Miss Raby was sitting opposite the famous fresco, which formed the only decoration of the room. It had been discovered during some repairs; and, though the surface had been injured in places, the colours were still bright. Signora Cantù attributed it now to Titian, now to Giotto, and declared that no one could interpret its meaning; professors and artists had puzzled themselves in vain. This she said because it pleased her to say it; the meaning was perfectly clear, and had been frequently explained to her. Those four figures were sibyls, holding prophecies of the Nativity. It was uncertain for what original reason they had been painted high up in the mountains, at the extreme boundary of Italian art. Now, at all events, they were an invaluable source of conversation; and many an acquaintance had been opened, and argument averted, by their timely presence on the wall.
‘Aren’t those saints cunning!’ said an American lady, following Miss Raby’s glance.
The lady’s father muttered something about superstition. They were a lugubrious couple, lately returned from the Holy Land, where they had been cheated shamefully, and their attitude towards religion had suffered in consequence.
Miss Raby said, rather sharply, that the saints were sibyls.
‘But I don’t recall sibyls,’ said the lady, ‘either in the N.T. or the O.’
‘Inventions of the priests to deceive the peasantry,’ said the father sadly. ‘Same as their churches; tinsel pretending to be gold, cotton pretending to be silk, stucco pretending to be marble; same as their processions, same as their – (he swore) – campaniles.’
‘My father,’ said the lady, bending forward, ‘he does suffer so from insomnia. Fancy a bell every morning at six!’
‘Yes, ma’am; you profit. We’ve stopped it.’
‘Stopped the early bell ringing?’ cried Miss Raby. People looked up to see who she was. Some one whispered that she wrote.
He replied that he had come up all these feet for rest, and that if he did not get it he would move on to another centre. The English and American visitors had co-operated, and forceed the hotel-keepers to take action. Now the priests rang a dinner bell, which was endurable. He believed that ‘co-operation’ would do anything: it had been the same with the peasants.
‘How did the tourists interfere with the peasants?’ asked Miss Raby, getting very hot, and trembling all over.
‘We said the same; we had come for rest, and we would have it. Every week they got drunk and sang till two. Is that a proper way to go on, anyhow?’
‘I remember,’ said Miss Raby, ‘that some of them did get drunk. But I also remember how they sang.’
‘Quite so. Till two,’ he retorted.
They parted in mutual irritation. She left him holding forth on the necessity of a new universal religion of the open air. Over his head stood the four sibyls, gracious for all their clumsiness and crudity, each proffering a tablet inscribed with concise promise of redemption. If the old religions had indeed become insufficient for humanity, it did not seem probable that an adequate substitute would be produced in America.
It was too early to pay her promised visit to Signora Cantù. Nor was Elizabeth, who had been rude overnight and was now tiresomely penitent, a possible companion. There were a few tables outside the inn, at which some women sat, drinking beer. Pollarded chestnuts shaded them; and a low wooden balustrade fenced them off from the village street. On this balustrade Miss Raby perched, for it gave her a view of the campanile. A critical eye could discover plenty of faults in its architecture. But she looked at it all with increasing pleasure, in which was mingled a certain gratitude.
The German waitress came out and suggested very civilly that she should find a more comfortable seat. This was the place where the lower classes ate; would she not go to the drawing-room?
‘Thank you, no; for how many years have you classified your guests according to their birth?’
‘For many years. It was necessary,’ replied the admirable woman. She returned to the house full of meat and common sense, one of the many signs that the Teuton was gaining on the Latin in this debatable valley.
A grey-haired lady came out next, shading her eyes from the sun, and crackling The Morning Post. She glanced at Miss Raby pleasantly, blew her nose, apologized for speaking, and spoke as follows:
‘This evening, I wonder if you know, there is a concert in aid of the stained-glass window for the English Church. Might I persuade you to take tickets? As has been said, it is so important that English people should have a rallying point, is it not?’
‘Most important,’ said Miss Raby; ‘but I wish the rallying point could be in England.’
The grey-haired lady smiled. Then she looked puzzled. Then she realized that she had been insulted, and, crackling The Morning Post, departed.
‘I have been rude,’ thought Miss Raby dejectedly. ‘Rude to a lady as silly and as grey-haired as myself. This is not a day on which I ought to talk to people.’
Her life had been successful, and on the whole happy. She was unaccustomed to that mood, which is termed depressed, but which certainly gives visions of wider, if greyer, horizons. That morning her outlook altered. She walked through the village, scarcely noticing the mountains by which it was still surrounded, or the unaltered radiance of its sun. But she was fully conscious of something new; of the indefinable corruption which is produced by the passage of a large number of people.
Even at that time the air was heavy with meat and drink, to which was added dust and tobacco smoke and the smell of tired horses. Carriages were huddled against the church, and underneath the campanile a woman was guarding a stack of bicycles. The season had been bad for climbing; and groups of young men in smart Norfolk suits were idling up and down, waiting to be hired as guides. Two large inexpensive hotels stood opposite the post office; and in front of them innumerable little tables surged out into the street. Here, from an early hour in the morning, eating had gone on, and would continue till a late hour at night. The customers, chiefly German, refreshed themselves with cries and with laughter, passing their arms round the waists of their wives. Then, rising heavily, they departed in single file towards some viewpoint, whereon a red flag indicated the possibility of another meal. The whole population was employed, even down to the little girls, who worried the guests to buy picture postcards and edelweiss. Vorta had taken to the tourist trade.
