, and the situation was saved. Caroline,
+charming, sober, Caroline Abbott, who lived two turnings away, was
+seeking a companion for a year's travel. Lilia gave up her house, sold
+half her furniture, left the other half and Irma with Mrs. Herriton, and
+had now departed, amid universal approval, for a change of scene.
+
+She wrote to them frequently during the winter--more frequently than she
+wrote to her mother. Her letters were always prosperous. Florence she
+found perfectly sweet, Naples a dream, but very whiffy. In Rome one had
+simply to sit still and feel. Philip, however, declared that she was
+improving. He was particularly gratified when in the early spring she
+began to visit the smaller towns that he had recommended. "In a place
+like this," she wrote, "one really does feel in the heart of things, and
+off the beaten track. Looking out of a Gothic window every morning, it
+seems impossible that the middle ages have passed away." The letter was
+from Monteriano, and concluded with a not unsuccessful description of
+the wonderful little town.
+
+"It is something that she is contented," said Mrs. Herriton. "But no one
+could live three months with Caroline Abbott and not be the better for
+it."
+
+Just then Irma came in from school, and she read her mother's letter to
+her, carefully correcting any grammatical errors, for she was a loyal
+supporter of parental authority--Irma listened politely, but soon
+changed the subject to hockey, in which her whole being was absorbed.
+They were to vote for colours that afternoon--yellow and white or yellow
+and green. What did her grandmother think?
+
+Of course Mrs. Herriton had an opinion, which she sedately expounded, in
+spite of Harriet, who said that colours were unnecessary for children,
+and of Philip, who said that they were ugly. She was getting proud of
+Irma, who had certainly greatly improved, and could no longer be called
+that most appalling of things--a vulgar child. She was anxious to form
+her before her mother returned. So she had no objection to the leisurely
+movements of the travellers, and even suggested that they should
+overstay their year if it suited them.
+
+Lilia's next letter was also from Monteriano, and Philip grew quite
+enthusiastic.
+
+"They've stopped there over a week!" he cried. "Why! I shouldn't have
+done as much myself. They must be really keen, for the hotel's none too
+comfortable."
+
+"I cannot understand people," said Harriet. "What can they be doing all
+day? And there is no church there, I suppose."
+
+"There is Santa Deodata, one of the most beautiful churches in Italy."
+
+"Of course I mean an English church," said Harriet stiffly. "Lilia
+promised me that she would always be in a large town on Sundays."
+
+"If she goes to a service at Santa Deodata's, she will find more beauty
+and sincerity than there is in all the Back Kitchens of Europe."
+
+The Back Kitchen was his nickname for St. James's, a small depressing
+edifice much patronized by his sister. She always resented any slight on
+it, and Mrs. Herriton had to intervene.
+
+"Now, dears, don't. Listen to Lilia's letter. 'We love this place, and
+I do not know how I shall ever thank Philip for telling me it. It is
+not only so quaint, but one sees the Italians unspoiled in all their
+simplicity and charm here. The frescoes are wonderful. Caroline, who
+grows sweeter every day, is very busy sketching.'"
+
+"Every one to his taste!" said Harriet, who always delivered a platitude
+as if it was an epigram. She was curiously virulent about Italy, which
+she had never visited, her only experience of the Continent being an
+occasional six weeks in the Protestant parts of Switzerland.
+
+"Oh, Harriet is a bad lot!" said Philip as soon as she left the room.
+His mother laughed, and told him not to be naughty; and the appearance
+of Irma, just off to school, prevented further discussion. Not only in
+Tracts is a child a peacemaker.
+
+"One moment, Irma," said her uncle. "I'm going to the station. I'll give
+you the pleasure of my company."
+
+They started together. Irma was gratified; but conversation flagged,
+for Philip had not the art of talking to the young. Mrs. Herriton sat
+a little longer at the breakfast table, re-reading Lilia's letter. Then
+she helped the cook to clear, ordered dinner, and started the housemaid
+turning out the drawing-room, Tuesday being its day. The weather was
+lovely, and she thought she would do a little gardening, as it was quite
+early. She called Harriet, who had recovered from the insult to St.
+James's, and together they went to the kitchen garden and began to sow
+some early vegetables.
+
+"We will save the peas to the last; they are the greatest fun," said
+Mrs. Herriton, who had the gift of making work a treat. She and her
+elderly daughter always got on very well, though they had not a great
+deal in common. Harriet's education had been almost too successful. As
+Philip once said, she had "bolted all the cardinal virtues and couldn't
+digest them." Though pious and patriotic, and a great moral asset for
+the house, she lacked that pliancy and tact which her mother so much
+valued, and had expected her to pick up for herself. Harriet, if she had
+been allowed, would have driven Lilia to an open rupture, and, what was
+worse, she would have done the same to Philip two years before, when he
+returned full of passion for Italy, and ridiculing Sawston and its ways.
+
+"It's a shame, Mother!" she had cried. "Philip laughs at everything--the
+Book Club, the Debating Society, the Progressive Whist, the bazaars.
+People won't like it. We have our reputation. A house divided against
+itself cannot stand."
+
+Mrs. Herriton replied in the memorable words, "Let Philip say what he
+likes, and he will let us do what we like." And Harriet had acquiesced.
+
+They sowed the duller vegetables first, and a pleasant feeling of
+righteous fatigue stole over them as they addressed themselves to the
+peas. Harriet stretched a string to guide the row straight, and Mrs.
+Herriton scratched a furrow with a pointed stick. At the end of it she
+looked at her watch.
+
+"It's twelve! The second post's in. Run and see if there are any
+letters."
+
+Harriet did not want to go. "Let's finish the peas. There won't be any
+letters."
+
+"No, dear; please go. I'll sow the peas, but you shall cover them
+up--and mind the birds don't see 'em!"
+
+Mrs. Herriton was very careful to let those peas trickle evenly from
+her hand, and at the end of the row she was conscious that she had never
+sown better. They were expensive too.
+
+"Actually old Mrs. Theobald!" said Harriet, returning.
+
+"Read me the letter. My hands are dirty. How intolerable the crested
+paper is."
+
+Harriet opened the envelope.
+
+"I don't understand," she said; "it doesn't make sense."
+
+"Her letters never did."
+
+"But it must be sillier than usual," said Harriet, and her voice began
+to quaver. "Look here, read it, Mother; I can't make head or tail."
+
+Mrs. Herriton took the letter indulgently. "What is the difficulty?" she
+said after a long pause. "What is it that puzzles you in this letter?"
+
+"The meaning--" faltered Harriet. The sparrows hopped nearer and began
+to eye the peas.
+
+"The meaning is quite clear--Lilia is engaged to be married. Don't cry,
+dear; please me by not crying--don't talk at all. It's more than I could
+bear. She is going to marry some one she has met in a hotel. Take the
+letter and read for yourself." Suddenly she broke down over what might
+seem a small point. "How dare she not tell me direct! How dare she
+write first to Yorkshire! Pray, am I to hear through Mrs. Theobald--a
+patronizing, insolent letter like this? Have I no claim at all? Bear
+witness, dear"--she choked with passion--"bear witness that for this
+I'll never forgive her!"
+
+"Oh, what is to be done?" moaned Harriet. "What is to be done?"
+
+"This first!" She tore the letter into little pieces and scattered it
+over the mould. "Next, a telegram for Lilia! No! a telegram for Miss
+Caroline Abbott. She, too, has something to explain."
+
+"Oh, what is to be done?" repeated Harriet, as she followed her mother
+to the house. She was helpless before such effrontery. What awful
+thing--what awful person had come to Lilia? "Some one in the hotel." The
+letter only said that. What kind of person? A gentleman? An Englishman?
+The letter did not say.
+
+"Wire reason of stay at Monteriano. Strange rumours," read Mrs.
+Herriton, and addressed the telegram to Abbott, Stella d'Italia,
+Monteriano, Italy. "If there is an office there," she added, "we might
+get an answer this evening. Since Philip is back at seven, and the
+eight-fifteen catches the midnight boat at Dover--Harriet, when you go
+with this, get 100 pounds in 5 pound notes at the bank."
+
+"Go, dear, at once; do not talk. I see Irma coming back; go quickly....
+Well, Irma dear, and whose team are you in this afternoon--Miss Edith's
+or Miss May's?"
+
+But as soon as she had behaved as usual to her grand-daughter, she went
+to the library and took out the large atlas, for she wanted to know
+about Monteriano. The name was in the smallest print, in the midst of a
+woolly-brown tangle of hills which were called the "Sub-Apennines." It
+was not so very far from Siena, which she had learnt at school. Past it
+there wandered a thin black line, notched at intervals like a saw,
+and she knew that this was a railway. But the map left a good deal to
+imagination, and she had not got any. She looked up the place in "Childe
+Harold," but Byron had not been there. Nor did Mark Twain visit it in
+the "Tramp Abroad." The resources of literature were exhausted: she
+must wait till Philip came home. And the thought of Philip made her try
+Philip's room, and there she found "Central Italy," by Baedeker, and
+opened it for the first time in her life and read in it as follows:--
+
+
+MONTERIANO (pop. 4800). Hotels: Stella d'Italia, moderate only; Globo,
+dirty. * Caffe Garibaldi. Post and Telegraph office in Corso Vittorio
+Emmanuele, next to theatre. Photographs at Seghena's (cheaper in
+Florence). Diligence (1 lira) meets principal trains.
+
+Chief attractions (2-3 hours): Santa Deodata, Palazzo Pubblico, Sant'
+Agostino, Santa Caterina, Sant' Ambrogio, Palazzo Capocchi. Guide
+(2 lire) unnecessary. A walk round the Walls should on no account be
+omitted. The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset.
+
+History: Monteriano, the Mons Rianus of Antiquity, whose Ghibelline
+tendencies are noted by Dante (Purg. xx.), definitely emancipated itself
+from Poggibonsi in 1261. Hence the distich, "POGGIBONIZZI, FAUI IN LA,
+CHE MONTERIANO SI FA CITTA!" till recently enscribed over the Siena
+gate. It remained independent till 1530, when it was sacked by the Papal
+troops and became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It is now of small
+importance, and seat of the district prison. The inhabitants are still
+noted for their agreeable manners.
+
+                    *****
+
+The traveller will proceed direct from the Siena gate to the Collegiate
+Church of Santa Deodata, and inspect (5th chapel on right) the charming
+Frescoes....
+
+
+Mrs. Herriton did not proceed. She was not one to detect the hidden
+charms of Baedeker. Some of the information seemed to her unnecessary,
+all of it was dull. Whereas Philip could never read "The view from the
+Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset" without a catching at the
+heart. Restoring the book to its place, she went downstairs, and looked
+up and down the asphalt paths for her daughter. She saw her at last,
+two turnings away, vainly trying to shake off Mr. Abbott, Miss Caroline
+Abbott's father. Harriet was always unfortunate. At last she returned,
+hot, agitated, crackling with bank-notes, and Irma bounced to greet her,
+and trod heavily on her corn.
+
+"Your feet grow larger every day," said the agonized Harriet, and gave
+her niece a violent push. Then Irma cried, and Mrs. Herriton was annoyed
+with Harriet for betraying irritation. Lunch was nasty; and during
+pudding news arrived that the cook, by sheer dexterity, had broken
+a very vital knob off the kitchen-range. "It is too bad," said Mrs.
+Herriton. Irma said it was three bad, and was told not to be rude. After
+lunch Harriet would get out Baedeker, and read in injured tones about
+Monteriano, the Mons Rianus of Antiquity, till her mother stopped her.
+
+"It's ridiculous to read, dear. She's not trying to marry any one in the
+place. Some tourist, obviously, who's stopping in the hotel. The place
+has nothing to do with it at all."
+
+"But what a place to go to! What nice person, too, do you meet in a
+hotel?"
+
+"Nice or nasty, as I have told you several times before, is not the
+point. Lilia has insulted our family, and she shall suffer for it. And
+when you speak against hotels, I think you forget that I met your father
+at Chamounix. You can contribute nothing, dear, at present, and I think
+you had better hold your tongue. I am going to the kitchen, to speak
+about the range."
+
+She spoke just too much, and the cook said that if she could not give
+satisfaction--she had better leave. A small thing at hand is greater
+than a great thing remote, and Lilia, misconducting herself upon a
+mountain in Central Italy, was immediately hidden. Mrs. Herriton flew to
+a registry office, failed; flew to another, failed again; came home,
+was told by the housemaid that things seemed so unsettled that she had
+better leave as well; had tea, wrote six letters, was interrupted by
+cook and housemaid, both weeping, asking her pardon, and imploring to
+be taken back. In the flush of victory the door-bell rang, and there was
+the telegram: "Lilia engaged to Italian nobility. Writing. Abbott."
+
+"No answer," said Mrs. Herriton. "Get down Mr. Philip's Gladstone from
+the attic."
+
+She would not allow herself to be frightened by the unknown. Indeed
+she knew a little now. The man was not an Italian noble, otherwise the
+telegram would have said so. It must have been written by Lilia. None
+but she would have been guilty of the fatuous vulgarity of "Italian
+nobility." She recalled phrases of this morning's letter: "We love this
+place--Caroline is sweeter than ever, and busy sketching--Italians full
+of simplicity and charm." And the remark of Baedeker, "The inhabitants
+are still noted for their agreeable manners," had a baleful meaning now.
+If Mrs. Herriton had no imagination, she had intuition, a more useful
+quality, and the picture she made to herself of Lilia's FIANCE did not
+prove altogether wrong.
+
+So Philip was received with the news that he must start in half an hour
+for Monteriano. He was in a painful position. For three years he had
+sung the praises of the Italians, but he had never contemplated having
+one as a relative. He tried to soften the thing down to his mother, but
+in his heart of hearts he agreed with her when she said, "The man may
+be a duke or he may be an organ-grinder. That is not the point. If Lilia
+marries him she insults the memory of Charles, she insults Irma, she
+insults us. Therefore I forbid her, and if she disobeys we have done
+with her for ever."
+
+"I will do all I can," said Philip in a low voice. It was the first time
+he had had anything to do. He kissed his mother and sister and puzzled
+Irma. The hall was warm and attractive as he looked back into it from
+the cold March night, and he departed for Italy reluctantly, as for
+something commonplace and dull.
+
+Before Mrs. Herriton went to bed she wrote to Mrs. Theobald, using plain
+language about Lilia's conduct, and hinting that it was a question on
+which every one must definitely choose sides. She added, as if it was an
+afterthought, that Mrs. Theobald's letter had arrived that morning.
+
+Just as she was going upstairs she remembered that she never covered
+up those peas. It upset her more than anything, and again and again she
+struck the banisters with vexation. Late as it was, she got a lantern
+from the tool-shed and went down the garden to rake the earth over them.
+The sparrows had taken every one. But countless fragments of the letter
+remained, disfiguring the tidy ground.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+When the bewildered tourist alights at the station of Monteriano, he
+finds himself in the middle of the country. There are a few houses round
+the railway, and many more dotted over the plain and the slopes of the
+hills, but of a town, mediaeval or otherwise, not the slightest sign. He
+must take what is suitably termed a "legno"--a piece of wood--and
+drive up eight miles of excellent road into the middle ages. For it is
+impossible, as well as sacrilegious, to be as quick as Baedeker.
+
+It was three in the afternoon when Philip left the realms of
+commonsense. He was so weary with travelling that he had fallen asleep
+in the train. His fellow-passengers had the usual Italian gift of
+divination, and when Monteriano came they knew he wanted to go there,
+and dropped him out. His feet sank into the hot asphalt of the platform,
+and in a dream he watched the train depart, while the porter who ought
+to have been carrying his bag, ran up the line playing touch-you-last
+with the guard. Alas! he was in no humour for Italy. Bargaining for a
+legno bored him unutterably. The man asked six lire; and though Philip
+knew that for eight miles it should scarcely be more than four, yet he
+was about to give what he was asked, and so make the man discontented
+and unhappy for the rest of the day. He was saved from this social
+blunder by loud shouts, and looking up the road saw one cracking his
+whip and waving his reins and driving two horses furiously, and behind
+him there appeared the swaying figure of a woman, holding star-fish
+fashion on to anything she could touch. It was Miss Abbott, who had just
+received his letter from Milan announcing the time of his arrival, and
+had hurried down to meet him.
+
+He had known Miss Abbott for years, and had never had much opinion about
+her one way or the other. She was good, quiet, dull, and amiable,
+and young only because she was twenty-three: there was nothing in her
+appearance or manner to suggest the fire of youth. All her life had
+been spent at Sawston with a dull and amiable father, and her pleasant,
+pallid face, bent on some respectable charity, was a familiar object
+of the Sawston streets. Why she had ever wished to leave them was
+surprising; but as she truly said, "I am John Bull to the backbone, yet
+I do want to see Italy, just once. Everybody says it is marvellous, and
+that one gets no idea of it from books at all." The curate suggested
+that a year was a long time; and Miss Abbott, with decorous playfulness,
+answered him, "Oh, but you must let me have my fling! I promise to have
+it once, and once only. It will give me things to think about and talk
+about for the rest of my life." The curate had consented; so had Mr.
+Abbott. And here she was in a legno, solitary, dusty, frightened, with
+as much to answer and to answer for as the most dashing adventuress
+could desire.
+
+They shook hands without speaking. She made room for Philip and his
+luggage amidst the loud indignation of the unsuccessful driver, whom it
+required the combined eloquence of the station-master and the station
+beggar to confute. The silence was prolonged until they started. For
+three days he had been considering what he should do, and still more
+what he should say. He had invented a dozen imaginary conversations, in
+all of which his logic and eloquence procured him certain victory. But
+how to begin? He was in the enemy's country, and everything--the hot
+sun, the cold air behind the heat, the endless rows of olive-trees,
+regular yet mysterious--seemed hostile to the placid atmosphere of
+Sawston in which his thoughts took birth. At the outset he made one
+great concession. If the match was really suitable, and Lilia were bent
+on it, he would give in, and trust to his influence with his mother to
+set things right. He would not have made the concession in England;
+but here in Italy, Lilia, however wilful and silly, was at all events
+growing to be a human being.
+
+"Are we to talk it over now?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly, please," said Miss Abbott, in great agitation. "If you will
+be so very kind."
+
+"Then how long has she been engaged?"
+
+Her face was that of a perfect fool--a fool in terror.
+
+"A short time--quite a short time," she stammered, as if the shortness
+of the time would reassure him.
+
+"I should like to know how long, if you can remember."
+
+She entered into elaborate calculations on her fingers. "Exactly eleven
+days," she said at last.
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+More calculations, while he tapped irritably with his foot. "Close on
+three weeks."
+
+"Did you know him before you came?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! Who is he?"
+
+"A native of the place."
+
+The second silence took place. They had left the plain now and
+were climbing up the outposts of the hills, the olive-trees still
+accompanying. The driver, a jolly fat man, had got out to ease the
+horses, and was walking by the side of the carriage.
+
+"I understood they met at the hotel."
+
+"It was a mistake of Mrs. Theobald's."
+
+"I also understand that he is a member of the Italian nobility."
+
+She did not reply.
+
+"May I be told his name?"
+
+Miss Abbott whispered, "Carella." But the driver heard her, and a grin
+split over his face. The engagement must be known already.
+
+"Carella? Conte or Marchese, or what?"
+
+"Signor," said Miss Abbott, and looked helplessly aside.
+
+"Perhaps I bore you with these questions. If so, I will stop."
+
+"Oh, no, please; not at all. I am here--my own idea--to give all
+information which you very naturally--and to see if somehow--please ask
+anything you like."
+
+"Then how old is he?"
+
+"Oh, quite young. Twenty-one, I believe."
+
+There burst from Philip the exclamation, "Good Lord!"
+
+"One would never believe it," said Miss Abbott, flushing. "He looks much
+older."
+
+"And is he good-looking?" he asked, with gathering sarcasm.
+
+She became decisive. "Very good-looking. All his features are good, and
+he is well built--though I dare say English standards would find him too
+short."
+
+Philip, whose one physical advantage was his height, felt annoyed at her
+implied indifference to it.
+
+"May I conclude that you like him?"
+
+She replied decisively again, "As far as I have seen him, I do."
+
+At that moment the carriage entered a little wood, which lay brown and
+sombre across the cultivated hill. The trees of the wood were small and
+leafless, but noticeable for this--that their stems stood in violets as
+rocks stand in the summer sea. There are such violets in England,
+but not so many. Nor are there so many in Art, for no painter has the
+courage. The cart-ruts were channels, the hollow lagoons; even the
+dry white margin of the road was splashed, like a causeway soon to be
+submerged under the advancing tide of spring. Philip paid no attention
+at the time: he was thinking what to say next. But his eyes had
+registered the beauty, and next March he did not forget that the road to
+Monteriano must traverse innumerable flowers.
+
+"As far as I have seen him, I do like him," repeated Miss Abbott, after
+a pause.
+
+He thought she sounded a little defiant, and crushed her at once.
+
+"What is he, please? You haven't told me that. What's his position?"
+
+She opened her mouth to speak, and no sound came from it. Philip waited
+patiently. She tried to be audacious, and failed pitiably.
+
+"No position at all. He is kicking his heels, as my father would say.
+You see, he has only just finished his military service."
+
+"As a private?"
+
+"I suppose so. There is general conscription. He was in the Bersaglieri,
+I think. Isn't that the crack regiment?"
+
+"The men in it must be short and broad. They must also be able to walk
+six miles an hour."
+
+She looked at him wildly, not understanding all that he said, but
+feeling that he was very clever. Then she continued her defence of
+Signor Carella.
+
+"And now, like most young men, he is looking out for something to do."
+
+"Meanwhile?"
+
+"Meanwhile, like most young men, he lives with his people--father,
+mother, two sisters, and a tiny tot of a brother."
+
+There was a grating sprightliness about her that drove him nearly mad.
+He determined to silence her at last.
+
+"One more question, and only one more. What is his father?"
+
+"His father," said Miss Abbott. "Well, I don't suppose you'll think it
+a good match. But that's not the point. I mean the point is not--I mean
+that social differences--love, after all--not but what--I--"
+
+Philip ground his teeth together and said nothing.
+
+"Gentlemen sometimes judge hardly. But I feel that you, and at
+all events your mother--so really good in every sense, so really
+unworldly--after all, love-marriages are made in heaven."
+
+"Yes, Miss Abbott, I know. But I am anxious to hear heaven's choice. You
+arouse my curiosity. Is my sister-in-law to marry an angel?"
+
+"Mr. Herriton, don't--please, Mr. Herriton--a dentist. His father's a
+dentist."
+
+Philip gave a cry of personal disgust and pain. He shuddered all over,
+and edged away from his companion. A dentist! A dentist at Monteriano. A
+dentist in fairyland! False teeth and laughing gas and the tilting
+chair at a place which knew the Etruscan League, and the Pax Romana,
+and Alaric himself, and the Countess Matilda, and the Middle Ages, all
+fighting and holiness, and the Renaissance, all fighting and beauty! He
+thought of Lilia no longer. He was anxious for himself: he feared that
+Romance might die.
+
+Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of
+us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected
+and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the
+sooner it goes from us the better. It was going from Philip now, and
+therefore he gave the cry of pain.
+
+"I cannot think what is in the air," he began. "If Lilia was determined
+to disgrace us, she might have found a less repulsive way. A boy of
+medium height with a pretty face, the son of a dentist at Monteriano.
+Have I put it correctly? May I surmise that he has not got one penny?
+May I also surmise that his social position is nil? Furthermore--"
+
+"Stop! I'll tell you no more."
+
+"Really, Miss Abbott, it is a little late for reticence. You have
+equipped me admirably!"
+
+"I'll tell you not another word!" she cried, with a spasm of terror.
+Then she got out her handkerchief, and seemed as if she would shed
+tears. After a silence, which he intended to symbolize to her the
+dropping of a curtain on the scene, he began to talk of other subjects.
+
+They were among olives again, and the wood with its beauty and wildness
+had passed away. But as they climbed higher the country opened out, and
+there appeared, high on a hill to the right, Monteriano. The hazy green
+of the olives rose up to its walls, and it seemed to float in isolation
+between trees and sky, like some fantastic ship city of a dream. Its
+colour was brown, and it revealed not a single house--nothing but the
+narrow circle of the walls, and behind them seventeen towers--all that
+was left of the fifty-two that had filled the city in her prime. Some
+were only stumps, some were inclining stiffly to their fall, some were
+still erect, piercing like masts into the blue. It was impossible to
+praise it as beautiful, but it was also impossible to damn it as quaint.
+
+Meanwhile Philip talked continually, thinking this to be great evidence
+of resource and tact. It showed Miss Abbott that he had probed her to
+the bottom, but was able to conquer his disgust, and by sheer force of
+intellect continue to be as agreeable and amusing as ever. He did not
+know that he talked a good deal of nonsense, and that the sheer force
+of his intellect was weakened by the sight of Monteriano, and by the
+thought of dentistry within those walls.
+
+The town above them swung to the left, to the right, to the left again,
+as the road wound upward through the trees, and the towers began to glow
+in the descending sun. As they drew near, Philip saw the heads of people
+gathering black upon the walls, and he knew well what was happening--how
+the news was spreading that a stranger was in sight, and the beggars
+were aroused from their content and bid to adjust their deformities; how
+the alabaster man was running for his wares, and the Authorized Guide
+running for his peaked cap and his two cards of recommendation--one from
+Miss M'Gee, Maida Vale, the other, less valuable, from an Equerry to the
+Queen of Peru; how some one else was running to tell the landlady of the
+Stella d'Italia to put on her pearl necklace and brown boots and empty
+the slops from the spare bedroom; and how the landlady was running to
+tell Lilia and her boy that their fate was at hand.
+
+Perhaps it was a pity Philip had talked so profusely. He had driven
+Miss Abbott half demented, but he had given himself no time to concert
+a plan. The end came so suddenly. They emerged from the trees on to the
+terrace before the walk, with the vision of half Tuscany radiant in the
+sun behind them, and then they turned in through the Siena gate, and
+their journey was over. The Dogana men admitted them with an air of
+gracious welcome, and they clattered up the narrow dark street, greeted
+by that mixture of curiosity and kindness which makes each Italian
+arrival so wonderful.
+
+He was stunned and knew not what to do. At the hotel he received no
+ordinary reception. The landlady wrung him by the hand; one person
+snatched his umbrella, another his bag; people pushed each other out of
+his way. The entrance seemed blocked with a crowd. Dogs were barking,
+bladder whistles being blown, women waving their handkerchiefs, excited
+children screaming on the stairs, and at the top of the stairs was Lilia
+herself, very radiant, with her best blouse on.
+
+"Welcome!" she cried. "Welcome to Monteriano!" He greeted her, for he
+did not know what else to do, and a sympathetic murmur rose from the
+crowd below.
+
+"You told me to come here," she continued, "and I don't forget it. Let
+me introduce Signor Carella!"
+
+Philip discerned in the corner behind her a young man who might
+eventually prove handsome and well-made, but certainly did not seem so
+then. He was half enveloped in the drapery of a cold dirty curtain, and
+nervously stuck out a hand, which Philip took and found thick and damp.
+There were more murmurs of approval from the stairs.
+
+"Well, din-din's nearly ready," said Lilia. "Your room's down the
+passage, Philip. You needn't go changing."
+
+He stumbled away to wash his hands, utterly crushed by her effrontery.
+
+"Dear Caroline!" whispered Lilia as soon as he had gone. "What an angel
+you've been to tell him! He takes it so well. But you must have had a
+MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE."
+
+Miss Abbott's long terror suddenly turned into acidity. "I've told
+nothing," she snapped. "It's all for you--and if it only takes a quarter
+of an hour you'll be lucky!"
+
+Dinner was a nightmare. They had the smelly dining-room to themselves.
+Lilia, very smart and vociferous, was at the head of the table; Miss
+Abbott, also in her best, sat by Philip, looking, to his irritated
+nerves, more like the tragedy confidante every moment. That scion of the
+Italian nobility, Signor Carella, sat opposite. Behind him loomed a bowl
+of goldfish, who swam round and round, gaping at the guests.
+
+The face of Signor Carella was twitching too much for Philip to study
+it. But he could see the hands, which were not particularly clean, and
+did not get cleaner by fidgeting amongst the shining slabs of hair.
+His starched cuffs were not clean either, and as for his suit, it had
+obviously been bought for the occasion as something really English--a
+gigantic check, which did not even fit. His handkerchief he had
+forgotten, but never missed it. Altogether, he was quite unpresentable,
+and very lucky to have a father who was a dentist in Monteriano. And
+why, even Lilia--But as soon as the meal began it furnished Philip with
+an explanation.
+
+For the youth was hungry, and his lady filled his plate with spaghetti,
+and when those delicious slippery worms were flying down his throat, his
+face relaxed and became for a moment unconscious and calm. And Philip
+had seen that face before in Italy a hundred times--seen it and loved
+it, for it was not merely beautiful, but had the charm which is the
+rightful heritage of all who are born on that soil. But he did not want
+to see it opposite him at dinner. It was not the face of a gentleman.
+
+Conversation, to give it that name, was carried on in a mixture of
+English and Italian. Lilia had picked up hardly any of the latter
+language, and Signor Carella had not yet learnt any of the former.
+Occasionally Miss Abbott had to act as interpreter between the lovers,
+and the situation became uncouth and revolting in the extreme. Yet
+Philip was too cowardly to break forth and denounce the engagement. He
+thought he should be more effective with Lilia if he had her alone,
+and pretended to himself that he must hear her defence before giving
+judgment.
