Alone Part 6

"Then my mother is a Scotsman."

I glanced from the sea into his face; there was something of the same calm depth in both, the same sunny composure. What is it, this limpid state of the mind? What do we call this alloy of profundity and frankness? We call it intelligence. I would like to meet that man or woman who can make Attilio say something foolish. He does not know what it is to feel shy. Serenely objective, he discards those subterfuges which are the usual safeguard of youth or inexperience--the evasions, reservations and prevarications that defend the shallow, the weak, the self-conscious. His candour rises above them. He feels instinctively that these things are pitfalls.

"Have you no sweetheart, Attilio?"

"Certainly I have. But it is not a man's affair. We are only children, you understand--siamo ancora piccoli."

"Did you ever give her a kiss?"

"Never. Not a single one."

I relight my pipe, and then inquire:

"Why not give her a kiss?"

"People would call me a disrespectful boy."

"n.o.body, surely, need be any the wiser?"

"She is not like you and me."

A pause....

"Not like us? How so?"

"She would tell her sister."

"What of it?"

"The sister would tell her mother, who would say unpleasant things to mine. And perhaps to other folks. Then the fat would be in the fire. And that is why."

Another pause....

"What would your mother say to you?"

"She would say: 'You are the oldest male; you should conduct yourself accordingly. What is this lack of judgment I hear about?'"

"I begin to understand."

Siena

Driven from the Paradise of Levanto, I landed not on earth but--with one jump--in h.e.l.l. The Turks figure forth a h.e.l.l of ice and snow; this is my present abode; its name is Siena. Every one knows that this town lies on a hill, on three hills; the inference that it would be cold in January was fairly obvious; how cold, n.o.body could have guessed. The sun is invisible. Streets are deep in snow. Icicles hang from the windows.

Worst of all, the hotels are unheated. Those English, you know,--they refuse to supply us with coal....

Could this be the city where I was once nearly roasted to death? It is an effort to recall that glistening month of the Palio festival, a month I spent at a genuine pension for a set purpose, namely, to write a study on the habits of "The Pension-cats of Europe"--those legions of elderly English spinsters who lead crepuscular lives in continental boarding-houses. I tore it up, I remember; it was unfair. These ladies have a perfect right to do as they please and, for that matter, are not nearly as ridiculous as many married couples that live outside boarding-houses. But when Siena grew intolerable--a stark, ill-provisioned place; you will look in vain for a respectable grocer or butcher; the wine leaves much to be desired; indeed, it has all the drawbacks of Florence and none of its advantages--why, then we fled into Mr. Edward Hutton's Unknown Tuscany. There, at Abbadia San Salvatore (though the summit of Mount Amiata did not come up to expectation) we at last felt cool again, wandering amid venerable chestnuts and wondrously tinted volcanic blocks, mountain-fragments, full of miniature glens and moisture and fernery--a green twilight, a landscape made for fairies....

Was this the same Siena from which we once escaped to get cool? m.u.f.fled up to the ears, with three waistcoats on, I move in and out of doors, endeavouring to discover whether there be any appreciable difference in temperature between the external air and that of my bedroom. There cannot be much to choose between them. They say I am the only foreigner now in Siena. That, at least, is a distinction, a record. Furthermore, no matches, not even of the sulphur variety, were procurable in any of the shops for the s.p.a.ce of three days; that also, I imagine, cannot yet have occurred within the memory of living man.

While stamping round the great Square yesterday to keep my feet warm, a Florentine addressed me; a commercial gentleman, it would seem. He disapproved of this square--it was not regular in shape, it was not even level. What a piazza! Such was his patriotism that he actually went on to say unfriendly things about the tower. Who ever thought of building a tower at the bottom of a hill? It was good enough, he dared say, for Siena. Oh, yes; doubtless it satisfied their artistic notions, such as they were.

This tower being one of my favourites, I felt called upon to undertake its defence. Recollecting all I had ever heard or read to its credit, citing authorities neither of us had ever dreamt of--improvising l.u.s.tily, in short, as I warmed to my work--I concluded by proving it to be one of the seven wonders of the world. He said:

"Now really! One would think you had been born in this miserable hole.

You know what we Florentines say:

Siena Di tre cose e piena: Torri, campane, E figli di putane."