A village must have some trade; and this village had always been full of virility and power. Obscure and happy, its splendid energies had found employment in wresting a livelihood out of the earth, whence had come a certain dignity, and kindliness, and love for other men. Civilization did not relax these energies, but it had diverted them; and all the precious qualities, which might have helped to heal the world, had been destroyed. The family affection, the affection for the commune, the sane pastoral virtues – all had perished while the campanile which was to embody them was being built. No villain had done this thing: it was the work of ladies and gentlemen who were good and rich and often clever – who, if they thought about the matter at all, thought that they were conferring a benefit, moral as well as commercial, on any place in which they chose to stop.
Never before had Miss Raby been conscious of such universal misdoing. She returned to the Biscione shattered and exhausted, remembering that terrible text in which there is much semblance of justice: ‘But woe to him through whom the offence cometh.’
Signora Cantù, somewhat over-excited, was lying in a dark room on the ground floor. The walls were bare; for all the beautiful things were in the rooms of her guests whom she loved as a good queen might love her subjects – and the walls were dirty also, for this was Signora Cantù’s own room. But no palace had so fair a ceiling; for from the wooden beams were suspended a whole dowry of copper vessels – pails, cauldrons, water pots, of every colour from lustrous black to the palest pink. It pleased the old lady to look up at these tokens of prosperity. An American lady had lately departed without them, more puzzled than angry.
The two women ha
d little in common; for Signora Cantù was an inflexible aristocrat. Had she been a great lady of the great century, she would have gone speedily to the guillotine, and Miss Raby would have howled approval. Now, with her scanty hair in curl-papers, and the snuff-coloured shawl spread over her, she entertained the distinguished authoress with accounts of other distinguished people who had stopped, and might again stop, at the Biscione. At first her tone was dignified. But before long she proceeded to village news, and a certain bitterness began to show itself. She chronicled deaths with a kind of melancholy pride. Being old herself, she liked to meditate on the fairness of Fate, which had not spared her contemporaries, and often had not spared her juniors. Miss Raby was unaccustomed to extract such consolation. She too was growing old, but it would have pleased her better if others could have remained young. She remembered few of these people well, but deaths were symbolical, just as the death of a flower may symbolize the passing of all the spring.
Signora Cantù then went on to her own misfortunes, beginning with an account of a landslip, which had destroyed her little farm. A landslip, in that valley, never hurried. Under the green coat of turf water would collect, just as an abscess is formed under the skin. There would be a lump on the sloping meadow, then the lump would break and discharge a slowly-moving stream of mud and stones. Then the whole area seemed to be corrupted; on every side the grass cracked and doubled into fantastic creases, the trees grew awry, the barns and cottages collapsed, all the beauty turned gradually to indistinguishable pulp, which slid downwards till it was washed away by some stream.
From the farm they proceeded to other grievances, over which Miss Raby became almost too depressed to sympathize. It was a bad season; the guests did not understand the ways of the hotel; the servants did not understand the guests; she was told she ought to have a concierge. But what was the good of a concierge?
‘I have no idea,’ said Miss Raby, feeling that no concierge would ever restore the fortunes of the Biscione.
‘They say he would meet the diligence and entrap the new arrivals. What pleasure should I have from guests I entrapped?’
‘The other hotels do it,’ said Miss Raby, sadly.
‘Exactly. Every day a man comes down from the Alpes.’
There was an awkward silence. Hitherto they had avoided mentioning that name.
‘He takes them all,’ she continued, in a burst of passion. ‘My son takes all my guests. He has taken all the English nobility, and the best Americans, and all my old Milanese friends. He slanders me up and down the valley, saying that the drains are bad. The hotel-keepers will not recommend me; they send on their guests to him, because he pays them five per cent for every one they send. He pays the drivers, he pays the porters, he pays the guides. He pays the band, so that it hardly ever plays down in the village. He even pays the little children to say my drains are bad. He and his wife and his concierge, they mean to ruin me, they would like to see me die.’
‘Don’t – don’t say these things, Signora Cantù.’ Miss Raby began to walk about the room, speaking, as was her habit, what was true rather than what was intelligible. ‘Try not to be so angry with your son. You don’t know what he had to contend with. You don’t know who led him into it. Some one else may be to blame. And whoever it may be – you will remember them in your prayers.’
‘Of course I am a Christian!’ exclaimed the angry old lady. ‘But he will not ruin me. I seem poor, but he has borrowed – too much. That hotel will fail!’
‘And perhaps,’ continued Miss Raby, ‘there is not much wickedness in the world. Most of the evil we see is the result of little faults – of stupidity or vanity.’
‘And I even know who led him into it – his wife, and the man who is now his concierge.’
‘This habit of talking, of self-expression – it seems so pleasant and necessary – yet it does harm——’
They were both interrupted by an uproar in the street. Miss Raby opened the window; and a cloud of dust, heavy with petrol, entered. A passing motor car had twitched over a table. Much beer had been spilt, and a little blood.
Signora Cantù sighed peevishly at the noise. Her ill-temper had exhausted her, and she lay motionless, with closed eyes. Over her head two copper vases clinked gently in the sudden gust of wind. Miss Raby had been on the point of a great dramatic confession, of a touching appeal for forgiveness. Her words were ready; her words always were ready. But she looked at those closed eyes, that suffering enfeebled frame, and she knew that she had no right to claim the luxury of pardon.
It seemed to her that with this interview her life had ended. She had done all that was possible. She had done much evil. It only remained for her to fold her hands and to wait, till her ugliness and her incompetence went the way of beauty and strength. Before her eyes there arose the pleasant face of Colonel Leyland, with whom she might harmlessly conclude her days. He would not be stimulating, but it did not seem desirable that she should be stimulated. It would be better if her faculties did close, if the senseless activity of her brain and her tongue were gradually numbed. For the first time in her life, she was tempted to become old.
Signora Cantù was still speaking of her son’s wife and concierge; of the vulgarity of the former and the ingratitude of the latter, whom she had been kind to long ago, when he first wandered up from Italy, an obscure boy. Now he had sided against her. Such was the reward of charity.
‘And what is his name?’ asked Miss Raby absently.
‘Feo Ginori,’ she replied. ‘You would not remember him. He used to carry——’
From the new campanile there burst a flood of sound to which the copper vessels vibrated responsively. Miss Raby lifted her hands, not to her ears but to her eyes. In her enfeebled state, the throbbing note of the bell had the curious effect of blood returning into frozen veins.
‘I remember that man perfectly,’ she said at last; ‘and I shall see him this afternoon.’
III
Miss Raby and Elizabeth were seated together in the lounge of the Hôtel des Alpes. They had walked up from the Biscione to see Colonel Leyland. But he, apparently, had walked down there to see them, and the only thing to do was to wait, and to justify the wait by ordering some refreshment. So Miss Raby had afternoon tea, while Elizabeth behaved like a perfect lady over an ice, occasionally turning the spoon upside down in the mouth when she saw that no one was looking. The under-waiters were clearing cups and glasses off the marble-topped tables, and the gold-laced officials were rearranging the wicker chairs into seductive groups of three and two. Here and there the visitors lingered among their crumbs, and the Russian Prince had fallen asleep in a prominent and ungraceful position. But most people had started for a little walk before dinner, or had gone to play tennis, or had taken a book under a tree. The weather was delightful, and the sun had so far declined that its light had become spiritualized, suggesting new substance as well as new colour in everything on which it fell. From her seat Miss Raby could see the great precipices under which they had passed the day before; and beyond those precipices she could see Italy – the Val d’Aprile, the Val Senese and the mountains she had named ‘The Beasts of the South’. All day those mountains were insignificant – distant chips of white or grey stone. But the evening sun transfigured them, and they would sit up like purple bears against the southern sky.
‘It is a sin you should not be out, Elizabeth. Find your friend if you can, and make her go with you. If you see Colonel Leyland, tell him I am here.’
‘Is that all, ma’am?’ Elizabeth was fond of her eccentric mistress, and her heart had been softened by the ice. She saw that Miss Raby did not look well. Possibly the course of love was running roughly. And indeed gentlemen must be treated with tact, especially when both parties are getting on.
‘Don’t give pennies to the children: that is the only other thing.’
The guests had disappeared, and the number of officials visibly diminished. From the hall behind came the genteel sniggers of those two most
vile creatures, a young lady behind the bureau and a young man in a frock coat who shows new arrivals to their rooms. Some of the porters joined them, standing at a suitable distance. At last only Miss Raby, the Russian Prince, and the concierge were left in the lounge.
The concierge was a competent European of forty or so, who spoke all languages fluently, and some well. He was still active, and had evidently once been muscular. But either his life or his time of life had been unkind to his figure: in a few years he would certainly be fat. His face was less easy to decipher. He was engaged in the unquestioning performance of his duty, and that is not a moment for self-revelation. He opened the windows, he filled the matchboxes, he flicked the little tables with a duster, always keeping an eye on the door in case any one arrived without luggage, or left without paying. He touched an electric bell, and a waiter flew up and cleared away Miss Raby’s tea-things. He touched another bell, and sent an underling to tidy up some fragments of paper which had fallen out of a bedroom window. Then ‘Excuse me, madam!’ and he had picked up Miss Raby’s handkerchief with a slight bow. He seemed to bear her no grudge for her abrupt departure of the preceding evening. Perhaps it was into his hand that she had dropped a tip. Perhaps he did not remember she had been there.
The gesture with which he returned the handkerchief troubled her with vague memories. Before she could thank him he was back in the doorway, standing sideways, so that the slight curve of his stomach was outlined against the view. He was speaking to a youth of athletic but melancholy appearance, who was fidgeting in the portico without. ‘I told you the percentage,’ she heard. ‘If you had agreed to it, I would have recommended you. Now it is too late. I have enough guides.’