+
+Signor Carella, heartened by the spaghetti and the throat-rasping wine,
+attempted to talk, and, looking politely towards Philip, said, "England
+is a great country. The Italians love England and the English."
+
+Philip, in no mood for international amenities, merely bowed.
+
+"Italy too," the other continued a little resentfully, "is a great
+country. She has produced many famous men--for example Garibaldi and
+Dante. The latter wrote the 'Inferno,' the 'Purgatorio,' the 'Paradiso.'
+The 'Inferno' is the most beautiful." And with the complacent tone of
+one who has received a solid education, he quoted the opening lines--
+
+  Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
+  Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
+  Che la diritta via era smarrita--
+
+a quotation which was more apt than he supposed.
+
+Lilia glanced at Philip to see whether he noticed that she was
+marrying no ignoramus. Anxious to exhibit all the good qualities of her
+betrothed, she abruptly introduced the subject of pallone, in which,
+it appeared, he was a proficient player. He suddenly became shy and
+developed a conceited grin--the grin of the village yokel whose cricket
+score is mentioned before a stranger. Philip himself had loved to watch
+pallone, that entrancing combination of lawn-tennis and fives. But he
+did not expect to love it quite so much again.
+
+"Oh, look!" exclaimed Lilia, "the poor wee fish!"
+
+A starved cat had been worrying them all for pieces of the purple
+quivering beef they were trying to swallow. Signor Carella, with the
+brutality so common in Italians, had caught her by the paw and flung her
+away from him. Now she had climbed up to the bowl and was trying to
+hook out the fish. He got up, drove her off, and finding a large glass
+stopper by the bowl, entirely plugged up the aperture with it.
+
+"But may not the fish die?" said Miss Abbott. "They have no air."
+
+"Fish live on water, not on air," he replied in a knowing voice, and sat
+down. Apparently he was at his ease again, for he took to spitting on
+the floor. Philip glanced at Lilia but did not detect her wincing. She
+talked bravely till the end of the disgusting meal, and then got up
+saying, "Well, Philip, I am sure you are ready for by-bye. We shall meet
+at twelve o'clock lunch tomorrow, if we don't meet before. They give us
+caffe later in our rooms."
+
+It was a little too impudent. Philip replied, "I should like to see you
+now, please, in my room, as I have come all the way on business." He
+heard Miss Abbott gasp. Signor Carella, who was lighting a rank cigar,
+had not understood.
+
+It was as he expected. When he was alone with Lilia he lost all
+nervousness. The remembrance of his long intellectual supremacy
+strengthened him, and he began volubly--
+
+"My dear Lilia, don't let's have a scene. Before I arrived I thought I
+might have to question you. It is unnecessary. I know everything. Miss
+Abbott has told me a certain amount, and the rest I see for myself."
+
+"See for yourself?" she exclaimed, and he remembered afterwards that she
+had flushed crimson.
+
+"That he is probably a ruffian and certainly a cad."
+
+"There are no cads in Italy," she said quickly.
+
+He was taken aback. It was one of his own remarks. And she further upset
+him by adding, "He is the son of a dentist. Why not?"
+
+"Thank you for the information. I know everything, as I told you before.
+I am also aware of the social position of an Italian who pulls teeth in
+a minute provincial town."
+
+He was not aware of it, but he ventured to conclude that it was pretty,
+low. Nor did Lilia contradict him. But she was sharp enough to say,
+"Indeed, Philip, you surprise me. I understood you went in for equality
+and so on."
+
+"And I understood that Signor Carella was a member of the Italian
+nobility."
+
+"Well, we put it like that in the telegram so as not to shock dear Mrs.
+Herriton. But it is true. He is a younger branch. Of course families
+ramify--just as in yours there is your cousin Joseph." She adroitly
+picked out the only undesirable member of the Herriton clan. "Gino's
+father is courtesy itself, and rising rapidly in his profession. This
+very month he leaves Monteriano, and sets up at Poggibonsi. And for
+my own poor part, I think what people are is what matters, but I don't
+suppose you'll agree. And I should like you to know that Gino's uncle is
+a priest--the same as a clergyman at home."
+
+Philip was aware of the social position of an Italian priest, and said
+so much about it that Lilia interrupted him with, "Well, his cousin's a
+lawyer at Rome."
+
+"What kind of 'lawyer'?"
+
+"Why, a lawyer just like you are--except that he has lots to do and can
+never get away."
+
+The remark hurt more than he cared to show. He changed his method, and
+in a gentle, conciliating tone delivered the following speech:--
+
+"The whole thing is like a bad dream--so bad that it cannot go on. If
+there was one redeeming feature about the man I might be uneasy. As it
+is I can trust to time. For the moment, Lilia, he has taken you in,
+but you will find him out soon. It is not possible that you, a lady,
+accustomed to ladies and gentlemen, will tolerate a man whose position
+is--well, not equal to the son of the servants' dentist in Coronation
+Place. I am not blaming you now. But I blame the glamour of Italy--I
+have felt it myself, you know--and I greatly blame Miss Abbott."
+
+"Caroline! Why blame her? What's all this to do with Caroline?"
+
+"Because we expected her to--" He saw that the answer would involve him
+in difficulties, and, waving his hand, continued, "So I am confident,
+and you in your heart agree, that this engagement will not last. Think
+of your life at home--think of Irma! And I'll also say think of us; for
+you know, Lilia, that we count you more than a relation. I should feel
+I was losing my own sister if you did this, and my mother would lose a
+daughter."
+
+She seemed touched at last, for she turned away her face and said, "I
+can't break it off now!"
+
+"Poor Lilia," said he, genuinely moved. "I know it may be painful. But
+I have come to rescue you, and, book-worm though I may be, I am not
+frightened to stand up to a bully. He's merely an insolent boy. He
+thinks he can keep you to your word by threats. He will be different
+when he sees he has a man to deal with."
+
+What follows should be prefaced with some simile--the simile of a
+powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake--for it blew Philip up in the
+air and flattened him on the ground and swallowed him up in the depths.
+Lilia turned on her gallant defender and said--
+
+"For once in my life I'll thank you to leave me alone. I'll thank your
+mother too. For twelve years you've trained me and tortured me, and I'll
+stand it no more. Do you think I'm a fool? Do you think I never felt?
+Ah! when I came to your house a poor young bride, how you all looked me
+over--never a kind word--and discussed me, and thought I might just do;
+and your mother corrected me, and your sister snubbed me, and you said
+funny things about me to show how clever you were! And when Charles died
+I was still to run in strings for the honour of your beastly family,
+and I was to be cooped up at Sawston and learn to keep house, and all my
+chances spoilt of marrying again. No, thank you! No, thank you! 'Bully?'
+'Insolent boy?' Who's that, pray, but you? But, thank goodness, I can
+stand up against the world now, for I've found Gino, and this time I
+marry for love!"
+
+The coarseness and truth of her attack alike overwhelmed him. But her
+supreme insolence found him words, and he too burst forth.
+
+"Yes! and I forbid you to do it! You despise me, perhaps, and think
+I'm feeble. But you're mistaken. You are ungrateful and impertinent and
+contemptible, but I will save you in order to save Irma and our name.
+There is going to be such a row in this town that you and he'll be sorry
+you came to it. I shall shrink from nothing, for my blood is up. It is
+unwise of you to laugh. I forbid you to marry Carella, and I shall tell
+him so now."
+
+"Do," she cried. "Tell him so now. Have it out with him. Gino! Gino!
+Come in! Avanti! Fra Filippo forbids the banns!"
+
+Gino appeared so quickly that he must have been listening outside the
+door.
+
+"Fra Filippo's blood's up. He shrinks from nothing. Oh, take care he
+doesn't hurt you!" She swayed about in vulgar imitation of Philip's
+walk, and then, with a proud glance at the square shoulders of her
+betrothed, flounced out of the room.
+
+Did she intend them to fight? Philip had no intention of doing so; and
+no more, it seemed, had Gino, who stood nervously in the middle of the
+room with twitching lips and eyes.
+
+"Please sit down, Signor Carella," said Philip in Italian. "Mrs.
+Herriton is rather agitated, but there is no reason we should not be
+calm. Might I offer you a cigarette? Please sit down."
+
+He refused the cigarette and the chair, and remained standing in the
+full glare of the lamp. Philip, not averse to such assistance, got his
+own face into shadow.
+
+For a long time he was silent. It might impress Gino, and it also gave
+him time to collect himself. He would not this time fall into the error
+of blustering, which he had caught so unaccountably from Lilia. He would
+make his power felt by restraint.
+
+Why, when he looked up to begin, was Gino convulsed with silent
+laughter? It vanished immediately; but he became nervous, and was even
+more pompous than he intended.
+
+"Signor Carella, I will be frank with you. I have come to prevent you
+marrying Mrs. Herriton, because I see you will both be unhappy together.
+She is English, you are Italian; she is accustomed to one thing, you to
+another. And--pardon me if I say it--she is rich and you are poor."
+
+"I am not marrying her because she is rich," was the sulky reply.
+
+"I never suggested that for a moment," said Philip courteously. "You are
+honourable, I am sure; but are you wise? And let me remind you that we
+want her with us at home. Her little daughter will be motherless,
+our home will be broken up. If you grant my request you will earn our
+thanks--and you will not be without a reward for your disappointment."
+
+"Reward--what reward?" He bent over the back of a chair and looked
+earnestly at Philip. They were coming to terms pretty quickly. Poor
+Lilia!
+
+Philip said slowly, "What about a thousand lire?"
+
+His soul went forth into one exclamation, and then he was silent, with
+gaping lips. Philip would have given double: he had expected a bargain.
+
+"You can have them tonight."
+
+He found words, and said, "It is too late."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because--" His voice broke. Philip watched his face,--a face without
+refinement perhaps, but not without expression,--watched it quiver and
+re-form and dissolve from emotion into emotion. There was avarice at one
+moment, and insolence, and politeness, and stupidity, and cunning--and
+let us hope that sometimes there was love. But gradually one emotion
+dominated, the most unexpected of all; for his chest began to heave and
+his eyes to wink and his mouth to twitch, and suddenly he stood erect
+and roared forth his whole being in one tremendous laugh.
+
+Philip sprang up, and Gino, who had flung wide his arms to let the
+glorious creature go, took him by the shoulders and shook him, and said,
+"Because we are married--married--married as soon as I knew you were,
+coming. There was no time to tell you. Oh. oh! You have come all the way
+for nothing. Oh! And oh, your generosity!" Suddenly he became grave, and
+said, "Please pardon me; I am rude. I am no better than a peasant, and
+I--" Here he saw Philip's face, and it was too much for him. He gasped
+and exploded and crammed his hands into his mouth and spat them out in
+another explosion, and gave Philip an aimless push, which toppled him on
+to the bed. He uttered a horrified Oh! and then gave up, and bolted away
+down the passage, shrieking like a child, to tell the joke to his wife.
+
+For a time Philip lay on the bed, pretending to himself that he was hurt
+grievously. He could scarcely see for temper, and in the passage he ran
+against Miss Abbott, who promptly burst into tears.
+
+"I sleep at the Globo," he told her, "and start for Sawston tomorrow
+morning early. He has assaulted me. I could prosecute him. But shall
+not."
+
+"I can't stop here," she sobbed. "I daren't stop here. You will have to
+take me with you!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Opposite the Volterra gate of Monteriano, outside the city, is a very
+respectable white-washed mud wall, with a coping of red crinkled tiles
+to keep it from dissolution. It would suggest a gentleman's garden if
+there was not in its middle a large hole, which grows larger with every
+rain-storm. Through the hole is visible, firstly, the iron gate that is
+intended to close it; secondly, a square piece of ground which, though
+not quite, mud, is at the same time not exactly grass; and finally,
+another wall, stone this time, which has a wooden door in the middle and
+two wooden-shuttered windows each side, and apparently forms the facade
+of a one-storey house.
+
+This house is bigger than it looks, for it slides for two storeys down
+the hill behind, and the wooden door, which is always locked, really
+leads into the attic. The knowing person prefers to follow the
+precipitous mule-track round the turn of the mud wall till he can take
+the edifice in the rear. Then--being now on a level with the cellars--he
+lifts up his head and shouts. If his voice sounds like something
+light--a letter, for example, or some vegetables, or a bunch of
+flowers--a basket is let out of the first-floor windows by a string,
+into which he puts his burdens and departs. But if he sounds like
+something heavy, such as a log of wood, or a piece of meat, or a
+visitor, he is interrogated, and then bidden or forbidden to ascend.
+The ground floor and the upper floor of that battered house are alike
+deserted, and the inmates keep the central portion, just as in a dying
+body all life retires to the heart. There is a door at the top of the
+first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a
+welcome which is not necessarily cold. There are several rooms, some
+dark and mostly stuffy--a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs,
+wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit--German bad taste
+without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room,
+which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence of
+hospitality is absent, and real bedrooms; and last, but not least, the
+loggia, where you can live day and night if you feel inclined, drinking
+vermouth and smoking cigarettes, with leagues of olive-trees and
+vineyards and blue-green hills to watch you.
+
+It was in this house that the brief and inevitable tragedy of Lilia's
+married life took place. She made Gino buy it for her, because it was
+there she had first seen him sitting on the mud wall that faced the
+Volterra gate. She remembered how the evening sun had struck his hair,
+and how he had smiled down at her, and being both sentimental and
+unrefined, was determined to have the man and the place together. Things
+in Italy are cheap for an Italian, and, though he would have preferred
+a house in the piazza, or better still a house at Siena, or, bliss above
+bliss, a house at Leghorn, he did as she asked, thinking that perhaps
+she showed her good taste in preferring so retired an abode.
+
+The house was far too big for them, and there was a general concourse of
+his relatives to fill it up. His father wished to make it a patriarchal
+concern, where all the family should have their rooms and meet together
+for meals, and was perfectly willing to give up the new practice at
+Poggibonsi and preside. Gino was quite willing too, for he was an
+affectionate youth who liked a large home-circle, and he told it as
+a pleasant bit of news to Lilia, who did not attempt to conceal her
+horror.
+
+At once he was horrified too; saw that the idea was monstrous; abused
+himself to her for having suggested it; rushed off to tell his father
+that it was impossible. His father complained that prosperity was
+already corrupting him and making him unsympathetic and hard; his mother
+cried; his sisters accused him of blocking their social advance. He
+was apologetic, and even cringing, until they turned on Lilia. Then
+he turned on them, saying that they could not understand, much less
+associate with, the English lady who was his wife; that there should be
+one master in that house--himself.
+
+Lilia praised and petted him on his return, calling him brave and a hero
+and other endearing epithets. But he was rather blue when his clan left
+Monteriano in much dignity--a dignity which was not at all impaired
+by the acceptance of a cheque. They took the cheque not to Poggibonsi,
+after all, but to Empoli--a lively, dusty town some twenty miles off.
+There they settled down in comfort, and the sisters said they had been
+driven to it by Gino.
+
+The cheque was, of course, Lilia's, who was extremely generous, and was
+quite willing to know anybody so long as she had not to live with them,
+relations-in-law being on her nerves. She liked nothing better than
+finding out some obscure and distant connection--there were several of
+them--and acting the lady bountiful, leaving behind her bewilderment,
+and too often discontent. Gino wondered how it was that all his people,
+who had formerly seemed so pleasant, had suddenly become plaintive
+and disagreeable. He put it down to his lady wife's magnificence, in
+comparison with which all seemed common. Her money flew apace, in
+spite of the cheap living. She was even richer than he expected; and he
+remembered with shame how he had once regretted his inability to accept
+the thousand lire that Philip Herriton offered him in exchange for her.
+It would have been a shortsighted bargain.
+
+Lilia enjoyed settling into the house, with nothing to do except give
+orders to smiling workpeople, and a devoted husband as interpreter. She
+wrote a jaunty account of her happiness to Mrs. Herriton, and Harriet
+answered the letter, saying (1) that all future communications should be
+addressed to the solicitors; (2) would Lilia return an inlaid box which
+Harriet had lent her--but not given--to keep handkerchiefs and collars
+in?
+
+"Look what I am giving up to live with you!" she said to Gino, never
+omitting to lay stress on her condescension. He took her to mean the
+inlaid box, and said that she need not give it up at all.
+
+"Silly fellow, no! I mean the life. Those Herritons are very well
+connected. They lead Sawston society. But what do I care, so long as I
+have my silly fellow!" She always treated him as a boy, which he was,
+and as a fool, which he was not, thinking herself so immeasurably
+superior to him that she neglected opportunity after opportunity of
+establishing her rule. He was good-looking and indolent; therefore he
+must be stupid. He was poor; therefore he would never dare to criticize
+his benefactress. He was passionately in love with her; therefore she
+could do exactly as she liked.
+
+"It mayn't be heaven below," she thought, "but it's better than
+Charles."
+
+And all the time the boy was watching her, and growing up.
+
+She was reminded of Charles by a disagreeable letter from the
+solicitors, bidding her disgorge a large sum of money for Irma, in
+accordance with her late husband's will. It was just like Charles's
+suspicious nature to have provided against a second marriage. Gino was
+equally indignant, and between them they composed a stinging reply,
+which had no effect. He then said that Irma had better come out and live
+with them. "The air is good, so is the food; she will be happy here, and
+we shall not have to part with the money." But Lilia had not the courage
+even to suggest this to the Herritons, and an unexpected terror seized
+her at the thought of Irma or any English child being educated at
+Monteriano.
+
+Gino became terribly depressed over the solicitors' letter, more
+depressed than she thought necessary. There was no more to do in the
+house, and he spent whole days in the loggia leaning over the parapet or
+sitting astride it disconsolately.
+
+"Oh, you idle boy!" she cried, pinching his muscles. "Go and play
+pallone."
+
+"I am a married man," he answered, without raising his head. "I do not
+play games any more."
+
+"Go and see your friends then."
+
+"I have no friends now."
+
+"Silly, silly, silly! You can't stop indoors all day!"
+
+"I want to see no one but you." He spat on to an olive-tree.
+
+"Now, Gino, don't be silly. Go and see your friends, and bring them to
+see me. We both of us like society."
+
+He looked puzzled, but allowed himself to be persuaded, went out, found
+that he was not as friendless as he supposed, and returned after several
+hours in altered spirits. Lilia congratulated herself on her good
+management.
+
+"I'm ready, too, for people now," she said. "I mean to wake you all up,
+just as I woke up Sawston. Let's have plenty of men--and make them bring
+their womenkind. I mean to have real English tea-parties."
+
+"There is my aunt and her husband; but I thought you did not want to
+receive my relatives."
+
+"I never said such a--"
+
+"But you would be right," he said earnestly. "They are not for you.
+Many of them are in trade, and even we are little more; you should have
+gentlefolk and nobility for your friends."
+
+"Poor fellow," thought Lilia. "It is sad for him to discover that his
+people are vulgar." She began to tell him that she loved him just for
+his silly self, and he flushed and began tugging at his moustache.
+
+"But besides your relatives I must have other people here. Your friends
+have wives and sisters, haven't they?"
+
+"Oh, yes; but of course I scarcely know them."
+
+"Not know your friends' people?"
+
+"Why, no. If they are poor and have to work for their living I may see
+them--but not otherwise. Except--" He stopped. The chief exception was
+a young lady, to whom he had once been introduced for matrimonial
+purposes. But the dowry had proved inadequate, and the acquaintance
+terminated.
+
+"How funny! But I mean to change all that. Bring your friends to see me,
+and I will make them bring their people."
+
+He looked at her rather hopelessly.
+
+"Well, who are the principal people here? Who leads society?"
+
+The governor of the prison, he supposed, and the officers who assisted
+him.
+
+"Well, are they married?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There we are. Do you know them?"
+
+"Yes--in a way."
+
+"I see," she exclaimed angrily. "They look down on you, do they, poor
+boy? Wait!" He assented. "Wait! I'll soon stop that. Now, who else is
+there?"
+
+"The marchese, sometimes, and the canons of the Collegiate Church."
+
+"Married?"
+
+"The canons--" he began with twinkling eyes.
+
+"Oh, I forgot your horrid celibacy. In England they would be the centre
+of everything. But why shouldn't I know them? Would it make it easier if
+I called all round? Isn't that your foreign way?"
+
+He did not think it would make it easier.
+
+"But I must know some one! Who were the men you were talking to this
+afternoon?"
+
+Low-class men. He could scarcely recollect their names.
+
+"But, Gino dear, if they're low class, why did you talk to them? Don't
+you care about your position?"
+
+All Gino cared about at present was idleness and pocket-money, and his
+way of expressing it was to exclaim, "Ouf-pouf! How hot it is in here.
+No air; I sweat all over. I expire. I must cool myself, or I shall never
+get to sleep." In his funny abrupt way he ran out on to the loggia,
+where he lay full length on the parapet, and began to smoke and spit
+under the silence of the stars.
+
+Lilia gathered somehow from this conversation that Continental society
+was not the go-as-you-please thing she had expected. Indeed she could
+not see where Continental society was. Italy is such a delightful place
+to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite
+luxury of Socialism--that true Socialism which is based not on equality
+of income or character, but on the equality of manners. In the democracy
+of the caffe or the street the great question of our life has been
+solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But is accomplished at
+the expense of the sisterhood of women. Why should you not make friends
+with your neighbour at the theatre or in the train, when you know and
+he knows that feminine criticism and feminine insight and feminine
+prejudice will never come between you? Though you become as David and
+Jonathan, you need never enter his home, nor he yours. All your lives
+you will meet under the open air, the only roof-tree of the South, under
+which he will spit and swear, and you will drop your h's, and nobody
+will think the worse of either.
+
+Meanwhile the women--they have, of course, their house and their church,
+with its admirable and frequent services, to which they are escorted by
+the maid. Otherwise they do not go out much, for it is not genteel to
+walk, and you are too poor to keep a carriage. Occasionally you will
+take them to the caffe or theatre, and immediately all your wonted
+acquaintance there desert you, except those few who are expecting
+and expected to marry into your family. It is all very sad. But one
+consolation emerges--life is very pleasant in Italy if you are a man.
+
+Hitherto Gino had not interfered with Lilia. She was so much older than
+he was, and so much richer, that he regarded her as a superior being who
+answered to other laws. He was not wholly surprised, for strange rumours
+were always blowing over the Alps of lands where men and women had the
+same amusements and interests, and he had often met that privileged
+maniac, the lady tourist, on her solitary walks. Lilia took solitary
+walks too, and only that week a tramp had grabbed at her watch--an
+episode which is supposed to be indigenous in Italy, though really less
+frequent there than in Bond Street. Now that he knew her better, he
+was inevitably losing his awe: no one could live with her and keep it,
+especially when she had been so silly as to lose a gold watch and chain.
+As he lay thoughtful along the parapet, he realized for the first time
+the responsibilities of monied life. He must save her from dangers,
+physical and social, for after all she was a woman. "And I," he
+reflected, "though I am young, am at all events a man, and know what is
+right."
+
+He found her still in the living-room, combing her hair, for she had
+something of the slattern in her nature, and there was no need to keep
+up appearances.
+
+"You must not go out alone," he said gently. "It is not safe. If you
+want to walk, Perfetta shall accompany you." Perfetta was a widowed
+cousin, too humble for social aspirations, who was living with them as
+factotum.
+
+"Very well," smiled Lilia, "very well"--as if she were addressing a
+solicitous kitten. But for all that she never took a solitary walk
+again, with one exception, till the day of her death.
+
+Days passed, and no one called except poor relatives. She began to feel
+dull. Didn't he know the Sindaco or the bank manager? Even the landlady
+of the Stella d'Italia would be better than no one. She, when she went
+into the town, was pleasantly received; but people naturally found a
+difficulty in getting on with a lady who could not learn their language.
+And the tea-party, under Gino's adroit management, receded ever and ever
+before her.
+
+He had a good deal of anxiety over her welfare, for she did not
+settle down in the house at all. But he was comforted by a welcome and
+unexpected visitor. As he was going one afternoon for the letters--they
+were delivered at the door, but it took longer to get them at the
+office--some one humorously threw a cloak over his head, and when he
+disengaged himself he saw his very dear friend Spiridione Tesi of the
+custom-house at Chiasso, whom he had not met for two years. What joy!
+what salutations! so that all the passersby smiled with approval on the
+amiable scene. Spiridione's brother was now station-master at Bologna,
+and thus he himself could spend his holiday travelling over Italy at the
+public expense. Hearing of Gino's marriage, he had come to see him on
+his way to Siena, where lived his own uncle, lately monied too.
+
+"They all do it," he exclaimed, "myself excepted." He was not quite
+twenty-three. "But tell me more. She is English. That is good, very
+good. An English wife is very good indeed. And she is rich?"
+
+"Immensely rich."
+
+"Blonde or dark?"
+
+"Blonde."
+
+"Is it possible!"
+
+"It pleases me very much," said Gino simply. "If you remember, I always
+desired a blonde." Three or four men had collected, and were listening.
+
+"We all desire one," said Spiridione. "But you, Gino, deserve your good
+fortune, for you are a good son, a brave man, and a true friend, and
+from the very first moment I saw you I wished you well."
+
+"No compliments, I beg," said Gino, standing with his hands crossed on
+his chest and a smile of pleasure on his face.
+
+Spiridione addressed the other men, none of whom he had ever seen
+before. "Is it not true? Does not he deserve this wealthy blonde?"
+
+"He does deserve her," said all the men.
+
+It is a marvellous land, where you love it or hate it.
+
+There were no letters, and of course they sat down at the Caffe
+Garibaldi, by the Collegiate Church--quite a good caffe that for so
+small a city. There were marble-topped tables, and pillars terra-cotta
+below and gold above, and on the ceiling was a fresco of the battle of
+Solferino. One could not have desired a prettier room. They had vermouth
+and little cakes with sugar on the top, which they chose gravely at
+the counter, pinching them first to be sure they were fresh. And though
+vermouth is barely alcoholic, Spiridione drenched his with soda-water to
+be sure that it should not get into his head.
+
+They were in high spirits, and elaborate compliments alternated
+curiously with gentle horseplay. But soon they put up their legs on a
+pair of chairs and began to smoke.
+
+"Tell me," said Spiridione--"I forgot to ask--is she young?"
+
+"Thirty-three."
+
+"Ah, well, we cannot have everything."
+
+"But you would be surprised. Had she told me twenty-eight, I should not
+have disbelieved her."
+
+"Is she SIMPATICA?" (Nothing will translate that word.)
+
+Gino dabbed at the sugar and said after a silence, "Sufficiently so."
+
+"It is a most important thing."
+
+"She is rich, she is generous, she is affable, she addresses her
+inferiors without haughtiness."
+
+There was another silence. "It is not sufficient," said the other. "One
+does not define it thus." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Last month
+a German was smuggling cigars. The custom-house was dark. Yet I
+refused because I did not like him. The gifts of such men do not bring
+happiness. NON ERA SIMPATICO. He paid for every one, and the fine for
+deception besides."
+
+"Do you gain much beyond your pay?" asked Gino, diverted for an instant.
+
+"I do not accept small sums now. It is not worth the risk. But the
+German was another matter. But listen, my Gino, for I am older than
+you and more full of experience. The person who understands us at first
+sight, who never irritates us, who never bores, to whom we can pour
+forth every thought and wish, not only in speech but in silence--that is
+what I mean by SIMPATICO."
+
+"There are such men, I know," said Gino. "And I have heard it said of
+children. But where will you find such a woman?"
+
+"That is true. Here you are wiser than I. SONO POCO SIMPATICHE LE DONNE.
+And the time we waste over them is much." He sighed dolefully, as if he
+found the nobility of his sex a burden.
+
+"One I have seen who may be so. She spoke very little, but she was a
+young lady--different to most. She, too, was English, the companion of
+my wife here. But Fra Filippo, the brother-in-law, took her back with
+him. I saw them start. He was very angry."
+
+Then he spoke of his exciting and secret marriage, and they made fun of
+the unfortunate Philip, who had travelled over Europe to stop it.
+
+"I regret though," said Gino, when they had finished laughing, "that I
+toppled him on to the bed. A great tall man! And when I am really amused
+I am often impolite."
+
+"You will never see him again," said Spiridione, who carried plenty of
+philosophy about him. "And by now the scene will have passed from his
+mind."
+
+"It sometimes happens that such things are recollected longest. I shall
+never see him again, of course; but it is no benefit to me that he
+should wish me ill. And even if he has forgotten, I am still sorry that
+I toppled him on to the bed."
+
+So their talk continued, at one moment full of childishness and
+tender wisdom, the next moment scandalously gross. The shadows of the
+terra-cotta pillars lengthened, and tourists, flying through the Palazzo
+Pubblico opposite, could observe how the Italians wasted time.
+
+The sight of tourists reminded Gino of something he might say. "I
+want to consult you since you are so kind as to take an interest in my
+affairs. My wife wishes to take solitary walks."
+
+Spiridione was shocked.
+
+"But I have forbidden her."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"She does not yet understand. She asked me to accompany her
+sometimes--to walk without object! You know, she would like me to be
+with her all day."
+
+"I see. I see." He knitted his brows and tried to think how he could
+help his friend. "She needs employment. Is she a Catholic?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That is a pity. She must be persuaded. It will be a great solace to her
+when she is alone."
+
+"I am a Catholic, but of course I never go to church."
+
+"Of course not. Still, you might take her at first. That is what my
+brother has done with his wife at Bologna and he has joined the Free
+Thinkers. He took her once or twice himself, and now she has acquired
+the habit and continues to go without him."
+
+"Most excellent advice, and I thank you for it. But she wishes to give
+tea-parties--men and women together whom she has never seen."
+
+"Oh, the English! they are always thinking of tea. They carry it by the
+kilogramme in their trunks, and they are so clumsy that they always pack
+it at the top. But it is absurd!"
+
+"What am I to do about it?"
+
+"Do nothing. Or ask me!"
+
+"Come!" cried Gino, springing up. "She will be quite pleased."
+
+The dashing young fellow coloured crimson. "Of course I was only
+joking."
+
+"I know. But she wants me to take my friends. Come now! Waiter!"
+
+"If I do come," cried the other, "and take tea with you, this bill must
+be my affair."
+
+"Certainly not; you are in my country!"
+
+A long argument ensued, in which the waiter took part, suggesting
+various solutions. At last Gino triumphed. The bill came to
+eightpence-halfpenny, and a halfpenny for the waiter brought it up
+to ninepence. Then there was a shower of gratitude on one side and of
+deprecation on the other, and when courtesies were at their height they
+suddenly linked arms and swung down the street, tickling each other with
+lemonade straws as they went.
+
+Lilia was delighted to see them, and became more animated than Gino had
+known her for a long time. The tea tasted of chopped hay, and they asked
+to be allowed to drink it out of a wine-glass, and refused milk; but, as
+she repeatedly observed, this was something like. Spiridione's manners
+were very agreeable. He kissed her hand on introduction, and as his
+profession had taught him a little English, conversation did not flag.
+
+"Do you like music?" she asked.
+
+"Passionately," he replied. "I have not studied scientific music, but
+the music of the heart, yes."
+
+So she played on the humming piano very badly, and he sang, not so
+badly. Gino got out a guitar and sang too, sitting out on the loggia. It
+was a most agreeable visit.
+
+Gino said he would just walk his friend back to his lodgings. As they
+went he said, without the least trace of malice or satire in his voice,
+"I think you are quite right. I shall not bring people to the house any
+more. I do not see why an English wife should be treated differently.
+This is Italy."
+
+"You are very wise," exclaimed the other; "very wise indeed. The more
+precious a possession the more carefully it should be guarded."
+
+They had reached the lodging, but went on as far as the Caffe Garibaldi,
+where they spent a long and most delightful evening.
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say
+"yesterday I was happy, today I am not." At no one moment did Lilia
+realize that her marriage was a failure; yet during the summer and
+autumn she became as unhappy as it was possible for her nature to be.
+She had no unkind treatment, and few unkind words, from her husband.
+He simply left her alone. In the morning he went out to do "business,"
+which, as far as she could discover, meant sitting in the Farmacia. He
+usually returned to lunch, after which he retired to another room and
+slept. In the evening he grew vigorous again, and took the air on
+the ramparts, often having his dinner out, and seldom returning till
+midnight or later. There were, of course, the times when he was away
+altogether--at Empoli, Siena, Florence, Bologna--for he delighted in
+travel, and seemed to pick up friends all over the country. Lilia often
+heard what a favorite he was.
+
+She began to see that she must assert herself, but she could not see
+how. Her self-confidence, which had overthrown Philip, had gradually
+oozed away. If she left the strange house there was the strange little
+town. If she were to disobey her husband and walk in the country, that
+would be stranger still--vast slopes of olives and vineyards, with
+chalk-white farms, and in the distance other slopes, with more olives
+and more farms, and more little towns outlined against the cloudless
+sky. "I don't call this country," she would say. "Why, it's not as wild
+as Sawston Park!" And, indeed, there was scarcely a touch of wildness
+in it--some of those slopes had been under cultivation for two thousand
+years. But it was terrible and mysterious all the same, and its
+continued presence made Lilia so uncomfortable that she forgot her
+nature and began to reflect.
+
+She reflected chiefly about her marriage. The ceremony had been hasty
+and expensive, and the rites, whatever they were, were not those of the
+Church of England. Lilia had no religion in her; but for hours at a
+time she would be seized with a vulgar fear that she was not "married
+properly," and that her social position in the next world might be as
+obscure as it was in this. It might be safer to do the thing thoroughly,
+and one day she took the advice of Spiridione and joined the Roman
+Catholic Church, or as she called it, "Santa Deodata's." Gino approved;
+he, too, thought it safer, and it was fun confessing, though the priest
+was a stupid old man, and the whole thing was a good slap in the face
+for the people at home.
+
+The people at home took the slap very soberly; indeed, there were few
+left for her to give it to. The Herritons were out of the question;
+they would not even let her write to Irma, though Irma was occasionally
+allowed to write to her. Mrs. Theobald was rapidly subsiding into
+dotage, and, as far as she could be definite about anything, had
+definitely sided with the Herritons. And Miss Abbott did likewise. Night
+after night did Lilia curse this false friend, who had agreed with her
+that the marriage would "do," and that the Herritons would come round to
+it, and then, at the first hint of opposition, had fled back to England
+shrieking and distraught. Miss Abbott headed the long list of those who
+should never be written to, and who should never be forgiven. Almost
+the only person who was not on that list was Mr. Kingcroft, who had
+unexpectedly sent an affectionate and inquiring letter. He was quite
+sure never to cross the Channel, and Lilia drew freely on her fancy in
+the reply.
+
+At first she had seen a few English people, for Monteriano was not the
+end of the earth. One or two inquisitive ladies, who had heard at home
+of her quarrel with the Herritons, came to call. She was very sprightly,
+and they thought her quite unconventional, and Gino a charming boy, so
+all that was to the good. But by May the season, such as it was, had
+finished, and there would be no one till next spring. As Mrs. Herriton
+had often observed, Lilia had no resources. She did not like music, or
+reading, or work. Her one qualification for life was rather blowsy
+high spirits, which turned querulous or boisterous according to
+circumstances. She was not obedient, but she was cowardly, and in the
+most gentle way, which Mrs. Herriton might have envied, Gino made her do
+what he wanted. At first it had been rather fun to let him get the upper
+hand. But it was galling to discover that he could not do otherwise. He
+had a good strong will when he chose to use it, and would not have had
+the least scruple in using bolts and locks to put it into effect. There
+was plenty of brutality deep down in him, and one day Lilia nearly
+touched it.
+
+It was the old question of going out alone.
+
+"I always do it in England."
+
+"This is Italy."
+
+"Yes, but I'm older than you, and I'll settle."
+
+"I am your husband," he said, smiling. They had finished their mid-day
+meal, and he wanted to go and sleep. Nothing would rouse him up, until
+at last Lilia, getting more and more angry, said, "And I've got the
+money."
+
+He looked horrified.
+
+Now was the moment to assert herself. She made the statement again. He
+got up from his chair.
+
+"And you'd better mend your manners," she continued, "for you'd find it
+awkward if I stopped drawing cheques."
+
+She was no reader of character, but she quickly became alarmed. As she
+said to Perfetta afterwards, "None of his clothes seemed to fit--too
+big in one place, too small in another." His figure rather than his face
+altered, the shoulders falling forward till his coat wrinkled across the
+back and pulled away from his wrists. He seemed all arms. He edged round
+the table to where she was sitting, and she sprang away and held the
+chair between them, too frightened to speak or to move. He looked at her
+with round, expressionless eyes, and slowly stretched out his left hand.
+
+Perfetta was heard coming up from the kitchen. It seemed to wake him up,
+and he turned away and went to his room without a word.
+
+"What has happened?" cried Lilia, nearly fainting. "He is ill--ill."
+
+Perfetta looked suspicious when she heard the account. "What did you say
+to him?" She crossed herself.
+
+"Hardly anything," said Lilia and crossed herself also. Thus did the two
+women pay homage to their outraged male.
+
+It was clear to Lilia at last that Gino had married her for money. But
+he had frightened her too much to leave any place for contempt. His
+return was terrifying, for he was frightened too, imploring her pardon,
+lying at her feet, embracing her, murmuring "It was not I," striving to
+define things which he did not understand. He stopped in the house
+for three days, positively ill with physical collapse. But for all his
+suffering he had tamed her, and she never threatened to cut off supplies
+again.
+
+Perhaps he kept her even closer than convention demanded. But he was
+very young, and he could not bear it to be said of him that he did
+not know how to treat a lady--or to manage a wife. And his own social
+position was uncertain. Even in England a dentist is a troublesome
+creature, whom careful people find difficult to class. He hovers between
+the professions and the trades; he may be only a little lower than the
+doctors, or he may be down among the chemists, or even beneath them. The
+son of the Italian dentist felt this too. For himself nothing mattered;
+he made friends with the people he liked, for he was that glorious
+invariable creature, a man. But his wife should visit nowhere rather
+than visit wrongly: seclusion was both decent and safe. The social
+ideals of North and South had had their brief contention, and this time
+the South had won.
+
+It would have been well if he had been as strict over his own behaviour
+as he was over hers. But the incongruity never occurred to him for
+a moment. His morality was that of the average Latin, and as he was
+suddenly placed in the position of a gentleman, he did not see why he
+should not behave as such. Of course, had Lilia been different--had
+she asserted herself and got a grip on his character--he might
+possibly--though not probably--have been made a better husband as well
+as a better man, and at all events he could have adopted the attitude of
+the Englishman, whose standard is higher even when his practice is the
+same. But had Lilia been different she might not have married him.
+
+The discovery of his infidelity--which she made by accident--destroyed
+such remnants of self-satisfaction as her life might yet possess. She
+broke down utterly and sobbed and cried in Perfetta's arms. Perfetta was
+kind and even sympathetic, but cautioned her on no account to speak to
+Gino, who would be furious if he was suspected. And Lilia agreed, partly
+because she was afraid of him, partly because it was, after all, the
+best and most dignified thing to do. She had given up everything for
+him--her daughter, her relatives, her friends, all the little comforts
+and luxuries of a civilized life--and even if she had the courage to
+break away, there was no one who would receive her now. The Herritons
+had been almost malignant in their efforts against her, and all her
+friends had one by one fallen off. So it was better to live on humbly,
+trying not to feel, endeavouring by a cheerful demeanour to put things
+right. "Perhaps," she thought, "if I have a child he will be different.
+I know he wants a son."
+
+Lilia had achieved pathos despite herself, for there are some situations
+in which vulgarity counts no longer. Not Cordelia nor Imogen more
+deserves our tears.
+
+She herself cried frequently, making herself look plain and old, which
+distressed her husband. He was particularly kind to her when he hardly
+ever saw her, and she accepted his kindness without resentment, even
+with gratitude, so docile had she become. She did not hate him, even as
+she had never loved him; with her it was only when she was excited that
+the semblance of either passion arose. People said she was headstrong,
+but really her weak brain left her cold.
+
+Suffering, however, is more independent of temperament, and the wisest
+of women could hardly have suffered more.
+
+As for Gino, he was quite as boyish as ever, and carried his iniquities
+like a feather. A favourite speech of his was, "Ah, one ought to marry!
+Spiridione is wrong; I must persuade him. Not till marriage does one
+realize the pleasures and the possibilities of life." So saying, he
+would take down his felt hat, strike it in the right place as infallibly
+as a German strikes his in the wrong place, and leave her.
+
+One evening, when he had gone out thus, Lilia could stand it no longer.
+It was September. Sawston would be just filling up after the summer
+holidays. People would be running in and out of each other's houses
+all along the road. There were bicycle gymkhanas, and on the 30th Mrs.
+Herriton would be holding the annual bazaar in her garden for the C.M.S.
+It seemed impossible that such a free, happy life could exist. She
+walked out on to the loggia. Moonlight and stars in a soft purple sky.
+The walls of Monteriano should be glorious on such a night as this. But
+the house faced away from them.
+
+Perfetta was banging in the kitchen, and the stairs down led past the
+kitchen door. But the stairs up to the attic--the stairs no one ever
+used--opened out of the living-room, and by unlocking the door at the
+top one might slip out to the square terrace above the house, and thus
+for ten minutes walk in freedom and peace.
+
+The key was in the pocket of Gino's best suit--the English check--which
+he never wore. The stairs creaked and the key-hole screamed; but
+Perfetta was growing deaf. The walls were beautiful, but as they faced
+west they were in shadow. To see the light upon them she must walk round
+the town a little, till they were caught by the beams of the rising
+moon. She looked anxiously at the house, and started.
+
+It was easy walking, for a little path ran all outside the ramparts.
+The few people she met wished her a civil good-night, taking her, in her
+hatless condition, for a peasant. The walls trended round towards the
+moon; and presently she came into its light, and saw all the rough
+towers turn into pillars of silver and black, and the ramparts
+into cliffs of pearl. She had no great sense of beauty, but she was
+sentimental, and she began to cry; for here, where a great cypress
+interrupted the monotony of the girdle of olives, she had sat with Gino
+one afternoon in March, her head upon his shoulder, while Caroline was
+looking at the view and sketching. Round the corner was the Siena gate,
+from which the road to England started, and she could hear the rumble of
+the diligence which was going down to catch the night train to Empoli.
+The next moment it was upon her, for the highroad came towards her a
+little before it began its long zigzag down the hill.
+
+The driver slackened, and called to her to get in. He did not know who
+she was. He hoped she might be coming to the station.
+
+"Non vengo!" she cried.
+
+He wished her good-night, and turned his horses down the corner. As the
+diligence came round she saw that it was empty.
+
+"Vengo..."
+
+Her voice was tremulous, and did not carry. The horses swung off.
+
+"Vengo! Vengo!"
+
+He had begun to sing, and heard nothing. She ran down the road screaming
+to him to stop--that she was coming; while the distance grew greater
+and the noise of the diligence increased. The man's back was black and
+square against the moon, and if he would but turn for an instant she
+would be saved. She tried to cut off the corner of the zigzag, stumbling
+over the great clods of earth, large and hard as rocks, which lay
+between the eternal olives. She was too late; for, just before she
+regained the road, the thing swept past her, thunderous, ploughing up
+choking clouds of moonlit dust.
+
+She did not call any more, for she felt very ill, and fainted; and when
+she revived she was lying in the road, with dust in her eyes, and dust
+in her mouth, and dust down her ears. There is something very terrible
+in dust at night-time.
+
+"What shall I do?" she moaned. "He will be so angry."
+
+And without further effort she slowly climbed back to captivity, shaking
+her garments as she went.
+
+Ill luck pursued her to the end. It was one of the nights when Gino
+happened to come in. He was in the kitchen, swearing and smashing
+plates, while Perfetta, her apron over her head, was weeping violently.
+At the sight of Lilia he turned upon her and poured forth a flood of
+miscellaneous abuse. He was far more angry but much less alarming than
+he had been that day when he edged after her round the table. And Lilia
+gained more courage from her bad conscience than she ever had from her
+good one, for as he spoke she was seized with indignation and feared him
+no longer, and saw him for a cruel, worthless, hypocritical, dissolute
+upstart, and spoke in return.
+
+Perfetta screamed for she told him everything--all she knew and all
+she thought. He stood with open mouth, all the anger gone out of
+him, feeling ashamed, and an utter fool. He was fairly and rightfully
+cornered. When had a husband so given himself away before? She finished;
+and he was dumb, for she had spoken truly. Then, alas! the absurdity of
+his own position grew upon him, and he laughed--as he would have laughed
+at the same situation on the stage.
+
+"You laugh?" stammered Lilia.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, "who could help it? I, who thought you knew and saw
+nothing--I am tricked--I am conquered. I give in. Let us talk of it no
+more."
+
+He touched her on the shoulder like a good comrade, half amused and half
+penitent, and then, murmuring and smiling to himself, ran quietly out of
+the room.
+
+Perfetta burst into congratulations. "What courage you have!" she cried;
+"and what good fortune! He is angry no longer! He has forgiven you!"
+
+Neither Perfetta, nor Gino, nor Lilia herself knew the true reason of
+all the misery that followed. To the end he thought that kindness and a
+little attention would be enough to set things straight. His wife was
+a very ordinary woman, and why should her ideas differ from his own?
+No one realized that more than personalities were engaged; that the
+struggle was national; that generations of ancestors, good, bad, or
+indifferent, forbad the Latin man to be chivalrous to the northern
+woman, the northern woman to forgive the Latin man. All this might have
+been foreseen: Mrs. Herriton foresaw it from the first.
+
+Meanwhile Lilia prided herself on her high personal standard, and Gino
+simply wondered why she did not come round. He hated discomfort and
+yearned for sympathy, but shrank from mentioning his difficulties in the
+town in case they were put down to his own incompetence. Spiridione was
+told, and replied in a philosophical but not very helpful letter. His
+other great friend, whom he trusted more, was still serving in Eritrea
+or some other desolate outpost. And, besides, what was the good of
+letters? Friends cannot travel through the post.
+
+Lilia, so similar to her husband in many ways, yearned for comfort and
+sympathy too. The night he laughed at her she wildly took up paper and
+pen and wrote page after page, analysing his character, enumerating his
+iniquities, reporting whole conversations, tracing all the causes and
+the growth of her misery. She was beside herself with passion,
+and though she could hardly think or see, she suddenly attained to
+magnificence and pathos which a practised stylist might have envied. It
+was written like a diary, and not till its conclusion did she realize
+for whom it was meant.
+
+"Irma, darling Irma, this letter is for you. I almost forgot I have a
+daughter. It will make you unhappy, but I want you to know everything,
+and you cannot learn things too soon. God bless you, my dearest, and
+save you. God bless your miserable mother."
+
+Fortunately Mrs. Herriton was in when the letter arrived. She seized
+it and opened it in her bedroom. Another moment, and Irma's placid
+childhood would have been destroyed for ever.
+
+Lilia received a brief note from Harriet, again forbidding direct
+communication between mother and daughter, and concluding with formal
+condolences. It nearly drove her mad.
+
+"Gently! gently!" said her husband. They were sitting together on the
+loggia when the letter arrived. He often sat with her now, watching her
+for hours, puzzled and anxious, but not contrite.
+
+"It's nothing." She went in and tore it up, and then began to write--a
+very short letter, whose gist was "Come and save me."
+
+It is not good to see your wife crying when she writes--especially if
+you are conscious that, on the whole, your treatment of her has been
+reasonable and kind. It is not good, when you accidentally look over her
+shoulder, to see that she is writing to a man. Nor should she shake her
+fist at you when she leaves the room, under the impression that you are
+engaged in lighting a cigar and cannot see her.
+
+Lilia went to the post herself. But in Italy so many things can be
+arranged. The postman was a friend of Gino's, and Mr. Kingcroft never
+got his letter.
+
+So she gave up hope, became ill, and all through the autumn lay in bed.
+Gino was distracted. She knew why; he wanted a son. He could talk and
+think of nothing else. His one desire was to become the father of a man
+like himself, and it held him with a grip he only partially understood,
+for it was the first great desire, the first great passion of his life.
+Falling in love was a mere physical triviality, like warm sun or cool
+water, beside this divine hope of immortality: "I continue." He gave
+candles to Santa Deodata, for he was always religious at a crisis, and
+sometimes he went to her himself and prayed the crude uncouth demands of
+the simple. Impetuously he summoned all his relatives back to bear him
+company in his time of need, and Lilia saw strange faces flitting past
+her in the darkened room.
+
+"My love!" he would say, "my dearest Lilia! Be calm. I have never loved
+any one but you."
+
+She, knowing everything, would only smile gently, too broken by
+suffering to make sarcastic repartees.
+
+Before the child was born he gave her a kiss, and said, "I have prayed
+all night for a boy."
+
+Some strangely tender impulse moved her, and she said faintly, "You are
+a boy yourself, Gino."
+
+He answered, "Then we shall be brothers."
+
+He lay outside the room with his head against the door like a dog. When
+they came to tell him the glad news they found him half unconscious, and
+his face was wet with tears.
+
+As for Lilia, some one said to her, "It is a beautiful boy!" But she had
+died in giving birth to him.
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+At the time of Lilia's death Philip Herriton was just twenty-four years
+of age--indeed the news reached Sawston on his birthday. He was a tall,
+weakly-built young man, whose clothes had to be judiciously padded
+on the shoulders in order to make him pass muster. His face was plain
+rather than not, and there was a curious mixture in it of good and bad.
+He had a fine forehead and a good large nose, and both observation
+and sympathy were in his eyes. But below the nose and eyes all was
+confusion, and those people who believe that destiny resides in the
+mouth and chin shook their heads when they looked at him.
+
+Philip himself, as a boy, had been keenly conscious of these defects.
+Sometimes when he had been bullied or hustled about at school he would
+retire to his cubicle and examine his features in a looking-glass, and
+he would sigh and say, "It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place
+for myself in the world." But as years went on he became either less
+self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a
+niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come
+later--or he might have it without knowing. At all events he had got
+a sense of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable gifts. The
+sense of beauty developed first. It caused him at the age of twenty to
+wear parti-coloured ties and a squashy hat, to be late for dinner on
+account of the sunset, and to catch art from Burne-Jones to Praxiteles.
+At twenty-two he went to Italy with some cousins, and there he absorbed
+into one aesthetic whole olive-trees, blue sky, frescoes, country inns,
+saints, peasants, mosaics, statues, beggars. He came back with the air
+of a prophet who would either remodel Sawston or reject it. All the
+energies and enthusiasms of a rather friendless life had passed into the
+championship of beauty.
+
+In a short time it was over. Nothing had happened either in Sawston or
+within himself. He had shocked half-a-dozen people, squabbled with his
+sister, and bickered with his mother. He concluded that nothing could
+happen, not knowing that human love and love of truth sometimes conquer
+where love of beauty fails.
+
+A little disenchanted, a little tired, but aesthetically intact, he
+resumed his placid life, relying more and more on his second gift, the
+gift of humour. If he could not reform the world, he could at all
+events laugh at it, thus attaining at least an intellectual superiority.
+Laughter, he read and believed, was a sign of good moral health, and he
+laughed on contentedly, till Lilia's marriage toppled contentment down
+for ever. Italy, the land of beauty, was ruined for him. She had no
+power to change men and things who dwelt in her. She, too, could produce
+avarice, brutality, stupidity--and, what was worse, vulgarity. It was on
+her soil and through her influence that a silly woman had married a cad.
+He hated Gino, the betrayer of his life's ideal, and now that the sordid
+tragedy had come, it filled him with pangs, not of sympathy, but of
+final disillusion.
+
+The disillusion was convenient for Mrs. Herriton, who saw a trying
+little period ahead of her, and was glad to have her family united.
+
+"Are we to go into mourning, do you think?" She always asked her
+children's advice where possible.
+
+Harriet thought that they should. She had been detestable to Lilia
+while she lived, but she always felt that the dead deserve attention
+and sympathy. "After all she has suffered. That letter kept me awake for
+nights. The whole thing is like one of those horrible modern plays where
+no one is in 'the right.' But if we have mourning, it will mean telling
+Irma."
+
+"Of course we must tell Irma!" said Philip.
+
+"Of course," said his mother. "But I think we can still not tell her
+about Lilia's marriage."
+
+"I don't think that. And she must have suspected something by now."
+
+"So one would have supposed. But she never cared for her mother, and
+little girls of nine don't reason clearly. She looks on it as a long
+visit. And it is important, most important, that she should not receive
+a shock. All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents.
+Destroy that and everything goes--morals, behaviour, everything.
+Absolute trust in some one else is the essence of education. That is why
+I have been so careful about talking of poor Lilia before her."
+
+"But you forget this wretched baby. Waters and Adamson write that there
+is a baby."
+
+"Mrs. Theobald must be told. But she doesn't count. She is breaking
+up very quickly. She doesn't even see Mr. Kingcroft now. He, thank
+goodness, I hear, has at last consoled himself with someone else."
+
+"The child must know some time," persisted Philip, who felt a little
+displeased, though he could not tell with what.
+
+"The later the better. Every moment she is developing."
+
+"I must say it seems rather hard luck, doesn't it?"
+
+"On Irma? Why?"
+
+"On us, perhaps. We have morals and behaviour also, and I don't think
+this continual secrecy improves them."
+
+"There's no need to twist the thing round to that," said Harriet, rather
+disturbed.
+
+"Of course there isn't," said her mother. "Let's keep to the main issue.
+This baby's quite beside the point. Mrs. Theobald will do nothing, and
+it's no concern of ours."
+
+"It will make a difference in the money, surely," said he.
+
+"No, dear; very little. Poor Charles provided for every kind of
+contingency in his will. The money will come to you and Harriet, as
+Irma's guardians."
+
+"Good. Does the Italian get anything?"
+
+"He will get all hers. But you know what that is."
+
+"Good. So those are our tactics--to tell no one about the baby, not even
+Miss Abbott."
+
+"Most certainly this is the proper course," said Mrs. Herriton,
+preferring "course" to "tactics" for Harriet's sake. "And why ever
+should we tell Caroline?"
+
+"She was so mixed up in the affair."
+
+"Poor silly creature. The less she hears about it the better she will be
+pleased. I have come to be very sorry for Caroline. She, if any one,
+has suffered and been penitent. She burst into tears when I told her a
+little, only a little, of that terrible letter. I never saw such genuine
+remorse. We must forgive her and forget. Let the dead bury their dead.
+We will not trouble her with them."
+
+Philip saw that his mother was scarcely logical. But there was no
+advantage in saying so. "Here beginneth the New Life, then. Do you
+remember, mother, that was what we said when we saw Lilia off?"
+
+"Yes, dear; but now it is really a New Life, because we are all at
+accord. Then you were still infatuated with Italy. It may be full
+of beautiful pictures and churches, but we cannot judge a country by
+anything but its men."
+
+"That is quite true," he said sadly. And as the tactics were now
+settled, he went out and took an aimless and solitary walk.
+
+By the time he came back two important things had happened. Irma had
+been told of her mother's death, and Miss Abbott, who had called for a
+subscription, had been told also.
+
+Irma had wept loudly, had asked a few sensible questions and a good many
+silly ones, and had been content with evasive answers. Fortunately the
+school prize-giving was at hand, and that, together with the prospect of
+new black clothes, kept her from meditating on the fact that Lilia, who
+had been absent so long, would now be absent for ever.
+
+"As for Caroline," said Mrs. Herriton, "I was almost frightened. She
+broke down utterly. She cried even when she left the house. I comforted
+her as best I could, and I kissed her. It is something that the breach
+between her and ourselves is now entirely healed."
+
+"Did she ask no questions--as to the nature of Lilia's death, I mean?"
+
+"She did. But she has a mind of extraordinary delicacy. She saw that I
+was reticent, and she did not press me. You see, Philip, I can say to
+you what I could not say before Harriet. Her ideas are so crude. Really
+we do not want it known in Sawston that there is a baby. All peace and
+comfort would be lost if people came inquiring after it."
+
+His mother knew how to manage him. He agreed enthusiastically. And a few
+days later, when he chanced to travel up to London with Miss Abbott,
+he had all the time the pleasant thrill of one who is better informed.
+Their last journey together had been from Monteriano back across
+Europe. It had been a ghastly journey, and Philip, from the force of
+association, rather expected something ghastly now.
+
+He was surprised. Miss Abbott, between Sawston and Charing Cross,
+revealed qualities which he had never guessed her to possess. Without
+being exactly original, she did show a commendable intelligence, and
+though at times she was gauche and even uncourtly, he felt that here was
+a person whom it might be well to cultivate.
+
+At first she annoyed him. They were talking, of course, about Lilia,
+when she broke the thread of vague commiseration and said abruptly, "It
+is all so strange as well as so tragic. And what I did was as strange as
+anything."
+
+It was the first reference she had ever made to her contemptible
+behaviour. "Never mind," he said. "It's all over now. Let the dead bury
+their dead. It's fallen out of our lives."
+
+"But that's why I can talk about it and tell you everything I have
+always wanted to. You thought me stupid and sentimental and wicked and
+mad, but you never really knew how much I was to blame."
+
+"Indeed I never think about it now," said Philip gently. He knew that
+her nature was in the main generous and upright: it was unnecessary for
+her to reveal her thoughts.
+
+"The first evening we got to Monteriano," she persisted, "Lilia went out
+for a walk alone, saw that Italian in a picturesque position on a wall,
+and fell in love. He was shabbily dressed, and she did not even know
+he was the son of a dentist. I must tell you I was used to this sort
+of thing. Once or twice before I had had to send people about their
+business."
+
+"Yes; we counted on you," said Philip, with sudden sharpness. After all,
+if she would reveal her thoughts, she must take the consequences.
+
+"I know you did," she retorted with equal sharpness. "Lilia saw him
+several times again, and I knew I ought to interfere. I called her to
+my bedroom one night. She was very frightened, for she knew what it was
+about and how severe I could be. 'Do you love this man?' I asked. 'Yes
+or no?' She said 'Yes.' And I said, 'Why don't you marry him if you
+think you'll be happy?'"
+
+"Really--really," exploded Philip, as exasperated as if the thing had
+happened yesterday. "You knew Lilia all your life. Apart from everything
+else--as if she could choose what could make her happy!"
+
+"Had you ever let her choose?" she flashed out. "I'm afraid that's
+rude," she added, trying to calm herself.
+
+"Let us rather say unhappily expressed," said Philip, who always adopted
+a dry satirical manner when he was puzzled.
+
+"I want to finish. Next morning I found Signor Carella and said the same
+to him. He--well, he was willing. That's all."
+
+"And the telegram?" He looked scornfully out of the window.