"I admit that Siena is deficient in certain points," I replied. "That wonderful dome of yours, for example--there is nothing like it here."

"No, indeed. Ah, that cupola! Ah, Brunelleschi--che genio!"

"I perceive you are a true Florentine. Could you perhaps tell me why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to see it rising out of the plain?"

"Some enemy has been talking to you...."

A little red-haired boy from Lucca, carrying for sale a trayful of those detestable plaster-casts, then accosted me.

Who bought such abominations, I inquired?

n.o.body. Business was bad.

Bad? I could well believe it. Having for the first time in my life nothing better to do, I did my duty. I purchased the entire collection of these horrors, on the understanding that he should forthwith convey them in my presence to the desolate public garden, where they were set up, one after the other, on the edge of a bench and shattered to fragments with our snow-b.a.l.l.s. Thus perished, not without laughter and in a good cause, three archangels, two Dantes, a nondescript lady with brocade garments and a delectable amorino whose counterpart, the sole survivor, was reserved for a better fate--being carried home and presented as a gift to my chambermaid.

She was polite enough to call it a beautiful work of art.

I was polite enough not to contradict her.

Both of us know better....

This young girl has no illusions (few Tuscans have) and yet a great charm. Her lover is at the front. There is little for her to do, the hotel being practically empty. There is nothing whatever for me to do, in these Arctic lat.i.tudes. Bored to death, both of us, we confabulate together huddled in shawls and greatcoats, each holding a charcoal pan to keep the fingers from being frostbitten. I say to myself: "You will never find a maidservant of this type in Rome, so sprightly of tongue, distinguished in manner and spotless in person--never!"

The same with her words. The phrases trip out of her mouth, immaculate, each in full dress. Seldom does she make an original remark, but she says ordinary things in a tone of intense conviction and invests them with an appetizing savour. Wherein lies that peculiar salt of Tuscan speech? In its emphasis, its air of finality. They are emphatic, rather than profound. Their deepest utterances, if you look below the surface, are generally found to be variants of one of those ancestral saws or proverbs wherewith the country is saturated. Theirs is a crusted charm.

A hard and glittering sanity, a kind of ageless enamel, is what confronts us in their temperament. There are not many deviations from this Tuscan standard. Close by, in Umbria, you will find a softer type.

One can be pa.s.sably warm in bed. Here I lie for long, long hours, endeavouring to generate the spark of energy which will propel me from this inhospitable mountain. Here I lie and study an old travel-book. I mean to press it to the last drop.

One seldom presses books out, nowadays. The mania for sc.r.a.ps of one kind or another, the general cheapening of printed matter, seem to have dulled that faculty and given us a scattered state of mind. We browse dispersedly, in goatish fas.h.i.+on, instead of nibbling down to the root like that more conscientious quadruped whose name, if I mentioned it, would degrade the metaphor. Devouring so much, so hastily, so irreverentially, how shall a man establish close contact with the mind of him who writes, and impregnate himself with his peculiar outlook to such an extent as to be able to take on, if only momentarily, a colouring different from his own? It is a task requiring submissiveness and leisure.

And yet, what could be more interesting than really to observe things and men from the angle of another individual, to install oneself within his mentality and make it one's habitation? To sit in his bones--what glimpses of unexplored regions! Were a man to know what his fellow truly thinks; could he feel in his own body those impulses which drive the other to his idiomatic acts and words--what an insight he would gain!

Morally, it might well amount to "tout comprendre, c'est ne rien pardonner"; but who troubles about pardoning or condemning?

Intellectually, it would be a feast. Thus immersed into an alien personality, a man would feel as though he lived two lives, and possessed two characters at the same time. One's own life, prolonged to an age, could never afford such unexpected revelations.

The thing can be done, up to a point, with patient humility; for everybody writes himself down more or less, though not everybody is worth the trouble of deciphering.

I purpose to apply this method; to squeeze the juice, the life-blood, out of what some would call a rather dry Scotch traveller. I read his book in England for the first time two years ago, and have brought it here with a view to further dissection. Would I had known of its existence five years earlier! Strange to say, despite my deplorable bookishness (vide Press) this was not the case; I could never ascertain either the author's name or the t.i.tle of his volume, though I had heard about him, rather vaguely, long before that time. It was Dr. Dohrn of the Naples Aquarium who said to me in those days: