Where Angels Fear to Tread Part 13

"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 a.s.s," 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 a.s.sented.

"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 s.m.u.t flew in her eye, and Harriet with a s.m.u.t 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 s.m.u.t 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.

"n.o.body 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?"