+
+Hitherto her voice had been hard, possibly in self-accusation, possibly
+in defiance. Now it became unmistakably sad. "Ah, the telegram! That was
+wrong. Lilia there was more cowardly than I was. We should have told the
+truth. It lost me my nerve, at all events. I came to the station meaning
+to tell you everything then. But we had started with a lie, and I got
+frightened. And at the end, when you left, I got frightened again and
+came with you."
+
+"Did you really mean to stop?"
+
+"For a time, at all events."
+
+"Would that have suited a newly married pair?"
+
+"It would have suited them. Lilia needed me. And as for him--I can't
+help feeling I might have got influence over him."
+
+"I am ignorant of these matters," said Philip; "but I should have
+thought that would have increased the difficulty of the situation."
+
+The crisp remark was wasted on her. She looked hopelessly at the raw
+over-built country, and said, "Well, I have explained."
+
+"But pardon me, Miss Abbott; of most of your conduct you have given a
+description rather than an explanation."
+
+He had fairly caught her, and expected that she would gape and collapse.
+To his surprise she answered with some spirit, "An explanation may bore
+you, Mr. Herriton: it drags in other topics."
+
+"Oh, never mind."
+
+"I hated Sawston, you see."
+
+He was delighted. "So did and do I. That's splendid. Go on."
+
+"I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty
+unselfishness."
+
+"Petty selfishness," he corrected. Sawston psychology had long been his
+specialty.
+
+"Petty unselfishness," she repeated. "I had got an idea that every one
+here spent their lives in making little sacrifices for objects they
+didn't care for, to please people they didn't love; that they never
+learnt to be sincere--and, what's as bad, never learnt how to enjoy
+themselves. That's what I thought--what I thought at Monteriano."
+
+"Why, Miss Abbott," he cried, "you should have told me this before!
+Think it still! I agree with lots of it. Magnificent!"
+
+"Now Lilia," she went on, "though there were things about her I didn't
+like, had somehow kept the power of enjoying herself with sincerity. And
+Gino, I thought, was splendid, and young, and strong not only in body,
+and sincere as the day. If they wanted to marry, why shouldn't they do
+so? Why shouldn't she break with the deadening life where she had got
+into a groove, and would go on in it, getting more and more--worse
+than unhappy--apathetic till she died? Of course I was wrong. She only
+changed one groove for another--a worse groove. And as for him--well,
+you know more about him than I do. I can never trust myself to judge
+characters again. But I still feel he cannot have been quite bad when
+we first met him. Lilia--that I should dare to say it!--must have been
+cowardly. He was only a boy--just going to turn into something fine,
+I thought--and she must have mismanaged him. So that is the one time I
+have gone against what is proper, and there are the results. You have an
+explanation now."
+
+"And much of it has been most interesting, though I don't understand
+everything. Did you never think of the disparity of their social
+position?"
+
+"We were mad--drunk with rebellion. We had no common-sense. As soon as
+you came, you saw and foresaw everything."
+
+"Oh, I don't think that." He was vaguely displeased at being credited
+with common-sense. For a moment Miss Abbott had seemed to him more
+unconventional than himself.
+
+"I hope you see," she concluded, "why I have troubled you with this long
+story. Women--I heard you say the other day--are never at ease till they
+tell their faults out loud. Lilia is dead and her husband gone to
+the bad--all through me. You see, Mr. Herriton, it makes me specially
+unhappy; it's the only time I've ever gone into what my father calls
+'real life'--and look what I've made of it! All that winter I seemed to
+be waking up to beauty and splendour and I don't know what; and when the
+spring came, I wanted to fight against the things I hated--mediocrity
+and dulness and spitefulness and society. I actually hated society for
+a day or two at Monteriano. I didn't see that all these things are
+invincible, and that if we go against them they will break us to pieces.
+Thank you for listening to so much nonsense."
+
+"Oh, I quite sympathize with what you say," said Philip encouragingly;
+"it isn't nonsense, and a year or two ago I should have been saying it
+too. But I feel differently now, and I hope that you also will change.
+Society is invincible--to a certain degree. But your real life is your
+own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can
+prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity--nothing that can stop
+you retreating into splendour and beauty--into the thoughts and beliefs
+that make the real life--the real you."
+
+"I have never had that experience yet. Surely I and my life must be
+where I live."
+
+Evidently she had the usual feminine incapacity for grasping philosophy.
+But she had developed quite a personality, and he must see more of her.
+"There is another great consolation against invincible mediocrity," he
+said--"the meeting a fellow-victim. I hope that this is only the first
+of many discussions that we shall have together."
+
+She made a suitable reply. The train reached Charing Cross, and they
+parted,--he to go to a matinee, she to buy petticoats for the corpulent
+poor. Her thoughts wandered as she bought them: the gulf between herself
+and Mr. Herriton, which she had always known to be great, now seemed to
+her immeasurable.
+
+These events and conversations took place at Christmas-time. The
+New Life initiated by them lasted some seven months. Then a little
+incident--a mere little vexatious incident--brought it to its close.
+
+Irma collected picture post-cards, and Mrs. Herriton or Harriet always
+glanced first at all that came, lest the child should get hold of
+something vulgar. On this occasion the subject seemed perfectly
+inoffensive--a lot of ruined factory chimneys--and Harriet was about to
+hand it to her niece when her eye was caught by the words on the margin.
+She gave a shriek and flung the card into the grate. Of course no fire
+was alight in July, and Irma only had to run and pick it out again.
+
+"How dare you!" screamed her aunt. "You wicked girl! Give it here!"
+
+Unfortunately Mrs. Herriton was out of the room. Irma, who was not in
+awe of Harriet, danced round the table, reading as she did so, "View of
+the superb city of Monteriano--from your lital brother."
+
+Stupid Harriet caught her, boxed her ears, and tore the post-card into
+fragments. Irma howled with pain, and began shouting indignantly, "Who
+is my little brother? Why have I never heard of him before? Grandmamma!
+Grandmamma! Who is my little brother? Who is my--"
+
+Mrs. Herriton swept into the room, saying, "Come with me, dear, and I
+will tell you. Now it is time for you to know."
+
+Irma returned from the interview sobbing, though, as a matter of
+fact, she had learnt very little. But that little took hold of her
+imagination. She had promised secrecy--she knew not why. But what harm
+in talking of the little brother to those who had heard of him already?
+
+"Aunt Harriet!" she would say. "Uncle Phil! Grandmamma! What do you
+suppose my little brother is doing now? Has he begun to play? Do Italian
+babies talk sooner than us, or would he be an English baby born
+abroad? Oh, I do long to see him, and be the first to teach him the Ten
+Commandments and the Catechism."
+
+The last remark always made Harriet look grave.
+
+"Really," exclaimed Mrs. Herriton, "Irma is getting too tiresome. She
+forgot poor Lilia soon enough."
+
+"A living brother is more to her than a dead mother," said Philip
+dreamily. "She can knit him socks."
+
+"I stopped that. She is bringing him in everywhere. It is most
+vexatious. The other night she asked if she might include him in the
+people she mentions specially in her prayers."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Of course I allowed her," she replied coldly. "She has a right to
+mention any one she chooses. But I was annoyed with her this morning,
+and I fear that I showed it."
+
+"And what happened this morning?"
+
+"She asked if she could pray for her 'new father'--for the Italian!"
+
+"Did you let her?"
+
+"I got up without saying anything."
+
+"You must have felt just as you did when I wanted to pray for the
+devil."
+
+"He is the devil," cried Harriet.
+
+"No, Harriet; he is too vulgar."
+
+"I will thank you not to scoff against religion!" was Harriet's retort.
+"Think of that poor baby. Irma is right to pray for him. What an
+entrance into life for an English child!"
+
+"My dear sister, I can reassure you. Firstly, the beastly baby is
+Italian. Secondly, it was promptly christened at Santa Deodata's, and a
+powerful combination of saints watch over--"
+
+"Don't, dear. And, Harriet, don't be so serious--I mean not so serious
+when you are with Irma. She will be worse than ever if she thinks we
+have something to hide."
+
+Harriet's conscience could be quite as tiresome as Philip's
+unconventionality. Mrs. Herriton soon made it easy for her daughter to
+go for six weeks to the Tirol. Then she and Philip began to grapple with
+Irma alone.
+
+Just as they had got things a little quiet the beastly baby sent another
+picture post-card--a comic one, not particularly proper. Irma received
+it while they were out, and all the trouble began again.
+
+"I cannot think," said Mrs. Herriton, "what his motive is in sending
+them."
+
+Two years before, Philip would have said that the motive was to give
+pleasure. Now he, like his mother, tried to think of something sinister
+and subtle.
+
+"Do you suppose that he guesses the situation--how anxious we are to
+hush the scandal up?"
+
+"That is quite possible. He knows that Irma will worry us about the
+baby. Perhaps he hopes that we shall adopt it to quiet her."
+
+"Hopeful indeed."
+
+"At the same time he has the chance of corrupting the child's morals."
+She unlocked a drawer, took out the post-card, and regarded it gravely.
+"He entreats her to send the baby one," was her next remark.
+
+"She might do it too!"
+
+"I told her not to; but we must watch her carefully, without, of course,
+appearing to be suspicious."
+
+Philip was getting to enjoy his mother's diplomacy. He did not think of
+his own morals and behaviour any more.
+
+"Who's to watch her at school, though? She may bubble out any moment."
+
+"We can but trust to our influence," said Mrs. Herriton.
+
+Irma did bubble out, that very day. She was proof against a single
+post-card, not against two. A new little brother is a valuable
+sentimental asset to a school-girl, and her school was then passing
+through an acute phase of baby-worship. Happy the girl who had her
+quiver full of them, who kissed them when she left home in the morning,
+who had the right to extricate them from mail-carts in the interval, who
+dangled them at tea ere they retired to rest! That one might sing
+the unwritten song of Miriam, blessed above all school-girls, who was
+allowed to hide her baby brother in a squashy place, where none but
+herself could find him!
+
+How could Irma keep silent when pretentious girls spoke of baby cousins
+and baby visitors--she who had a baby brother, who wrote her post-cards
+through his dear papa? She had promised not to tell about him--she knew
+not why--and she told. And one girl told another, and one girl told her
+mother, and the thing was out.
+
+"Yes, it is all very sad," Mrs. Herriton kept saying. "My
+daughter-in-law made a very unhappy marriage, as I dare say you know.
+I suppose that the child will be educated in Italy. Possibly his
+grandmother may be doing something, but I have not heard of it. I do not
+expect that she will have him over. She disapproves of the father. It is
+altogether a painful business for her."
+
+She was careful only to scold Irma for disobedience--that eighth deadly
+sin, so convenient to parents and guardians. Harriet would have plunged
+into needless explanations and abuse. The child was ashamed, and talked
+about the baby less. The end of the school year was at hand, and she
+hoped to get another prize. But she also had put her hand to the wheel.
+
+It was several days before they saw Miss Abbott. Mrs. Herriton had not
+come across her much since the kiss of reconciliation, nor Philip since
+the journey to London. She had, indeed, been rather a disappointment to
+him. Her creditable display of originality had never been repeated:
+he feared she was slipping back. Now she came about the Cottage
+Hospital--her life was devoted to dull acts of charity--and though she
+got money out of him and out of his mother, she still sat tight in her
+chair, looking graver and more wooden than ever.
+
+"I dare say you have heard," said Mrs. Herriton, well knowing what the
+matter was.
+
+"Yes, I have. I came to ask you; have any steps been taken?"
+
+Philip was astonished. The question was impertinent in the extreme. He
+had a regard for Miss Abbott, and regretted that she had been guilty of
+it.
+
+"About the baby?" asked Mrs. Herriton pleasantly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"As far as I know, no steps. Mrs. Theobald may have decided on
+something, but I have not heard of it."
+
+"I was meaning, had you decided on anything?"
+
+"The child is no relation of ours," said Philip. "It is therefore
+scarcely for us to interfere."
+
+His mother glanced at him nervously. "Poor Lilia was almost a daughter
+to me once. I know what Miss Abbott means. But now things have altered.
+Any initiative would naturally come from Mrs. Theobald."
+
+"But does not Mrs. Theobald always take any initiative from you?" asked
+Miss Abbott.
+
+Mrs. Herriton could not help colouring. "I sometimes have given her
+advice in the past. I should not presume to do so now."
+
+"Then is nothing to be done for the child at all?"
+
+"It is extraordinarily good of you to take this unexpected interest,"
+said Philip.
+
+"The child came into the world through my negligence," replied Miss
+Abbott. "It is natural I should take an interest in it."
+
+"My dear Caroline," said Mrs. Herriton, "you must not brood over the
+thing. Let bygones be bygones. The child should worry you even less than
+it worries us. We never even mention it. It belongs to another world."
+
+Miss Abbott got up without replying and turned to go. Her extreme
+gravity made Mrs. Herriton uneasy. "Of course," she added, "if Mrs.
+Theobald decides on any plan that seems at all practicable--I must say
+I don't see any such--I shall ask if I may join her in it, for Irma's
+sake, and share in any possible expenses."
+
+"Please would you let me know if she decides on anything. I should like
+to join as well."
+
+"My dear, how you throw about your money! We would never allow it."
+
+"And if she decides on nothing, please also let me know. Let me know in
+any case."
+
+Mrs. Herriton made a point of kissing her.
+
+"Is the young person mad?" burst out Philip as soon as she had departed.
+"Never in my life have I seen such colossal impertinence. She ought to
+be well smacked, and sent back to Sunday-school."
+
+His mother said nothing.
+
+"But don't you see--she is practically threatening us? You can't put
+her off with Mrs. Theobald; she knows as well as we do that she is a
+nonentity. If we don't do anything she's going to raise a scandal--that
+we neglect our relatives, &c., which is, of course, a lie. Still she'll
+say it. Oh, dear, sweet, sober Caroline Abbott has a screw loose! We
+knew it at Monteriano. I had my suspicions last year one day in the
+train; and here it is again. The young person is mad."
+
+She still said nothing.
+
+"Shall I go round at once and give it her well? I'd really enjoy it."
+
+In a low, serious voice--such a voice as she had not used to him for
+months--Mrs. Herriton said, "Caroline has been extremely impertinent.
+Yet there may be something in what she says after all. Ought the child
+to grow up in that place--and with that father?"
+
+Philip started and shuddered. He saw that his mother was not sincere.
+Her insincerity to others had amused him, but it was disheartening when
+used against himself.
+
+"Let us admit frankly," she continued, "that after all we may have
+responsibilities."
+
+"I don't understand you, Mother. You are turning absolutely round. What
+are you up to?"
+
+In one moment an impenetrable barrier had been erected between them.
+They were no longer in smiling confidence. Mrs. Herriton was off on
+tactics of her own--tactics which might be beyond or beneath him.
+
+His remark offended her. "Up to? I am wondering whether I ought not to
+adopt the child. Is that sufficiently plain?"
+
+"And this is the result of half-a-dozen idiocies of Miss Abbott?"
+
+"It is. I repeat, she has been extremely impertinent. None the less
+she is showing me my duty. If I can rescue poor Lilia's baby from that
+horrible man, who will bring it up either as Papist or infidel--who will
+certainly bring it up to be vicious--I shall do it."
+
+"You talk like Harriet."
+
+"And why not?" said she, flushing at what she knew to be an insult.
+"Say, if you choose, that I talk like Irma. That child has seen the
+thing more clearly than any of us. She longs for her little brother. She
+shall have him. I don't care if I am impulsive."
+
+He was sure that she was not impulsive, but did not dare to say so. Her
+ability frightened him. All his life he had been her puppet. She let him
+worship Italy, and reform Sawston--just as she had let Harriet be Low
+Church. She had let him talk as much as he liked. But when she wanted a
+thing she always got it.
+
+And though she was frightening him, she did not inspire him with
+reverence. Her life, he saw, was without meaning. To what purpose was
+her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour? Did
+they make any one better or happier? Did they even bring happiness to
+herself? Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches
+after pleasure, were after all more divine than this well-ordered,
+active, useless machine.
+
+Now that his mother had wounded his vanity he could criticize her thus.
+But he could not rebel. To the end of his days he could probably go on
+doing what she wanted. He watched with a cold interest the duel between
+her and Miss Abbott. Mrs. Herriton's policy only appeared gradually. It
+was to prevent Miss Abbott interfering with the child at all costs, and
+if possible to prevent her at a small cost. Pride was the only solid
+element in her disposition. She could not bear to seem less charitable
+than others.
+
+"I am planning what can be done," she would tell people, "and that kind
+Caroline Abbott is helping me. It is no business of either of us, but
+we are getting to feel that the baby must not be left entirely to that
+horrible man. It would be unfair to little Irma; after all, he is her
+half-brother. No, we have come to nothing definite."
+
+Miss Abbott was equally civil, but not to be appeased by good
+intentions. The child's welfare was a sacred duty to her, not a matter
+of pride or even of sentiment. By it alone, she felt, could she undo a
+little of the evil that she had permitted to come into the world. To her
+imagination Monteriano had become a magic city of vice, beneath
+whose towers no person could grow up happy or pure. Sawston, with its
+semi-detached houses and snobby schools, its book teas and bazaars, was
+certainly petty and dull; at times she found it even contemptible. But
+it was not a place of sin, and at Sawston, either with the Herritons or
+with herself, the baby should grow up.
+
+As soon as it was inevitable, Mrs. Herriton wrote a letter for Waters
+and Adamson to send to Gino--the oddest letter; Philip saw a copy of
+it afterwards. Its ostensible purpose was to complain of the picture
+postcards. Right at the end, in a few nonchalant sentences, she offered
+to adopt the child, provided that Gino would undertake never to come
+near it, and would surrender some of Lilia's money for its education.
+
+"What do you think of it?" she asked her son. "It would not do to let
+him know that we are anxious for it."
+
+"Certainly he will never suppose that."
+
+"But what effect will the letter have on him?"
+
+"When he gets it he will do a sum. If it is less expensive in the long
+run to part with a little money and to be clear of the baby, he will
+part with it. If he would lose, he will adopt the tone of the loving
+father."
+
+"Dear, you're shockingly cynical." After a pause she added, "How would
+the sum work out?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. But if you wanted to ensure the baby being
+posted by return, you should have sent a little sum to HIM. Oh, I'm not
+cynical--at least I only go by what I know of him. But I am weary of
+the whole show. Weary of Italy. Weary, weary, weary. Sawston's a kind,
+pitiful place, isn't it? I will go walk in it and seek comfort."
+
+He smiled as he spoke, for the sake of not appearing serious. When he
+had left her she began to smile also.
+
+It was to the Abbotts' that he walked. Mr. Abbott offered him tea, and
+Caroline, who was keeping up her Italian in the next room, came in to
+pour it out. He told them that his mother had written to Signor Carella,
+and they both uttered fervent wishes for her success.
+
+"Very fine of Mrs. Herriton, very fine indeed," said Mr. Abbott,
+who, like every one else, knew nothing of his daughter's exasperating
+behaviour. "I'm afraid it will mean a lot of expense. She will get
+nothing out of Italy without paying."
+
+"There are sure to be incidental expenses," said Philip cautiously.
+Then he turned to Miss Abbott and said, "Do you suppose we shall have
+difficulty with the man?"
+
+"It depends," she replied, with equal caution.
+
+"From what you saw of him, should you conclude that he would make an
+affectionate parent?"
+
+"I don't go by what I saw of him, but by what I know of him."
+
+"Well, what do you conclude from that?"
+
+"That he is a thoroughly wicked man."
+
+"Yet thoroughly wicked men have loved their children. Look at Rodrigo
+Borgia, for example."
+
+"I have also seen examples of that in my district."
+
+With this remark the admirable young woman rose, and returned to keep
+up her Italian. She puzzled Philip extremely. He could understand
+enthusiasm, but she did not seem the least enthusiastic. He could
+understand pure cussedness, but it did not seem to be that either.
+Apparently she was deriving neither amusement nor profit from the
+struggle. Why, then, had she undertaken it? Perhaps she was not sincere.
+Perhaps, on the whole, that was most likely. She must be professing one
+thing and aiming at another. What the other thing could be he did not
+stop to consider. Insincerity was becoming his stock explanation for
+anything unfamiliar, whether that thing was a kindly action or a high
+ideal.
+
+"She fences well," he said to his mother afterwards.
+
+"What had you to fence about?" she said suavely. Her son might know her
+tactics, but she refused to admit that he knew. She still pretended to
+him that the baby was the one thing she wanted, and had always wanted,
+and that Miss Abbott was her valued ally.
+
+And when, next week, the reply came from Italy, she showed him no face
+of triumph. "Read the letters," she said. "We have failed."
+
+Gino wrote in his own language, but the solicitors had sent a laborious
+English translation, where "Preghiatissima Signora" was rendered
+as "Most Praiseworthy Madam," and every delicate compliment and
+superlative--superlatives are delicate in Italian--would have felled an
+ox. For a moment Philip forgot the matter in the manner; this grotesque
+memorial of the land he had loved moved him almost to tears. He knew
+the originals of these lumbering phrases; he also had sent "sincere
+auguries"; he also had addressed letters--who writes at home?--from the
+Caffe Garibaldi. "I didn't know I was still such an ass," he thought.
+"Why can't I realize that it's merely tricks of expression? A bounder's
+a bounder, whether he lives in Sawston or Monteriano."
+
+"Isn't it disheartening?" said his mother.
+
+He then read that Gino could not accept the generous offer. His paternal
+heart would not permit him to abandon this symbol of his deplored
+spouse. As for the picture post-cards, it displeased him greatly that
+they had been obnoxious. He would send no more. Would Mrs. Herriton,
+with her notorious kindness, explain this to Irma, and thank her for
+those which Irma (courteous Miss!) had sent to him?
+
+"The sum works out against us," said Philip. "Or perhaps he is putting
+up the price."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Herriton decidedly. "It is not that. For some perverse
+reason he will not part with the child. I must go and tell poor
+Caroline. She will be equally distressed."
+
+She returned from the visit in the most extraordinary condition. Her
+face was red, she panted for breath, there were dark circles round her
+eyes.
+
+"The impudence!" she shouted. "The cursed impudence! Oh, I'm swearing.
+I don't care. That beastly woman--how dare she interfere--I'll--Philip,
+dear, I'm sorry. It's no good. You must go."
+
+"Go where? Do sit down. What's happened?" This outburst of violence from
+his elegant ladylike mother pained him dreadfully. He had not known that
+it was in her.
+
+"She won't accept--won't accept the letter as final. You must go to
+Monteriano!"
+
+"I won't!" he shouted back. "I've been and I've failed. I'll never see
+the place again. I hate Italy."
+
+"If you don't go, she will."
+
+"Abbott?"
+
+"Yes. Going alone; would start this evening. I offered to write; she
+said it was 'too late!' Too late! The child, if you please--Irma's
+brother--to live with her, to be brought up by her and her father at our
+very gates, to go to school like a gentleman, she paying. Oh, you're a
+man! It doesn't matter for you. You can laugh. But I know what people
+say; and that woman goes to Italy this evening."
+
+He seemed to be inspired. "Then let her go! Let her mess with Italy by
+herself. She'll come to grief somehow. Italy's too dangerous, too--"
+
+"Stop that nonsense, Philip. I will not be disgraced by her. I WILL have
+the child. Pay all we've got for it. I will have it."
+
+"Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't
+understand! Look at this letter! The man who wrote it will marry her,
+or murder her, or do for her somehow. He's a bounder, but he's not an
+English bounder. He's mysterious and terrible. He's got a country behind
+him that's upset people from the beginning of the world."
+
+"Harriet!" exclaimed his mother. "Harriet shall go too. Harriet, now,
+will be invaluable!" And before Philip had stopped talking nonsense, she
+had planned the whole thing and was looking out the trains.
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+Italy, Philip had always maintained, is only her true self in the height
+of the summer, when the tourists have left her, and her soul awakes
+under the beams of a vertical sun. He now had every opportunity of
+seeing her at her best, for it was nearly the middle of August before he
+went out to meet Harriet in the Tirol.
+
+He found his sister in a dense cloud five thousand feet above the sea,
+chilled to the bone, overfed, bored, and not at all unwilling to be
+fetched away.
+
+"It upsets one's plans terribly," she remarked, as she squeezed out her
+sponges, "but obviously it is my duty."
+
+"Did mother explain it all to you?" asked Philip.
+
+"Yes, indeed! Mother has written me a really beautiful letter. She
+describes how it was that she gradually got to feel that we must rescue
+the poor baby from its terrible surroundings, how she has tried by
+letter, and it is no good--nothing but insincere compliments and
+hypocrisy came back. Then she says, 'There is nothing like personal
+influence; you and Philip will succeed where I have failed.' She says,
+too, that Caroline Abbott has been wonderful."
+
+Philip assented.
+
+"Caroline feels it as keenly almost as us. That is because she knows the
+man. Oh, he must be loathsome! Goodness me! I've forgotten to pack the
+ammonia!... It has been a terrible lesson for Caroline, but I fancy it
+is her turning-point. I can't help liking to think that out of all this
+evil good will come."
+
+Philip saw no prospect of good, nor of beauty either. But the expedition
+promised to be highly comic. He was not averse to it any longer; he
+was simply indifferent to all in it except the humours. These would be
+wonderful. Harriet, worked by her mother; Mrs. Herriton, worked by Miss
+Abbott; Gino, worked by a cheque--what better entertainment could he
+desire? There was nothing to distract him this time; his sentimentality
+had died, so had his anxiety for the family honour. He might be a
+puppet's puppet, but he knew exactly the disposition of the strings.
+
+They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams
+broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the
+people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink
+wine and to be beautiful. And the train which had picked them at sunrise
+out of a waste of glaciers and hotels was waltzing at sunset round the
+walls of Verona.
+
+"Absurd nonsense they talk about the heat," said Philip, as they drove
+from the station. "Supposing we were here for pleasure, what could be
+more pleasurable than this?"
+
+"Did you hear, though, they are remarking on the cold?" said Harriet
+nervously. "I should never have thought it cold."
+
+And on the second day the heat struck them, like a hand laid over the
+mouth, just as they were walking to see the tomb of Juliet. From
+that moment everything went wrong. They fled from Verona. Harriet's
+sketch-book was stolen, and the bottle of ammonia in her trunk burst
+over her prayer-book, so that purple patches appeared on all her
+clothes. Then, as she was going through Mantua at four in the morning,
+Philip made her look out of the window because it was Virgil's
+birthplace, and a smut flew in her eye, and Harriet with a smut in her
+eye was notorious. At Bologna they stopped twenty-four hours to rest. It
+was a FESTA, and children blew bladder whistles night and day. "What a
+religion!" said Harriet. The hotel smelt, two puppies were asleep on
+her bed, and her bedroom window looked into a belfry, which saluted her
+slumbering form every quarter of an hour. Philip left his walking-stick,
+his socks, and the Baedeker at Bologna; she only left her sponge-bag.
+Next day they crossed the Apennines with a train-sick child and a
+hot lady, who told them that never, never before had she sweated so
+profusely. "Foreigners are a filthy nation," said Harriet. "I don't care
+if there are tunnels; open the windows." He obeyed, and she got another
+smut in her eye. Nor did Florence improve matters. Eating, walking, even
+a cross word would bathe them both in boiling water. Philip, who was
+slighter of build, and less conscientious, suffered less. But Harriet
+had never been to Florence, and between the hours of eight and eleven
+she crawled like a wounded creature through the streets, and swooned
+before various masterpieces of art. It was an irritable couple who took
+tickets to Monteriano.
+
+"Singles or returns?" said he.
+
+"A single for me," said Harriet peevishly; "I shall never get back
+alive."
+
+"Sweet creature!" said her brother, suddenly breaking down. "How helpful
+you will be when we come to Signor Carella!"
+
+"Do you suppose," said Harriet, standing still among a whirl of
+porters--"do you suppose I am going to enter that man's house?"
+
+"Then what have you come for, pray? For ornament?"
+
+"To see that you do your duty."
+
+"Oh, thanks!"
+
+"So mother told me. For goodness sake get the tickets; here comes that
+hot woman again! She has the impudence to bow."
+
+"Mother told you, did she?" said Philip wrathfully, as he went to
+struggle for tickets at a slit so narrow that they were handed to him
+edgeways. Italy was beastly, and Florence station is the centre of
+beastly Italy. But he had a strange feeling that he was to blame for it
+all; that a little influx into him of virtue would make the whole land
+not beastly but amusing. For there was enchantment, he was sure of that;
+solid enchantment, which lay behind the porters and the screaming and
+the dust. He could see it in the terrific blue sky beneath which they
+travelled, in the whitened plain which gripped life tighter than a
+frost, in the exhausted reaches of the Arno, in the ruins of brown
+castles which stood quivering upon the hills. He could see it, though
+his head ached and his skin was twitching, though he was here as a
+puppet, and though his sister knew how he was here. There was nothing
+pleasant in that journey to Monteriano station. But nothing--not even
+the discomfort--was commonplace.
+
+"But do people live inside?" asked Harriet. They had exchanged
+railway-carriage for the legno, and the legno had emerged from the
+withered trees, and had revealed to them their destination. Philip, to
+be annoying, answered "No."
+
+"What do they do there?" continued Harriet, with a frown.
+
+"There is a caffe. A prison. A theatre. A church. Walls. A view."
+
+"Not for me, thank you," said Harriet, after a weighty pause.
+
+"Nobody asked you, Miss, you see. Now Lilia was asked by such a nice
+young gentleman, with curls all over his forehead, and teeth just as
+white as father makes them." Then his manner changed. "But, Harriet, do
+you see nothing wonderful or attractive in that place--nothing at all?"
+
+"Nothing at all. It's frightful."
+
+"I know it is. But it's old--awfully old."
+
+"Beauty is the only test," said Harriet. "At least so you told me when
+I sketched old buildings--for the sake, I suppose, of making yourself
+unpleasant."
+
+"Oh, I'm perfectly right. But at the same time--I don't know--so
+many things have happened here--people have lived so hard and so
+splendidly--I can't explain."
+
+"I shouldn't think you could. It doesn't seem the best moment to begin
+your Italy mania. I thought you were cured of it by now. Instead, will
+you kindly tell me what you are going to do when you arrive. I do beg
+you will not be taken unawares this time."
+
+"First, Harriet, I shall settle you at the Stella d'Italia, in the
+comfort that befits your sex and disposition. Then I shall make myself
+some tea. After tea I shall take a book into Santa Deodata's, and read
+there. It is always fresh and cool."
+
+The martyred Harriet exclaimed, "I'm not clever, Philip. I don't go in
+for it, as you know. But I know what's rude. And I know what's wrong."
+
+"Meaning--?"
+
+"You!" she shouted, bouncing on the cushions of the legno and startling
+all the fleas. "What's the good of cleverness if a man's murdered a
+woman?"
+
+"Harriet, I am hot. To whom do you refer?"
+
+"He. Her. If you don't look out he'll murder you. I wish he would."
+
+"Tut tut, tutlet! You'd find a corpse extraordinarily inconvenient."
+Then he tried to be less aggravating. "I heartily dislike the fellow,
+but we know he didn't murder her. In that letter, though she said a lot,
+she never said he was physically cruel."
+
+"He has murdered her. The things he did--things one can't even
+mention--"
+
+"Things which one must mention if one's to talk at all. And things which
+one must keep in their proper place. Because he was unfaithful to his
+wife, it doesn't follow that in every way he's absolutely vile." He
+looked at the city. It seemed to approve his remark.
+
+"It's the supreme test. The man who is unchivalrous to a woman--"
+
+"Oh, stow it! Take it to the Back Kitchen. It's no more a supreme test
+than anything else. The Italians never were chivalrous from the first.
+If you condemn him for that, you'll condemn the whole lot."
+
+"I condemn the whole lot."
+
+"And the French as well?"
+
+"And the French as well."
+
+"Things aren't so jolly easy," said Philip, more to himself than to her.
+
+But for Harriet things were easy, though not jolly, and she turned upon
+her brother yet again. "What about the baby, pray? You've said a lot of
+smart things and whittled away morality and religion and I don't know
+what; but what about the baby? You think me a fool, but I've been
+noticing you all today, and you haven't mentioned the baby once. You
+haven't thought about it, even. You don't care. Philip! I shall not
+speak to you. You are intolerable."
+
+She kept her promise, and never opened her lips all the rest of the way.
+But her eyes glowed with anger and resolution. For she was a straight,
+brave woman, as well as a peevish one.
+
+Philip acknowledged her reproof to be true. He did not care about the
+baby one straw. Nevertheless, he meant to do his duty, and he was fairly
+confident of success. If Gino would have sold his wife for a thousand
+lire, for how much less would he not sell his child? It was just a
+commercial transaction. Why should it interfere with other things? His
+eyes were fixed on the towers again, just as they had been fixed when he
+drove with Miss Abbott. But this time his thoughts were pleasanter, for
+he had no such grave business on his mind. It was in the spirit of the
+cultivated tourist that he approached his destination.
+
+One of the towers, rough as any other, was topped by a cross--the tower
+of the Collegiate Church of Santa Deodata. She was a holy maiden of the
+Dark Ages, the city's patron saint, and sweetness and barbarity mingle
+strangely in her story. So holy was she that all her life she lay upon
+her back in the house of her mother, refusing to eat, refusing to play,
+refusing to work. The devil, envious of such sanctity, tempted her in
+various ways. He dangled grapes above her, he showed her fascinating
+toys, he pushed soft pillows beneath her aching head. When all proved
+vain he tripped up the mother and flung her downstairs before her very
+eyes. But so holy was the saint that she never picked her mother up, but
+lay upon her back through all, and thus assured her throne in Paradise.
+She was only fifteen when she died, which shows how much is within the
+reach of any school-girl. Those who think her life was unpractical need
+only think of the victories upon Poggibonsi, San Gemignano, Volterra,
+Siena itself--all gained through the invocation of her name; they need
+only look at the church which rose over her grave. The grand schemes for
+a marble facade were never carried out, and it is brown unfinished stone
+until this day. But for the inside Giotto was summoned to decorate the
+walls of the nave. Giotto came--that is to say, he did not come, German
+research having decisively proved--but at all events the nave is covered
+with frescoes, and so are two chapels in the left transept, and the
+arch into the choir, and there are scraps in the choir itself. There the
+decoration stopped, till in the full spring of the Renaissance a
+great painter came to pay a few weeks' visit to his friend the Lord of
+Monteriano. In the intervals between the banquets and the discussions on
+Latin etymology and the dancing, he would stroll over to the church, and
+there in the fifth chapel to the right he has painted two frescoes of
+the death and burial of Santa Deodata. That is why Baedeker gives the
+place a star.
+
+Santa Deodata was better company than Harriet, and she kept Philip in a
+pleasant dream until the legno drew up at the hotel. Every one there was
+asleep, for it was still the hour when only idiots were moving. There
+were not even any beggars about. The cabman put their bags down in the
+passage--they had left heavy luggage at the station--and strolled about
+till he came on the landlady's room and woke her, and sent her to them.
+
+Then Harriet pronounced the monosyllable "Go!"
+
+"Go where?" asked Philip, bowing to the landlady, who was swimming down
+the stairs.
+
+"To the Italian. Go."
+
+"Buona sera, signora padrona. Si ritorna volontieri a Monteriano!"
+(Don't be a goose. I'm not going now. You're in the way, too.) "Vorrei
+due camere--"
+
+"Go. This instant. Now. I'll stand it no longer. Go!"
+
+"I'm damned if I'll go. I want my tea."
+
+"Swear if you like!" she cried. "Blaspheme! Abuse me! But understand,
+I'm in earnest."
+
+"Harriet, don't act. Or act better."
+
+"We've come here to get the baby back, and for nothing else. I'll not
+have this levity and slackness, and talk about pictures and churches.
+Think of mother; did she send you out for THEM?"
+
+"Think of mother and don't straddle across the stairs. Let the cabman
+and the landlady come down, and let me go up and choose rooms."
+
+"I shan't."
+
+"Harriet, are you mad?"
+
+"If you like. But you will not come up till you have seen the Italian."
+
+"La signorina si sente male," said Philip, "C' e il sole."
+
+"Poveretta!" cried the landlady and the cabman.
+
+"Leave me alone!" said Harriet, snarling round at them. "I don't care
+for the lot of you. I'm English, and neither you'll come down nor he up
+till he goes for the baby."
+
+"La prego-piano-piano-c e un' altra signorina che dorme--"
+
+"We shall probably be arrested for brawling, Harriet. Have you the very
+slightest sense of the ludicrous?"
+
+Harriet had not; that was why she could be so powerful. She had
+concocted this scene in the carriage, and nothing should baulk her
+of it. To the abuse in front and the coaxing behind she was equally
+indifferent. How long she would have stood like a glorified Horatius,
+keeping the staircase at both ends, was never to be known. For the young
+lady, whose sleep they were disturbing, awoke and opened her bedroom
+door, and came out on to the landing. She was Miss Abbott.
+
+Philip's first coherent feeling was one of indignation. To be run by
+his mother and hectored by his sister was as much as he could stand. The
+intervention of a third female drove him suddenly beyond politeness. He
+was about to say exactly what he thought about the thing from beginning
+to end. But before he could do so Harriet also had seen Miss Abbott. She
+uttered a shrill cry of joy.
+
+"You, Caroline, here of all people!" And in spite of the heat she darted
+up the stairs and imprinted an affectionate kiss upon her friend.
+
+Philip had an inspiration. "You will have a lot to tell Miss Abbott,
+Harriet, and she may have as much to tell you. So I'll pay my call on
+Signor Carella, as you suggested, and see how things stand."
+
+Miss Abbott uttered some noise of greeting or alarm. He did not reply to
+it or approach nearer to her. Without even paying the cabman, he escaped
+into the street.
+
+"Tear each other's eyes out!" he cried, gesticulating at the facade of
+the hotel. "Give it to her, Harriet! Teach her to leave us alone. Give
+it to her, Caroline! Teach her to be grateful to you. Go it, ladies; go
+it!"
+
+Such people as observed him were interested, but did not conclude that
+he was mad. This aftermath of conversation is not unknown in Italy.
+
+He tried to think how amusing it was; but it would not do--Miss Abbott's
+presence affected him too personally. Either she suspected him of
+dishonesty, or else she was being dishonest herself. He preferred to
+suppose the latter. Perhaps she had seen Gino, and they had prepared
+some elaborate mortification for the Herritons. Perhaps Gino had sold
+the baby cheap to her for a joke: it was just the kind of joke that
+would appeal to him. Philip still remembered the laughter that had
+greeted his fruitless journey, and the uncouth push that had toppled him
+on to the bed. And whatever it might mean, Miss Abbott's presence spoilt
+the comedy: she would do nothing funny.
+
+During this short meditation he had walked through the city, and was out
+on the other side. "Where does Signor Carella live?" he asked the men at
+the Dogana.
+
+"I'll show you," said a little girl, springing out of the ground as
+Italian children will.
+
+"She will show you," said the Dogana men, nodding reassuringly. "Follow
+her always, always, and you will come to no harm. She is a trustworthy
+guide. She is my
+
+    daughter."
+    cousin."
+    sister."
+
+Philip knew these relatives well: they ramify, if need be, all over the
+peninsula.
+
+"Do you chance to know whether Signor Carella is in?" he asked her.
+
+She had just seen him go in. Philip nodded. He was looking forward to
+the interview this time: it would be an intellectual duet with a man
+of no great intellect. What was Miss Abbott up to? That was one of the
+things he was going to discover. While she had it out with Harriet, he
+would have it out with Gino. He followed the Dogana's relative softly,
+like a diplomatist.
+
+He did not follow her long, for this was the Volterra gate, and the
+house was exactly opposite to it. In half a minute they had scrambled
+down the mule-track and reached the only practicable entrance. Philip
+laughed, partly at the thought of Lilia in such a building, partly in
+the confidence of victory. Meanwhile the Dogana's relative lifted up her
+voice and gave a shout.
+
+For an impressive interval there was no reply. Then the figure of a
+woman appeared high up on the loggia.
+
+"That is Perfetta," said the girl.
+
+"I want to see Signor Carella," cried Philip.
+
+"Out!"
+
+"Out," echoed the girl complacently.
+
+"Why on earth did you say he was in?" He could have strangled her
+for temper. He had been just ripe for an interview--just the right
+combination of indignation and acuteness: blood hot, brain cool. But
+nothing ever did go right in Monteriano. "When will he be back?" he
+called to Perfetta. It really was too bad.
+
+She did not know. He was away on business. He might be back this
+evening, he might not. He had gone to Poggibonsi.
+
+At the sound of this word the little girl put her fingers to her
+nose and swept them at the plain. She sang as she did so, even as her
+foremothers had sung seven hundred years back--
+
+  Poggibonizzi, fatti in la,
+  Che Monteriano si fa citta!
+
+Then she asked Philip for a halfpenny. A German lady, friendly to the
+Past, had given her one that very spring.
+
+"I shall have to leave a message," he called.
+
+"Now Perfetta has gone for her basket," said the little girl. "When she
+returns she will lower it--so. Then you will put your card into it. Then
+she will raise it--thus. By this means--"
+
+When Perfetta returned, Philip remembered to ask after the baby. It took
+longer to find than the basket, and he stood perspiring in the evening
+sun, trying to avoid the smell of the drains and to prevent the little
+girl from singing against Poggibonsi. The olive-trees beside him were
+draped with the weekly--or more probably the monthly--wash. What a
+frightful spotty blouse! He could not think where he had seen it. Then
+he remembered that it was Lilia's. She had brought it "to hack about in"
+at Sawston, and had taken it to Italy because "in Italy anything does."
+He had rebuked her for the sentiment.
+
+"Beautiful as an angel!" bellowed Perfetta, holding out something which
+must be Lilia's baby. "But who am I addressing?"
+
+"Thank you--here is my card." He had written on it a civil request
+to Gino for an interview next morning. But before he placed it in the
+basket and revealed his identity, he wished to find something out. "Has
+a young lady happened to call here lately--a young English lady?"
+
+Perfetta begged his pardon: she was a little deaf.
+
+"A young lady--pale, large, tall."
+
+She did not quite catch.
+
+"A YOUNG LADY!"
+
+"Perfetta is deaf when she chooses," said the Dogana's relative. At
+last Philip admitted the peculiarity and strode away. He paid off the
+detestable child at the Volterra gate. She got two nickel pieces and was
+not pleased, partly because it was too much, partly because he did not
+look pleased when he gave it to her. He caught her fathers and cousins
+winking at each other as he walked past them. Monteriano seemed in
+one conspiracy to make him look a fool. He felt tired and anxious and
+muddled, and not sure of anything except that his temper was lost.
+In this mood he returned to the Stella d'Italia, and there, as he was
+ascending the stairs, Miss Abbott popped out of the dining-room on the
+first floor and beckoned to him mysteriously.
+
+"I was going to make myself some tea," he said, with his hand still on
+the banisters.
+
+"I should be grateful--"
+
+So he followed her into the dining-room and shut the door.
+
+"You see," she began, "Harriet knows nothing."
+
+"No more do I. He was out."
+
+"But what's that to do with it?"
+
+He presented her with an unpleasant smile. She fenced well, as he had
+noticed before. "He was out. You find me as ignorant as you have left
+Harriet."
+
+"What do you mean? Please, please Mr. Herriton, don't be mysterious:
+there isn't the time. Any moment Harriet may be down, and we shan't have
+decided how to behave to her. Sawston was different: we had to keep up
+appearances. But here we must speak out, and I think I can trust you to
+do it. Otherwise we'll never start clear."
+
+"Pray let us start clear," said Philip, pacing up and down the room.
+"Permit me to begin by asking you a question. In which capacity have you
+come to Monteriano--spy or traitor?"
+
+"Spy!" she answered, without a moment's hesitation. She was standing
+by the little Gothic window as she spoke--the hotel had been a palace
+once--and with her finger she was following the curves of the moulding
+as if they might feel beautiful and strange. "Spy," she repeated, for
+Philip was bewildered at learning her guilt so easily, and could not
+answer a word. "Your mother has behaved dishonourably all through. She
+never wanted the child; no harm in that; but she is too proud to let it
+come to me. She has done all she could to wreck things; she did not tell
+you everything; she has told Harriet nothing at all; she has lied or
+acted lies everywhere. I cannot trust your mother. So I have come here
+alone--all across Europe; no one knows it; my father thinks I am in
+Normandy--to spy on Mrs. Herriton. Don't let's argue!" for he had begun,
+almost mechanically, to rebuke her for impertinence. "If you are here to
+get the child, I will help you; if you are here to fail, I shall get it
+instead of you."
+
+"It is hopeless to expect you to believe me," he stammered. "But I can
+assert that we are here to get the child, even if it costs us all we've
+got. My mother has fixed no money limit whatever. I am here to carry
+out her instructions. I think that you will approve of them, as you have
+practically dictated them. I do not approve of them. They are absurd."
+
+She nodded carelessly. She did not mind what he said. All she wanted was
+to get the baby out of Monteriano.
+
+"Harriet also carries out your instructions," he continued. "She,
+however, approves of them, and does not know that they proceed from you.
+I think, Miss Abbott, you had better take entire charge of the rescue
+party. I have asked for an interview with Signor Carella tomorrow
+morning. Do you acquiesce?"
+
+She nodded again.
+
+"Might I ask for details of your interview with him? They might be
+helpful to me."
+
+He had spoken at random. To his delight she suddenly collapsed. Her hand
+fell from the window. Her face was red with more than the reflection of
+evening.
+
+"My interview--how do you know of it?"
+
+"From Perfetta, if it interests you."
+
+"Who ever is Perfetta?"
+
+"The woman who must have let you in."
+
+"In where?"
+
+"Into Signor Carella's house."
+
+"Mr. Herriton!" she exclaimed. "How could you believe her? Do you
+suppose that I would have entered that man's house, knowing about him
+all that I do? I think you have very odd ideas of what is possible for
+a lady. I hear you wanted Harriet to go. Very properly she refused.
+Eighteen months ago I might have done such a thing. But I trust I have
+learnt how to behave by now."
+
+Philip began to see that there were two Miss Abbotts--the Miss Abbott
+who could travel alone to Monteriano, and the Miss Abbott who could
+not enter Gino's house when she got there. It was an amusing discovery.
+Which of them would respond to his next move?
+
+"I suppose I misunderstood Perfetta. Where did you have your interview,
+then?"
+
+"Not an interview--an accident--I am very sorry--I meant you to have the
+chance of seeing him first. Though it is your fault. You are a day late.
+You were due here yesterday. So I came yesterday, and, not finding you,
+went up to the Rocca--you know that kitchen-garden where they let you
+in, and there is a ladder up to a broken tower, where you can stand
+and see all the other towers below you and the plain and all the other
+hills?"
+
+"Yes, yes. I know the Rocca; I told you of it."
+
+"So I went up in the evening for the sunset: I had nothing to do. He was
+in the garden: it belongs to a friend of his."
+
+"And you talked."
+
+"It was very awkward for me. But I had to talk: he seemed to make me.
+You see he thought I was here as a tourist; he thinks so still. He
+intended to be civil, and I judged it better to be civil also."
+
+"And of what did you talk?"
+
+"The weather--there will be rain, he says, by tomorrow evening--the
+other towns, England, myself, about you a little, and he actually
+mentioned Lilia. He was perfectly disgusting; he pretended he loved
+her; he offered to show me her grave--the grave of the woman he has
+murdered!"
+
+"My dear Miss Abbott, he is not a murderer. I have just been driving
+that into Harriet. And when you know the Italians as well as I do, you
+will realize that in all that he said to you he was perfectly sincere.
+The Italians are essentially dramatic; they look on death and love as
+spectacles. I don't doubt that he persuaded himself, for the moment,
+that he had behaved admirably, both as husband and widower."
+
+"You may be right," said Miss Abbott, impressed for the first time.
+"When I tried to pave the way, so to speak--to hint that he had not
+behaved as he ought--well, it was no good at all. He couldn't or
+wouldn't understand."
+
+There was something very humorous in the idea of Miss Abbott approaching
+Gino, on the Rocca, in the spirit of a district visitor. Philip, whose
+temper was returning, laughed.
+
+"Harriet would say he has no sense of sin."
+
+"Harriet may be right, I am afraid."
+
+"If so, perhaps he isn't sinful!"
+
+Miss Abbott was not one to encourage levity. "I know what he has
+done," she said. "What he says and what he thinks is of very little
+importance."
+
+Philip smiled at her crudity. "I should like to hear, though, what he
+said about me. Is he preparing a warm reception?"
+
+"Oh, no, not that. I never told him that you and Harriet were coming.
+You could have taken him by surprise if you liked. He only asked for
+you, and wished he hadn't been so rude to you eighteen months ago."
+
+"What a memory the fellow has for little things!" He turned away as he
+spoke, for he did not want her to see his face. It was suffused with
+pleasure. For an apology, which would have been intolerable eighteen
+months ago, was gracious and agreeable now.
+
+She would not let this pass. "You did not think it a little thing at the
+time. You told me he had assaulted you."
+
+"I lost my temper," said Philip lightly. His vanity had been appeased,
+and he knew it. This tiny piece of civility had changed his mood. "Did
+he really--what exactly did he say?"
+
+"He said he was sorry--pleasantly, as Italians do say such things. But
+he never mentioned the baby once."
+
+What did the baby matter when the world was suddenly right way up?
+Philip smiled, and was shocked at himself for smiling, and smiled again.
+For romance had come back to Italy; there were no cads in her; she was
+beautiful, courteous, lovable, as of old. And Miss Abbott--she, too, was
+beautiful in her way, for all her gaucheness and conventionality.
+She really cared about life, and tried to live it properly. And
+Harriet--even Harriet tried.
+
+This admirable change in Philip proceeds from nothing admirable, and
+may therefore provoke the gibes of the cynical. But angels and other
+practical people will accept it reverently, and write it down as good.
+
+"The view from the Rocca (small gratuity) is finest at sunset," he
+murmured, more to himself than to her.
+
+"And he never mentioned the baby once," Miss Abbott repeated. But she
+had returned to the window, and again her finger pursued the delicate
+curves. He watched her in silence, and was more attracted to her than he
+had ever been before. She really was the strangest mixture.
+
+"The view from the Rocca--wasn't it fine?"
+
+"What isn't fine here?" she answered gently, and then added, "I wish I
+was Harriet," throwing an extraordinary meaning into the words.
+
+"Because Harriet--?"
+
+She would not go further, but he believed that she had paid homage
+to the complexity of life. For her, at all events, the expedition was
+neither easy nor jolly. Beauty, evil, charm, vulgarity, mystery--she
+also acknowledged this tangle, in spite of herself. And her voice
+thrilled him when she broke silence with "Mr. Herriton--come here--look
+at this!"
+
+She removed a pile of plates from the Gothic window, and they leant out
+of it. Close opposite, wedged between mean houses, there rose up one of
+the great towers. It is your tower: you stretch a barricade between it
+and the hotel, and the traffic is blocked in a moment. Farther up, where
+the street empties out by the church, your connections, the Merli and
+the Capocchi, do likewise. They command the Piazza, you the Siena gate.
+No one can move in either but he shall be instantly slain, either by
+bows or by crossbows, or by Greek fire. Beware, however, of the
+back bedroom windows. For they are menaced by the tower of the
+Aldobrandeschi, and before now arrows have stuck quivering over the
+washstand. Guard these windows well, lest there be a repetition of the
+events of February 1338, when the hotel was surprised from the rear, and
+your dearest friend--you could just make out that it was he--was thrown
+at you over the stairs.
+
+"It reaches up to heaven," said Philip, "and down to the other place."
+The summit of the tower was radiant in the sun, while its base was in
+shadow and pasted over with advertisements. "Is it to be a symbol of the
+town?"
+
+She gave no hint that she understood him. But they remained together at
+the window because it was a little cooler and so pleasant. Philip
+found a certain grace and lightness in his companion which he had never
+noticed in England. She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness of
+wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm. He did not suspect
+that he was more graceful too. For our vanity is such that we hold our
+own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have
+changed, even for the better.
+
+Citizens came out for a little stroll before dinner. Some of them stood
+and gazed at the advertisements on the tower.
+
+"Surely that isn't an opera-bill?" said Miss Abbott.
+
+Philip put on his pince-nez. "'Lucia di Lammermoor. By the Master
+Donizetti. Unique representation. This evening.'
+
+"But is there an opera? Right up here?"
+
+"Why, yes. These people know how to live. They would sooner have a thing
+bad than not have it at all. That is why they have got to have so much
+that is good. However bad the performance is tonight, it will be alive.
+Italians don't love music silently, like the beastly Germans. The
+audience takes its share--sometimes more."
+
+"Can't we go?"
+
+He turned on her, but not unkindly. "But we're here to rescue a child!"
+
+He cursed himself for the remark. All the pleasure and the light went
+out of her face, and she became again Miss Abbott of Sawston--good, oh,
+most undoubtedly good, but most appallingly dull. Dull and remorseful:
+it is a deadly combination, and he strove against it in vain till he was
+interrupted by the opening of the dining-room door.
+
+They started as guiltily as if they had been flirting. Their interview
+had taken such an unexpected course. Anger, cynicism, stubborn
+morality--all had ended in a feeling of good-will towards each other
+and towards the city which had received them. And now Harriet
+was here--acrid, indissoluble, large; the same in Italy as in
+England--changing her disposition never, and her atmosphere under
+protest.
+
+Yet even Harriet was human, and the better for a little tea. She did not
+scold Philip for finding Gino out, as she might reasonably have done.
+She showered civilities on Miss Abbott, exclaiming again and again
+that Caroline's visit was one of the most fortunate coincidences in the
+world. Caroline did not contradict her.
+
+"You see him tomorrow at ten, Philip. Well, don't forget the blank
+cheque. Say an hour for the business. No, Italians are so slow; say two.
+Twelve o'clock. Lunch. Well--then it's no good going till the evening
+train. I can manage the baby as far as Florence--"
+
+"My dear sister, you can't run on like that. You don't buy a pair of
+gloves in two hours, much less a baby."
+
+"Three hours, then, or four; or make him learn English ways. At Florence
+we get a nurse--"
+
+"But, Harriet," said Miss Abbott, "what if at first he was to refuse?"
+
+"I don't know the meaning of the word," said Harriet impressively. "I've
+told the landlady that Philip and I only want our rooms one night, and
+we shall keep to it."
+
+"I dare say it will be all right. But, as I told you, I thought the man
+I met on the Rocca a strange, difficult man."
+
+"He's insolent to ladies, we know. But my brother can be trusted to
+bring him to his senses. That woman, Philip, whom you saw will carry the
+baby to the hotel. Of course you must tip her for it. And try, if you
+can, to get poor Lilia's silver bangles. They were nice quiet things,
+and will do for Irma. And there is an inlaid box I lent her--lent, not
+gave--to keep her handkerchiefs in. It's of no real value; but this is
+our only chance. Don't ask for it; but if you see it lying about, just
+say--"
+
+"No, Harriet; I'll try for the baby, but for nothing else. I promise
+to do that tomorrow, and to do it in the way you wish. But tonight, as
+we're all tired, we want a change of topic. We want relaxation. We want
+to go to the theatre."
+
+"Theatres here? And at such a moment?"
+
+"We should hardly enjoy it, with the great interview impending," said
+Miss Abbott, with an anxious glance at Philip.
+
+He did not betray her, but said, "Don't you think it's better than
+sitting in all the evening and getting nervous?"
+
+His sister shook her head. "Mother wouldn't like it. It would be most
+unsuitable--almost irreverent. Besides all that, foreign theatres
+are notorious. Don't you remember those letters in the 'Church Family
+Newspaper'?"
+
+"But this is an opera--'Lucia di Lammermoor'--Sir Walter
+Scott--classical, you know."
+
+Harriet's face grew resigned. "Certainly one has so few opportunities
+of hearing music. It is sure to be very bad. But it might be better than
+sitting idle all the evening. We have no book, and I lost my crochet at
+Florence."
+
+"Good. Miss Abbott, you are coming too?"
+
+"It is very kind of you, Mr. Herriton. In some ways I should enjoy
+it; but--excuse the suggestion--I don't think we ought to go to cheap
+seats."
+
+"Good gracious me!" cried Harriet, "I should never have thought of that.
+As likely as not, we should have tried to save money and sat among the
+most awful people. One keeps on forgetting this is Italy."
+
+"Unfortunately I have no evening dress; and if the seats--"
+
+"Oh, that'll be all right," said Philip, smiling at his timorous,
+scrupulous women-kind. "We'll go as we are, and buy the best we can get.
+Monteriano is not formal."
+
+So this strenuous day of resolutions, plans, alarms, battles, victories,
+defeats, truces, ended at the opera. Miss Abbott and Harriet were both
+a little shame-faced. They thought of their friends at Sawston, who were
+supposing them to be now tilting against the powers of evil. What would
+Mrs. Herriton, or Irma, or the curates at the Back Kitchen say if they
+could see the rescue party at a place of amusement on the very first day
+of its mission? Philip, too, marvelled at his wish to go. He began
+to see that he was enjoying his time in Monteriano, in spite of the
+tiresomeness of his companions and the occasional contrariness of
+himself.
+
+He had been to this theatre many years before, on the occasion of a
+performance of "La Zia di Carlo." Since then it had been thoroughly done
+up, in the tints of the beet-root and the tomato, and was in many other
+ways a credit to the little town. The orchestra had been enlarged,
+some of the boxes had terra-cotta draperies, and over each box was now
+suspended an enormous tablet, neatly framed, bearing upon it the number
+of that box. There was also a drop-scene, representing a pink and purple
+landscape, wherein sported many a lady lightly clad, and two more ladies
+lay along the top of the proscenium to steady a large and pallid clock.
+So rich and so appalling was the effect, that Philip could scarcely
+suppress a cry. There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy;
+it is not the bad taste of a country which knows no better; it has not
+the nervous vulgarity of England, or the blinded vulgarity of Germany.
+It observes beauty, and chooses to pass it by. But it attains to
+beauty's confidence. This tiny theatre of Monteriano spraddled and
+swaggered with the best of them, and these ladies with their clock would
+have nodded to the young men on the ceiling of the Sistine.
+
+Philip had tried for a box, but all the best were taken: it was rather
+a grand performance, and he had to be content with stalls. Harriet was
+fretful and insular. Miss Abbott was pleasant, and insisted on praising
+everything: her only regret was that she had no pretty clothes with her.
+
+"We do all right," said Philip, amused at her unwonted vanity.
+
+"Yes, I know; but pretty things pack as easily as ugly ones. We had no
+need to come to Italy like guys."
+
+This time he did not reply, "But we're here to rescue a baby." For
+he saw a charming picture, as charming a picture as he had seen for
+years--the hot red theatre; outside the theatre, towers and dark gates
+and mediaeval walls; beyond the walls olive-trees in the starlight and
+white winding roads and fireflies and untroubled dust; and here in the
+middle of it all, Miss Abbott, wishing she had not come looking like a
+guy. She had made the right remark. Most undoubtedly she had made the
+right remark. This stiff suburban woman was unbending before the shrine.
+
+"Don't you like it at all?" he asked her.
+
+"Most awfully." And by this bald interchange they convinced each other
+that Romance was here.
+
+Harriet, meanwhile, had been coughing ominously at the drop-scene, which
+presently rose on the grounds of Ravenswood, and the chorus of Scotch
+retainers burst into cry. The audience accompanied with tappings and
+drummings, swaying in the melody like corn in the wind. Harriet, though
+she did not care for music, knew how to listen to it. She uttered an
+acid "Shish!"
+
+"Shut it," whispered her brother.
+
+"We must make a stand from the beginning. They're talking."
+
+"It is tiresome," murmured Miss Abbott; "but perhaps it isn't for us to
+interfere."
+
+Harriet shook her head and shished again. The people were quiet, not
+because it is wrong to talk during a chorus, but because it is natural
+to be civil to a visitor. For a little time she kept the whole house in
+order, and could smile at her brother complacently.
+
+Her success annoyed him. He had grasped the principle of opera in
+Italy--it aims not at illusion but at entertainment--and he did not want
+this great evening-party to turn into a prayer-meeting. But soon the
+boxes began to fill, and Harriet's power was over. Families greeted each
+other across the auditorium. People in the pit hailed their brothers and
+sons in the chorus, and told them how well they were singing. When Lucia
+appeared by the fountain there was loud applause, and cries of "Welcome
+to Monteriano!"
+
+"Ridiculous babies!" said Harriet, settling down in her stall.
+
+"Why, it is the famous hot lady of the Apennines," cried Philip; "the
+one who had never, never before--"
+
+"Ugh! Don't. She will be very vulgar. And I'm sure it's even worse here
+than in the tunnel. I wish we'd never--"
+
+Lucia began to sing, and there was a moment's silence. She was stout
+and ugly; but her voice was still beautiful, and as she sang the theatre
+murmured like a hive of happy bees. All through the coloratura she
+was accompanied by sighs, and its top note was drowned in a shout of
+universal joy.
+
+So the opera proceeded. The singers drew inspiration from the audience,
+and the two great sextettes were rendered not unworthily. Miss Abbott
+fell into the spirit of the thing. She, too, chatted and laughed and
+applauded and encored, and rejoiced in the existence of beauty. As for
+Philip, he forgot himself as well as his mission. He was not even an
+enthusiastic visitor. For he had been in this place always. It was his
+home.
+
+Harriet, like M. Bovary on a more famous occasion, was trying to follow
+the plot. Occasionally she nudged her companions, and asked them what
+had become of Walter Scott. She looked round grimly. The audience
+sounded drunk, and even Caroline, who never took a drop, was swaying
+oddly. Violent waves of excitement, all arising from very little, went
+sweeping round the theatre. The climax was reached in the mad scene.
+Lucia, clad in white, as befitted her malady, suddenly gathered up her
+streaming hair and bowed her acknowledgment to the audience. Then from
+the back of the stage--she feigned not to see it--there advanced a kind
+of bamboo clothes-horse, stuck all over with bouquets. It was very ugly,
+and most of the flowers in it were false. Lucia knew this, and so did
+the audience; and they all knew that the clothes-horse was a piece of
+stage property, brought in to make the performance go year after year.
+None the less did it unloose the great deeps. With a scream of amazement
+and joy she embraced the animal, pulled out one or two practicable
+blossoms, pressed them to her lips, and flung them into her admirers.
+They flung them back, with loud melodious cries, and a little boy in one
+of the stageboxes snatched up his sister's carnations and offered them.
+"Che carino!" exclaimed the singer. She darted at the little boy and
+kissed him. Now the noise became tremendous. "Silence! silence!" shouted
+many old gentlemen behind. "Let the divine creature continue!" But
+the young men in the adjacent box were imploring Lucia to extend her
+civility to them. She refused, with a humorous, expressive gesture. One
+of them hurled a bouquet at her. She spurned it with her foot. Then,
+encouraged by the roars of the audience, she picked it up and tossed it
+to them. Harriet was always unfortunate. The bouquet struck her full in
+the chest, and a little billet-doux fell out of it into her lap.
+
+"Call this classical!" she cried, rising from her seat. "It's not even
+respectable! Philip! take me out at once."
+
+"Whose is it?" shouted her brother, holding up the bouquet in one hand
+and the billet-doux in the other. "Whose is it?"
+
+The house exploded, and one of the boxes was violently agitated, as if
+some one was being hauled to the front. Harriet moved down the gangway,
+and compelled Miss Abbott to follow her. Philip, still laughing
+and calling "Whose is it?" brought up the rear. He was drunk with
+excitement. The heat, the fatigue, and the enjoyment had mounted into
+his head.
+
+"To the left!" the people cried. "The innamorato is to the left."
+
+He deserted his ladies and plunged towards the box. A young man was
+flung stomach downwards across the balustrade. Philip handed him up the
+bouquet and the note. Then his own hands were seized affectionately. It
+all seemed quite natural.
+
+"Why have you not written?" cried the young man. "Why do you take me by
+surprise?"
+
+"Oh, I've written," said Philip hilariously. "I left a note this
+afternoon."
+
+"Silence! silence!" cried the audience, who were beginning to have
+enough. "Let the divine creature continue." Miss Abbott and Harriet had
+disappeared.
+
+"No! no!" cried the young man. "You don't escape me now." For Philip was
+trying feebly to disengage his hands. Amiable youths bent out of the box
+and invited him to enter it.
+
+"Gino's friends are ours--"
+
+"Friends?" cried Gino. "A relative! A brother! Fra Filippo, who has come
+all the way from England and never written."
+
+"I left a message."
+
+The audience began to hiss.
+
+"Come in to us."
+
+"Thank you--ladies--there is not time--"
+
+The next moment he was swinging by his arms. The moment after he shot
+over the balustrade into the box. Then the conductor, seeing that the
+incident was over, raised his baton. The house was hushed, and Lucia di
+Lammermoor resumed her song of madness and death.
+
+Philip had whispered introductions to the pleasant people who had pulled
+him in--tradesmen's sons perhaps they were, or medical students, or
+solicitors' clerks, or sons of other dentists. There is no knowing who
+is who in Italy. The guest of the evening was a private soldier. He
+shared the honour now with Philip. The two had to stand side by side in
+the front, and exchange compliments, whilst Gino presided, courteous,
+but delightfully familiar. Philip would have a spasm of horror at the
+muddle he had made. But the spasm would pass, and again he would be
+enchanted by the kind, cheerful voices, the laughter that was never
+vapid, and the light caress of the arm across his back.
+
+He could not get away till the play was nearly finished, and Edgardo was
+singing amongst the tombs of ancestors. His new friends hoped to see him
+at the Garibaldi tomorrow evening. He promised; then he remembered that
+if they kept to Harriet's plan he would have left Monteriano. "At ten
+o'clock, then," he said to Gino. "I want to speak to you alone. At ten."
+
+"Certainly!" laughed the other.
+
+Miss Abbott was sitting up for him when he got back. Harriet, it seemed,
+had gone straight to bed.
+
+"That was he, wasn't it?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, rather."
+
+"I suppose you didn't settle anything?"
+
+"Why, no; how could I? The fact is--well, I got taken by surprise,
+but after all, what does it matter? There's no earthly reason why we
+shouldn't do the business pleasantly. He's a perfectly charming person,
+and so are his friends. I'm his friend now--his long-lost brother.
+What's the harm? I tell you, Miss Abbott, it's one thing for England and
+another for Italy. There we plan and get on high moral horses. Here
+we find what asses we are, for things go off quite easily, all by
+themselves. My hat, what a night! Did you ever see a really purple sky
+and really silver stars before? Well, as I was saying, it's absurd to
+worry; he's not a porky father. He wants that baby as little as I do.
+He's been ragging my dear mother--just as he ragged me eighteen months
+ago, and I've forgiven him. Oh, but he has a sense of humour!"
+
+Miss Abbott, too, had a wonderful evening, nor did she ever remember
+such stars or such a sky. Her head, too, was full of music, and that
+night when she opened the window her room was filled with warm, sweet
+air. She was bathed in beauty within and without; she could not go to
+bed for happiness. Had she ever been so happy before? Yes, once before,
+and here, a night in March, the night Gino and Lilia had told her of
+their love--the night whose evil she had come now to undo.
+
+She gave a sudden cry of shame. "This time--the same place--the same
+thing"--and she began to beat down her happiness, knowing it to be
+sinful. She was here to fight against this place, to rescue a little
+soul--who was innocent as yet. She was here to champion morality and
+purity, and the holy life of an English home. In the spring she had
+sinned through ignorance; she was not ignorant now. "Help me!" she
+cried, and shut the window as if there was magic in the encircling air.
+But the tunes would not go out of her head, and all night long she was
+troubled by torrents of music, and by applause and laughter, and angry
+young men who shouted the distich out of Baedeker:--
+
+  Poggibonizzi fatti in la,
+  Che Monteriano si fa citta!
+
+Poggibonsi was revealed to her as they sang--a joyless, straggling
+place, full of people who pretended. When she woke up she knew that it
+had been Sawston.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+At about nine o'clock next morning Perfetta went out on to the loggia,
+not to look at the view, but to throw some dirty water at it. "Scusi
+tanto!" she wailed, for the water spattered a tall young lady who had
+for some time been tapping at the lower door.
+
+"Is Signor Carella in?" the young lady asked. It was no business of
+Perfetta's to be shocked, and the style of the visitor seemed to demand
+the reception-room. Accordingly she opened its shutters, dusted a round
+patch on one of the horsehair chairs, and bade the lady do herself the
+inconvenience of sitting down. Then she ran into Monteriano and shouted
+up and down its streets until such time as her young master should hear
+her.
+
+The reception-room was sacred to the dead wife. Her shiny portrait hung
+upon the wall--similar, doubtless, in all respects to the one which
+would be pasted on her tombstone. A little piece of black drapery had
+been tacked above the frame to lend a dignity to woe. But two of the
+tacks had fallen out, and the effect was now rakish, as of a drunkard's
+bonnet. A coon song lay open on the piano, and of the two tables one
+supported Baedeker's "Central Italy," the other Harriet's inlaid box.
+And over everything there lay a deposit of heavy white dust, which
+was only blown off one moment to thicken on another. It is well to
+be remembered with love. It is not so very dreadful to be forgotten
+entirely. But if we shall resent anything on earth at all, we shall
+resent the consecration of a deserted room.
+
+Miss Abbott did not sit down, partly because the antimacassars might
+harbour fleas, partly because she had suddenly felt faint, and was glad
+to cling on to the funnel of the stove. She struggled with herself,
+for she had need to be very calm; only if she was very calm might her
+behaviour be justified. She had broken faith with Philip and Harriet:
+she was going to try for the baby before they did. If she failed she
+could scarcely look them in the face again.
+
+"Harriet and her brother," she reasoned, "don't realize what is before
+them. She would bluster and be rude; he would be pleasant and take it
+as a joke. Both of them--even if they offered money--would fail. But I
+begin to understand the man's nature; he does not love the child, but he
+will be touchy about it--and that is quite as bad for us. He's charming,
+but he's no fool; he conquered me last year; he conquered Mr. Herriton
+yesterday, and if I am not careful he will conquer us all today, and the
+baby will grow up in Monteriano. He is terribly strong; Lilia found that
+out, but only I remember it now."
+
+This attempt, and this justification of it, were the results of the long
+and restless night. Miss Abbott had come to believe that she alone could
+do battle with Gino, because she alone understood him; and she had put
+this, as nicely as she could, in a note which she had left for Philip.
+It distressed her to write such a note, partly because her education
+inclined her to reverence the male, partly because she had got to like
+Philip a good deal after their last strange interview. His pettiness
+would be dispersed, and as for his "unconventionality," which was so
+much gossiped about at Sawston, she began to see that it did not differ
+greatly from certain familiar notions of her own. If only he would
+forgive her for what she was doing now, there might perhaps be before
+them a long and profitable friendship. But she must succeed. No one
+would forgive her if she did not succeed. She prepared to do battle with
+the powers of evil.
+
+The voice of her adversary was heard at last, singing fearlessly
+from his expanded lungs, like a professional. Herein he differed from
+Englishmen, who always have a little feeling against music, and sing
+only from the throat, apologetically. He padded upstairs, and looked
+in at the open door of the reception-room without seeing her. Her heart
+leapt and her throat was dry when he turned away and passed, still
+singing, into the room opposite. It is alarming not to be seen.
+
+He had left the door of this room open, and she could see into it,
+right across the landing. It was in a shocking mess. Food, bedclothes,
+patent-leather boots, dirty plates, and knives lay strewn over a large
+table and on the floor. But it was the mess that comes of life, not of
+desolation. It was preferable to the charnel-chamber in which she was
+standing now, and the light in it was soft and large, as from some
+gracious, noble opening.
+
+He stopped singing, and cried "Where is Perfetta?"
+
+His back was turned, and he was lighting a cigar. He was not speaking
+to Miss Abbott. He could not even be expecting her. The vista of the
+landing and the two open doors made him both remote and significant,
+like an actor on the stage, intimate and unapproachable at the same
+time. She could no more call out to him than if he was Hamlet.
+
+"You know!" he continued, "but you will not tell me. Exactly like you."
+He reclined on the table and blew a fat smoke-ring. "And why won't you
+tell me the numbers? I have dreamt of a red hen--that is two hundred and
+five, and a friend unexpected--he means eighty-two. But I try for the
+Terno this week. So tell me another number."
+
+Miss Abbott did not know of the Tombola. His speech terrified her. She
+felt those subtle restrictions which come upon us in fatigue. Had she
+slept well she would have greeted him as soon as she saw him. Now it was
+impossible. He had got into another world.
+
+She watched his smoke-ring. The air had carried it slowly away from him,
+and brought it out intact upon the landing.
+
+"Two hundred and five--eighty-two. In any case I shall put them on Bari,
+not on Florence. I cannot tell you why; I have a feeling this week for
+Bari." Again she tried to speak. But the ring mesmerized her. It had
+become vast and elliptical, and floated in at the reception-room door.
+
+"Ah! you don't care if you get the profits. You won't even say 'Thank
+you, Gino.' Say it, or I'll drop hot, red-hot ashes on you. 'Thank you,
+Gino--'"
+
+The ring had extended its pale blue coils towards her. She lost
+self-control. It enveloped her. As if it was a breath from the pit, she
+screamed.
+
+There he was, wanting to know what had frightened her, how she had got
+here, why she had never spoken. He made her sit down. He brought her
+wine, which she refused. She had not one word to say to him.
+
+"What is it?" he repeated. "What has frightened you?"
+
+He, too, was frightened, and perspiration came starting through the tan.
+For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something
+curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
+
+"Business--" she said at last.
+
+"Business with me?"
+
+"Most important business." She was lying, white and limp, in the dusty
+chair.
+
+"Before business you must get well; this is the best wine."
+
+She refused it feebly. He poured out a glass. She drank it. As she did
+so she became self-conscious. However important the business, it was not
+proper of her to have called on him, or to accept his hospitality.
+
+"Perhaps you are engaged," she said. "And as I am not very well--"
+
+"You are not well enough to go back. And I am not engaged."
+
+She looked nervously at the other room.
+
+"Ah, now I understand," he exclaimed. "Now I see what frightened you.
+But why did you never speak?" And taking her into the room where he
+lived, he pointed to--the baby.
+
+She had thought so much about this baby, of its welfare, its soul, its
+morals, its probable defects. But, like most unmarried people, she had
+only thought of it as a word--just as the healthy man only thinks of the
+word death, not of death itself. The real thing, lying asleep on a dirty
+rug, disconcerted her. It did not stand for a principle any longer.
+It was so much flesh and blood, so many inches and ounces of life--a
+glorious, unquestionable fact, which a man and another woman had given
+to the world. You could talk to it; in time it would answer you; in time
+it would not answer you unless it chose, but would secrete, within the
+compass of its body, thoughts and wonderful passions of its own. And
+this was the machine on which she and Mrs. Herriton and Philip and
+Harriet had for the last month been exercising their various ideals--had
+determined that in time it should move this way or that way, should
+accomplish this and not that. It was to be Low Church, it was to be
+high-principled, it was to be tactful, gentlemanly, artistic--excellent
+things all. Yet now that she saw this baby, lying asleep on a dirty rug,
+she had a great disposition not to dictate one of them, and to exert
+no more influence than there may be in a kiss or in the vaguest of the
+heartfelt prayers.
+
+But she had practised self-discipline, and her thoughts and actions were
+not yet to correspond. To recover her self-esteem she tried to imagine
+that she was in her district, and to behave accordingly.
+
+"What a fine child, Signor Carella. And how nice of you to talk to it.
+Though I see that the ungrateful little fellow is asleep! Seven months?
+No, eight; of course eight. Still, he is a remarkably fine child for his
+age."
+
+Italian is a bad medium for condescension. The patronizing words came
+out gracious and sincere, and he smiled with pleasure.
+
+"You must not stand. Let us sit on the loggia, where it is cool. I am
+afraid the room is very untidy," he added, with the air of a hostess who
+apologizes for a stray thread on the drawing-room carpet. Miss Abbott
+picked her way to the chair. He sat near her, astride the parapet, with
+one foot in the loggia and the other dangling into the view. His face
+was in profile, and its beautiful contours drove artfully against
+the misty green of the opposing hills. "Posing!" said Miss Abbott to
+herself. "A born artist's model."
+
+"Mr. Herriton called yesterday," she began, "but you were out."
+
+He started an elaborate and graceful explanation. He had gone for the
+day to Poggibonsi. Why had the Herritons not written to him, so that he
+could have received them properly? Poggibonsi would have done any day;
+not but what his business there was fairly important. What did she
+suppose that it was?
+
+Naturally she was not greatly interested. She had not come from Sawston
+to guess why he had been to Poggibonsi. She answered politely that she
+had no idea, and returned to her mission.
+
+"But guess!" he persisted, clapping the balustrade between his hands.
+
+She suggested, with gentle sarcasm, that perhaps he had gone to
+Poggibonsi to find something to do.
+
+He intimated that it was not as important as all that. Something to
+do--an almost hopeless quest! "E manca questo!" He rubbed his thumb and
+forefinger together, to indicate that he had no money. Then he
+sighed, and blew another smoke-ring. Miss Abbott took heart and turned
+diplomatic.
+
+"This house," she said, "is a large house."
+
+"Exactly," was his gloomy reply. "And when my poor wife died--" He got
+up, went in, and walked across the landing to the reception-room door,
+which he closed reverently. Then he shut the door of the living-room
+with his foot, returned briskly to his seat, and continued his sentence.
+"When my poor wife died I thought of having my relatives to live here.
+My father wished to give up his practice at Empoli; my mother and
+sisters and two aunts were also willing. But it was impossible. They
+have their ways of doing things, and when I was younger I was content
+with them. But now I am a man. I have my own ways. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Miss Abbott, thinking of her own dear father, whose
+tricks and habits, after twenty-five years spent in their company, were
+beginning to get on her nerves. She remembered, though, that she was
+not here to sympathize with Gino--at all events, not to show that
+she sympathized. She also reminded herself that he was not worthy of
+sympathy. "It is a large house," she repeated.
+
+"Immense; and the taxes! But it will be better when--Ah! but you have
+never guessed why I went to Poggibonsi--why it was that I was out when
+he called."
+
+"I cannot guess, Signor Carella. I am here on business."
+
+"But try."
+
+"I cannot; I hardly know you."
+
+"But we are old friends," he said, "and your approval will be grateful
+to me. You gave it me once before. Will you give it now?"
+
+"I have not come as a friend this time," she answered stiffly. "I am not
+likely, Signor Carella, to approve of anything you do."
+
+"Oh, Signorina!" He laughed, as if he found her piquant and amusing.
+"Surely you approve of marriage?"
+
+"Where there is love," said Miss Abbott, looking at him hard. His face
+had altered in the last year, but not for the worse, which was baffling.
+
+"Where there is love," said he, politely echoing the English view. Then
+he smiled on her, expecting congratulations.
+
+"Do I understand that you are proposing to marry again?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I forbid you, then!"
+
+He looked puzzled, but took it for some foreign banter, and laughed.
+
+"I forbid you!" repeated Miss Abbott, and all the indignation of her sex
+and her nationality went thrilling through the words.
+
+"But why?" He jumped up, frowning. His voice was squeaky and petulant,
+like that of a child who is suddenly forbidden a toy.
+
+"You have ruined one woman; I forbid you to ruin another. It is not a
+year since Lilia died. You pretended to me the other day that you loved
+her. It is a lie. You wanted her money. Has this woman money too?"
+
+"Why, yes!" he said irritably. "A little."
+
+"And I suppose you will say that you love her."
+
+"I shall not say it. It will be untrue. Now my poor wife--" He stopped,
+seeing that the comparison would involve him in difficulties. And indeed
+he had often found Lilia as agreeable as any one else.
+
+Miss Abbott was furious at this final insult to her dead acquaintance.
+She was glad that after all she could be so angry with the boy. She
+glowed and throbbed; her tongue moved nimbly. At the finish, if the
+real business of the day had been completed, she could have swept
+majestically from the house. But the baby still remained, asleep on a
+dirty rug.
+
+Gino was thoughtful, and stood scratching his head. He respected Miss
+Abbott. He wished that she would respect him. "So you do not advise me?"
+he said dolefully. "But why should it be a failure?"
+
+Miss Abbott tried to remember that he was really a child still--a child
+with the strength and the passions of a disreputable man. "How can it
+succeed," she said solemnly, "where there is no love?"
+
+"But she does love me! I forgot to tell you that."
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"Passionately." He laid his hand upon his own heart.
+
+"Then God help her!"
+
+He stamped impatiently. "Whatever I say displeases you, Signorina. God
+help you, for you are most unfair. You say that I ill-treated my dear
+wife. It is not so. I have never ill-treated any one. You complain that
+there is no love in this marriage. I prove that there is, and you become
+still more angry. What do you want? Do you suppose she will not be
+contented? Glad enough she is to get me, and she will do her duty well."
+
+"Her duty!" cried Miss Abbott, with all the bitterness of which she was
+capable.
+
+"Why, of course. She knows why I am marrying her."
+
+"To succeed where Lilia failed! To be your housekeeper, your slave,
+you--" The words she would like to have said were too violent for her.
+
+"To look after the baby, certainly," said he.
+
+"The baby--?" She had forgotten it.
+
+"It is an English marriage," he said proudly. "I do not care about the
+money. I am having her for my son. Did you not understand that?"
+
+"No," said Miss Abbott, utterly bewildered. Then, for a moment, she saw
+light. "It is not necessary, Signor Carella. Since you are tired of the
+baby--"
+
+Ever after she remembered it to her credit that she saw her mistake at
+once. "I don't mean that," she added quickly.
+
+"I know," was his courteous response. "Ah, in a foreign language (and
+how perfectly you speak Italian) one is certain to make slips."
+
+She looked at his face. It was apparently innocent of satire.
+
+"You meant that we could not always be together yet, he and I. You are
+right. What is to be done? I cannot afford a nurse, and Perfetta is too
+rough. When he was ill I dare not let her touch him. When he has to
+be washed, which happens now and then, who does it? I. I feed him, or
+settle what he shall have. I sleep with him and comfort him when he is
+unhappy in the night. No one talks, no one may sing to him but I. Do not
+be unfair this time; I like to do these things. But nevertheless (his
+voice became pathetic) they take up a great deal of time, and are not
+all suitable for a young man."
+
+"Not at all suitable," said Miss Abbott, and closed her eyes wearily.
+Each moment her difficulties were increasing. She wished that she was
+not so tired, so open to contradictory impressions. She longed for
+Harriet's burly obtuseness or for the soulless diplomacy of Mrs.
+Herriton.
+
+"A little more wine?" asked Gino kindly.
+
+"Oh, no, thank you! But marriage, Signor Carella, is a very serious
+step. Could you not manage more simply? Your relative, for example--"
+
+"Empoli! I would as soon have him in England!"
+
+"England, then--"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"He has a grandmother there, you know--Mrs. Theobald."
+
+"He has a grandmother here. No, he is troublesome, but I must have him
+with me. I will not even have my father and mother too. For they would
+separate us," he added.
+
+"How?"
+
+"They would separate our thoughts."
+
+She was silent. This cruel, vicious fellow knew of strange refinements.
+The horrible truth, that wicked people are capable of love, stood naked
+before her, and her moral being was abashed. It was her duty to rescue
+the baby, to save it from contagion, and she still meant to do her duty.
+But the comfortable sense of virtue left her. She was in the presence of
+something greater than right or wrong.
+
+Forgetting that this was an interview, he had strolled back into the
+room, driven by the instinct she had aroused in him. "Wake up!" he cried
+to his baby, as if it was some grown-up friend. Then he lifted his foot
+and trod lightly on its stomach.
+
+Miss Abbott cried, "Oh, take care!" She was unaccustomed to this method
+of awakening the young.
+
+"He is not much longer than my boot, is he? Can you believe that in time
+his own boots will be as large? And that he also--"
+
+"But ought you to treat him like that?"
+
+He stood with one foot resting on the little body, suddenly musing,
+filled with the desire that his son should be like him, and should have
+sons like him, to people the earth. It is the strongest desire that can
+come to a man--if it comes to him at all--stronger even than love or the
+desire for personal immortality. All men vaunt it, and declare that it
+is theirs; but the hearts of most are set elsewhere. It is the exception
+who comprehends that physical and spiritual life may stream out of him
+for ever. Miss Abbott, for all her goodness, could not comprehend it,
+though such a thing is more within the comprehension of women. And
+when Gino pointed first to himself and then to his baby and said
+"father-son," she still took it as a piece of nursery prattle, and
+smiled mechanically.
+
+The child, the first fruits, woke up and glared at her. Gino did not
+greet it, but continued the exposition of his policy.
+
+"This woman will do exactly what I tell her. She is fond of children.
+She is clean; she has a pleasant voice. She is not beautiful; I cannot
+pretend that to you for a moment. But she is what I require."
+
+The baby gave a piercing yell.
+
+"Oh, do take care!" begged Miss Abbott. "You are squeezing it."
+
+"It is nothing. If he cries silently then you may be frightened. He
+thinks I am going to wash him, and he is quite right."
+
+"Wash him!" she cried. "You? Here?" The homely piece of news seemed
+to shatter all her plans. She had spent a long half-hour in elaborate
+approaches, in high moral attacks; she had neither frightened her enemy
+nor made him angry, nor interfered with the least detail of his domestic
+life.
+
+"I had gone to the Farmacia," he continued, "and was sitting there
+comfortably, when suddenly I remembered that Perfetta had heated water
+an hour ago--over there, look, covered with a cushion. I came away at
+once, for really he must be washed. You must excuse me. I can put it off
+no longer."
+
+"I have wasted your time," she said feebly.
+
+He walked sternly to the loggia and drew from it a large earthenware
+bowl. It was dirty inside; he dusted it with a tablecloth. Then he
+fetched the hot water, which was in a copper pot. He poured it out. He
+added cold. He felt in his pocket and brought out a piece of soap. Then
+he took up the baby, and, holding his cigar between his teeth, began to
+unwrap it. Miss Abbott turned to go.
+
+"But why are you going? Excuse me if I wash him while we talk."
+
+"I have nothing more to say," said Miss Abbott. All she could do now
+was to find Philip, confess her miserable defeat, and bid him go in
+her stead and prosper better. She cursed her feebleness; she longed to
+expose it, without apologies or tears.
+
+"Oh, but stop a moment!" he cried. "You have not seen him yet."
+
+"I have seen as much as I want, thank you."
+
+The last wrapping slid off. He held out to her in his two hands a little
+kicking image of bronze.
+
+"Take him!"
+
+She would not touch the child.
+
+"I must go at once," she cried; for the tears--the wrong tears--were
+hurrying to her eyes.
+
+"Who would have believed his mother was blonde? For he is brown all
+over--brown every inch of him. Ah, but how beautiful he is! And he is
+mine; mine for ever. Even if he hates me he will be mine. He cannot help
+it; he is made out of me; I am his father."
+
+It was too late to go. She could not tell why, but it was too late.
+She turned away her head when Gino lifted his son to his lips. This was
+something too remote from the prettiness of the nursery. The man was
+majestic; he was a part of Nature; in no ordinary love scene could he
+ever be so great. For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the
+children; and--by some sad, strange irony--it does not bind us children
+to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with
+gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos
+and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy. Gino
+passionately embracing, Miss Abbott reverently averting her eyes--both
+of them had parents whom they did not love so very much.
+
+"May I help you to wash him?" she asked humbly.
+
+He gave her his son without speaking, and they knelt side by side,
+tucking up their sleeves. The child had stopped crying, and his arms and
+legs were agitated by some overpowering joy. Miss Abbott had a woman's
+pleasure in cleaning anything--more especially when the thing was human.
+She understood little babies from long experience in a district, and
+Gino soon ceased to give her directions, and only gave her thanks.
+
+"It is very kind of you," he murmured, "especially in your beautiful
+dress. He is nearly clean already. Why, I take the whole morning! There
+is so much more of a baby than one expects. And Perfetta washes him just
+as she washes clothes. Then he screams for hours. My wife is to have a
+light hand. Ah, how he kicks! Has he splashed you? I am very sorry."
+
+"I am ready for a soft towel now," said Miss Abbott, who was strangely
+exalted by the service.
+
+"Certainly! certainly!" He strode in a knowing way to a cupboard. But
+he had no idea where the soft towel was. Generally he dabbed the baby on
+the first dry thing he found.
+
+"And if you had any powder."
+
+He struck his forehead despairingly. Apparently the stock of powder was
+just exhausted.
+
+She sacrificed her own clean handkerchief. He put a chair for her on the
+loggia, which faced westward, and was still pleasant and cool. There she
+sat, with twenty miles of view behind her, and he placed the dripping
+baby on her knee. It shone now with health and beauty: it seemed to
+reflect light, like a copper vessel. Just such a baby Bellini sets
+languid on his mother's lap, or Signorelli flings wriggling on pavements
+of marble, or Lorenzo di Credi, more reverent but less divine, lays
+carefully among flowers, with his head upon a wisp of golden straw. For
+a time Gino contemplated them standing. Then, to get a better view, he
+knelt by the side of the chair, with his hands clasped before him.
+
+So they were when Philip entered, and saw, to all intents and purposes,
+the Virgin and Child, with Donor.
+
+"Hullo!" he exclaimed; for he was glad to find things in such cheerful
+trim.
+
+She did not greet him, but rose up unsteadily and handed the baby to his
+father.
+
+"No, do stop!" whispered Philip. "I got your note. I'm not offended;
+you're quite right. I really want you; I could never have done it
+alone."
+
+No words came from her, but she raised her hands to her mouth, like one
+who is in sudden agony.
+
+"Signorina, do stop a little--after all your kindness."
+
+She burst into tears.
+
+"What is it?" said Philip kindly.
+
+She tried to speak, and then went away weeping bitterly.
+
+The two men stared at each other. By a common impulse they ran on to the
+loggia. They were just in time to see Miss Abbott disappear among the
+trees.
+
+"What is it?" asked Philip again. There was no answer, and somehow he
+did not want an answer. Some strange thing had happened which he could
+not presume to understand. He would find out from Miss Abbott, if ever
+he found out at all.
+
+"Well, your business," said Gino, after a puzzled sigh.
+
+"Our business--Miss Abbott has told you of that."
+
+"No."
+
+"But surely--"
+
+"She came for business. But she forgot about it; so did I."
+
+Perfetta, who had a genius for missing people, now returned, loudly
+complaining of the size of Monteriano and the intricacies of its
+streets. Gino told her to watch the baby. Then he offered Philip a
+cigar, and they proceeded to the business.
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+"Mad!" screamed Harriet,--"absolutely stark, staring, raving mad!"
+
+Philip judged it better not to contradict her.
+
+"What's she here for? Answer me that. What's she doing in Monteriano in
+August? Why isn't she in Normandy? Answer that. She won't. I can: she's
+come to thwart us; she's betrayed us--got hold of mother's plans. Oh,
+goodness, my head!"
+
+He was unwise enough to reply, "You mustn't accuse her of that. Though
+she is exasperating, she hasn't come here to betray us."
+
+"Then why has she come here? Answer me that."
+
+He made no answer. But fortunately his sister was too much agitated
+to wait for one. "Bursting in on me--crying and looking a disgusting
+sight--and says she has been to see the Italian. Couldn't even talk
+properly; pretended she had changed her opinions. What are her opinions
+to us? I was very calm. I said: 'Miss Abbott, I think there is a
+little misapprehension in this matter. My mother, Mrs. Herriton--' Oh,
+goodness, my head! Of course you've failed--don't trouble to answer--I
+know you've failed. Where's the baby, pray? Of course you haven't got
+it. Dear sweet Caroline won't let you. Oh, yes, and we're to go away at
+once and trouble the father no more. Those are her commands. Commands!
+COMMANDS!" And Harriet also burst into tears.
+
+Philip governed his temper. His sister was annoying, but quite
+reasonable in her indignation. Moreover, Miss Abbott had behaved even
+worse than she supposed.
+
+"I've not got the baby, Harriet, but at the same time I haven't
+exactly failed. I and Signor Carella are to have another interview
+this afternoon, at the Caffe Garibaldi. He is perfectly reasonable and
+pleasant. Should you be disposed to come with me, you would find him
+quite willing to discuss things. He is desperately in want of money, and
+has no prospect of getting any. I discovered that. At the same time, he
+has a certain affection for the child." For Philip's insight, or perhaps
+his opportunities, had not been equal to Miss Abbott's.
+
+Harriet would only sob, and accuse her brother of insulting her; how
+could a lady speak to such a horrible man? That, and nothing else, was
+enough to stamp Caroline. Oh, poor Lilia!
+
+Philip drummed on the bedroom window-sill. He saw no escape from the
+deadlock. For though he spoke cheerfully about his second interview with
+Gino, he felt at the bottom of his heart that it would fail. Gino was
+too courteous: he would not break off negotiations by sharp denial; he
+loved this civil, half-humorous bargaining. And he loved fooling his
+opponent, and did it so nicely that his opponent did not mind being
+fooled.
+
+"Miss Abbott has behaved extraordinarily," he said at last; "but at the
+same time--"
+
+His sister would not hear him. She burst forth again on the madness, the
+interference, the intolerable duplicity of Caroline.
+
+"Harriet, you must listen. My dear, you must stop crying. I have
+something quite important to say."
+
+"I shall not stop crying," said she. But in time, finding that he would
+not speak to her, she did stop.
+
+"Remember that Miss Abbott has done us no harm. She said nothing to him
+about the matter. He assumes that she is working with us: I gathered
+that."
+
+"Well, she isn't."
+
+"Yes; but if you're careful she may be. I interpret her behaviour thus:
+She went to see him, honestly intending to get the child away. In the
+note she left me she says so, and I don't believe she'd lie."
+
+"I do."
+
+"When she got there, there was some pretty domestic scene between him
+and the baby, and she has got swept off in a gush of sentimentalism.
+Before very long, if I know anything about psychology, there will be a
+reaction. She'll be swept back."
+
+"I don't understand your long words. Say plainly--"
+
+"When she's swept back, she'll be invaluable. For she has made quite an
+impression on him. He thinks her so nice with the baby. You know, she
+washed it for him."
+
+"Disgusting!"
+
+Harriet's ejaculations were more aggravating than the rest of her. But
+Philip was averse to losing his temper. The access of joy that had come
+to him yesterday in the theatre promised to be permanent. He was more
+anxious than heretofore to be charitable towards the world.
+
+"If you want to carry off the baby, keep your peace with Miss Abbott.
+For if she chooses, she can help you better than I can."
+
+"There can be no peace between me and her," said Harriet gloomily.
+
+"Did you--"
+
+"Oh, not all I wanted. She went away before I had finished
+speaking--just like those cowardly people!--into the church."
+
+"Into Santa Deodata's?"
+
+"Yes; I'm sure she needs it. Anything more unchristian--"
+
+In time Philip went to the church also, leaving his sister a little
+calmer and a little disposed to think over his advice. What had come
+over Miss Abbott? He had always thought her both stable and sincere.
+That conversation he had had with her last Christmas in the train to
+Charing Cross--that alone furnished him with a parallel. For the second
+time, Monteriano must have turned her head. He was not angry with her,
+for he was quite indifferent to the outcome of their expedition. He was
+only extremely interested.
+
+It was now nearly midday, and the streets were clearing. But the intense
+heat had broken, and there was a pleasant suggestion of rain. The
+Piazza, with its three great attractions--the Palazzo Pubblico, the
+Collegiate Church, and the Caffe Garibaldi: the intellect, the soul, and
+the body--had never looked more charming. For a moment Philip stood in
+its centre, much inclined to be dreamy, and thinking how wonderful it
+must feel to belong to a city, however mean. He was here, however, as
+an emissary of civilization and as a student of character, and, after a
+sigh, he entered Santa Deodata's to continue his mission.
+
+There had been a FESTA two days before, and the church still smelt of
+incense and of garlic. The little son of the sacristan was sweeping the
+nave, more for amusement than for cleanliness, sending great clouds
+of dust over the frescoes and the scattered worshippers. The sacristan
+himself had propped a ladder in the centre of the Deluge--which fills
+one of the nave spandrels--and was freeing a column from its wealth of
+scarlet calico. Much scarlet calico also lay upon the floor--for the
+church can look as fine as any theatre--and the sacristan's little
+daughter was trying to fold it up. She was wearing a tinsel crown. The
+crown really belonged to St. Augustine. But it had been cut too big:
+it fell down over his cheeks like a collar: you never saw anything so
+absurd. One of the canons had unhooked it just before the FIESTA began,
+and had given it to the sacristan's daughter.
+
+"Please," cried Philip, "is there an English lady here?"
+
+The man's mouth was full of tin-tacks, but he nodded cheerfully towards
+a kneeling figure. In the midst of this confusion Miss Abbott was
+praying.
+
+He was not much surprised: a spiritual breakdown was quite to be
+expected. For though he was growing more charitable towards mankind,
+he was still a little jaunty, and too apt to stake out beforehand the
+course that will be pursued by the wounded soul. It did not surprise
+him, however, that she should greet him naturally, with none of the sour
+self-consciousness of a person who had just risen from her knees. This
+was indeed the spirit of Santa Deodata's, where a prayer to God is
+thought none the worse of because it comes next to a pleasant word to
+a neighbour. "I am sure that I need it," said she; and he, who had
+expected her to be ashamed, became confused, and knew not what to reply.
+
+"I've nothing to tell you," she continued. "I have simply changed
+straight round. If I had planned the whole thing out, I could not have
+treated you worse. I can talk it over now; but please believe that I
+have been crying."
+
+"And please believe that I have not come to scold you," said Philip. "I
+know what has happened."
+
+"What?" asked Miss Abbott. Instinctively she led the way to the famous
+chapel, the fifth chapel on the right, wherein Giovanni da Empoli has
+painted the death and burial of the saint. Here they could sit out of
+the dust and the noise, and proceed with a discussion which promised to
+be important.
+
+"What might have happened to me--he had made you believe that he loved
+the child."
+
+"Oh, yes; he has. He will never give it up."
+
+"At present it is still unsettled."
+
+"It will never be settled."
+
+"Perhaps not. Well, as I said, I know what has happened, and I am not
+here to scold you. But I must ask you to withdraw from the thing for the
+present. Harriet is furious. But she will calm down when she realizes
+that you have done us no harm, and will do none."
+
+"I can do no more," she said. "But I tell you plainly I have changed
+sides."
+
+"If you do no more, that is all we want. You promise not to prejudice
+our cause by speaking to Signor Carella?"
+
+"Oh, certainly. I don't want to speak to him again; I shan't ever see
+him again."
+
+"Quite nice, wasn't he?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Well, that's all I wanted to know. I'll go and tell Harriet of your
+promise, and I think things'll quiet down now."
+
+But he did not move, for it was an increasing pleasure to him to be
+near her, and her charm was at its strongest today. He thought less of
+psychology and feminine reaction. The gush of sentimentalism which had
+carried her away had only made her more alluring. He was content to
+observe her beauty and to profit by the tenderness and the wisdom that
+dwelt within her.
+
+"Why aren't you angry with me?" she asked, after a pause.
+
+"Because I understand you--all sides, I think,--Harriet, Signor Carella,
+even my mother."
+
+"You do understand wonderfully. You are the only one of us who has a
+general view of the muddle."
+
+He smiled with pleasure. It was the first time she had ever praised
+him. His eyes rested agreeably on Santa Deodata, who was dying in full
+sanctity, upon her back. There was a window open behind her, revealing
+just such a view as he had seen that morning, and on her widowed
+mother's dresser there stood just such another copper pot. The saint
+looked neither at the view nor at the pot, and at her widowed mother
+still less. For lo! she had a vision: the head and shoulders of St.
+Augustine were sliding like some miraculous enamel along the rough-cast
+wall. It is a gentle saint who is content with half another saint to see
+her die. In her death, as in her life, Santa Deodata did not accomplish
+much.
+
+"So what are you going to do?" said Miss Abbott.
+
+Philip started, not so much at the words as at the sudden change in the
+voice. "Do?" he echoed, rather dismayed. "This afternoon I have another
+interview."
+
+"It will come to nothing. Well?"
+
+"Then another. If that fails I shall wire home for instructions. I dare
+say we may fail altogether, but we shall fail honourably."
+
+She had often been decided. But now behind her decision there was a note
+of passion. She struck him not as different, but as more important, and
+he minded it very much when she said--
+
+"That's not doing anything! You would be doing something if you
+kidnapped the baby, or if you went straight away. But that! To fail
+honourably! To come out of the thing as well as you can! Is that all you
+are after?"
+
+"Why, yes," he stammered. "Since we talk openly, that is all I am after
+just now. What else is there? If I can persuade Signor Carella to give
+in, so much the better. If he won't, I must report the failure to my
+mother and then go home. Why, Miss Abbott, you can't expect me to follow
+you through all these turns--"
+
+"I don't! But I do expect you to settle what is right and to follow
+that. Do you want the child to stop with his father, who loves him and
+will bring him up badly, or do you want him to come to Sawston, where
+no one loves him, but where he will be brought up well? There is the
+question put dispassionately enough even for you. Settle it. Settle
+which side you'll fight on. But don't go talking about an 'honourable
+failure,' which means simply not thinking and not acting at all."
+
+"Because I understand the position of Signor Carella and of you, it's no
+reason that--"
+
+"None at all. Fight as if you think us wrong. Oh, what's the use of your
+fair-mindedness if you never decide for yourself? Any one gets hold of
+you and makes you do what they want. And you see through them and laugh
+at them--and do it. It's not enough to see clearly; I'm muddle-headed
+and stupid, and not worth a quarter of you, but I have tried to do
+what seemed right at the time. And you--your brain and your insight are
+splendid. But when you see what's right you're too idle to do it. You
+told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our
+accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to
+accomplish--not sit intending on a chair."
+
+"You are wonderful!" he said gravely.
+
+"Oh, you appreciate me!" she burst out again. "I wish you didn't. You
+appreciate us all--see good in all of us. And all the time you are
+dead--dead--dead. Look, why aren't you angry?" She came up to him, and
+then her mood suddenly changed, and she took hold of both his hands.
+"You are so splendid, Mr. Herriton, that I can't bear to see you wasted.
+I can't bear--she has not been good to you--your mother."
+
+"Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do
+things. I'm one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar.
+I came out to stop Lilia's marriage, and it was too late. I came out
+intending to get the baby, and I shall return an 'honourable failure.' I
+never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed.
+You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the
+theatre yesterday, talking to you now--I don't suppose I shall ever
+meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without
+colliding with it or moving it--and I'm sure I can't tell you whether
+the fate's good or evil. I don't die--I don't fall in love. And if other
+people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.
+You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which--thank God,
+and thank Italy, and thank you--is now more beautiful and heartening
+than it has ever been before."
+
+She said solemnly, "I wish something would happen to you, my dear
+friend; I wish something would happen to you."
+
+"But why?" he asked, smiling. "Prove to me why I don't do as I am."
+
+She also smiled, very gravely. She could not prove it. No argument
+existed. Their discourse, splendid as it had been, resulted in nothing,
+and their respective opinions and policies were exactly the same when
+they left the church as when they had entered it.
+
+Harriet was rude at lunch. She called Miss Abbott a turncoat and a
+coward to her face. Miss Abbott resented neither epithet, feeling that
+one was justified and the other not unreasonable. She tried to avoid
+even the suspicion of satire in her replies. But Harriet was sure
+that she was satirical because she was so calm. She got more and more
+violent, and Philip at one time feared that she would come to blows.
+
+"Look here!" he cried, with something of the old manner, "it's too
+hot for this. We've been talking and interviewing each other all the
+morning, and I have another interview this afternoon. I do stipulate for
+silence. Let each lady retire to her bedroom with a book."
+
+"I retire to pack," said Harriet. "Please remind Signor Carella, Philip,
+that the baby is to be here by half-past eight this evening."
+
+"Oh, certainly, Harriet. I shall make a point of reminding him."
+
+"And order a carriage to take us to the evening train."
+
+"And please," said Miss Abbott, "would you order a carriage for me too?"
+
+"You going?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Of course," she replied, suddenly flushing. "Why not?"
+
+"Why, of course you would be going. Two carriages, then. Two carriages
+for the evening train." He looked at his sister hopelessly. "Harriet,
+whatever are you up to? We shall never be ready."
+
+"Order my carriage for the evening train," said Harriet, and departed.
+
+"Well, I suppose I shall. And I shall also have my interview with Signor
+Carella."
+
+Miss Abbott gave a little sigh.
+
+"But why should you mind? Do you suppose that I shall have the slightest
+influence over him?"
+
+"No. But--I can't repeat all that I said in the church. You ought never
+to see him again. You ought to bundle Harriet into a carriage, not this
+evening, but now, and drive her straight away."
+
+"Perhaps I ought. But it isn't a very big 'ought.' Whatever Harriet and
+I do the issue is the same. Why, I can see the splendour of it--even the
+humour. Gino sitting up here on the mountain-top with his cub. We come
+and ask for it. He welcomes us. We ask for it again. He is equally
+pleasant. I'm agreeable to spend the whole week bargaining with him. But
+I know that at the end of it I shall descend empty-handed to the
+plains. It might be finer of me to make up my mind. But I'm not a fine
+character. And nothing hangs on it."
+
+"Perhaps I am extreme," she said humbly. "I've been trying to run you,
+just like your mother. I feel you ought to fight it out with Harriet.
+Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important
+today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds
+like blasphemy. There's never any knowing--(how am I to put it?)--which
+of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it
+for ever."
+
+He assented, but her remark had only an aesthetic value. He was not
+prepared to take it to his heart. All the afternoon he rested--worried,
+but not exactly despondent. The thing would jog out somehow. Probably
+Miss Abbott was right. The baby had better stop where it was loved. And
+that, probably, was what the fates had decreed. He felt little interest
+in the matter, and he was sure that he had no influence.
+
+It was not surprising, therefore, that the interview at the Caffe
+Garibaldi came to nothing. Neither of them took it very seriously. And
+before long Gino had discovered how things lay, and was ragging his
+companion hopelessly. Philip tried to look offended, but in the end
+he had to laugh. "Well, you are right," he said. "This affair is being
+managed by the ladies."
+
+"Ah, the ladies--the ladies!" cried the other, and then he roared like
+a millionaire for two cups of black coffee, and insisted on treating his
+friend, as a sign that their strife was over.
+
+"Well, I have done my best," said Philip, dipping a long slice of sugar
+into his cup, and watching the brown liquid ascend into it. "I shall
+face my mother with a good conscience. Will you bear me witness that
+I've done my best?"
+
+"My poor fellow, I will!" He laid a sympathetic hand on Philip's knee.
+
+"And that I have--" The sugar was now impregnated with coffee, and he
+bent forward to swallow it. As he did so his eyes swept the opposite of
+the Piazza, and he saw there, watching them, Harriet. "Mia sorella!" he
+exclaimed. Gino, much amused, laid his hand upon the little table, and
+beat the marble humorously with his fists. Harriet turned away and began
+gloomily to inspect the Palazzo Pubblico.
+
+"Poor Harriet!" said Philip, swallowing the sugar. "One more wrench and
+it will all be over for her; we are leaving this evening."
+
+Gino was sorry for this. "Then you will not be here this evening as you
+promised us. All three leaving?"
+
+"All three," said Philip, who had not revealed the secession of Miss
+Abbott; "by the night train; at least, that is my sister's plan. So I'm
+afraid I shan't be here."
+
+They watched the departing figure of Harriet, and then entered upon the
+final civilities. They shook each other warmly by both hands. Philip
+was to come again next year, and to write beforehand. He was to be
+introduced to Gino's wife, for he was told of the marriage now. He was
+to be godfather to his next baby. As for Gino, he would remember some
+time that Philip liked vermouth. He begged him to give his love to Irma.
+Mrs. Herriton--should he send her his sympathetic regards? No; perhaps
+that would hardly do.
+
+So the two young men parted with a good deal of genuine affection. For
+the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets
+pass what is good. Or--to put the thing less cynically--we may be better
+in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or
+vice. Philip, at all events, lived more graciously in Italian, the very
+phrases of which entice one to be happy and kind. It was horrible to
+think of the English of Harriet, whose every word would be as hard, as
+distinct, and as unfinished as a lump of coal.
+
+Harriet, however, talked little. She had seen enough to know that her
+brother had failed again, and with unwonted dignity she accepted the
+situation. She did her packing, she wrote up her diary, she made a brown
+paper cover for the new Baedeker. Philip, finding her so amenable, tried
+to discuss their future plans. But she only said that they would sleep
+in Florence, and told him to telegraph for rooms. They had supper
+alone. Miss Abbott did not come down. The landlady told them that Signor
+Carella had called on Miss Abbott to say good-bye, but she, though in,
+had not been able to see him. She also told them that it had begun
+to rain. Harriet sighed, but indicated to her brother that he was not
+responsible.
+
+The carriages came round at a quarter past eight. It was not raining
+much, but the night was extraordinarily dark, and one of the drivers
+wanted to go slowly to the station. Miss Abbott came down and said that
+she was ready, and would start at once.
+
+"Yes, do," said Philip, who was standing in the hall. "Now that we have
+quarrelled we scarcely want to travel in procession all the way down the
+hill. Well, good-bye; it's all over at last; another scene in my pageant
+has shifted."
+
+"Good-bye; it's been a great pleasure to see you. I hope that won't
+shift, at all events." She gripped his hand.
+
+"You sound despondent," he said, laughing. "Don't forget that you return
+victorious."
+
+"I suppose I do," she replied, more despondently than ever, and got into
+the carriage. He concluded that she was thinking of her reception at
+Sawston, whither her fame would doubtless precede her. Whatever would
+Mrs. Herriton do? She could make things quite unpleasant when she
+thought it right. She might think it right to be silent, but then there
+was Harriet. Who would bridle Harriet's tongue? Between the two of
+them Miss Abbott was bound to have a bad time. Her reputation, both for
+consistency and for moral enthusiasm, would be lost for ever.
+
+"It's hard luck on her," he thought. "She is a good person. I must do
+for her anything I can." Their intimacy had been very rapid, but he too
+hoped that it would not shift. He believed that he understood her,
+and that she, by now, had seen the worst of him. What if after a
+long time--if after all--he flushed like a boy as he looked after her
+carriage.
+
+He went into the dining-room to look for Harriet. Harriet was not to
+be found. Her bedroom, too, was empty. All that was left of her was
+the purple prayer-book which lay open on the bed. Philip took it up
+aimlessly, and saw--"Blessed be the Lord my God who teacheth my hands to
+war and my fingers to fight." He put the book in his pocket, and began
+to brood over more profitable themes.
+
+Santa Deodata gave out half past eight. All the luggage was on, and
+still Harriet had not appeared. "Depend upon it," said the landlady,
+"she has gone to Signor Carella's to say good-bye to her little nephew."
+Philip did not think it likely. They shouted all over the house and
+still there was no Harriet. He began to be uneasy. He was helpless
+without Miss Abbott; her grave, kind face had cheered him wonderfully,
+even when it looked displeased. Monteriano was sad without her; the rain
+was thickening; the scraps of Donizetti floated tunelessly out of the
+wineshops, and of the great tower opposite he could only see the base,
+fresh papered with the advertisements of quacks.
+
+A man came up the street with a note. Philip read, "Start at once. Pick
+me up outside the gate. Pay the bearer. H. H."
+
+"Did the lady give you this note?" he cried.
+
+The man was unintelligible.
+
+"Speak up!" exclaimed Philip. "Who gave it you--and where?"
+
+Nothing but horrible sighings and bubblings came out of the man.
+
+"Be patient with him," said the driver, turning round on the box. "It is
+the poor idiot." And the landlady came out of the hotel and echoed "The
+poor idiot. He cannot speak. He takes messages for us all."
+
+Philip then saw that the messenger was a ghastly creature, quite bald,
+with trickling eyes and grey twitching nose. In another country he would
+have been shut up; here he was accepted as a public institution, and
+part of Nature's scheme.
+
+"Ugh!" shuddered the Englishman. "Signora padrona, find out from him;
+this note is from my sister. What does it mean? Where did he see her?"
+
+"It is no good," said the landlady. "He understands everything but he
+can explain nothing."
+
+"He has visions of the saints," said the man who drove the cab.
+
+"But my sister--where has she gone? How has she met him?"
+
+"She has gone for a walk," asserted the landlady. It was a nasty
+evening, but she was beginning to understand the English. "She has gone
+for a walk--perhaps to wish good-bye to her little nephew. Preferring to
+come back another way, she has sent you this note by the poor idiot and
+is waiting for you outside the Siena gate. Many of my guests do this."
+
+There was nothing to do but to obey the message. He shook hands with
+the landlady, gave the messenger a nickel piece, and drove away. After
+a dozen yards the carriage stopped. The poor idiot was running and
+whimpering behind.
+
+"Go on," cried Philip. "I have paid him plenty."
+
+A horrible hand pushed three soldi into his lap. It was part of the
+idiot's malady only to receive what was just for his services. This was
+the change out of the nickel piece.
+
+"Go on!" shouted Philip, and flung the money into the road. He was
+frightened at the episode; the whole of life had become unreal. It was
+a relief to be out of the Siena gate. They drew up for a moment on the
+terrace. But there was no sign of Harriet. The driver called to the
+Dogana men. But they had seen no English lady pass.
+
+"What am I to do?" he cried; "it is not like the lady to be late. We
+shall miss the train."
+
+"Let us drive slowly," said the driver, "and you shall call her by name
+as we go."
+
+So they started down into the night, Philip calling "Harriet! Harriet!
+Harriet!" And there she was, waiting for them in the wet, at the first
+turn of the zigzag.
+
+"Harriet, why don't you answer?"
+
+"I heard you coming," said she, and got quickly in. Not till then did he
+see that she carried a bundle.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Hush--"
+
+"Whatever is that?"
+
+"Hush--sleeping."
+
+Harriet had succeeded where Miss Abbott and Philip had failed. It was
+the baby.
+
+She would not let him talk. The baby, she repeated, was asleep, and she
+put up an umbrella to shield it and her from the rain. He should
+hear all later, so he had to conjecture the course of the wonderful
+interview--an interview between the South pole and the North. It was
+quite easy to conjecture: Gino crumpling up suddenly before the intense
+conviction of Harriet; being told, perhaps, to his face that he was a
+villain; yielding his only son perhaps for money, perhaps for nothing.
+"Poor Gino," he thought. "He's no greater than I am, after all."
+
+Then he thought of Miss Abbott, whose carriage must be descending the
+darkness some mile or two below them, and his easy self-accusation
+failed. She, too, had conviction; he had felt its force; he would feel
+it again when she knew this day's sombre and unexpected close.
+
+"You have been pretty secret," he said; "you might tell me a little now.
+What do we pay for him? All we've got?"
+
+"Hush!" answered Harriet, and dandled the bundle laboriously, like some
+bony prophetess--Judith, or Deborah, or Jael. He had last seen the baby
+sprawling on the knees of Miss Abbott, shining and naked, with twenty
+miles of view behind him, and his father kneeling by his feet. And
+that remembrance, together with Harriet, and the darkness, and the
+poor idiot, and the silent rain, filled him with sorrow and with the
+expectation of sorrow to come.
+
+Monteriano had long disappeared, and he could see nothing but the
+occasional wet stem of an olive, which their lamp illumined as they
+passed it. They travelled quickly, for this driver did not care how fast
+he went to the station, and would dash down each incline and scuttle
+perilously round the curves.
+
+"Look here, Harriet," he said at last, "I feel bad; I want to see the
+baby."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"I don't mind if I do wake him up. I want to see him. I've as much right
+in him as you."
+
+Harriet gave in. But it was too dark for him to see the child's face.
+"Wait a minute," he whispered, and before she could stop him he had
+lit a match under the shelter of her umbrella. "But he's awake!" he
+exclaimed. The match went out.
+
+"Good ickle quiet boysey, then."
+
+Philip winced. "His face, do you know, struck me as all wrong."
+
+"All wrong?"
+
+"All puckered queerly."
+
+"Of course--with the shadows--you couldn't see him."
+
+"Well, hold him up again." She did so. He lit another match. It went out
+quickly, but not before he had seen that the baby was crying.
+
+"Nonsense," said Harriet sharply. "We should hear him if he cried."
+
+"No, he's crying hard; I thought so before, and I'm certain now."
+
+Harriet touched the child's face. It was bathed in tears. "Oh, the night
+air, I suppose," she said, "or perhaps the wet of the rain."
+
+"I say, you haven't hurt it, or held it the wrong way, or anything;
+it is too uncanny--crying and no noise. Why didn't you get Perfetta to
+carry it to the hotel instead of muddling with the messenger? It's a
+marvel he understood about the note."
+
+"Oh, he understands." And he could feel her shudder. "He tried to carry
+the baby--"
+
+"But why not Gino or Perfetta?"
+
+"Philip, don't talk. Must I say it again? Don't talk. The baby wants
+to sleep." She crooned harshly as they descended, and now and then she
+wiped up the tears which welled inexhaustibly from the little eyes.
+Philip looked away, winking at times himself. It was as if they were
+travelling with the whole world's sorrow, as if all the mystery, all the
+persistency of woe were gathered to a single fount. The roads were
+now coated with mud, and the carriage went more quietly but not less
+swiftly, sliding by long zigzags into the night. He knew the landmarks
+pretty well: here was the crossroad to Poggibonsi; and the last view of
+Monteriano, if they had light, would be from here. Soon they ought to
+come to that little wood where violets were so plentiful in spring. He
+wished the weather had not changed; it was not cold, but the air was
+extraordinarily damp. It could not be good for the child.
+
+"I suppose he breathes, and all that sort of thing?" he said.
+
+"Of course," said Harriet, in an angry whisper. "You've started him
+again. I'm certain he was asleep. I do wish you wouldn't talk; it makes
+me so nervous."
+
+"I'm nervous too. I wish he'd scream. It's too uncanny. Poor Gino! I'm
+terribly sorry for Gino."
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"Because he's weak--like most of us. He doesn't know what he wants. He
+doesn't grip on to life. But I like that man, and I'm sorry for him."
+
+Naturally enough she made no answer.
+
+"You despise him, Harriet, and you despise me. But you do us no good
+by it. We fools want some one to set us on our feet. Suppose a really
+decent woman had set up Gino--I believe Caroline Abbott might have done
+it--mightn't he have been another man?"
+
+"Philip," she interrupted, with an attempt at nonchalance, "do you
+happen to have those matches handy? We might as well look at the baby
+again if you have."
+
+The first match blew out immediately. So did the second. He suggested
+that they should stop the carriage and borrow the lamp from the driver.
+
+"Oh, I don't want all that bother. Try again."
+
+They entered the little wood as he tried to strike the third match.
+At last it caught. Harriet poised the umbrella rightly, and for a full
+quarter minute they contemplated the face that trembled in the light of
+the trembling flame. Then there was a shout and a crash. They were lying
+in the mud in darkness. The carriage had overturned.
+
+Philip was a good deal hurt. He sat up and rocked himself to and fro,
+holding his arm. He could just make out the outline of the carriage
+above him, and the outlines of the carriage cushions and of their
+luggage upon the grey road. The accident had taken place in the wood,
+where it was even darker than in the open.
+
+"Are you all right?" he managed to say. Harriet was screaming, the horse
+was kicking, the driver was cursing some other man.
+
+Harriet's screams became coherent. "The baby--the baby--it slipped--it's
+gone from my arms--I stole it!"
+
+"God help me!" said Philip. A cold circle came round his mouth, and, he
+fainted.
+
+When he recovered it was still the same confusion. The horse was
+kicking, the baby had not been found, and Harriet still screamed like a
+maniac, "I stole it! I stole it! I stole it! It slipped out of my arms!"
+
+"Keep still!" he commanded the driver. "Let no one move. We may tread on
+it. Keep still."
+
+For a moment they all obeyed him. He began to crawl through the mud,
+touching first this, then that, grasping the cushions by mistake,
+listening for the faintest whisper that might guide him. He tried to
+light a match, holding the box in his teeth and striking at it with the
+uninjured hand. At last he succeeded, and the light fell upon the bundle
+which he was seeking.
+
+It had rolled off the road into the wood a little way, and had fallen
+across a great rut. So tiny it was that had it fallen lengthways it
+would have disappeared, and he might never have found it.
+
+"I stole it! I and the idiot--no one was there." She burst out laughing.
+
+He sat down and laid it on his knee. Then he tried to cleanse the face
+from the mud and the rain and the tears. His arm, he supposed, was
+broken, but he could still move it a little, and for the moment he
+forgot all pain. He was listening--not for a cry, but for the tick of a
+heart or the slightest tremor of breath.
+
+"Where are you?" called a voice. It was Miss Abbott, against whose
+carriage they had collided. She had relit one of the lamps, and was
+picking her way towards him.
+
+"Silence!" he called again, and again they obeyed. He shook the bundle;
+he breathed into it; he opened his coat and pressed it against him. Then
+he listened, and heard nothing but the rain and the panting horses, and
+Harriet, who was somewhere chuckling to herself in the dark.
+
+Miss Abbott approached, and took it gently from him. The face was
+already chilly, but thanks to Philip it was no longer wet. Nor would it
+again be wetted by any tear.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+The details of Harriet's crime were never known. In her illness
+she spoke more of the inlaid box that she lent to Lilia--lent, not
+given--than of recent troubles. It was clear that she had gone prepared
+for an interview with Gino, and finding him out, she had yielded to a
+grotesque temptation. But how far this was the result of ill-temper, to
+what extent she had been fortified by her religion, when and how she had
+met the poor idiot--these questions were never answered, nor did they
+interest Philip greatly. Detection was certain: they would have been
+arrested by the police of Florence or Milan, or at the frontier. As it
+was, they had been stopped in a simpler manner a few miles out of the
+town.
+
+As yet he could scarcely survey the thing. It was too great. Round the
+Italian baby who had died in the mud there centred deep passions and
+high hopes. People had been wicked or wrong in the matter; no one save
+himself had been trivial. Now the baby had gone, but there remained this
+vast apparatus of pride and pity and love. For the dead, who seemed
+to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours. The
+passion they have aroused lives after them, easy to transmute or to
+transfer, but well-nigh impossible to destroy. And Philip knew that he
+was still voyaging on the same magnificent, perilous sea, with the sun
+or the clouds above him, and the tides below.
+
+The course of the moment--that, at all events, was certain. He and no
+one else must take the news to Gino. It was easy to talk of Harriet's
+crime--easy also to blame the negligent Perfetta or Mrs. Herriton at
+home. Every one had contributed--even Miss Abbott and Irma. If one
+chose, one might consider the catastrophe composite or the work of fate.
+But Philip did not so choose. It was his own fault, due to acknowledged
+weakness in his own character. Therefore he, and no one else, must take
+the news of it to Gino.
+
+Nothing prevented him. Miss Abbott was engaged with Harriet, and people
+had sprung out of the darkness and were conducting them towards some
+cottage. Philip had only to get into the uninjured carriage and order
+the driver to return. He was back at Monteriano after a two hours'
+absence. Perfetta was in the house now, and greeted him cheerfully.
+Pain, physical and mental, had made him stupid. It was some time before
+he realized that she had never missed the child.
+
+Gino was still out. The woman took him to the reception-room, just as
+she had taken Miss Abbott in the morning, and dusted a circle for him on
+one of the horsehair chairs. But it was dark now, so she left the guest
+a little lamp.
+
+"I will be as quick as I can," she told him. "But there are many streets
+in Monteriano; he is sometimes difficult to find. I could not find him
+this morning."
+
+"Go first to the Caffe Garibaldi," said Philip, remembering that this
+was the hour appointed by his friends of yesterday.
+
+He occupied the time he was left alone not in thinking--there was
+nothing to think about; he simply had to tell a few facts--but in trying
+to make a sling for his broken arm. The trouble was in the elbow-joint,
+and as long as he kept this motionless he could go on as usual. But
+inflammation was beginning, and the slightest jar gave him agony. The
+sling was not fitted before Gino leapt up the stairs, crying--
+
+"So you are back! How glad I am! We are all waiting--"
+
+Philip had seen too much to be nervous. In low, even tones he told what
+had happened; and the other, also perfectly calm, heard him to the end.
+In the silence Perfetta called up that she had forgotten the baby's
+evening milk; she must fetch it. When she had gone Gino took up the lamp
+without a word, and they went into the other room.
+
+"My sister is ill," said Philip, "and Miss Abbott is guiltless. I should
+be glad if you did not have to trouble them."
+
+Gino had stooped down by the way, and was feeling the place where his
+son had lain. Now and then he frowned a little and glanced at Philip.
+
+"It is through me," he continued. "It happened because I was cowardly
+and idle. I have come to know what you will do."
+
+Gino had left the rug, and began to pat the table from the end, as if
+he was blind. The action was so uncanny that Philip was driven to
+intervene.
+
+"Gently, man, gently; he is not here."
+
+He went up and touched him on the shoulder.
+
+He twitched away, and began to pass his hands over things more
+rapidly--over the table, the chairs, the entire floor, the walls as high
+as he could reach them. Philip had not presumed to comfort him. But now
+the tension was too great--he tried.
+
+"Break down, Gino; you must break down. Scream and curse and give in for
+a little; you must break down."
+
+There was no reply, and no cessation of the sweeping hands.
+
+"It is time to be unhappy. Break down or you will be ill like my sister.
+You will go--"
+
+The tour of the room was over. He had touched everything in it except
+Philip. Now he approached him. He face was that of a man who has lost
+his old reason for life and seeks a new one.
+
+"Gino!"
+
+He stopped for a moment; then he came nearer. Philip stood his ground.
+
+"You are to do what you like with me, Gino. Your son is dead, Gino. He
+died in my arms, remember. It does not excuse me; but he did die in my
+arms."
+
+The left hand came forward, slowly this time. It hovered before Philip
+like an insect. Then it descended and gripped him by his broken elbow.
+
+Philip struck out with all the strength of his other arm. Gino fell to
+the blow without a cry or a word.
+
+"You brute!" exclaimed the Englishman. "Kill me if you like! But just
+you leave my broken arm alone."
+
+Then he was seized with remorse, and knelt beside his adversary and
+tried to revive him. He managed to raise him up, and propped his body
+against his own. He passed his arm round him. Again he was filled with
+pity and tenderness. He awaited the revival without fear, sure that both
+of them were safe at last.
+
+Gino recovered suddenly. His lips moved. For one blessed moment it
+seemed that he was going to speak. But he scrambled up in silence,
+remembering everything, and he made not towards Philip, but towards the
+lamp.
+
+"Do what you like; but think first--"
+
+The lamp was tossed across the room, out through the loggia. It broke
+against one of the trees below. Philip began to cry out in the dark.
+
+Gino approached from behind and gave him a sharp pinch. Philip spun
+round with a yell. He had only been pinched on the back, but he knew
+what was in store for him. He struck out, exhorting the devil to fight
+him, to kill him, to do anything but this. Then he stumbled to the door.
+It was open. He lost his head, and, instead of turning down the stairs,
+he ran across the landing into the room opposite. There he lay down on
+the floor between the stove and the skirting-board.
+
+His senses grew sharper. He could hear Gino coming in on tiptoe. He even
+knew what was passing in his mind, how now he was at fault, now he
+was hopeful, now he was wondering whether after all the victim had not
+escaped down the stairs. There was a quick swoop above him, and then
+a low growl like a dog's. Gino had broken his finger-nails against the
+stove.
+
+Physical pain is almost too terrible to bear. We can just bear it when
+it comes by accident or for our good--as it generally does in modern
+life--except at school. But when it is caused by the malignity of a
+man, full grown, fashioned like ourselves, all our control disappears.
+Philip's one thought was to get away from that room at whatever
+sacrifice of nobility or pride.
+
+Gino was now at the further end of the room, groping by the little
+tables. Suddenly the instinct came to him. He crawled quickly to where
+Philip lay and had him clean by the elbow.
+
+The whole arm seemed red-hot, and the broken bone grated in the joint,
+sending out shoots of the essence of pain. His other arm was pinioned
+against the wall, and Gino had trampled in behind the stove and was
+kneeling on his legs. For the space of a minute he yelled and yelled
+with all the force of his lungs. Then this solace was denied him. The
+other hand, moist and strong, began to close round his throat.
+
+At first he was glad, for here, he thought, was death at last. But
+it was only a new torture; perhaps Gino inherited the skill of his
+ancestors--and childlike ruffians who flung each other from the towers.
+Just as the windpipe closed, the hand fell off, and Philip was revived
+by the motion of his arm. And just as he was about to faint and gain at
+last one moment of oblivion, the motion stopped, and he would struggle
+instead against the pressure on his throat.
+
+Vivid pictures were dancing through the pain--Lilia dying some months
+back in this very house, Miss Abbott bending over the baby, his mother
+at home, now reading evening prayers to the servants. He felt that he
+was growing weaker; his brain wandered; the agony did not seem so great.
+Not all Gino's care could indefinitely postpone the end. His yells and
+gurgles became mechanical--functions of the tortured flesh rather than
+true notes of indignation and despair. He was conscious of a horrid
+tumbling. Then his arm was pulled a little too roughly, and everything
+was quiet at last.
+
+"But your son is dead, Gino. Your son is dead, dear Gino. Your son is
+dead."
+
+The room was full of light, and Miss Abbott had Gino by the shoulders,
+holding him down in a chair. She was exhausted with the struggle, and
+her arms were trembling.
+
+"What is the good of another death? What is the good of more pain?"
+
+He too began to tremble. Then he turned and looked curiously at Philip,
+whose face, covered with dust and foam, was visible by the stove. Miss
+Abbott allowed him to get up, though she still held him firmly. He gave
+a loud and curious cry--a cry of interrogation it might be called. Below
+there was the noise of Perfetta returning with the baby's milk.
+
+"Go to him," said Miss Abbott, indicating Philip. "Pick him up. Treat
+him kindly."
+
+She released him, and he approached Philip slowly. His eyes were filling
+with trouble. He bent down, as if he would gently raise him up.
+
+"Help! help!" moaned Philip. His body had suffered too much from Gino.
+It could not bear to be touched by him.
+
+Gino seemed to understand. He stopped, crouched above him. Miss Abbott
+herself came forward and lifted her friend in her arms.
+
+"Oh, the foul devil!" he murmured. "Kill him! Kill him for me."
+
+Miss Abbott laid him tenderly on the couch and wiped his face. Then she
+said gravely to them both, "This thing stops here."
+
+"Latte! latte!" cried Perfetta, hilariously ascending the stairs.
+
+"Remember," she continued, "there is to be no revenge. I will have no
+more intentional evil. We are not to fight with each other any more."
+
+"I shall never forgive him," sighed Philip.
+
+"Latte! latte freschissima! bianca come neve!" Perfetta came in with
+another lamp and a little jug.
+
+Gino spoke for the first time. "Put the milk on the table," he said.
+"It will not be wanted in the other room." The peril was over at last.
+A great sob shook the whole body, another followed, and then he gave a
+piercing cry of woe, and stumbled towards Miss Abbott like a child and
+clung to her.
+
+All through the day Miss Abbott had seemed to Philip like a goddess, and
+more than ever did she seem so now. Many people look younger and more
+intimate during great emotion. But some there are who look older, and
+remote, and he could not think that there was little difference in
+years, and none in composition, between her and the man whose head was
+laid upon her breast. Her eyes were open, full of infinite pity and
+full of majesty, as if they discerned the boundaries of sorrow, and saw
+unimaginable tracts beyond. Such eyes he had seen in great pictures but
+never in a mortal. Her hands were folded round the sufferer, stroking
+him lightly, for even a goddess can do no more than that. And it seemed
+fitting, too, that she should bend her head and touch his forehead with
+her lips.
+
+Philip looked away, as he sometimes looked away from the great pictures
+where visible forms suddenly become inadequate for the things they have
+shown to us. He was happy; he was assured that there was greatness in
+the world. There came to him an earnest desire to be good through the
+example of this good woman. He would try henceforward to be worthy of
+the things she had revealed. Quietly, without hysterical prayers or
+banging of drums, he underwent conversion. He was saved.
+
+"That milk," said she, "need not be wasted. Take it, Signor Carella, and
+persuade Mr. Herriton to drink."
+
+Gino obeyed her, and carried the child's milk to Philip. And Philip
+obeyed also and drank.
+
+"Is there any left?"
+
+"A little," answered Gino.
+
+"Then finish it." For she was determined to use such remnants as lie
+about the world.
+
+"Will you not have some?"
+
+"I do not care for milk; finish it all."
+
+"Philip, have you had enough milk?"
+
+"Yes, thank you, Gino; finish it all."
+
+He drank the milk, and then, either by accident or in some spasm of
+pain, broke the jug to pieces. Perfetta exclaimed in bewilderment. "It
+does not matter," he told her. "It does not matter. It will never be
+wanted any more."
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+"He will have to marry her," said Philip. "I heard from him this
+morning, just as we left Milan. He finds he has gone too far to back
+out. It would be expensive. I don't know how much he minds--not as much
+as we suppose, I think. At all events there's not a word of blame in the
+letter. I don't believe he even feels angry. I never was so completely
+forgiven. Ever since you stopped him killing me, it has been a vision of
+perfect friendship. He nursed me, he lied for me at the inquest, and at
+the funeral, though he was crying, you would have thought it was my son
+who had died. Certainly I was the only person he had to be kind to;
+he was so distressed not to make Harriet's acquaintance, and that he
+scarcely saw anything of you. In his letter he says so again."
+
+"Thank him, please, when you write," said Miss Abbott, "and give him my
+kindest regards."
+
+"Indeed I will." He was surprised that she could slide away from the
+man so easily. For his own part, he was bound by ties of almost alarming
+intimacy. Gino had the southern knack of friendship. In the intervals
+of business he would pull out Philip's life, turn it inside out,
+remodel it, and advise him how to use it for the best. The sensation was
+pleasant, for he was a kind as well as a skilful operator. But Philip
+came away feeling that he had not a secret corner left. In that
+very letter Gino had again implored him, as a refuge from domestic
+difficulties, "to marry Miss Abbott, even if her dowry is small." And
+how Miss Abbott herself, after such tragic intercourse, could resume
+the conventions and send calm messages of esteem, was more than he could
+understand.
+
+"When will you see him again?" she asked. They were standing together in
+the corridor of the train, slowly ascending out of Italy towards the San
+Gothard tunnel.
+
+"I hope next spring. Perhaps we shall paint Siena red for a day or
+two with some of the new wife's money. It was one of the arguments for
+marrying her."
+
+"He has no heart," she said severely. "He does not really mind about the
+child at all."
+
+"No; you're wrong. He does. He is unhappy, like the rest of us. But he
+doesn't try to keep up appearances as we do. He knows that the things
+that have made him happy once will probably make him happy again--"
+
+"He said he would never be happy again."
+
+"In his passion. Not when he was calm. We English say it when we are
+calm--when we do not really believe it any longer. Gino is not ashamed
+of inconsistency. It is one of the many things I like him for."
+
+"Yes; I was wrong. That is so."
+
+"He's much more honest with himself than I am," continued Philip, "and
+he is honest without an effort and without pride. But you, Miss Abbott,
+what about you? Will you be in Italy next spring?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'm sorry. When will you come back, do you think?"
+
+"I think never."
+
+"For whatever reason?" He stared at her as if she were some monstrosity.
+
+"Because I understand the place. There is no need."
+
+"Understand Italy!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Well, I don't. And I don't understand you," he murmured to himself, as
+he paced away from her up the corridor. By this time he loved her very
+much, and he could not bear to be puzzled. He had reached love by the
+spiritual path: her thoughts and her goodness and her nobility had
+moved him first, and now her whole body and all its gestures had become
+transfigured by them. The beauties that are called obvious--the beauties
+of her hair and her voice and her limbs--he had noticed these
+last; Gino, who never traversed any path at all, had commended them
+dispassionately to his friend.
+
+Why was he so puzzling? He had known so much about her once--what she
+thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew
+that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him
+just as he needed it most. Why would she never come to Italy again? Why
+had she avoided himself and Gino ever since the evening that she had
+saved their lives? The train was nearly empty. Harriet slumbered in
+a compartment by herself. He must ask her these questions now, and he
+returned quickly to her down the corridor.
+
+She greeted him with a question of her own. "Are your plans decided?"
+
+"Yes. I can't live at Sawston."
+
+"Have you told Mrs. Herriton?"
+
+"I wrote from Monteriano. I tried to explain things; but she will
+never understand me. Her view will be that the affair is settled--sadly
+settled since the baby is dead. Still it's over; our family circle need
+be vexed no more. She won't even be angry with you. You see, you have
+done us no harm in the long run. Unless, of course, you talk about
+Harriet and make a scandal. So that is my plan--London and work. What is
+yours?"
+
+"Poor Harriet!" said Miss Abbott. "As if I dare judge Harriet! Or
+anybody." And without replying to Philip's question she left him to
+visit the other invalid.
+
+Philip gazed after her mournfully, and then he looked mournfully out of
+the window at the decreasing streams. All the excitement was over--the
+inquest, Harriet's short illness, his own visit to the surgeon. He was
+convalescent, both in body and spirit, but convalescence brought no joy.
+In the looking-glass at the end of the corridor he saw his face haggard,
+and his shoulders pulled forward by the weight of the sling. Life was
+greater than he had supposed, but it was even less complete. He had seen
+the need for strenuous work and for righteousness. And now he saw what a
+very little way those things would go.
+
+"Is Harriet going to be all right?" he asked. Miss Abbott had come back
+to him.
+
+"She will soon be her old self," was the reply. For Harriet, after a
+short paroxysm of illness and remorse, was quickly returning to her
+normal state. She had been "thoroughly upset" as she phrased it, but
+she soon ceased to realize that anything was wrong beyond the death of
+a poor little child. Already she spoke of "this unlucky accident," and
+"the mysterious frustration of one's attempts to make things better."
+Miss Abbott had seen that she was comfortable, and had given her a kind
+kiss. But she returned feeling that Harriet, like her mother, considered
+the affair as settled.
+
+"I'm clear enough about Harriet's future, and about parts of my own. But
+I ask again, What about yours?"
+
+"Sawston and work," said Miss Abbott.
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?" she asked, smiling.
+
+"You've seen too much. You've seen as much and done more than I have."
+
+"But it's so different. Of course I shall go to Sawston. You forget
+my father; and even if he wasn't there, I've a hundred ties: my
+district--I'm neglecting it shamefully--my evening classes, the St.
+James'--"
+
+"Silly nonsense!" he exploded, suddenly moved to have the whole thing
+out with her. "You're too good--about a thousand times better than I am.
+You can't live in that hole; you must go among people who can hope to
+understand you. I mind for myself. I want to see you often--again and
+again."
+
+"Of course we shall meet whenever you come down; and I hope that it will
+mean often."
+
+"It's not enough; it'll only be in the old horrible way, each with a
+dozen relatives round us. No, Miss Abbott; it's not good enough."
+
+"We can write at all events."
+
+"You will write?" he cried, with a flush of pleasure. At times his hopes
+seemed so solid.
+
+"I will indeed."
+
+"But I say it's not enough--you can't go back to the old life if you
+wanted to. Too much has happened."
+
+"I know that," she said sadly.
+
+"Not only pain and sorrow, but wonderful things: that tower in the
+sunlight--do you remember it, and all you said to me? The theatre, even.
+And the next day--in the church; and our times with Gino."
+
+"All the wonderful things are over," she said. "That is just where it
+is."
+
+"I don't believe it. At all events not for me. The most wonderful things
+may be to come--"
+
+"The wonderful things are over," she repeated, and looked at him so
+mournfully that he dare not contradict her. The train was crawling up
+the last ascent towards the Campanile of Airolo and the entrance of the
+tunnel.
+
+"Miss Abbott," he murmured, speaking quickly, as if their free
+intercourse might soon be ended, "what is the matter with you? I
+thought I understood you, and I don't. All those two great first days at
+Monteriano I read you as clearly as you read me still. I saw why you
+had come, and why you changed sides, and afterwards I saw your wonderful
+courage and pity. And now you're frank with me one moment, as you used
+to be, and the next moment you shut me up. You see I owe too much to
+you--my life, and I don't know what besides. I won't stand it. You've
+gone too far to turn mysterious. I'll quote what you said to me: 'Don't
+be mysterious; there isn't the time.' I'll quote something else: 'I and
+my life must be where I live.' You can't live at Sawston."
+
+He had moved her at last. She whispered to herself hurriedly. "It is
+tempting--" And those three words threw him into a tumult of joy. What
+was tempting to her? After all was the greatest of things possible?
+Perhaps, after long estrangement, after much tragedy, the South had
+brought them together in the end. That laughter in the theatre, those
+silver stars in the purple sky, even the violets of a departed spring,
+all had helped, and sorrow had helped also, and so had tenderness to
+others.
+
+"It is tempting," she repeated, "not to be mysterious. I've wanted often
+to tell you, and then been afraid. I could never tell any one else,
+certainly no woman, and I think you're the one man who might understand
+and not be disgusted."
+
+"Are you lonely?" he whispered. "Is it anything like that?"
+
+"Yes." The train seemed to shake him towards her. He was resolved that
+though a dozen people were looking, he would yet take her in his
+arms. "I'm terribly lonely, or I wouldn't speak. I think you must know
+already." Their faces were crimson, as if the same thought was surging
+through them both.
+
+"Perhaps I do." He came close to her. "Perhaps I could speak instead.
+But if you will say the word plainly you'll never be sorry; I will thank
+you for it all my life."
+
+She said plainly, "That I love him." Then she broke down. Her body was
+shaken with sobs, and lest there should be any doubt she cried between
+the sobs for Gino! Gino! Gino!
+
+He heard himself remark "Rather! I love him too! When I can forget how
+he hurt me that evening. Though whenever we shake hands--" One of them
+must have moved a step or two, for when she spoke again she was already
+a little way apart.
+
+"You've upset me." She stifled something that was perilously near
+hysterics. "I thought I was past all this. You're taking it wrongly. I'm
+in love with Gino--don't pass it off--I mean it crudely--you know what I
+mean. So laugh at me."
+
+"Laugh at love?" asked Philip.
+
+"Yes. Pull it to pieces. Tell me I'm a fool or worse--that he's a cad.
+Say all you said when Lilia fell in love with him. That's the help
+I want. I dare tell you this because I like you--and because you're
+without passion; you look on life as a spectacle; you don't enter it;
+you only find it funny or beautiful. So I can trust you to cure me.
+Mr. Herriton, isn't it funny?" She tried to laugh herself, but became
+frightened and had to stop. "He's not a gentleman, nor a Christian, nor
+good in any way. He's never flattered me nor honoured me. But because
+he's handsome, that's been enough. The son of an Italian dentist, with
+a pretty face." She repeated the phrase as if it was a charm against
+passion. "Oh, Mr. Herriton, isn't it funny!" Then, to his relief, she
+began to cry. "I love him, and I'm not ashamed of it. I love him, and
+I'm going to Sawston, and if I mayn't speak about him to you sometimes,
+I shall die."
+
+In that terrible discovery Philip managed to think not of himself but of
+her. He did not lament. He did not even speak to her kindly, for he saw
+that she could not stand it. A flippant reply was what she asked and
+needed--something flippant and a little cynical. And indeed it was the
+only reply he could trust himself to make.
+
+"Perhaps it is what the books call 'a passing fancy'?"
+
+She shook her head. Even this question was too pathetic. For as far
+as she knew anything about herself, she knew that her passions, once
+aroused, were sure. "If I saw him often," she said, "I might remember
+what he is like. Or he might grow old. But I dare not risk it, so
+nothing can alter me now."
+
+"Well, if the fancy does pass, let me know." After all, he could say
+what he wanted.
+
+"Oh, you shall know quick enough--"
+
+"But before you retire to Sawston--are you so mighty sure?"
+
+"What of?" She had stopped crying. He was treating her exactly as she
+had hoped.
+
+"That you and he--" He smiled bitterly at the thought of them together.
+Here was the cruel antique malice of the gods, such as they once sent
+forth against Pasiphae. Centuries of aspiration and culture--and the
+world could not escape it. "I was going to say--whatever have you got in
+common?"
+
+"Nothing except the times we have seen each other." Again her face was
+crimson. He turned his own face away.
+
+"Which--which times?"
+
+"The time I thought you weak and heedless, and went instead of you to
+get the baby. That began it, as far as I know the beginning. Or it may
+have begun when you took us to the theatre, and I saw him mixed up with
+music and light. But didn't understand till the morning. Then you opened
+the door--and I knew why I had been so happy. Afterwards, in the church,
+I prayed for us all; not for anything new, but that we might just be as
+we were--he with the child he loved, you and I and Harriet safe out of
+the place--and that I might never see him or speak to him again. I could
+have pulled through then--the thing was only coming near, like a wreath
+of smoke; it hadn't wrapped me round."
+
+"But through my fault," said Philip solemnly, "he is parted from the
+child he loves. And because my life was in danger you came and saw
+him and spoke to him again." For the thing was even greater than she
+imagined. Nobody but himself would ever see round it now. And to see
+round it he was standing at an immense distance. He could even be glad
+that she had once held the beloved in her arms.
+
+"Don't talk of 'faults.' You're my friend for ever, Mr. Herriton, I
+think. Only don't be charitable and shift or take the blame. Get over
+supposing I'm refined. That's what puzzles you. Get over that."
+
+As he spoke she seemed to be transfigured, and to have indeed no part
+with refinement or unrefinement any longer. Out of this wreck there was
+revealed to him something indestructible--something which she, who had
+given it, could never take away.
+
+"I say again, don't be charitable. If he had asked me, I might have
+given myself body and soul. That would have been the end of my rescue
+party. But all through he took me for a superior being--a goddess. I
+who was worshipping every inch of him, and every word he spoke. And that
+saved me."
+
+Philip's eyes were fixed on the Campanile of Airolo. But he saw instead
+the fair myth of Endymion. This woman was a goddess to the end. For
+her no love could be degrading: she stood outside all degradation. This
+episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him,
+remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted, that
+without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper
+too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things
+had happened.
+
+"Thank you," was all that he permitted himself. "Thank you for
+everything."
+
+She looked at him with great friendliness, for he had made her life
+endurable. At that moment the train entered the San Gothard tunnel. They
+hurried back to the carriage to close the windows lest the smuts should
+get into Harriet's eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Where Angels Fear to Tread, by E. M. Forster
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